The Worst Hard Time is all about surviving the dust bowl days in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, commonly referred to as no man’s land. The author, Timothy Egan, wrote this because he knew the sources for first hand accounts were dwindling as many people who were alive during that time are now growing old. Egan begins by describing breakup of the XIT ranch which covered most of the Texas panhandle. All this land was then sold in small sections to new homesteaders, or nesters, who then began to turn sod, till the land plant wheat, corn, and other crops on this newfound inexhaustible resource. Egan describes the forces that led to European settlement of the Great Plains. The U.S. government cleared the land of the Indians and bison by the …show more content…
They range from the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles into northeast New Mexico, southeast Colorado, western Kansas and southern Nebraska. Bam White, for example, was a cowboy traveling south with his wife, three children, all their possessions and no money, when their last horse died near Dalhart, Texas. He decided to stay and make the best of it, “the last best chance to do something right, to get a small piece of the world and make it work,” as Egan says. The Whites sensed the optimism that pervaded the town. Egan describes Dalhart’s unfounded optimism as “a place where dreams took flight on the last snort of a dying horse.” Another example is George Ehrlich who was a German Russian who ended up in Kansas and Oklahoma. He was one of many German Russians who left Russia for America after Czar Alexander II revoked Catherine the Great’s efforts to settle parts of Russia by allowing farmers to be exempt from taxes and the military draft. They brought with them the seeds of a hard winter wheat that had served them well in Russia. They also brought the seeds of Russian thistle, which is now known as tumbleweed, and features prominently in the mythology of the Western United
Hard Times’ ‘The Dirty 30s’ ‘The Great Depression’ (Ganzel n. pag.)This quote describes so much about 1930’s especially farming. Farming was hard because there was a really bad drought. Was out they rain no crops could grow. And the crops can't hold the soil together and not blow away. Which was really bad for the soil to blow away. Also the farmers didn't know that the equipment they were using would tear up the soil too much and it would blow away. The farming in the 1930s was bad because of the dust bowl and the price of everything was low.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
As history cascades through an hourglass, the changing, developmental hands of time are shrouded throughout American history. This ever-changing hourglass of time is reflected in the process of maturation undertaken by western America in the late nineteenth century. Change, as defined by Oxford’s Dictionary, is “To make or become different through alteration or modification.” The notion of change is essential when attempting to unwind the economic make-up of Kansas in the 1880’s and 1890’s. Popular culture often reveres the American cowboy, which has led him to become the predominate figure in America’s “westering” experience (Savage, p3). However, by 1880 the cowboy had become a mythical figure rather than a presence in western life. The era of the cowboy roaming the Great Plains had past and farmers now sought to become the culturally dominant figure and force in the American West. Unlike the cowboys, farmers were able to evolved, organizing and establishing the Populist Party. The farmers’ newly formed political organization provided them with a voice, which mandated western reform. Furthermore, the populist ideas spread quickly and dominated western thought in the 1880’s and 1890’s. The period of the 1880’s and 1890’s marked the end of the American cowboy and gave farmers a political stronghold that would forever impact the modernization of the West.
The “Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s”, was written by Donald Worster, who admits wanted to write the book for selfish reasons, so that he would have a reason o visit the Southern Plains again. In the book he discusses the events of the “dirty thirties” in the Dust Bowl region and how it affected other areas in America. “Dust Bowl” was a term coined by a journalist and used to describe the area that was in the southern planes in the states of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, between the years of 1931 and 1939. This area experienced massive dust storms, which left dust covering everything in its wake. These dust storms were so severe at times that it made it so that the visibility in the area was so low to where people
First, Egan believes that the Chicago Syndicate, as well as the government, took part in causing the Dust Bowl. The Worst Hard Time began with an explanation of how the land was inhabited after the Comanche were kicked off. Texas wanted an extravagant state capitol building after the Civil War. In order to fund this building, Texas agreed to give land to whoever would take on the endeavor of building the structure. The Chicago Syndicate decided
(Worster12) but neglects the fact that at the time of the Dust Bowl many of the farmers weren’t fully educated in preventing most of the natural disasters that occurred. The drought has caused a lot of unfavorable conditions for farmers in the southwest. In Worster’s book he says “Few of us want to live in the region now”. There is too much wind, dirt, flatness, space, barbed wire, drought, uncertainty, hard work.”
People had to live off of the possessions they owned and what little money they had or could earn. The determined families had to cling to their homes and way of life. Some of the things they had to endure were the drought, dust, disease and even death for almost a decade. For the families to survive free from dust storms they had to move to California, but only a quarter of the “ Dust Bowlers” did (The Drought n. pag.). People during the Great Depression didn’t really have much so most of the families from the Dust Bowl had to stay at their homes and survive the extreme dust storms.Some people think that it was the hardest to survive as a child.
