This is what I've been reading lately and I've been mesmerized, barely able to put it down. If you enjoy reading any kind of history, you should get this book: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan.The Dust Bowl is a chapter of American history that I had known very little about. My parents lived through the Depression, but that was in the midwest, not the western Great Plains. They never spoke of immense natural disasters and incredible famine in the days when there was no government safety net to help people out of unspeakable hardships. No farm supports, no welfare, no social security. Children and the elderly dying due to dust pneumonia. Food scarcity to the point of relying upon tumbleweeds and yucca to feed your family, a mere seventy years ago, is certainly far outside any experience of my lifetime.
You think you have endurance? Try again. Read the stories of people who really did.
7 comments:
Oh, that's an excellent book! I second your recommendation!
Have you ever read Grapes of Wrath? If so I'm wondering if that fictionalized version of the life of a dust bowl victim is accurate. Maybe I'll have to read The Worst Hard Time to find out.
I think I only saw the movie (Henry Fonda, right?), and that was so long ago I can't remember much of it... sorry!
OMG, was that not the worst thing EVER? Every time I thought their lives could suck no more, there'd be something worse. "Well, at least we have some things growing, maybe we'll have a crop--hey, what's that loud, buzzing, undulating, rolling mass coming towards us?"
You write:
You think you have endurance?
I'm not in a hurry to find out.
yeah we are wimps compared to those that endured real true-to-life hardships! And I complain if I can't immediately take a hot shower after a three mile run...
First, living in Arizona, what is a snow day?
Second, thanks for the book recommendation. I'm going to look of it
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