What You're Really Meant to Do

the forecast hot dry and windy or at least it was back in the summer of nineteen thirty five i'm j mcintyre and today on k pr preserve we head back to the dust bowl days it's the worst hard time the untold story of those who survived the great american dust bowl by timothy egan the worst hard time with a k you come and book forty thousand thirteen two thousand fourteen as well as they greet across lawrence book forty thousand thirteen in just a minute we'll hear from timothy egan from atop he gave at the university of kansas leed center but first the lord's public library has just kicked off its breed across lawrence program for this year housekeeping is marilynne robinson's first novel published in nineteen eighty eight and nominated for a pulitzer prize time magazine named it one of the great american novels of the twentieth century the lawrence public library is hosting a number of events this month during their read across florida's including a book

giveaway a lecture by marilynne robinson discussion groups and a screening of the film adaptation find out more about reed across lawrence at the library's website daddy daddy daddy you've got warrants that well i'd be that katie as that us last year's read across lawrence selection was also that hey you come about for two thousand thirteen two thousand fourteen the worst hard time the untold story of those who survived the great american dust bowl won the national book award and it's either timothy egan is the pulitzer prize winning reporter and author of seven books he spoke at the university of kansas leed center on september twenty six two thousand thirteen my son was in high school taking his ap american history he came only young standard tax or just stereotypes for his school on ep american history and i was then deep into the writing of this book i was just breathing snorting spitting just to

calm in my sleep i would wake up just thinking some of the chapters in some of the characters is you have to live the dream you know when you write a book this was just a deep into it he comes on what this history book and i love history since i was a little kid and my mother gave me no mark twain stuff which isn't technically history but i can imagine a film and i look back and you can use you know died to see the dust bowl and it's one one it was the largest man caused disaster in our history it was it came at a time when the earth itself turned on these people it came at a time when we had never had a worse depression one in four people were out of work it came at a time when i really had a hard time believing this but i heard time and again people even get out to children with the birthrate for the first time in our history with the other way people start having babies in those that

have babies in some cases were so poor that they got out of the county to the courthouse to say i just don't know if i can raise that one paragraph this extraordinary story to tell so much about human nature humorous about you know what we think we can do about our relationship with here all the steps one paragraph so that sort of spurred me on got my irish up and it's where the reasons i am i tried to write this book with passion the new thing you know what happens in history somebody gets to take somebody tells the tale of what is trickster stories i'm a storyteller i'm not an academic historian i am a storyteller so it's a take of history it's like somebody coming on the first person to see the car wreck and they tell you what happened and that area that first what happened with the dust bowl as john steinbeck wrote a magnificent book called the grapes of wrath it was made into a film starring henry ford won academy awards and that became the accepted story of the gospel that everybody

left in fact there are three million people living in a five state area the gospel how many have left one in three it was very significant it was the largest movement of americans from a natural event a natchez turned out until hurricane katrina but two million of them didn't go anywhere they stayed behind and there's earthen floors of these sod houses in these dug out to these tiny places where they live they stay behind when storms came out of nowhere and black and the sun and that was my jumping off point was like holy cow maybe what we know about this event in history is only part of it maybe there's a bigger story there maybe their story i can tell and that's what you live for the other thing that i don't really understand this you know growing up throughout the gospel even as a journalist in your time jobs i didn't understand it it was human cost so we have a debate we should have a debate because most scientists there's consensus view of a debate can human

beings change the car can human beings change the earth can we have our own under the dome the dome is the ceo to that comes out of earth and makes everything that and my answer to that is we already did we have a mini story of climate change and it's the dust bowl itself so that's the that's the other big one i want to try and stay right you know i can do this thing accidentally i was gone all over the western prairie do a series for the new york times of the class of small town america and i would go to these dying little towns and they were dying they are you know three quarters of the counties to hire western plains have less people now though they had a hundred years ago they meet the census definition of friendship and less than four people per square mile so these towns were left with maybe not a high school a grade school not a restaurant maybe a mini mart if they were lucky with that same hot dog rolls around constantly and a red light

