The Worst Hard Time Part 11

22. Cornhusker II AT YEAR'S END, Don Hartwell was worried about his health, his long shadow of debt, the dead land, and about an America that still seemed lost seven years into the Depression. In his summary of 1936, he wrote in his diary that it was the driest year ever in Webster County, Nebraska. He wanted to spend New Year's Eve at a dance in the town of Red Cloud, to put behind him the past twelve months of misery. But a cold drizzle and then a norther packing dust and snow kept Hartwell and his wife at home near Inavale. They ate cornmeal and ham and went to bed early. On New Year's Day, he recorded in his diary the simple facts of life on the farm, the wind at twenty-two miles an hour, gas selling for twenty cents a gallon, which meant it took a full day's work at one of the government road jobs to fill up your tank. Don Hartwell was worried about his health, his long shadow of debt, the dead land, and about an America that still seemed lost seven years into the Depression. In his summary of 1936, he wrote in his diary that it was the driest year ever in Webster County, Nebraska. He wanted to spend New Year's Eve at a dance in the town of Red Cloud, to put behind him the past twelve months of misery. But a cold drizzle and then a norther packing dust and snow kept Hartwell and his wife at home near Inavale. They ate cornmeal and ham and went to bed early. On New Year's Day, he recorded in his diary the simple facts of life on the farm, the wind at twenty-two miles an hour, gas selling for twenty cents a gallon, which meant it took a full day's work at one of the government road jobs to fill up your tank.

"Many things of importance have happened," he wrote, "and we are also thankful for some things which did not happen."

Ike Osteen had walked away from his dugout in Baca County. Hazel Shaw had given up on No Man's Land after losing her baby to the dust. The German Borths had been forced to break up their family, sending the children south to escape death from pneumonia. But in the Republican River drainage of southern Nebraska, Don Hartwell tightened his grip on the land, holding on to it because he had nothing else. At the start of 1937, about nine million acres of former homestead land were orphaned in Nebraska. Hartwell was trying to fend off complete failure-losing the farm to the bank, losing his wife, all his dreams dissolving. He still made a little money playing piano in towns on the Kansas-Nebraska border, banging out dance tunes till early morning. People liked favorites, old-timey songs, but Hartwell would often end a set with the words, "Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky" from "Stormy Weather," and d.a.m.n if people didn't care to hear it, Hartwell liked to play it.

Jan 10 Jan 10Influenza is hanging like a pall over the country. Hundreds have died in the large cities & it is gradually closing in on this country. Smallpox was the popular disease last winter.Jan 11We have only 2 old sows, 6 fall pigs & 5 horses now & I doubt if we can get feed for them much longer. So-I don't know. I don't know whether we can even stay here this year. I wish we could see our way clear again.Feb 14Well, it's Valentine's Day again! I think everyone has a sneaking desire to send one to someone besides his father or mother or other 'accredited' a.s.sociates & has still more desire to get one the same way, but few, oh so very few, ever do.Feb 18The air is filled with dust today. Very bad dust storms are reported in W. Kans., Okla. etc, but that is not unusual for the drouth dust & wind program of this country for the last 4 or 5 years.I didn't get home from Superior until 3 a.m. so am rather tired.Feb 25In Chicago a man offered to give away his baby so he could keep his car and, of course, there is much righteous indignation. But at least he dares to be honest. I'll bet anything that thousands of others would do the same thing, if only they dared to and could.Mar 4 It is fair and clear today, warm in the afternoon. I didn't get home till 2:30 this a.m. But I don't know yet for sure what we are going to do this year & I don't know where or how we can borrow any more money to keep going on this year. It is fair and clear today, warm in the afternoon. I didn't get home till 2:30 this a.m. But I don't know yet for sure what we are going to do this year & I don't know where or how we can borrow any more money to keep going on this year.Mar 6I haven't felt extra well for the last 2 weeks. Our yard is bare as the road. I sowed blue gra.s.s last spring, but last summers drouth killed it out.Mar 18We are still wondering what we are going to do this year. We, like the rest have nothing left to mortgage to keep 'farming,' so I don't know. A terrible school house explosion at New London, Texas, 450 killed. Some of our tulips are coming up.Mar 30Verna & I went to Harry Chaplins sale. A big crowd was there. He, like many others, has lived here many years but also, like many others, is being forced out of the country by the continuous drouth of the last few years.Apr 4Some people live in hopes of 'something happening,'-I have always lived more or less in fear of it. And, contrary to popular belief, very many of the things we live in fear of DO happen.Apr 10I did some disking in the field W. of the feed yard in the afternoon. The first disking I have done this year. But we don't know from one day to another what we can or will do this year!Apr 14Partly cloudy & more or less dusty all the time. I did some disking on the W. bottom in the afternoon. But I don't know yet if & how we can stay here this summer, so it is not very encouraging to try to do very much. Very warm. Apr 15 Apr 15Well, my hunch concerning last year proved to be utterly correct. 1936 was one of the most complete failures ever known, even here. All the alfalfa & corn I put in last year was utterly destroyed by hot winds except a little fodder on the bottom.Apr 16The big alfalfa fields which used to be so common in this country are all gone now. Just bare, windswept infested fields remain.Apr 24Today is the worst so far this year. A mile gale from the N.W. & blinding dust. One can't do much & it doesn't look as though there was any use of doing much anyway. Wind, dust & drouth are getting worse every day.Apr 30April is ending! I wonder if we ever will live here another April.May 20The dust still hangs in the air & the drouth is getting worse all the time. I planted corn on the W. bottom. The heat & dust were stifling 13 p.m.May 25Well, I finished planting corn-until I start replanting it. It seems nothing grows for me even after I get it planted. The air still is sort of hazy & dusty but clouds gathered in the S.W. at 6 p.m. Verna and I went in the cellar for awhile.May 29Went to R. Cloud ... We took our lawn mower & rake along & cleaned up the cemetery lots.... I went to Riverton to play for a dance-not many there. I doubt if I go again.June 1 I finished re-planting corn today-I guess. I finished re-planting corn today-I guess.June 19Today was as mean as one could ask for. A driving S.W. wind, dust coming in clouds from the river & at 6 p.m. a vague dusty cloud from the N.W., which pa.s.sed with a few drops of rain. A crowd gathered for an out door picture show but none was held.June 22The drouth really got going today. I weeded the corn N. of the feed yard-but the horses have taken to giving out so I don't know just how I will get along. Bad luck seems to follow me.July 2I laid a thermometer on the ground at the base of a hill of corn today, it registered 137 degrees!July 4Today is Sunday & the 4th of July, a quiet combination in Inavale. A clear sky, a blazing sun. I swept & dusted in the forenoon. We had cherry pie for dinner. We didn't go anywhere. We used to years ago, but those days are gone-forever, I guess.July 7The drouth still continues its way of destruction & despair. First the alfalfa seed didn't come up because of drouth now nearly all the cane I sowed is destroyed & it is now starting to destroy the corn, corn is damaged about 20 percent.July 14Some Russian aviators flew from Moscow to California over the N. Pole today, that would be easy compared to raising corn in Webster C., Nebraska.July 15 I placed a thermometer out in the field beside a stalk of corn, it registered 140 degrees! No wonder things burn! A carnival is in R. Cloud but I haven't been to one for a long time. I placed a thermometer out in the field beside a stalk of corn, it registered 140 degrees! No wonder things burn! A carnival is in R. Cloud but I haven't been to one for a long time.July 16One small cloud formed in the W., another in the N.W. This one went S.E. & gave Red Cloud rain & hail, we got a light shower at 7 p.m. One of the horses got sick in the afternoon. I don't know-it seems as though we haven't much left to do much with.

