It was a horrible, horrible situation, Walter. Lots of people and livestock died. Especially livestock. Imagine watching your little child die a slow death with lungs filled with grit. Imagine said grit finding its way into your home in every nook and cranny. Imagine a never ending wind carrying that grit everywhere. The wind sometimes went on for days. Imagine said home covered with, not snow drifts, but drifts of grit. There was a show on PBS about this, I think it may have been done by Ken Burns, and I watched it. It was just mind numbing that something like that could happen in this country in such a short span, all because of a drought one year, which went on into the next. Day would turn into night within minutes. People could see the dark clouds of grit coming from miles away (the plains are pretty flat) and there was nothing they could do except watch it blowing in. Nothing. The government tried to help, but you can't fight Mother Nature. If the family was lucky enough to have some money to leave, they were faced with discrimination where ever they went and had to accept work with almost non-living wages. Alot of them had to shop at the 'company store' on the farm where they worked/lived and paid high prices for their goods. It was a no-win situation. Not one of our best times in our countries history.