i think they get them from one place and all people battles were all people with their members or people with their stories old people with this chapter of history just about to leave us an it only in my research there would come a moment where one of these folks would go back into a room the rubble around azure want a startling of paper shuffling to come back with a shoe box and open up that shoe box and inside that shoe box was a life story inside that she works with letters pictures diaries little more mentors pieces scraps shrapnel of an untold story of a history and that's where i got my history person aside from those shoe boxes and from looking into the face of those people almost all of whom are gone now know they were about your age when the day your age or a little younger and so most of your students a muslim saying your age and

when i talk and there were ninety or so years old and you know that scene in the opening of a movie titanic where this elderly woman who becomes kate winslet is telling the story being one of the last survivors of the tech titanic that's always for me i'd be sitting down with an ideal woman and after about twenty minutes of talking to her i wasn't talking to a lady or person who was hard to move and hardy here i was talking to a seventeen year old girl who was just about ready to get a high school and just about ready to bury her high school sweetheart and thinking maybe should have a family of her own and the rules ahead of or so i heard this story i started to see it as a parable a parable or fable or possibility after about what happens when human beings pushed the earth too far and the birth pushback the other part of the parable is you can take anything if you could take a hit this there are some horrible things that happen in this tent mates i

portray the result is that there was some bad things people took each other's forearms banks took each of those forms the suicide rate shot up there is racism i saw in the newspaper clippings and i have a section of a book about this that some of these towns in texas had signs at the edge of town that said black men don't let the sun go down on you here and in fact they found an african american a town after the sun went down and sometimes threw him in jail for what davidson which was all purpose term so it was an all whole market rose innocent people but the point i came away with was a two piece hits the resilience of going through this thing i've seen your children and i've seen the sky darkened ed bryant gumbel weed and came out the other end and still saw some hope so let's look at this terrible what we were still we started with was the greatest grassland the world had never known the great plains in his birthday suit walt whitman had called and that they regret that delicate vertical feet every recurring

grass and they inevitably these people is the midwest were described especially in the spring as the blues jam was waist high and then as you got for the west and first heard it buckle it got higher elevation is buffalo grass short resilient buffalo grass and as it does now the sun beat down in the summer to be a hundred and ten degrees and as it does now it could be twenty below zero in the winter and as it does now there would be twisters that would come along and wiped out whole sections and as now you would get grass fires scary grass fires a horse couldn't outrun em you'd get hail storms the proverbial hail the size of softballs you would get all these things somebody told me that six of the seven things that came from the sky could kill you all that was in place but the soil helped so all that happened during the great depression during the gospel time something was missing i'll get to that in a minute

on this grass or by some sixty million of them huge big two thousand pound hours thirty million in the northern heard thirty million in a southerner the indians conservative portable protein they get everything they needed out of those bison at the shelter they made their clothes they made twine they ate the heart's fresh after they sliced open a buffalo they dr dimitri jerky during the winter to get everything they need from those bison all the need was the grass the grass that the bison well you know the story of what happened in eight people so i don't need to repeat it but as the settlers the american settlers start to move through what was still indian country they wanted no part of this bleep got the great plains in the far western edge was uninhabitable an effective government formally said eighteen twenty this was a government report that came back from the high plains said it is

wholly uninhabitable by people depended on agriculture and note that it's a holy uninhabitable indians were living prosperous lives the comanche for the plane's rome over the five states they had developed a wonderful for a sign language they could command he was you know on a horse and they would do this elaborate side system for communicating with each other that's kids were afraid of and the ngos were afraid of the texas rangers were afraid of them the comanches they were big time stuff powell live well here the apache through the rating came in another part of new mexico so people under it wasn't holy uninhabitable it was only holy uninhabitable by people depended on agriculture cares what was called on the map you were moving to california during the eighteen forties to go in the park a great surge of wagon trains and you pass through this section what you saw on the map was something labeled great american desert as you move through the

oklahoma panhandle which has probably drawn stick to stop or to slave states and free states the formal designation of that on the map was no man's land don't want us you'll die in sickness not just that was considered there's nothing he'd known or live there and the spanish latinos who'd come up from the south of mexico and raise sheep in his lab in a name for this hi play especially in texas they called the level as a couple the state claims what they call it that because of the infinity o'shea a flat and away they found their way around was to put the stakes in the ground was the state claims those stakes we're markers those we are guided tours for how to get through this ocean of laps to go from one plane to the other so dawn of the twentieth century the indians are gone comanche or destroyed by what room most indians which was their inability to adopt to the diseases that they didn't have immunity for their move on his little postage stamp