23. The Last Men PEOPLE SHUNNED BAM WHITE in Dalhart, blaming him for that picture show that made it seem like the nesters had killed the land out of greed or ignorance. They called him half-breed and traitor to Texas, even if all Bam did was guide a plow across a desiccated field as the doc.u.mentarians filmed him. Most days, Bam didn't care what people said to him or about him. Gossip in town wasn't worth a cup of curdled spit. But it hurt when young Melt came home from school, fevered over what people had said about his daddy. Melt was proud of his father. Seeing him up on the big screen at the Mission Theater made him a bigger man. Bam, Andy James, and the old XIT cowboys knew they were right, that the nesters had ripped up the gra.s.s without a thought to what it might do to the natural order. That huge sand dune on the James ranch looked like a transplant from the northern Sahara, all misshapen, growing daily. The irony was that Andy was a rancher; he never got into the wheat game, and the desert dunes on his ranch were somebody else's dirt. More than 700,000 acres in Dallam County were seriously eroded, by the calculation of Hugh Bennett's men. It would not change a thing to say it wasn't so. Much of the land felt like the powdered residue left after an explosion. in Dalhart, blaming him for that picture show that made it seem like the nesters had killed the land out of greed or ignorance. They called him half-breed and traitor to Texas, even if all Bam did was guide a plow across a desiccated field as the doc.u.mentarians filmed him. Most days, Bam didn't care what people said to him or about him. Gossip in town wasn't worth a cup of curdled spit. But it hurt when young Melt came home from school, fevered over what people had said about his daddy. Melt was proud of his father. Seeing him up on the big screen at the Mission Theater made him a bigger man. Bam, Andy James, and the old XIT cowboys knew they were right, that the nesters had ripped up the gra.s.s without a thought to what it might do to the natural order. That huge sand dune on the James ranch looked like a transplant from the northern Sahara, all misshapen, growing daily. The irony was that Andy was a rancher; he never got into the wheat game, and the desert dunes on his ranch were somebody else's dirt. More than 700,000 acres in Dallam County were seriously eroded, by the calculation of Hugh Bennett's men. It would not change a thing to say it wasn't so. Much of the land felt like the powdered residue left after an explosion.

Still, in the spring of 1937 in this place of next year people, it was hard to corral the impulse to put something in the earth. n.o.body had money for tractor fuel, or hiring farm hands, or even for buying seed. The government handed out seed for gra.s.s and gave grants for gasoline, so long as people agreed to try a new way of tilling the ground. Bennett's project, Operation Dust Bowl, was in full swing. An army of CCC workers, aided by unemployed farm hands, was called to duty each morning from barracks on the High Plains, in a war against dirt. The CCC workers pushed the huge, creeping dune on Andy James's ranch around, trying to level it, and then making furrows so that the dust was shaped to offer the least resistance to prevailing wind patterns. The dune had been fifty feet high at one point, topping the roof of any barn, a monster that had grown to nearly a mile in length. They seeded a section of the exhausted ranch with African desert gra.s.s and cane. And while they did not say it would ever be a working spread again, they did say it might spring back to life, an awakening of green. In a few years, some gra.s.s might grow again without the help of the CCC, and maybe some wild plums in the draw will take hold, some sagebrush, maybe some tamarisk, and it could look in parts like it did when the James family had first come to the High Plains and p.r.o.nounced it the most heavenly place on earth. If they could make it work here, Big Hugh said, they could do it anywhere in the Dust Bowl. Dallam County was the lab. Bennett started out working with 16,000 acres, but the project expanded quickly to 47,000 acres, with a goal of ten times that size. After so many years of destruction, of hearing how they had killed the land, people wanted to be a part of restoration. It felt good to be trying to heal something.

The Whites planted corn and some gra.s.s on the patch of ground outside their two-room house. There was a little section of intact sandy loam that had not been dusted over or ripped up. Bam had kept it in gra.s.s, and though it browned early and looked dead for most of the last six years, it held the earth down. Another part of the ground was as hard as cement. When Bam took his hoe and hacked at it, he could barely make a dent. He got his axe, called out to his boys to come have a look, and tried to split the armor of dirt. Only after repeated big swings could he make a slit. He ran the horse-drawn plow, the same one that was in the picture show, over some bundled-up dirt, and got it moved around enough to get some seeds in there. He planted alfalfa because he wanted a little hay to give his two horses, and because after it was cut the stubble would be left on the ground as a way to hold the ground in place. The rain came right in the spring, an inch one day, half an inch another, then ten days of sun, followed by a two-inch downpour. Bam told the children they might actually have something to show in the summer.

Doc Dawson took time off from his duties at the soup kitchen to give his land a final go. It looked so defeated: tumbleweeds snagged against the barbed wire, the surface shaped like an old brown rag. There were dunes ten feet high and hillocks of red dust from New Mexico and heaps of that sickly yellow sand that blew in from other parts of Texas. He followed the advice of the CCC crews, plowing in furrows so the wind would ripple instead of rip and lift, and he pushed the dunes around. He tried planting gra.s.s seed as well and drilled holes for corn and maize, which had always been easier to grow than a toenail.

People across the Panhandle had finally agreed to strict conservation, setting up sanctions for any landowner who let his property blow. It was out of character, not very Texan, to allow a committee of farmers and ranchers to determine whether one individual was not in compliance with the laws of nature, but then it wasn't very Texan to let the New Deal conservation men have the run of the Llano Estacado. But they had begged for the help, sending a telegram to Washington. Even Dalhart's lone banker, Lon C. McCrory, had joined in the plea for outside relief, saying, "We need somebody to save us from ourselves."

The remedial efforts did not keep cattle from dying or black blizzards from rolling over other parts of the Dust Bowl. In 1937, there were more dusters on the High Plains than in any other year-134. To people who lived with death and gray land, it had become the palette of life, almost unnoticed. But to people who had been away or came to the Dust Bowl with fresh eyes, the sight of this sick land was shocking. A minister's son, Alexandre Hogue, had grown up on a relative's ranch not far from Dalhart, left for the city, then returned with a plan to paint what he saw. Hogue was a careful student of the land, studying the way a grove of trees he remembered from his youth now looked like standing skeletons, or how farm animals gnawed on fence posts, or what happened when their eyes were hardened wide open with dust, and the pained expressions on their faces. He saw death on the plains like a black plague. Hogue painted starving animals, drifts that covered tractors and homes, a surfeit of predatory snakes and bugs, a landscape of rotting h.e.l.l. Life Life magazine ran his paintings in 1937, calling him "the artist of the Dust Bowl." The painting that drew the most attention was an oil-on-canvas piece named magazine ran his paintings in 1937, calling him "the artist of the Dust Bowl." The painting that drew the most attention was an oil-on-canvas piece named Drouth Survivors, Drouth Survivors, a portrait of an agrarian nightmare, with surreal touches. It showed two dead cows face-planted into a drift, the top of a leafless tree buried by dust, a tractor half-smothered by sand, a fence drifted. After a portrait of an agrarian nightmare, with surreal touches. It showed two dead cows face-planted into a drift, the top of a leafless tree buried by dust, a tractor half-smothered by sand, a fence drifted. After Life Life ran the painting, it hung in the Pan-American Exposition in Dallas. ran the painting, it hung in the Pan-American Exposition in Dallas.

McCarty railed against the painting, backed by his Chamber of Commerce. It was bad enough that The Plow That Broke the Plains The Plow That Broke the Plains was still playing in some theaters, but now here was this fancy-pants ar- was still playing in some theaters, but now here was this fancy-pants ar-teest making the High Plains of Texas out to be like an open-faced cemetery. McCarty pushed a plan through the Chamber to buy the painting, bring it back to Dalhart, and burn it to the cheers of his Last Man Club. The town sent an emissary to Dallas with fifty dollars. The painting couldn't be worth any more than that, they figured. But in Dallas, the Exposition wanted at least two thousand for making the High Plains of Texas out to be like an open-faced cemetery. McCarty pushed a plan through the Chamber to buy the painting, bring it back to Dalhart, and burn it to the cheers of his Last Man Club. The town sent an emissary to Dallas with fifty dollars. The painting couldn't be worth any more than that, they figured. But in Dallas, the Exposition wanted at least two thousand for Drouth Survivors. Drouth Survivors. This here painting had been featured in This here painting had been featured in Life Life magazine, after all. The Dalhart representative returned home empty-handed. The painting was later purchased by the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, a museum in Paris, and burned in a fire. magazine, after all. The Dalhart representative returned home empty-handed. The painting was later purchased by the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, a museum in Paris, and burned in a fire.

In early summer, a couple of decent storms visited, and the rain didn't fall in a fury, like the kind that caused flash floods. It was just simple rain at intervals in the middle part of the growing season. It wasn't pure and clean-there was dirt in the downpour-but it was steady enough to do some good. Parched earth that had been planted in gra.s.s, hay, and corn looked spongelike for the first time in years. We finally got our break, folks said. Bam White's little patch of green grew to a blanket of green by early July. Doc Dawson's beaten-down sections also had a little blush going and rows of healthy corn stood tall. Even the gra.s.s planted on Andy James's ranch went from a nice start to ankle-high carpet. It seemed like a miracle, and people gave G.o.d and Franklin Roosevelt equal credit. G.o.d had brought the rain, and FDR showed people the way to bring the land back. Dallam County had the largest soil conservation project in the nation; and in the summer of 1937, it was a trophy. Most of the county was still a wasteland. But on the sections where dunes had been moved, the ground furrowed, and the conservation restrictions put in place, it looked alive-a resurrection. Hugh Bennett came back for another visit and posed for pictures in fields of waist-high alfalfa. Big Hugh was cautious and urged people not to read too much into this little spurt of life. Again, he nagged them all about holding together a sea of conservation districts, not just a small patch of cooperation here and there.

In July the rains gave out and the heat returned, pushing the mercury well past 110 degrees. The ground burned in the big areas that were barren or drifted, and blast-furnace winds browned the crops to a crisp. The corn was not ready for harvest, but maybe some of the gra.s.s and hay could be cut and stacked for feed before it crumbled. Some people decided to wait, hoping for one more soaker, gambling that they could outlast the heat or another big duster.

Melt White was outside in early evening, temperature still above a hundred, when he heard a buzz like the electricity of a snapped power line. He poked around and could not find anything that would cause the noise, just a soft breeze at the end of a clear, oppressively hot day. The buzz grew louder. He looked up at the sky and saw a strange-looking cloud, about three times the size of a football field, moving toward him. At first he thought it was an odd duster, some new type of dirt cloud. This ma.s.s was thick and dark, and it moved quickly, erratically, the sunlight filtering through as it flickered. The buzz sharpened as the cloud approached, a whirring sound. It scared the boy. He called out for his daddy. Bam White ambled outside, his bowlegs moving slowly in the heat.

What is it, boy?

That cloud. Funny-looking duster, making that noise.

Bam crinkled his eyes and shaded his brow, taking in the moving, buzzing cloud.

d.a.m.n! That ain't no duster. It's hoppers.

