Growing up, I heard story after story about the Dust Bowl from my parents and grandparents. Dad described his mother shoveling rather than sweeping post-storm drifts. Grandma told how she placed wet sheets over her children’s beds to protect their lungs as they slept. She’d launder filthy linens day after day.
My mother’s family lived in Southwest Kansas and shared similar tales when family gathered. What made these epics unique was that I grew up in Southern California among verdant citrus orchards and strawberry fields. Dust blacking out the sun seemed outlandish to a little girl who played outside on green grass year-round.
When we moved to Oklahoma in 1972, I listened to more first-person accounts of the Dirty Thirties, tales that-seemed movie or book-like to me. Even though I ‘d seen dramatic photos in history books, I couldn’t imagine air that held more dirt than breathable oxygen.
As a college junior in Weatherford, Oklahoma, I got my first taste of dust storms. As my relatives once described, daylight disappeared. Aeolian soil, probably from Nebraska, found its way through every crevice in my ancient dorm room. Mucus coughed up in response to this invasion was muddy, which explained why my taste buds screamed, “What are you doing, eating dirt?”
Just as in the stories relatives relayed, the day turned so dark I flicked on overhead lights to see. I also skipped the trek to the cafeteria for supper. My tongue thanked me as it already had plenty of foreign matter to process. I hadn’t devoured that much soil since I was three.
Over decades, I’ve seen dust storms enough that those old tales now ring true. Recently, I drove between Ellis and Logan during marathon winds. As I traveled toward my destination, air-borne loam muted all horizon lines. Beyond those fuzzy edges, I could see distant elevators.
By the time I finished my chores and began the return trip, I couldn’t see from one section line to another. Wind speeds had increased considerably, stirring air to the color of milky coffee. What had been bluster early was now gale that pressed ditch weeds flat to the earth.
Hordes of tumbleweeds large and small raced east. It was like watching a movie or news report where throngs of people broke out of prison and scurried helter skelter to get away–only these were various sized herbaceous orbs rolling at top speed across the prairie. I didn’t clock them, but if I’d had a radar gun, I suspect sleeker plants sailed by at over 55 miles per hour.
Thankfully, they were plants and not people or animals dashing in front of my grille. I know I whacked over 200 unmoored Russian thistles that day. At times, it seemed as if 2,000,000 sped my way. If I could’ve seen more than a couple hundred feet, I’d have parked to count the masses. Tumbleweeds that day compared in number to the millions of migrating buffalo that once stopped trains crossing these grasslands for up to three days.
I no longer have trouble understanding family Dust Bowl accounts. In fact, after that nasty storm, I’ve a saga of my own to pass on to grandchildren. As Kansas kids, they won’t have the trouble Grandma did picturing a landscape erased by blowing dirt.
Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.