Darkness at Midday

April 10, 1935  We had a terrible dust storm.  It got so dark by noon that we lit the lamps and burned them the rest of the day.  We went to Meade.

Dust storms year after year wore a person down.  Many people left for California during the 1930s (the “Okies”) on rumors of good work to be found there.  But the Siemens were tougher and stayed put.  Cornelius was wise enough not to borrow money against their farm, so he did not have mortgage payments to make and there was no bank threatening to foreclose on them.

During the World War I, North American farmers had broken a lot of new ground to feed the world, and they continued to do so during the good years that followed in the 1920s.  But unbeknownst to them, they were using farming practices that turned the soil to powder.  When it was wet, as it was during the 1920s, this was not a problem.  But for eleven consecutive years, from 1930 to 1940, Kansas experienced below average rainfall.  When the vegetation and crops dried up, great clouds of dust blew away the precious topsoil, leaving a hardpan on which nothing would grow.

The dust storms would roll in as a huge black cloud.  Flocks of birds would fly ahead of the cloud, trying in vain to escape it.  Day would turn to night.  No one had seen anything like this, and people were terrified that the world was ending.  In hindsight that seems rather silly, but if we had experienced, I have no doubt that we would have felt the same.

In the house, they would stuff wet rags in the cracks and cover windows with wet sheets to try to stop the dust.  But the powdery soil still managed to penetrate, and after the storm they would sweep and even shovel the dust out of the house.  Everything – the kitchen, stove, pots and pans, the dining room table, the chairs, the beds, clothes – was covered with dust.  Dust would pile up along fences and drift around buildings like snow.  Animals could walk over the dirt and get out of pastures and corrals.  Roads would drift shut with dirt.  There was a lot of static electricity in the air due to all the fine particles, so cars would not start.  It must have seemed like the world truly was ending.

In 1932, the Siemens did not finish the harvest because it was not worth cutting the stunted wheat.  And 1933 was just as dry.  Many farmers did not even plant a crop because there was no moisture in the ground.  Babies’ weak lungs could not expel the dust, so they got something called dust pneumonia, and some even died from it.  The Siemens had three little children at this time, Henry age 4, Elmer 3, and Anna 1; so they must have worried what would happen to them. 

Imagine having to light kerosene lamps at noon because the dust completely blocked the sun.  Imagine having one crop failure after another.  Imagine feeding tumbleweeds to the cattle because there was no feed to buy for miles and miles around (and very little money to buy it with).  Imagine the discouragement of fighting the dust day after day to keep the house clean.  Yet the Siemens survived this dust storm and many others.