The cloud dispersed in a few minutes' time, descending on Bam White's gra.s.s, latching on to his hay, smothering the garden. Melt was scared-an uncountable swarm of gra.s.shoppers had invaded his home. They consumed everything the family had grown. The gra.s.s was gone in minutes. The hay disappeared in a hurry. Melt took a broom and tried to swoosh the hoppers off the gra.s.s, but it was no use. Some of them attacked him, chewing on his clothes. They swallowed every cell of fiber in the ground until nothing was standing, and the field looked dead and brown again, and then they lifted off, fortified by the White family's season of labor.

When the gra.s.shoppers. .h.i.t Doc Dawson's fields, they chewed the corn down to thin stalks and then sucked up the standing strands as well. Gra.s.shoppers are eating machines, each bug consuming up to half of its body weight in a single day. The insects took out all Dawson's gra.s.s, all his corn, all his maize, and moved on to the wooden handles of his farm tools. The Doc had left a few shovels, some pitchforks, and a rake lying out. In their feeding frenzy, the hoppers crawled over the polished wood and tried to consume it too. Then they were on the fence posts. His acreage looked like a solid layer of moving, munching hoppers, and his hope for any income in 1937 was destroyed. He had nothing. The Doc's wife said it was like the Biblical Exodus and they were the Egyptians, coping with one plague after another.

The gra.s.shoppers were not selective. The insect clouds moved from county to county, looking for any living thing, leaving not a flower or leaf or a sprig of gra.s.s standing. In No Man's Land, they chewed all the turf on the irrigated Kohler ranch, and in the shaded draws on the Lujan spread, and in fields where people had felt encouraged enough to try and nurse wheat through to harvest. The buzzing clouds dropped down on Fred Folkers's place and gnawed his garden to dirt, a plane of winged, bent-legged omnivores. His orchard was long gone, but he had some knee-high wheat planted in furrows. The hoppers got it all. The county ag man, Bill Baker, said he had never seen a bigger surge of insects in his lifetime. He estimated there were 23,000 gra.s.shoppers per acre, fourteen million per square mile. A farmer with two sections faced twenty-eight million of the voracious creatures.

Nature was out of whack. In place of buffalo gra.s.s, prairie chickens, and mourning doves were black blizzards, black widows, cutworms, rabbits, and now this-a frenzied sky of gra.s.shoppers. They had come out of the dry Rocky Mountains, the government men said, locusts that laid eggs in the flatlands and multiplied during dry years without predators. A wet year would usually produce a fungus that killed many of them. Birds that used to populate the High Plains year-round or descend on its stubble during the migrating season had disappeared. Same with rattlesnakes. A farmer used to fill a bucket in the spring with all the rattlers he shot on his half-section. But no more. For five years, people had rarely seen a rattler. Snakes and birds ate gra.s.shoppers. When they were taken out of the prairie life cycle, the hoppers metastasized. That much, people could see; it was obvious. The early ecologists in Bennett's soil service were only beginning to examine how much life had frayed below the surface, among the small world of insects and microorganisms.

The National Guard was called out and instructed to exterminate the gra.s.shopper plague by any means necessary. The troops tried burning fields. They tried crushing the insects, using tractors to drag big rollers over the ground. They brewed up tanks of poison and spread it over the land, as much as 175 tons of toxins per acre. If there was anything still alive in the ground, it would die under the blanket of poison. CCC crews were diverted from their furrowing and dune-reshaping projects and put on the poison campaign. In No Man's Land, eighty trucks from the state highway department joined National Guard troops in mixing and hauling gra.s.shopper poison around the clock. A combination of a.r.s.enic and bran was settled on as the best method, and it was sprayed from the air and distributed by seeding machines. In places where it killed the gra.s.shoppers, roads were slick with dead, squashed bugs. But the poison killed everything else as well. After the promising rains, the growing season had turned in a few days' time to another disaster.

Just as the hoppers were piling up dead in the fields, the dusters kicked up again. By the fall the tally was put at half a billion dollars' worth of lost crops-to dust, gra.s.shoppers, or drought. The southern plains were in no better shape than at the start of the drought five years earlier.

In Dalhart came a surprise announcement: John McCarty was leaving town. The founder of the Last Man Club, the Dust Bowl cheerleader, the Empire Builder, the director of the Dalhart Chamber of Commerce, the editor and publisher of the Texan Texan was pulling up stakes and moving south to the city of Amarillo. Nothing personal, he explained to slack-jawed friends around the DeSoto. Nothing against Dalhart, this fine town, full of Spartans, he told d.i.c.k c.o.o.n and Doc Dawson and all the people who had signed a pledge to never leave, a virtual marriage contract with a town. McCarty wanted a divorce. Nothing against Dallam County. It was just that a man had to follow opportunity when it called your tune. He had had a good job offer in Amarillo and could not afford to turn it down. Nothing against the other members of the Last Man Club. He said good luck and goodbye and turned his back for good on a town he swore he would never leave. The betrayal lingered through the last years of the dust storms. was pulling up stakes and moving south to the city of Amarillo. Nothing personal, he explained to slack-jawed friends around the DeSoto. Nothing against Dalhart, this fine town, full of Spartans, he told d.i.c.k c.o.o.n and Doc Dawson and all the people who had signed a pledge to never leave, a virtual marriage contract with a town. McCarty wanted a divorce. Nothing against Dallam County. It was just that a man had to follow opportunity when it called your tune. He had had a good job offer in Amarillo and could not afford to turn it down. Nothing against the other members of the Last Man Club. He said good luck and goodbye and turned his back for good on a town he swore he would never leave. The betrayal lingered through the last years of the dust storms.