sized reservation in oklahoma territory which was supposed to be the designated indian territory kyle ward on the patterned on geronimo woody was captured just before the twentieth century the last indian is to resist had six people with him completely erased people a bicycle completely sixty million bison gone except for a tiny little remembered maybe hundred of them living in yellowstone park thanks to people like teddy roosevelt thought it would be important to try to save this signature american animal and he says government promises what the hell do we do with the space station of our country is the dawn of the twentieth century they did a census or the texas panhandle and twelve counties of the texas panhandle they counted less than a hundred people is a blank slate it was the tumble ross of the waffle knowing is nothing what we do with this so i decided to induce a settlement scott social engineering called government does that they doubled the homestead act instead of owning three hundred and twenty acres for free you could have a six

hundred and forty acres he square mile for free and the railroads which were pushing western wanted some reason to go through this territory started this little rules a promotion scheme it would play a camera every twelve miles and they twirl all over europe give these flyers out to the deans to the dutch to the scots sing come to the american midwest didn't get a square mile for free they'll be a glorious town waiting for you when you get there the way to reduce the scandinavians was because the sockets they live going to lose water there's mountains green forest a lover when you get there they got there they were just they were in a brown shocker but in typical teenage family for example the progenitor of the oldest son would get the form so fewer the second son of the third son will the fourth daughter you're going to get anything so there was a huge reason to leave your old country and come here and get yourself a square mile i called it the last chance are so we have this huge huge land rush this homestead surgeons the greatest

people think home sitting all happen in the eighteen hundreds the greatest search was from nineteen hundred to nineteen twenty huge search and these people were the last chances that people do that anything in their family nobody in their family line have never owned anything and they could come out here and get a piece of dirt they come out here and give themselves a square mile of the big green open prairie and who were that you had this fascinating suburb i found and there's a museum what would their stuff in the nebraska yesterday germans from russia they had been kicked out of germany the seventeen hundreds because they were passengers in when a fire wars and he resisted taxes they didn't want to pay taxes so catherine the great the russians have come to the russian state in the eye low tech show drafting they moved to russia of the live there front and fifty years of images are sort of the draft and start a tax and what'd they do they move their entire towns

to kansas so you have a town called catherine's down here in kansas you have a town called pfeiffer of those hotels have picked up like dorothy's house in the wizard of oz from russia and dropped here in kansas they move their entire communities or two hundred thousand of them came here during that the germans from russia they brought with them the skills that they are making their great brought worse they had a culture of sinking and one more thing they were indeed this freaks anyone keep them under the dusters to blow you haven't latinos come up from the south and so you had the so called poor white trash but what is poor white trash that true gets thrown around a lot when i'm in those days were mostly scots irish people who'd fought only confederacy site but were slave holders were landowners they were the cannon fodder who are drafted by the confederacy or the poor and forced to fight

for the confederate side and when the war was over they had nothing and then this thing came along forty years later a chance for their descendents to come out here and get a piece of the solos so called for white trash came here and so you have this instant settlement is so american almost overnight town after town sprouted along the railroad's people came they start out in these sod houses which is another thing i couldn't get my mind around i mean it's an igloo made of grass and they would there was no tiller was born a building materials so he would come on and his car what's your age is down put pieces sawed up to another one of you that assad house they had sought school houses then i had this woman one is when i interviewed said you know at night you'd sort of cure all the bugs scratching the ceiling in the spiders it was thick your bass calls of their initial to a subsistence living

they lived in the dugout says some of you've probably heard that term that was a step above a sod house it was dug four feet into the ground about four feet above was designed to protect you mainly from the wind and that enters your house by god and not face north disaster the cold came from one is blue norther risque i'm down i interviewed guy by casting a wonderful guy he later landed in normandy in war to and fought the nazis he was from a family of nine the leader of four square foot dugout with an earthen floor i asked ai clear what was harder fighting the nazis landing in normandy beach or you know every other one here francisco to be shredded gone up that cliff there not knowing what's going to happen or living through the dust bowl and he said without blinking the dust balls harder because there was random death he didn't know when the storm's gonna come we had no idea was something was going to one of your friends but that didn't happen just yet they prospered came out there saw houses and a lot of

our dugouts and they build timber frame houses now is we're going to get water in this part of the country to drive sport with our nation well remember the wind the wind always blows so they were ordered from sears roebuck when milk cans and go down to the train station and pick up their when milk it would say or by mail taken out of the square mile put the windmill up and voila water from the ground and the winds blowing it pumped up and he had water for stocking had water for your garden to get water for some subsistence you're on your way and things went very well for a while in the first fifteen to twenty years those were wet years people doubled their acreage tripled their acreage they bought nice clothes for their kids they got out just earthen floor they'd had built a row house they bomb brand new cars new always often these pictures you would you always use the card are

so proud of the car see him standing further mali or the model t and they gave their kids' piano lessons they could afford all these sort of lectures they felt like they've been blessed and so this thing attracted a different category for recall the suitcase farmers or so much money to be made in the week gave the suitcase farmers would show up in the fall with their suitcases get off the train depot go out clay the square mile have the grass ripped out throw some seed in the ground and come back in spring and harvested and they thought it would go on forever the price we doubled and tripled and doubled again until it was selling for almost one selling for now without being adjusted for inflation there was a woman in kansas or rancher she boasted in i think it was nineteen twenty two i made more money last year than babe ruth did as the qana money was to me from this thing

now this close to the terrible part of that everything that goes up has to go down every balloon bubble gets first whether it's real estate our goal with any other kind of commodities tubes were the first and most famous one that happened three hundred years ago in holland well the price we at war one came down and four bucks a bushel to three bucks a bushel to two to about fifty cents to a dime and then they couldn't give away you see pictures of the perez read riding along the train stations and so what they do that all taken out bank loans they're all hawk bank thinking i'm going to do nothing a lot of that had to plow up more grass the only way to cover their neck was to expand the farm me produce even more thinking that somehow prices would turn around say you haven't called the last great plow up with ideas with creased with what they had been a square mile suddenly became twenty thousand acres are an individual farmer and every window or so the suitcase farmers left

in plant and there is nothing in place again in the grass was missing so the land started to blow people in our city are getting for their money started to blow up slowly you know little the world would come up every now and then that would be something kind of freakish that they've never seen before they would be a different color of dirt that it was must be oklahoma characters of color not from texas and they blamed each other states are sitting on their dirt but nothing catastrophic yet there are still trying to figure out what was going on then and this is why this was the worst hard time the great depression nineteen twenty nine stock market collapse and you've probably seen some of the pictures of people jumping out of buildings in europe city that was largely mythic but it was terrible but here's the interesting thing about the cops the stock market in nineteen twenty nine only two percent of americans own stocks more than fifty percent now only two percent we're sitting under kansas' under we farm and you're wonderful

new frame house we say this can't touch me i don't care what people on wall street how to get touches you had money in the bank every small town had a bank the banks full of like dominoes while there were unregulated and they'd bet your money on the stock market so the stock market collapsed it took with the city's ever seen the book where these people are diehard tax paid on the door to let me only me and we want our money back at close the money is gone so the great depression hit them like that you went for over the head soon twenty five percent of people are out of work one for labor's know we have no safety net there was no social security that came in nineteen thirty five old people used to write letters to president roosevelt saying dear mr president i'm solo have no family have no money do you know someone who can take care of me your family wouldn't take care of you the priest or security or you're pretty

much lost to the whims of the community and anyone who could take care of you they have continued to blow continue to get bigger stores to continue to be more frequently start to have weird names for them they call them black blizzards a new turn and a lexicographer control of that language of the planes and one with snow and there'd be addressed to going on the snow the dark and they call that us mr cynic you know what all these different terms than the storms got huge in nineteen thirty four there was a storm that came up their rigid i think here in kansas it went north little bit and that took the right turn and when it hit chicago it dumped six thousand tons on the city of chicago they were freaked out that in one of course that you know what this was it continued onto york city at two o'clock in the

afternoon tree lights were on in new york city and those who could afford it did what new yorkers always do in a panic they rushed to see their shrinks and they wondered what is this where this comes from dr what black at two o'clock because you secure dirt to the city that storm in nineteen thirty four was measured at eighty teeing hundred miles long trail ordered eighteen hundred miles long and then it went beyond york city and ships at sea a hundred miles out in the atlantic so the storm as well and with that for the land was out of whack the land was dying the land as people said time again seemed to go into black and white nothing would grow it was a terrible drought as well but what's the difference to me the police have always had drought please i've always had a high wind please of always had bouts of heat and bad winners and things like that what was different now is there's nothing to hold the land in place so

