Dust Bowl Research Paper

Can you imagine waking up in the morning and its pitch black outside? Would you be able to stand the dirt and the little rocks hitting your face everyday? Could you stand to inhale the dirt while you took a breath? What about eating the dirt that falls into your food? In the 1930’s in the Southern Plains, these people went through the worst, horrible experience of dust storms for nearly a decade. No sunrays will hit inside your house giving the warmth, just a big pitch-black cloud covering the whole land with fast winds and rocks hitting your face. This history-making storm was a natural disaster and the worst man made storm that was known as the Dust Bowl or as the dirty thirties. It was a damage and failure to apply dry land farming methods
This had caused demise to some of the farmers that were in the region. After constantly plowing, and receiving no rainfall for years, the soil became very dry and it was losing its fertility. This caused some people unable to do their job, unable to survive, unable to live and unable to provide. The weather during the 1930’s was pretty hectic and unpredictable. There was a short time when they received an amount of heavy rainfall, which caused some flooding’s around some of the areas. The winters and summers had horrible blizzards and a severe drought in the summer. Many died from the heat. In 1934 the temperature was extremely burning hot causing many deaths from the sun’s heat. “The problem with this method is that it leaves fields vulnerable to wind erosion and dust storms” (Ganzel). The dirt was stealing everything; it was killing cattle and losing crops causing life to be impossible to live. This dirt was killing children and adults with a disease that was spreading fast. These unlucky ones that were hit with this disease is called the dust pneumonia. Dust pneumonia is lungs filled with dirt that was caused from a high exposure of dirt from the dust storms and its considered to be a bad respiratory disease. There was no way that anyone could work through this disease. With this disease many fled and left their homes for their own
Children had to go to school with a mask on their face and a scarf or homemade rag to cover their mouths from dirt entering in. Everyone’s houses were being filled with dirt, from the hard floors to the kitchen table were you had your three meals served. Ken Burns stated that the only place that was clean was the shape of your head on the pillow from sleeping on top of it. According to the article “Legacy” on PBS, “Huge drifts of dirt buried pastures and barnyards, piled up in front of homesteaders' doors, came in through window cracks and sifted down from ceilings.” No matter how hard you tried to cover up your home the dirt would always try to find a way in. There were many but few that were found to interview about the experience they went through when the dust storms took over their town. Lawrence Svobida was one of the few that experienced this storm and he said, “I came to Meade County, Kansas fired with ambition to become a wheat farmer. Harvesting wheat was a thrill to me. The roar of the laboring motors and the whine of the combine was music to my ears. It was breath-taking — hundreds of acres of wheat that were mine. To me it was the most beautiful scene in all the world.” Svobida loved the job he had but it wasn’t quick before the storm took over and stole something from him that he loved to do. Fern Behrendt was another person that