So Dalhart lost its biggest booster and the Dalhart Texan Dalhart Texan was without its unique voice. The promising crop was ruined by hoppers. The land was on the move again, worse than any time since the start of the black blizzards. Children were dying of dust pneumonia; it seemed like one death every ten days. Uncle d.i.c.k was the only community pillar left in town. The survivor of the Galveston hurricane looked around at his shriveled, humbled town, coated in grime, as colorless as the inside of a gopher hole. The First National Bank had folded and never reopened. The pool hall was gone, taken by d.i.c.k himself in reluctant foreclosure. Herzstein's was gone, also lost in foreclosure. The DeSoto could barely hold on. Bennett's project had brought a payroll to town and provided rental income for folks who opened up their houses to the CCC workers who didn't want to bunk in the camps outside town. But when Operation Dust Bowl folded its tents, what would be left for Dalhart? c.o.o.n found his answer at the card table, where he looked into the weather-creased, sun-blasted faces of XIT cowboys playing their hands and spitting tobacco into cups. Dalhart had a resource after all: this history, the biggest ranch in the state, the spread that built the capitol, the largest gra.s.s under fence in the world, the boys of original Texas. was without its unique voice. The promising crop was ruined by hoppers. The land was on the move again, worse than any time since the start of the black blizzards. Children were dying of dust pneumonia; it seemed like one death every ten days. Uncle d.i.c.k was the only community pillar left in town. The survivor of the Galveston hurricane looked around at his shriveled, humbled town, coated in grime, as colorless as the inside of a gopher hole. The First National Bank had folded and never reopened. The pool hall was gone, taken by d.i.c.k himself in reluctant foreclosure. Herzstein's was gone, also lost in foreclosure. The DeSoto could barely hold on. Bennett's project had brought a payroll to town and provided rental income for folks who opened up their houses to the CCC workers who didn't want to bunk in the camps outside town. But when Operation Dust Bowl folded its tents, what would be left for Dalhart? c.o.o.n found his answer at the card table, where he looked into the weather-creased, sun-blasted faces of XIT cowboys playing their hands and spitting tobacco into cups. Dalhart had a resource after all: this history, the biggest ranch in the state, the spread that built the capitol, the largest gra.s.s under fence in the world, the boys of original Texas.

"We oughtta have ourselves a barbecue," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "A reunion, all the XIT cowboys, get 'em here in Dalhart and hold a barbecue."

The idea was an easy sell, especially since d.i.c.k said he would pay for the chow. That first week of October, they gathered up as many cowboys as they could find, after a call went out near and far, and held a big feast, with spits of pork ribs and sides of chicken and slabs of beef, grilled in the open air, on a day when the dirt clouds kept their distance. Bam White brought his fiddle, and he was joined by other cowboys. They played all afternoon and danced into the evening, the finest time in Dalhart since the start of this dirty decade. Cowboys gave speeches and toasted the great ghost-the gra.s.sland of the XIT. Old-timers told their stories of riding herds and sleeping on the good, soft sod of the Llano Estacado, and how this place was so green in the spring you would have thought it was Ireland. They could not put a stopper in the stories; they just kept coming, late into the night: about how Doc Dawson's sanitarium was a cowboy refuge for a man carved up by barbed wire after a drunk, about all the antelope running over gra.s.s, about lightning killing a horse during a thunder-boomer, about how you could ride from sunup to sundown and never get out of the XIT, about snowstorms that came down the prairie lane from Canada, northers so cold they froze your p.i.s.s in midstream. People laughed late into the night, danced to fiddle music, sang, and ate bread pudding with corn whiskey sauce poured over it. Everyone felt they had something good here with this reunion, that they should not let these stories go.

A few days later, Uncle d.i.c.k was leaning against a rail in front of the DeSoto when he spotted a young cowboy and his family drifting through town. For five years now, d.i.c.k had watched a steady parade of jalopies and wagons float through Dalhart, the people staying only a night or two, and then moving on to some place where there might be work or stable land. California had turned its back on the Exodusters. A billboard posted outside of Tulsa told people traveling west on Highway 66 to stay away.

" "NO JOBS IN CALIFORNIA.

IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR WORK-KEEP OUT"

d.i.c.k rolled a cigarette from the plug of tobacco he kept in a vest pouch, staring all the while at one cowboy and his family. He overheard part of the conversation, the man telling his kids he knew they were hungry but would have to hold on a little longer, maybe at the next town they could get something to eat. The cowboy had wandered into town with the XIT reunion. He thought with all those old saddle-riders around, somebody might know of a place to get work.

"You there," Uncle d.i.c.k called out to him.

"Yes, sir?"

"Wha'cha doing here?"

"Fixing to leave, sir. I came hoping to find something on a ranch."

"You know how to ride?"

"Yes, sir. And rope. Fix a fence line. Mend a windmill. I can do it all."

"What's holding ya back?"

"No jobs around here."

"Nothing?"

"No, sir."

Uncle d.i.c.k reached into his pocket and pulled out his hundred-dollar bill. He handed the money to the cowboy, told him to take it-it was his. The young man was stunned.

"Are you sure?"

"You take it," Uncle d.i.c.k said. "Get yourself situated. Good luck."

The cowboy broke down in tears, sobbing on the dusted streets of Dalhart. Later, when the cowboy asked around about his benefactor, people told him it was d.i.c.k c.o.o.n, the richest man in town. He owned everything. But they were surprised to see him give up the C-note. He probably had another hundred-dollar bill to replace the one he gave to the cowboy. Only c.o.o.n's closest friends knew the truth: Uncle d.i.c.k was broke. All his properties were mortgaged and not bringing in any income. He had four dollars left in his bank account. And he was sick. The Doc told d.i.c.k c.o.o.n he had placed himself in peril by staying on the High Plains. But he had signed the Last Man pledge and took his oath seriously. The Doc said people would understand if he pulled up stakes and said goodbye to Dalhart. It wasn't like that hypocrite John McCarty leaving to take a better job after getting everybody worked up into a froth and pledging to stick around. d.i.c.k had to leave in order to stay alive. Okay, then. He moved into the Rice Hotel in Houston and died with little more money than he had when he came into the world, the son of penniless parents.

Lizzie White's great fear was starvation; it kept her up at night and made her weep. After the gra.s.shoppers ate everything that Bam White had put into the ground, he was forced to go on relief. The family got government clothes and government food to go with a government mortgage on the shack. That winter was not easy. Northers blew down and drove the temperature so low that Bam's handlebar mustache froze stiff, just like the water inside their place. The boys would get up early and get the stove going to melt enough water for coffee and washing. Bam seemed to have lost his spirit. He did not want to go outside or kick around with cowboys. He looked rusted.

"Get me that fiddle, boy."

In the winter, trapped for days in the enclosure of cold and darkness, a little music could change the mood inside the White shack. But Bam didn't often feel good enough to play. His hands were cracked, chipped and arthritic; he could barely close them. Melt brought his daddy the instrument and Bam started in. He winced at the pain of moving those cracked hands, but the music came, and as it did, Bam's fingers started to bleed. Melt told his daddy he should stop, but the cowboy kept at it, playing soft fiddle music for his family in the drafty shack, blood trickling down onto the cold, dusted floor.

A few days later, on a Sat.u.r.day during the first week of February 1938, Bam did not get out of bed. He groaned and wailed, said his stomach was killing him. He was burning with fever. The boys were sent to town to get something for him and rushed back with a pink fluid, like Pepto-Bismol. Bam White drank the bottle of pink liquid, but it did not still the pain. He held his stomach and groaned so loudly his cries could be heard outside. Sunday brought no improvement. He tried to hold it in, to keep his children from seeing him in such agony. The pain was sharp and persistent, like he had a cat inside him clawing to get out. On Monday he died.

They buried Bam near the old XIT, a small service, just family and some cowboys. It was noted that even though Bam White had been shunned by people in town for being a part of that film and had not been asked to join the Last Man Club, he never gave up on the High Plains; he stayed longer than McCarty himself, stayed till his last breath. A few days later, the Resettlement agency came out and sold everything the family had left-a cow, a couple of hogs, every bird in the henhouse, a pair of horses, a mule-to satisfy the debt on the house. When they were done, they told Lizzie White that the family still owed the government $2,300. She had nothing. Resettlement took t.i.tle to the shack and its dirt patch. Lizzie moved the family south, as she had always wanted to, settling in with her sister in a part of Texas that was not so dusted and torn. They found work picking cotton. Melt could not stand it. He needed freedom, open s.p.a.ce, just like his daddy. One day he said he'd had enough. He would never pick cotton for a living. A boy of seventeen, Melt packed a few things and said he was going home.

Home? His mama was taken aback. Where's home?

Melt said he missed the old place where his daddy was buried and that he was born to horses and the open range. He was going to get back to Dalhart and find some way to work a ranch. His mama tried to dissuade him, this headstrong boy, and asked him why he could possibly want to go back to that place of horrors. Melt didn't know himself, at first. He said later his Indian blood was calling him back to the Llano Estacado because it was a place that belonged to Indians and gra.s.s, and one day both might be restored.

Dalhart was a lonely town for Doc Dawson in his last years. He missed d.i.c.k c.o.o.n's generosity, John McCarty's bl.u.s.tery boosterism, Bam White's fiddle. A lot of the faces he did not know; they were strangers, working for the CCC on the big soil conservation project north of town. People had started bringing water up with deep wells, reaching into the Ogallala Aquifer, in a hurry to get that water out of the ground and running. If only they could get the soil to settle, folks said, the Panhandle would be back on its way, for now it had its own liquid gold. But Dawson was done with the land. He had tried for nearly a decade to raise a decent crop-first cotton, then wheat, corn, sorghum, anything-on his couple of sections, but it was a cursed piece of dirt. Through cycles of drought and black blizzards, gra.s.shoppers and blue northers, he had nothing to show but tumbleweeds snagged on a fence line. As his strength faded, he gave up his duties at the soup kitchen. He still kept a little office in town where he saw patients every now and then, but most of them could not pay for his services. More often, people came by just to talk. He spent one afternoon helping a woman with her domestic troubles, and by the end of the day, she had decided not to seek a divorce. But he felt bad because "this may be taking a shingle off the lawyer's roof," he wrote to his son.

The winter of 1938 lingered well into April, a white blizzard entombing the town one day, a black blizzard smothering Dalhart the next, and in between a snuster, followed by a three-day blow of midnight dirt that blocked out the sun almost as bad as the dust of Black Sunday.

"Never in all the 31 years we have lived in the West, have we seen the thing continued for three days and nights without a stretch, without one minute between violent gusts and lambasting dirt deluging us unceasingly," wrote Willie Dawson in a letter to her son John.

On a rare clear day in early May, the Doc went into town. He found the entrance door to his office had blown open and the floor buried by dust. A small dune had formed in his little doctor's office. It took him and a friend most of a day to shovel it out. The Doc decided it was time for him to move as well. But his thoughts were stuck in a loop of despair: he had come to the Texas Panhandle for his health, and now it was one of the unhealthiest places on the planet.

"We are all so discouraged and ready to go," he wrote his son.

How could he leave? His fine house was worth little in a town where one in five people had packed up and rolled away. And how could he stay? If the dust had defeated Dalhart's most vocal cheer leader, and its richest man, and its toughest cowboy, how could an ailing, aged doctor expect to hold on? Dalhart, like Boise City, was closed to the outside world for days on end as dusters buried roads in and out of town, covered the railroad tracks, and made it impossible to see. Some days, the only thing on the Doc's calendar was a visit from an old friend. Even that small joy was taken from him in the spring of 1938 as the black blizzards kept people off the roads.

A ma.s.sive brain hemorrhage killed Dr. G. Waller Dawson. Going through his belongings, his son John found a tattered, crumbled card inside the Doc's wallet. It was his Last Man Club card, signifying Dawson as the fourth person to join, with his familiar doctor's signature attached to the pledge that he would be the last man to leave the High Plains and that he would always be loyal to it.

24. Cornhusker III THROUGH SEVEN CENTURIES , a single tree grew in a fold of the land in Nebraska. After it was cut down in 1936, the rings were counted and examined, each circle telling a story of a season on the plains. Dry years were thin rings, when the tree itself barely grew but held on, a still life; wet years were thick, when the tree fattened up with fiber. An examination of the tree found that Nebraska had been through twenty droughts over the previous 748 years. At stake for Don Hartwell was whether he could survive the twenty-first. At the start of August 1937, when he put his thermometer into the ground, it registered a temperature of 151 degrees. , a single tree grew in a fold of the land in Nebraska. After it was cut down in 1936, the rings were counted and examined, each circle telling a story of a season on the plains. Dry years were thin rings, when the tree itself barely grew but held on, a still life; wet years were thick, when the tree fattened up with fiber. An examination of the tree found that Nebraska had been through twenty droughts over the previous 748 years. At stake for Don Hartwell was whether he could survive the twenty-first. At the start of August 1937, when he put his thermometer into the ground, it registered a temperature of 151 degrees.

"Rain just doesn't fall in Inavale," Hartwell wrote.