when one of these stores would come i sometimes describe it as you know you're driving say across for colorado and towards gender as you see the rocky mountains on the horizon their says long brown line they would see one of the store because they have this great high point is now like his parkinson's he was he wanted the storms someday some four hundred miles long without skipping five thousand feet high it was like a mountain range on the move was like a range or moving toward them this great even if they had just fifteen years ago suddenly couldn't feed people the town boys city oklahoma sent a telegram to washington dc said half the town in italy starring need immediate help people took a tumble we tumble week and brian get fed into their horses and some cases they themselves now a footnote about tom always sort of a symbol of the west and rolling tumble we do see is a wire fences it is

uncomfortable it's not from or you know we got to hear those germans from russia who came to the united states they had sewn in the vast pockets other clothes the seeds of turkey red wheat there is the wheat that's grown in dry climates called dry land wheat but the accidental seats they got in there with the wheat seeds or something called russian thistle was russian thistle it's tumbling that's how we got it became the seat of the pockets a seat in the pockets of those people from russia tumble we would grow and they grind in unaided people ate road kill on april fourteenth nineteen thirty five there was a storm up on the canadian border that dawned the whole day had dawned beautiful it was a gorgeous sunday morning and people who for now three years so for years in some places had every day putting a wet

towel over their windows at night have been rolling up the summer wet towel and putting it under the doors who had taken their pots and pans and flip them over so that there wouldn't be any dust on it in the morning who said when you woke up after a night sleep what you saw on your pillow was the outline of your head because it was so fun to cover these are paper thin walls in some cases literally paper people said that i need to read the newspapers the funny sometimes cause i was your installation the inside of your house the desk i am so predominant but on april fourteenth nineteen thirty five the sky was blue people put on their nice clothes they wear to church they went out for a walk vague should the sheets and clean their clothes and let dry and the prairie wind thought to themselves the worst is over we beat this thing they were called tomorrow people tomorrow people that's why they stuck around because they believed in tomorrow but they didn't know was brewing up north the storm was coming down from the dakotas and was gathering speed with every

square mile the to the time i got to denver he completely blacked out the city of denver and they were singing telegrams in their calling on the phone and saying it's coming it's coming it's coming as it came down to it as well tell entire counties went dark as this thing took over what you heard again the other stuff is tough for me is a city boy why didn't one summer of four but to try to realize that they would pull my leg the people talked about the static electricity of the guys just couldn't she committed crimes he and when the storms were approached as the static was so great and in fact if you have a car you care to change that electricity to ground as you drove along as people drag a chain along the ground so they knew the thing was upon them because the static electricity was there and they knew they had a run and try to get in some sort of shelter i asked one individual in oklahoma was like we saw black

sunday and he said it was like to be denied senate job and i gave him credit for the phrase because you know he can ride like that you got a future as a great description and i was they couldn't see the hands and for their face they had a crawl on the ground to try to find some shelter when blacks are making the moves through kansas and some of the best pitchers this is the most documented and again natural a natural barrier has to the government set of photographers and filmmakers so we have lots of archival footage and like you can ver show to see in the film a few scenes this is extraordinary stuff i am it moved to kansas move through southeast colorado river oklahoma were gunned down a texas guy named woody guthrie amarillo texas would have this little shack there was a lone likable in the shackling zimmer with about half a dozen women he said they were shrieking the end is near the end is there is the biblical prophecy the end is near and woody

guthrie to god as perry wrote couple lyrics and that became a song so this is an economy is anything goes it is

this week is it this week it is

as beaker me it is is

it black sunday through more dirt to the sky and that one day that was dug out of the panama canal in seven years the us geological survey estimated that it was eight tons of dirt eighty tons of dirt for every living american that's how much was drawn to the sky it took a left turn when it got down to the gulf that move up toward washington dc president franklin roosevelt to go like this and see a part of your state in the oval office congress looked outside and try to create the soil conservation service and some ways of their own sustainable going out and talk about it moved them to do so history of the soil conservation service which became the most

lasting legacy of the new deal now that was the peak they destroy an area the size of pennsylvania nothing would grow there debt the land was dead again back to steven had been so wonderful these people gave it back nothing people were hungry the air itself was killing you had to have the red cross damascus in order to go outside wonderful pictures of people in school with the red cross nurse there were kids in boise talk about in the book were sent to school i do have a lesson and then the storm came and bang bang bang all the windows got knocked out of this thing is to get under your desk down a desolate couldn't see the kid next to them in a horrific time you would have in the county your high school gymnasium would be ready for the play that you're on a stage at a musical a piece of love story or if you were promising for couple weeks it's only

the red cross came in and said this is now a hospital we convert of these high schools gymnasiums under the basketball hoops into three r's hospitals people died of something called dust pneumonia which is a form of solar costs these tiny particles of dust weekend your loans and so compromise your breathing i found an intriguing a diary from a doctor who talked about looking at seventeen year old kid healthy husky football player looking guy otherwise healthy who had trouble breathing scoff or doubles tournament field a doctor came and looked down a nuestro he said own son you're just filled up with dirt and it died about two weeks later testimony that's the randomness of death that's what i think i learned a normative world war two said that's what's so scary about you didn't know who was going to strike you didn't know what would it would take your best friend mann himself human

beings had become by nineteen thirty five a force of awful geology so don't tell me that human beings can change the climate don't tell that human beings can chase the years they did chase year if they were a force of geology now it's not very complicated what happens and i have a scene in the book gonna down white half apache have anglo he was a cowboy hat morse is an ex it rinsed out of texas and in fact they kept that land in grass just run cattle over desert devices they're never would've cropped gray grass country he should've turned it over though his son i was with him and he looked out this form now dead this former great grassland now brown this former paradise now glowing sky killing children schools and he told us a story he said wrong side up and that in a

nutshell if you remember nothing else from this if you're forced to take notes for classes that in a nutshell is the story of the gospel wrong side up this grass evolved over humans nothing was there to hold the ground of place anymore so what could the government do having sort of chris semi created this problem no do i blame these people know i mean i came from a big irish catholic family we were relatively poor and if we were chatting about some ways that you can go get a square mile prairie grass for free we probably the use of two years is one of maybe taken him up on that i don't blame people for that pepsi american story we pushed out from nothing we make something from nothing we're proud of that these people were proud of that so i blame them for going with the government had told him to go with a double it by blame them for going with the trains had written them there for free the right out there was free because they

wanted to and to settlement they want to build these test or blame those people for that no i dont perhaps with a little over their heads on this and they all said this to me they need al gore told that you need to make in a town that they know at some point they pushed they know at some point there was this question of hubris of going to for the great great term so the girl was trying for all what could they do having learned these people here they know had a problem on their hands and a lot of people were getting tired of them there was this quite racism but they call these oak he's you know the score what terms there were signs of old he was a term for anyone who lived in five states does pawn they as they move to california there are signs of the california border saying go back to in a way religion you're sized restaurants has said oh please and dogs oh using dogs use the back entrance the true terrible league there are letters the newspapers the saying out one of these people go back to where they came from

and where they came from was the united states of america most of them they were first or second generation americans sold partly political push was what we just let him die we just let the eerie empty out and roosevelt was not going to do that the political peril there was a texas pressure most republican state with seventy five percent democrat oklahoma which is now seventy five percent republican was seventy five percent democrat they had a connection with this new deal democrat from the hudson river valley franklin roosevelt now what roosevelt know about average people here paul will remember if you ever see pictures of franklin roosevelt who help to speed the nazis listen the great depression you know yellow metal braces on his legs that anytime means an important because they set the braces lakes that's how we understand he couldn't walk without the aid of someone else but he was a young man he spent an entire year on his back and he said if you smell you're laying on your back trying to move your small toe

nothing will face you after that so he had a sympathy for these people because of what he went through with polio cases are being denied a final at a big part of america empty on my watch so they have this dust bowl summit nineteen thirty seven after do report and the report was terrible it said that this thing was human caused it wasn't the drought there's a backdrop that wasn't drops fall they said human beings had caused they said settlement may even have been a mistake and there is this thing called the resettlement of effort with a tribe a paid people to move out of there that was one part of it that was one prototype else to try to restore the grass so roosevelt sent an army of people mostly from the cities chicago new york philadelphia boston area the gros michel tells always like some interest border boys in town and they have money in their pockets and they they can't get a town is tense and they they were the ccc worked civilian conservation corps and their job was to plant trees

and over seven years they planted two hundred and twenty million trees you'll see some of these trees if the driver of the old dust bowl now the idea was that there would be a row trees gone from the canadian border the mexican border in between that row you could be to grow so the cousin protected from the wind would be a shelter about so they planted trees they try to get people to commit to conjure plowing to respect your neighbor's property and your property as the same as part of an ecological they even this is one of the great ironies approached some of the native americans it said oh would you be actually having this landbank name is looked at him and like are you queasy look what you've done in this thing it's completely trashed so that was part of the committee report was to can we get back to the indians what would they take it so a big question confronting roosevelt was could man put back what band had destroyed now franklin roosevelt came out of the dakotas not long after he was elected i remember

we had prohibition for ten thirteen years ended in nineteen thirty two the euro's those like to it thirty three please visit to the dakotas got a bit more also holds up a giant sign outside of roosevelt's car we would always oh right with open our current cigarette the air and said mr president you give us a clearer now give us water and roosevelt turned to his aide and said the beer was the easy part as it turned out the beer was easy part because everything the matter what they tried they could repair what they had destroyed not three two hundred and twenty million trees not involve a planning some grass not with all the efforts to turn this around we couldn't repair it so we just think turnout was emily left two million stay behind they put some of the grass back they start to get decent

rains and a land that they could hold down with new grass with contra plowing came back a little bit dated restored some want a lot of people left as i said with those who stayed behind were mostly left with their memories and they start talking about the story this is something that happens that's happening out of world war two vets it wait ten years twenty years when i was going around trying to collect the story was almost eighty years old and the last survivors tell that story and they hadn't talked about it for decades as they didn't think any of you would believe that they didn't think i would believe them they didn't think there was a time when you know they were little girls living inside houses they didn't think there was a time i could tell this terrible story of a german man was so proud of being a provider first family so proud of what he'd done and then it all to quit he lost his manly pride and he couldn't get close for his little kids for easter sunday because it would add aware

berlet sax that's what onions and potatoes came in the fuel economy and so this girl she was a girl that she was eighty five when i interviewed told me she saw her german father of this big brawny provider he would go around behind the bourne and always i sell his break down crying and i have the diaries of dawn harwell who was i wanted to get some in this story because mostly the women on with them and by a nine to one and women he says are far more articulate than images and i we're trying to get some laws has a possible real and the women were just go ok so has the sun it was nine o'clock i was wearing a purple dress omits when the pinterest the sky was blue robin's egg blue and that started to change and i was going to cook her past and you know his great detail so i want to get some and in the story i found a diary from

nebraska that the nebraska districts i thought because somebody was burning and throwing a barrel page by page this old lady they can possibly two and she said i want to go on a horror what a replaceable they paul does carry on the fire and transcribed and i used in my book it's the dartmouth story store the man and his dire or five years and how does paul distorted he loses his land he loses his home and this is why she has to go to work as a maid in denver they had no children they disappear from the earth and sixty years later got becomes wrong fights the diary was interesting but that are in islam and he's a nebraska farm they have good ratings service revolver he listened for some reason to new york yankee games every night he hit the eighties it's gotten all the yankee hatred was pretty consistent through the years i say that as a hero and a writer with no parallel

oh so he was at the top of every day at the end of every day he would say jake is lost for too good and many would say mostly cloudy today some sprinkled still ray and then he would say something like right after doing the sport or whether in very short term to say don't know how much longer i can hold on don't know how much longer i can take it sold the car today something like that's like the us in the book that well i just put those diary entries i mean comment on but it's how an event destroyed human being so we were left with their stories abraham lincoln famously said you cannot escape history but as i said talk about my son's high school history book this history almost escaped us and we all those people who were still

living it urges everyone has it ever grand mother grandfather or great grandmother or great grandfather was still alive this thanksgiving to sit down with your tape recorder and asked them to tell you their story we all want our story told with all our narrative told and this is one of the better stories in our history not just american history and world history idea loyalist people all the world on this thing and they're amazed at that human spirit there are appalled by what we did paul because we did do this but they're amazed by the human spirit so it's a good and a bad story of resilience as a story of destruction so one end on that story of resilience there was a woman who came out here how her mother was a broadway dancers and she was a high flying down new york city who new york city then was the air was terrible and she was a smoker to his most people spoke in the nineteen thirties and so are loans were very calm he was a doctor said you gotta go out the

