I know looks aren’t everything. At least that’s what mama tried to tell us when we were living hand to mouth over in Centrahoma. Things went pretty well when there was just immediate family around, but someone always came back. You know, the refugees from the dust, the poverty, and foreclosing banks. Such as my uncle’s families from California who returned periodically to visit. Many people from the “dust bowl era” migrated someplace else for the simple reason most chances for being prosperous in the dusty environs of Oklahoma and surrounding states had gone down to about zero.

Books have been written about this disaster of the 1930s but many of us and our kin lived through this horror of blowing dust and farm failures which led to the disappearance of thousands of school districts and even more small towns that had dotted the plains. Everybody had some sort of idea or solution for this natural disaster, but it was easier to simply flee. And flee they did. But what about those left behind making 10 cents an hour? Well, they were victims of what my late cousin Corky liked to say: “Its just a case of there you are.”

Our newly elected President Roosevelt proposed several things for us. One local program to aid those “left behind.” In Dalhart Texas, was this. Destitute residents were getting 10 free gallons of gas to get them on their way. Other programs bought these defunct farms out with the clear expectation of the occupants hitting highway 66 to California. But out of the estimated 300,000 migrants landing in California only about 37,000 actually came from the “hardest hit” areas of the so called “real” dust bowl.

Partly as a result of press and other negative publicity put out at these times there were a lot of negative feelings out there for those fleeing the hard times. Movies like “The Grapes of Wrath” portrayed the Joads (a family fleeing the dust) as ignorant and somewhat stupid. One national news writer, H L. Menckin wrote; “We should just sterilize all of them.” The idea being, if anyone was stupid enough to move out there to that dustbowl and not smart enough to leave, we shouldn’t be expected to bail them out. His view of our “ambience” or lack thereof was widespread.

But a compassionate President Roosevelt’s ideas to reclaim the land, planting shelter belts of trees worked best. Hundreds of CCC workers found themselves employed surveying, planting, and watering thousands of these trees in hopes of stopping the massive wind erosion of the soil. Thousands of these trees still stand— bravely fighting the winds and dust to this day. Sadly, farmers have dozed thousands of them away to make room to plant more stuff. They may not have ever caught on to Roosevelts’ physics.

Or maybe I just still remember a sign on someone’s front yard in San Diego after I had joined the Navy. It read, “Sailors and Dogs Stay off the Lawn.” My mind reverted back to “Okie days” when neither the dust nor migrant Okies were welcome. For sure there isn’t any dust bowl around here anymore. Now if we can just get it to stop raining all the time. Hope your week is good and thanks to those who write. I always enjoy (nearly always) reading your letters.

Wayne Bullard, DPh cwaynebullard@gmail.cl