Hartwell was a nudge short of being washed out among the hoboes. His farm was down to three lame horses and a single hog. He still played music in town at night, though the crowds were thin as Webster County hollowed out. His wife took in other people's clothes to iron and sew, but the odd jobs did not bring enough money for seed. The bank had been hara.s.sing Hartwell with a flurry of notices that he was well behind on his mortgage. He picked up rumors of work in Leadville, Colorado, or Phoenix, but he seemed paralyzed to move. Though he was only forty-eight years old, he was often sick, forced into bed. He felt tired and stiff. On the arid plains, he noted in his diary, people got old early.

Aug 9 Today is a combination of killing heat, scattered dusty clouds, gusts of burning wind & a few drops of rain. Verna got a letter from Sarah Points at Ward, Colo wanting her to come out there and go into the restaurant business. It is certain we will have to do something... Today is a combination of killing heat, scattered dusty clouds, gusts of burning wind & a few drops of rain. Verna got a letter from Sarah Points at Ward, Colo wanting her to come out there and go into the restaurant business. It is certain we will have to do something...Aug 27Verna and I were married 25 years ago today. It would be foolish to say that we have never had trouble. One would have trouble even by himself in that length of time ... Today is terribly hot, dry S. breeze, a few scattered clouds.Aug 31Practically all the corn in this country & most of the state has been destroyed by hot winds and drouth this month. This makes the 4th total failure in succession here.Sept 6Today is Labor Day. Holidays mean very little here, as in this country it is a sort of distinction NOT TO observe them.Sept 21I have not felt right for some time. I always did live intensley [sic]. [sic]. Perhaps it might be a nervous reaction-I hope nothing worse. Perhaps it might be a nervous reaction-I hope nothing worse.Oct 10Fair and pleasant today. Verna and I listened to the World Series baseball game. The N.Y. Yankees beat the Giants, 42, the Yankees winning and ending the series. We have listened to these World Series games for several years now, but I believe that this is the last one we will ever listen to here in Inavale-we shall see.Nov 8I burned some Russian Thistles on the W. place. I cut down a dead tree W. of our house. I set out this tree more than 20 years ago, it was a Norway poplar & it seemed that when it turned green that spring had really come. But the drouth of the last few years got it-the same as it has us. Nov 19 Nov 19Today is very cold & mean, a continuous N. wind. We have no hogs at all now, it is the first time I can remember in my entire life when there haven't been either hogs or cattle on the place. In fact-we have nothing left. We literally have no place to go if we are not 'all dressed up.'

The communities around Hartwell's farm were dying fast. A village four miles north of his home fell empty, the school abandoned, the houses and farm buildings deserted, tumbleweeds pressed against the sides. This could not possibly be the same land Lewis and Clark had seen in 1804, "well calculated for the sweetest and most nourishing hay," the bluestem twelve feet high. Clark had marveled at the gra.s.s as the Corps of Discovery moved up the Missouri River, staring east at the plains of Nebraska. "So magnificent a scenery," he wrote, "one of the most pleasing prospects I ever beheld."

One of Hartwell's best friends left for Wyoming, saying he planned to return, but Hartwell was sure he would never see him again. Another friend turned on him, becoming cold, "as impersonal as an election notice on a telegraph pole," Hartwell wrote. The frozen air killed drifters or forced others to steal. Someone threw a rock through the window of a lumberyard, "so that he could go to jail & get something to eat & keep from freezing to death," Hartwell wrote.

Around Thanksgiving, a letter arrived from a friend in Denver, urging the Hartwells to move west. To a middle-aged farm couple, Denver was a strange city, big and uncertain. Hartwell felt cornered by his circ.u.mstances. He tucked away his pride and appealed to the Red Cross for a relief grant but was rejected. Now he felt he had no luck left; he was on a path to sure collapse. He still had a working car but no money for gas.

"I guess we have reached the end of the trail in Nebraska," he wrote at year's end.

He spent much of early 1938 begging the bank to let him keep the farm after failing to make a payment for nearly half a year. As a stopgap measure, the bank agreed to stretch out the interest payments, which lowered the monthly bill but did nothing to move the pile of debt off Hartwell. By habit, he still tried to think like a farmer, using the winter months to plan for the coming year's crop, and to act like a farmer, pruning trees, and clearing out drainage ditches. But his motions were faint and halfhearted. He could not afford seed for the crop, and the bank would not extend him a penny. Another horse died, a mare named Bell. He mourned the loss for months. His body ached and his stomach made strange noises; without money to see a doctor, he had no idea what ailed him.

"I haven't felt right for a year."

People continued to leave Webster County, chased away by dust and dead ground. Some shuttered their houses and moved without notice; others held big home sales, weepy parties, and departed on ceremony. Hartwell scrounged around his family farmstead looking for something of value. The piano was an obvious choice, but he could not bring himself to give it up. He took his land roller, a big metal cylinder used to flatten dirt, to Red Cloud and got five dollars for it. There was a crowd in town, pawing over the possessions of people who had given up. It was mostly junk, Hartwell wrote, but it was the only way most people could shop.

Apr 5Verna has been doing a little sewing for different ones & I have been doing princ.i.p.ally nothing. No income, only 2 horses left, 95 acres of mortgaged land, unpaid taxes & interest and $0 in cash. That is the outlook that faces us after I have lived more than 40 years in Nebr.Apr 6Electric lights have been off all day, the first time for a long time. But I think ours will soon be off for good.Apr 8Verna got $2 for fixing Miss Bloom's coat.Apr 18 Well here it is Monday again & I haven't done a bit of farm work yet & I don't know if I ever will. With only 2 horses, not a cent to our name, not a cent of income for the last 4 years I just don't know exactly where to turn. Well here it is Monday again & I haven't done a bit of farm work yet & I don't know if I ever will. With only 2 horses, not a cent to our name, not a cent of income for the last 4 years I just don't know exactly where to turn.

A friend loaned him some seed, on the condition that he pay it back in corn or money. Hartwell disked the fields and planted twenty-two rows of corn. Off and on during the planting in May, he was hara.s.sed by "dust showers," rain and dirt falling together. He also planted Sudan gra.s.s, which the CCC was pushing as a drought-tolerant plant that would take easily to the wind-raked land. The corn no sooner came up than gra.s.shoppers descended on his fields. He spread poison. Verna found work washing sheets and towels at a hotel in town, and after a while they were allowed to eat there in the laundry room, dining on the hotel's leftover food.