The area of severe wind erosion, soon known as the Dust Bowl, compromised a section of the wheat belt near the intersection of Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. ”(Gregory, 11). Along with Gregory, John Steinbeck in his book, The Harvest Gypsies, and Debra Weber in her book, Dark Sweat, White Gold, also write about these events, and in particular the people who were affected by it. The Dust Bowl had ruined any chance of farmers in those regions being able to farm, because of that they were forced to relocate to be able to survive.
In the beginning of the novel, Steinbeck describes the devastating Dust bowl that settles “on the corn, on roofs,” and blankets “the weeds and trees” (Steinbeck 3). His use of imagery instantly installs the picture of destruction into the reader’s mind. The Dust Bowl is the beginning of the hardships that are to come for the migrants. There is an anecdote of a turtle who struggles to get to the other side of the road. The turtle struggles up the embankment like the families struggled to get to California. When he was trying to cross the highway he was nearly hit twice, which is similar to the business owners and Californians running over the Oklahoma people. This small chapter symbolizes the entire journey of the Joad family, in turn it symbolizes the journey of all the Oklahoma people. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
In the 1930s, the Great Plains region, were given the name The Dust Bowl due to the droughts in the 1930s, as America was going into the Great depression. The droughts, dust storms and people doing the method of dryland farming caused the destruction of the environment, agriculture, and the people life’s living there. Timothy Egan in book, “The Worst Hard Time,” emphasizes on the stories of the people who chose to stay and survived the environmental disasters, destruction of their towns, battling through starvation and diseases by dust storms in America’s High Plains. Hazel Lucas Shaw is a particular individual highlighted by Timothy Egan throughout the book. Egan analyzes her journey as she arrived in the Great Plains and throughout the dirty
First the northern plains were hit by the dry spell, but by July the southern plains were in the drought. Because of the late planting and early frost, much of the wheat was damaged when the spring winds of 1932 began to blow. The region was blasted by a horrible dirt storm, which killed almost all the wheat. Although the dirt storms were fewer in 1934, it was the year, which brought the Dust Bowl national attention. A severe storm blew dirt from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. In spite of the terrific storm in the year 1934 there was a satisfying break from the blowing dirt and tornadoes of the previous year. But nature had another trick up her sleeve, the year was extremely hot with new records being made. Before the year had run its course, hundreds of people in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas had died from the heat. The weather in the Dust Bowl again made the national headlines. A description of this storm of coming was made by a farmer:" The storm causes a tremendous amount of damage and suffering mentally and physically some of the conditions were animals dying from dust in the lungs and people developing dust pneumonia.” A giant dust storm engulfs Oklahoma. These storms destroyed vast areas of the Great Plains farmland. The methods of fighting the dust were as many and varied as were the means of finding a way to get something to eat. Canned foods had became the only way anybody could eat. Every possible crack was plugged, sheets were placed over windows and blankets were hung behind doors. Often the places were so tightly plugged against the dust that the houses became extremely hot and stuffy. Men, women and children stayed in their houses and tied handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. When they dared to leave, they added goggles to protect their eyes. Houses were shut tight, cloth was wedged in the cracks of the doors and windows but still the fine silt forced its way into houses, schools
I would recommend this book to anyone looking to expand their knowledge of the Dust Bowl Era. The way Worster is able to integrate personal accounts, different varieties of art, music, writing, etc. of the times, and concrete data and statistics is wonderful and interesting. He also provokes his readers to realize the connections between the past and the present, and wonder whether Americans have grown from the mistakes in the past. Because of this, this book can easily be read for both intellectual stimulation and
Every person has their own unique way of coping with situations in their life. The goal of coping is,“to deal effectively with something difficult” (OED). While there are many effective ways of coping there are also many ineffective ways to cope. Holden Caulfield , the protagonist The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger, is a character who addresses stressful moments in his life with unhealthy coping methods. According to Sigmund Freud,a doctor who studied the human mind, Holden’s “ID” and “Super-Ego”, or his unconscious mind, was at conflict and the coping strategies that presented themselves through his actions, thoughts, and words were to deal with this internal conflict. An unhealthy coping strategy that Holden uses often is fantasy.
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan gives the account of the Great Plains and the hardships the people who tried to conquer this land survived. People flocked to the Great Plains in search of prosperity. The land was ripe for the taking. The Homestead Act of 1862 and the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 attracted many people to this area. The land was unknown to most Americans, and the climate was not understood. The Native Americans had been long removed along with their livestock. The whole area was an endless sea of grassland. The climate was different than the urban areas on New York and Chicago. Some people were even given diagnosis that this desert climate could only cure. “Doctors prescribed a remedy: go west, to the southern plains,
The opening chapter paints a vivid picture of the situation facing the drought-stricken farmers of Oklahoma. Dust is described a covering everything, smothering the life out of anything that wants to grow. The dust is symbolic of the erosion of the lives of the people. The dust is synonymous with "deadness". The land is ruined ^way of life (farming) gone, people ^uprooted and forced to leave. Secondly, the dust stands for ^profiteering banks in the background that squeeze the life out the land by forcing the people off the land. The soil, the people (farmers) have been drained of life and are exploited: