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the dust bowl commonlit answers
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The Dust Bowl was a rough time for farmers in the 1930’s. The Dust Bowl was a drought that had many dust storms involved, which lasted about a decade.
What was life like for the people in the dust bowl? People spent a decade of their life trying to survive in a drought, having to fight diseases, shoveling dust out of their homes, and watch as all their crops get blown away. Some residents thought it was the end of the world.
Being a kid in Oklahoma during the dust bowl wasn’t the greatest. Every morning no matter the weather conditions the kids would have to milk their cows, and feed all the farm animals (A Child's Life During the Dust Bowl). The walks to and from school were never easy. They would walk several miles, and it would always be very windy. Sometimes the kids would have no choice but to walk backwards because the wind was that bad. Pneumonia was also a problem for the children. Since food was also scarce in the dust bowl, children suffered watching their parents starve. Moving away from the dust bowl didn’t mean life would get easier. Many people moved to California, and they were given a nickname “Okies.” Most of the kids would get teased because they were an Okie. The Okies were called dumb because they didn’t have the opportunity to go to school as much because of the dust storms (A Child's Life During the Dust Bowl). In my opinion if I was kid living in the dust bowl I would probably want to kill myself. I would not be able to handle it. It seems like there was nothing to look forward to and each day was another struggle. I can barely go just a few hours without anything to eat. Knowing that they had to eat the same things every day, and always would end up chewing on some dust makes me happy with the way my lif...
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...elful of fine sand flung against the face. People caught in their own yards grope for the doorstep. Cars come to a standstill, for no light in the world can penetrate that swirling murk... We live with the dust, eat it, sleep with it, watch it strip us of possessions and the hope of possessions. It is becoming Real." said by Avis D. Carlson (Ganzel, The Dust Bowl). The farmers could have colorful fruits on one day, and then the next it would turn black the next. People were getting really tired of the drought and were desperate to try anything to let rain fall. This one guy named Tex Thorton had a crazy idea that explosions would give some excitement to the atmosphere and rain fall would happen. Surprisingly, after a couple of explosions; a little bit of snow began to fall from the sky. But it wasn’t what the people were looking for. Then on one random day a group
The Dust Bowl grazed across the Midwest of the United States, destroying the ecology and agriculture of the United States and Canadian Prairies"1. The Midwest had been experiencing a severe drought when the wind started to collect any loose dry dirt building up gigantic dust clouds. The 1920 's were so prosperous with many new inventions and lifestyles being adapted. Farmers now had the aid of a tractor to help plow the fields faster and farther.2 Was the newly plowed dirt the cause of the Dust Bowl, historian, Professor R. Douglas Hurt seems to think so.
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains area in the 1930s. Much of the region was an agricultural area and relied on it for most of their economy. Combined with The Great Depression and the dust storms, farmers in the Great Plains area were severely hurt. These farmers were seeking opportunity elsewhere near the Pacific where they were mistreated by the others already there. The mistreatment is a form of disenfranchisement, by excluding and segregating a group of people from the rest of society. The disenfranchisement of the Oklahoma farmers during the 1930s was caused by a combination of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression which led to the farmers being forced to move west where they were mistreated because there were not enough jobs.
One major difference between the two events was the death toll. During the Dust Bowl, the major windstorms & dust-storms force dust into people's lungs. This caused a disorder called "Dust Pneumonia". According to Denver's Post: effects of the Dust Bowl, the Dust Bowl caused "7,000 people, men, women, and especially small children" to die from this disorder 'Dust Pneumonia'. During the 2012 drought, the number of deaths were much lower. There wasn't any dust-storms that caused Dust Pneumonia. Also, medical treatments and medicine have improved greatly since the
The Dust Bowl, a tragic era lasting from 1930 to 1939, was characterized by blinding dust storms. These dust storms were composed of strong winds that blew across dry, cultivated soil for hundreds of miles, which could remain active for ten hours or more (Hansen, 667). The storms actually had the potential to drag on for days on end. In 1939, for example, one storm stop blowing for more than one hundred hours.
A magnanimous amount of motivation for the tenant farmers was generally found in the self, in an individualistic manner. As "gentle (winds) followed the rain clouds," furthering the magnitude of the dust storms, the survival of the farmers and their families soon became doubtful. The men would sit in "the doorways of their houses; their hands were busy with sticks and little rocks... (as they) sat still--thinking--figuring." The adversity represented by the weather was hindered by the idea that man could triumph over nature--over the machine--and retain a sense of self-identity.
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
The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." The early thirties opened with prosperity and growth. At the time the Midwest was full of agricultural growth. The Panhandle of the Oklahoma and Texas region was marked contrast to the long soup lines of the Eastern United States.
The book The Worst Hard Time describes my experience on trying to get through this book but somehow almost made me grateful that even as difficult and exhausting as it was in actuality there was nothing worse, difficult or exhausting than living through the dust bowl storms in the 1930’s which luckily I did not do. If you ever feel ungrateful or depressed about something in your life just read this book and you will know that most problems now a days in the United States don’t compare to the hardships and loss of loved ones who died during the dust storms in the 1930s. The people who inhabited the dust bowl area which consisted of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas where sold an Idea of the American dream of owning property
The Dust Bowl was "the darkest moment in the twentieth-century life of the southern plains," (pg. 4) as described by Donald Worster in his book "The Dust Bowl." It was a time of drought, famine, and poverty that existed in the 1930's. It's cause, as Worster presents in a very thorough manner, was a chain of events that was perpetuated by the basic capitalistic society's "need" for expansion and consumption. Considered by some as one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of man, Worster argues that the Dust Bowl was created not by nature's work, but by an American culture that was working exactly the way it was planned. In essence, the Dust Bowl was the effect of a society, which deliberately set out to take all it could from the earth while giving next to nothing back.
The Dust Bowl was also known as the “Dirty Thirties” which took its toll (Dunn n. pag.). The decade from the Dust Bowl was filled with extreme conditions such as tornadoes, floods, droughts, and dirt storms. The Dust Bowl occurred in the midwestern states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Within these states the conditions affected many peoples lives. The Dust Bowl had gotten its name after Black Sunday, April 14,1935( Ganzel n. pag.). While traveling through the midwest a reporter named Robert Geige, wrote, “Three little words achingly familiar on a western farmer’s tongue, rule life in the Dust Bowl of the continent- if it rains” (The Drought n. pag.). People back then used the term Dust Bowl to help describe the people that lived in the hard times of the drought stricken region during the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl is still a term we use today to describe the harsh times of the droughts and dirt storms. The Dust Bowl was a harsh time to live in, it affected many things such as: the way people lived and farming.
This story also may have been influenced slightly by the Dust Bowl, which is hinted at on page 5, when O’Connor mentions “dust coated trees”.
The Dust Bowl was a brutal time period in Midwestern history; farmers were pushed off their land and forced to find new homes in new states.
My brother and I have heard of this storm called the Dust Bowl and my brother said that we're lucky it didn’t happen to us. Suddenly we heard people screaming. The screaming was getting louder and louder. Then I looked outside and saw people running toward our house. At the same time my brother and I who have always had the same thoughts said, “OH NO.”
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
The Dust Bowl was a time of serious depression, and it gave a very big impact in the economy.The economy was negatively affected by the Dust Bowl. It was hugely negatively affected that it the part of the South west had to have government assistance, The was a huge decrease in the number of jobs, and there was death to all cattle crops.