July 12Today is a terrible day. A glaring sun, a few little clouds & a deliberate, deadly S.W. breeze which has set out to destroy every thing again this year. I had hoped to live long enough to see one more decent year in this country.July 20I wonder if in the next 500 years-or the next 1,000 years, there will be a summer when rain will fall in Inavale. Certainly not as long as I live will the curse of drought be lifted from this country.July 24Today is just common h.e.l.l, death and destruction to every growing thing. A dry, deadly S.W. wind, a dead clear sky & a vicious blazing sun make up the picture of destruction. G.o.d in his infinite wisdom might have made a more discouraging place than Webster Co, Nebr., but so far as I know G.o.d never did.July 25 I have felt lost since the horses are gone. There is not much I can do. It is the first time in nearly 40 years that I have not had a team to use. I walked up through the corn and cane in the forenoon. It is being hurt every day by drought. I have felt lost since the horses are gone. There is not much I can do. It is the first time in nearly 40 years that I have not had a team to use. I walked up through the corn and cane in the forenoon. It is being hurt every day by drought.Aug 17Bad luck-destingy [sic]-(call it what you will) has seemed to follow us since 1932 & this year will be little better. We could not pay back taxes & interest & as the horses are all gone now & we have no income and not one cent in reserve-So what?

The next week, Hartwell and his wife set off for Denver to find work. The money Verna made washing at the hotel was not enough to keep them on the farm. In the city, they stayed with friends who had lined up a job for Verna as a maid at a doctor's house. There was no work for Hartwell and no room for him at the doctor's house. The farmer said goodbye to his wife and returned to Inavale. The separation was supposed to be temporary. The dust, the drought, the fractured farm had broken the last thing they had: their bond. It was the first time they were apart in twenty-six years of marriage. Hartwell moped around his farm, talking to himself and writing in his diary, without even a horse or hog to keep him company. He played music, and at times he was so low he cried at the sight of one of Verna's dresses or a half-opened can of peaches.

"I can hardly call it home anymore. I can't write how I really feel about that."

Oct 7I wrote to Verna. It seems so long since she was here. Yet it is only a week! How will it seem if the days go on into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into...Nov 2I did a rash thing today & started for Colo & when I got as far as McCook I changed my mind & came home. I just didn't have the money to go on.Nov 24 The first thanksgiving since 1912 when Verna & I haven't been together. Will we ever live together again? The first thanksgiving since 1912 when Verna & I haven't been together. Will we ever live together again?Dec 19I never saw fields any drier. Everything is filled with dust.Dec 21I went up & took some pictures of abandoned farms N. of here (I intend to put them in a book) in the forenoon. Little is left up there of a once prosperous country. Drouth has all but obliterated a fairly prosperous farming region. Vacant houses, tumble-down buildings, weed-grown fields are all that remain.Dec 24Very dry everywhere. I raked the N. side of our yard in the forenoon. I swept and dusted in the afternoon. I trimmed the tree and lighted it in the evening, so it was lighted when Verna came up from the depot. She got home at 10 p.m.

Verna stayed a week, then returned to Colorado and her maid's job at the doctor's house. She made forty dollars a month and sent her husband five dollars every two weeks. Hartwell started 1939 still on the farm in Inavale but alone, without seed, horses, cattle, or hogs. To stave off foreclosure, he sold his farm machinery-getting nineteen dollars for a two-row lister, his biggest sale. He sometimes thought of going to town to play music, or even to dance, but he never did. Once, he took a train to Kansas City and saw a burlesque show.

"The girls danced and posed with nothing on," he reported. "But 4H can do that."

The tug of failure was too strong; his life was on a course he could not reverse. But he was still not ready to give up. A friend loaned him a mule and some seed, and he made plans to plant corn again. His heart was torn by loneliness.

"We lived here 26 years together before Nebraska weather & economic conditions finally ruined and separated us," he wrote at year's end.

Feb 3 I used to look forward to spring this time of year, but now-I don't know what to do. I never have been cornered like I am now. I used to look forward to spring this time of year, but now-I don't know what to do. I never have been cornered like I am now.Feb 4A cold mean wind all day ... I doubt very much if Verna & I will ever have a home of our own again. I wouldn't even guess what is ahead of us.Feb 5I have felt lost lately-not knowing where to turn or what to do. In fact, if one hasn't 'got' anything, there is not much he can do.Feb 23I got a letter from the Federal Land Bank saying they were foreclosing on our place. So our last place will soon be gone.May 27A chilly, driving N.W. wind. I finished planting corn on the W. bottom in the afternoon, (probably for the last time). An outdoor picture show in the evening but pretty cool to sit out and watch it.July 10The same clear, glaring sky & vicious blazing killing sun. Cane is about dead, corn is being damaged; it will soon be destroyed. Those who coined the phrase 'There's no place like Nebraska' wrote better than they thought. In Nebraska, you don't have to die to go to h.e.l.l.Aug 4Practically no one comes here now. Of those who used to ask so diffidently 'Is Verna here?' not one comes around any more. They have vanished like last year's crop of turnips.Aug 5Nearly everything is destroyed.Sept 13 Today is a terrible day of S.W. wind, dust & heat. One can't really do much afternoons owing to the blast of wind & dust. I raked up what little cane there was worth cutting, but there is very little. Today is a terrible day of S.W. wind, dust & heat. One can't really do much afternoons owing to the blast of wind & dust. I raked up what little cane there was worth cutting, but there is very little.Sept 18There are no dances here anymore-nothing but silence, emptiness, 'respectability.'Sept 30September, 1939 was one of the driest ever known, the Weather Bureau says in 40 years. Almost continuous hot winds.... there is less corn even than last year.... Hitler, Russia, France and England are now supposed to be at war.Oct 13Well today is my birthday again. They seem to come altogether too often. Verna sent me a dollar & I went to the hotel to get my dinner.Nov 14Everything is a reek of dust. It is in your clothes, you taste it; feel it.Dec 12Well, there is not a great deal to report. Winter, in Inavale, is just staying, just living. But I don't look for or expect anything going on any more.

The bank took the land that Hartwells had owned since 1909. Hartwell was allowed to stay in the house for another year, as a rent-paying tenant. He found part-time work on a government road crew. Verna stayed in Denver, still working as a maid. After being apart from her husband for two years, she returned for Christmas. Hartwell ended his diary with a poem, attributed to a woman from Ridgewood, New Jersey, Eleanor Chaffee. He attached the poem to the last page of his diary, without additional comment.