prairie and his fresh air or you're going to die as well be your goal with the story she and her little daughter jeannie who i profiled end up giving testimony they come out to kansas for the air and the air almost kills and there were sharp coming from broadway new york city in a riding on this forget the time or the county that they're riding with the tradeoff a they got their suitcases and holy bleep are warily what we do well jimmy carter whose mother was the right way to answer phil over the cowboys and she bought herself a bar and she lived her whole life in kansas and when i found her she was about three years old and i was going from counter terror trying to find survivors and she was in ways little antique stores slash museums to buy the stuff you look at he wanted

to elicit lot for sale to one of the women vets remain they in the museum is named aldo and she had this little oxygen cylinder next to her course she still smoke cigarettes that he could blow things up and smoke and down i said that's given them good morning one man who was around in the dirty thirties what they call the dirty thirties she said oh paul to see and that was sort of my introduction eugenie clark i really got to love her still a lot of time with her told her story so after the book came out and i was really afraid that no one really because it's not like reading is not a valentine's day gift home honey i love you and there's the worst hard time you know i would gladly for syria but hopefully wasn't too much of a flourish but i was afraid no one really i was afraid that like my son's high school history books at

norwich are there would be two parties try think i told him on a story but i thought it was going to pardon a peep like almost the spores no means complete story well people believe their story the book has sold almost a million copies and it became a ken burns' film the cheek or the people i really care about the people or profile got to have their story told city told me that seventh graders show up on her doorstep and knock on our door with their little notebooks and say we're doing a project in the dust ball can we talk to you again she would say pull up a seat at them and tell her story to these little kids who are dirt gospel project the chamber of commerce in the county invited to speak and tell her story so a story that nearly went black nearly went dark but she stopped talking about for all these years was revived she called me up two months before she died and she was like a schoolgirl she was just giddy at city and i'm like a rock star in this county now so she got in the end i'm so

happy and it's the rarest of things from us we people who tell histories and what you think of history not as a blank slate not is a separate tone picture not as a statute not as a series of dates but as this is drama as individuals like you struggling with life stories genie and got what all of us one she got to have her story told thank you timothy even if he is the author of the worst hard time the untold story of those who survived the great american dust bowl i'm j mcintyre you're listening to jp our prisons on kansas public radio timothy egan now takes questions from the audience i'm dying asses question because it's highly relevant in my opinion i'm a was born at the tail end of the great gospel and i have read your book as a cautionary tale and i think it will only be completed in

my mind if you can eliminate what policies need to be implemented what conservation measures need to be undertaken to forestall still another dust bowl many are wearing this audience that they are poor for that you mentioned so often that crosses many states is being depleted rapidly we are on the verge of having another great calamity what are the policies that we can get in place soon well good question now you know i write an opinion column for the new york times i consider myself a story writer of course they know they're drawing down the water for it appalled me being down in oklahoma and texas and seeing these giant pivot sprinklers sucking up the oxford make grow

cotton and they all know it in the us uses telling seems to be gone they said ready get while it's good and one displaced fifteen years old volunteer oh yeah because you're making another moon skip so they know and people ask me a question your gas a teller of history is did we learn from this gas this about all across the us but the civil war the us but every event in our history that is a bad thing did we learn from this i'm an optimistic person i'm a positive person i like to think we learned from this but i don't think you see in the policy right now because we are sucking this great it's a great lakes underneath the planes what it is it's a it's a thing that took thousands and thousands and thousands of years to create come off a runoff of the rocky mountains and we're such in a drive thru shortsighted policies and what can we do i couldn't do what we did with the blowing soil was to get people to look at it as a whole and not i've got my peace screw you you

know that what they did was the main thing with so called research is to get people to say he's not your land gets his land or her land it's all part of the same land and that water has to look at that way i don't know the intricacies of several warm water policies enough to know what levers can you pull but i do know that on our watch is happening on our watch you've just heard timothy egan author of the worst hard time he's come and booked for two thousand thirteen fourteen and to read across floor and spoke for two thousand thirteen egan spoke act he is leed center on september twenty six two thousand and thirteen thanks to mark crabtree for audio of this advanced i'm kate mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio