Survivors of the Dust Bowl

Imagine breathing in dust everywhere you are, even in your own house. How about a huge dust cloud swallowing up your home to the point that it can barely be seen, or walking down the street and seeing a black wall of dust about to come through town? That was the “Dust Bowl”. Everything was covered in dust. Even on the good days, when the dust settled there could be an inch of dust everywhere inside your house. The Dust Bowl happened between 1931 and 1939. It was a series of dust storms. Loose dirt from fields would gather up into big clouds. Droughts were a big participant in the storms. According Wessels site people said things like “Severe drought hits the Midwestern Plains.”.” As the crops die, the “black blizzards” began.”

During the the Dust Bowl food was scarce because no rain tends to equal no crops, so that was something they had to protect. When keeping food safe during the dust bowl people would immediately eat as soon as it was prepared. People used a lot of canned foods and they put leftovers in closed rooms (rooms without any windows). Even though that didn’t keep all the dust out, it did help.

Dietary diseases were rampant because adequate food such as milk, fruit, fresh vegetables, and eggs could not be bought with the family’s low income. Unfortunately, because this was all happening the same time as the “Great Depression,” job availability and money was low. The death rate for people suffering from undernourishment was on the rise because children were losing their stamina and were unable to fight off disease.Those with families had the task of keeping their family together when the principal moneymaker of the family was out of work. Women had to be creative with what they had. They obviously could not create elaborate meals for their families, but they made do with what they had. The men had to go out and try to support their own family to keep up with rent so they would have a house to live in to protect them.

During the extreme dust storms people would have to connect ropes from their houses to sheds so when they went out they could find their way back and not get lost in the dust because of how thick it was. Leroy Hankel a farmer at the time, had witnessed a storm coming and was inside a store at the time looking out at the black cloud. He said winds were very high and outside a store a truck was thrown 30-40 feet because of the winds. Anytime the dust was moving slowly people would try to go out to get necessities and get back in time to protect their families from the storms that would be coming after it picks up again.

The dust bowl caused a lot of hardships. People stayed to protect where they’d been living and pushed through it all. Things like walking outside or going out was not easy, it was even sometimes deadly. Food has to be kept safe and packaged. 2.5 million people left the plains during the Dust Bowl.