On July 12th, 1851 in eastern Montana, a farmer named Curtis Spinella was beginning the grueling task of plowing a field on the family ranch. His brother Frank had just returned from a long journey to Carson City for supplies. As the afternoon grew into evening, the clouds thickened and became as dark as coal. A low rumbling sound rippled across the sky and Curtis knew that a storm was imminent. After what seemed to be no more than a few moments he felt the first drops of rain. Curtis increased the speed at which he was plowing because it was of utmost importance that the field be completed. Frank had just stepped out of the tool shed to give his brother a hand, and he was stopped in his tracks as an enormous bolt of lightning
The farmers had torn out millions of miles of prairie grass so that they could farm there. Without the grass, dust began to kick up and storm around the air causing dust storms.
The “Dust Bowl Odyssey” presented an initial perspective of why families migrated from drought-ridden, Dust Bowl, areas to California. Edward Carr cautions, “Interpretation plays a necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no existing interpretation is wholly objective, on interpretation is a good as another, and the facts of history are in principle not amendable to objective interpretation” (Carr, 1961, p. 31). Historians had to separate the prejudices, assumptions, and beliefs of the times in order to have a more objective reasoning of the migration. The migration had valid evidence that supported against the theory of the Dust Bowl being the only contributor. Rather there were other historical contributions to
John Deere was born in Vermont in 1804. His father went to England to find a job in 1808 and never came back, so he was primarily raised by his mother with his three brothers and his one sister. He was an educated man, and had always been fascinated with blacksmithing. At the age of 17, Deere got his first apprenticeship as a blacksmith in Middlebury. He was so talented, that with just a three year apprenticeship he was able to gain so much knowledge and start his own blacksmith company in 1825. Blacksmithing in Vermont wasn’t as substantial as in the West because the soil wasn’t as hard, so when Deere’s business wasn’t flourishing he packed up and moved to the West.
Steinbeck’s book garnered acclaim both from critics and from the American public. The story struck a chord with the American people because Steinbeck truly captured the angst and heartbreak of those directly impacted by the Dust Bowl disaster. To truly comprehend the havoc the Dust Bowl wreaked, one must first understand how and why the Dust Bowl took place and who it affected the most. The Dust Bowl was the result of a conglomeration of weather, falling crop prices, and government policies. The Dust Bowl, a tragic era lasting from 1930 to 1939, was characterized by blinding dust storms.
The Midwest had been experiencing a severe drought when the wind started to collect any loose dry dirt, building up gigantic dust clouds. The 1920s 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. Professor R. Douglas Hurt is the Director of the Graduate Program in Agricultural History and Rural Studies at Iowa State University in Ames. Professor Hurt wrote the book, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History, based on historical events and his opinion of the what caused the Dust Bowl.3 Professor Hurt said, "Dust storms in the Southern Great Plains, and indeed, in the Plains as a whole, were not unique to the 1930's..
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 drought 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…” (Worster 105). The droughts caused many unfavorable condition throughout the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. Thus, roughly one-third of Texas and Oklahoman farmers left their homes and headed to California in search of migrant work. The droughts during the 1930s are a drastically misrepresented factor of the Dust bowl considering “the 1930s droughts were, in the words of a Weather Bureau scientist, the worst in the climatological history of the country.” (Worster 232) Some of the direct effects of the droughts were that many of the farmers’ crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. What essentially happened was that the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” The constant dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The effects of the drought happened so rapidly and progressively over time that
The Dry Creek Station was created in the spring of 1860 by crew members. This station was the last one built on the Pony Express on Bolivar Roberts division. This station was built for the purpose of the Pony Express which delivered mail. William H. Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B. Waddell created the Pony Express because mail delivery by boat would take a substantial amount of time so they chose that delivering mail by horse would take a cut on time. During the building process they ran into some issues with Indians, and one day when a “heavy mail” carrier named William H. Streeper was headed westward and ran into two prospectors that asked if they could join him in the journey. They neared Dry Creek Station and saw that there were no Indians in sight, but when they got to the station they found the station keeper scalped and mutilated, this man’s name was Ralph Rosier. What had actually happened is that Indians came into the station and shot two men. One of the men shot was named Applegate, who was already suffering from being shot, one of the Indians gave him a bullet and they let him decide his fate. He chose to shoot himself in the head rather than try and shoot the Indian in front of him.
Eric Burdon once said, “Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other”. Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, illustrates a recurring motif of Good vs. Evil in a charred post-apocalyptic universe. This new world that is scorched of life contains the father and son duo who go one each day with Good and Evil lurking behind. The father and son, for most of the novel, are the good side of the spectrum but even the good in people parts away when the stress of living one more day is constantly knocking on the front door. McCarthy’s larger purpose in writing The Road is to show how Good and Evil coincide with each other while facing identical circumstances.
Nine-year-old Catherine Hattrup lived through the largest and most powerful dust storm in American history: Black Sunday. Catherine and her family lived in Hodgeman County, Kansas. The Hattrup family and thousands of other settlers moved to the area in the early 1800s after the U.S. government had forced the Native Americans from their lands.The U.S. Government had offers of free or very inexpensive land. The settlers had removed the prairie grasses to make more room they did this by using axes, sharp-bladed plows, and even their hands to get rid of the grasses. This had been done to make acres of wheat farms. Plains farmers prospered until the early 1930s, when the Great Depression hit and a severe drought during the sweltering summer heat
The authors in “Proper Library” and in “Mrs. Turner’s Lawn Jockeys”, both use the empathy of the child archetype to boost the protagonist’s confidence, giving them security. They argue that children are judgment free and have unconditional love, until exposed to bias.
Mills, C. A., & Heady, J. T. (1934). Human behavior and the weather. In , Living with the
In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a man and the boy live in a post-apocalyptic world in which fire has destroyed much of the landscape leaving forests and cities in ash and ruins. They spend a majority of their days trekking a southbound road, and throughout their journey on the road, they are unremittingly challenged by their environment. The threat of cannibals capturing them, the possibility of hypothermia, and imminent starvation are constant terrors. Each trial they face is met with the man’s constant attempts to encourage the boy. Due to the troubles they face and the security they lack, it is difficult for the man to keep the faith to continue on their journey. Because of the many mentions in the novel, the man and boy’s recognition of an omniscient being is proof they rely on a god to be their motivation and the man’s hope for the future is fueled by a higher power acting as their guiding light.
They were original up in missouri. It is now present day nebraska. There land was covered by grass and very flatlands. The climate had a hot summer. The spring was warm. The fall was some what warm winter was very cold.
Robert Frost wrote the poem “The Pasture” in 1913. He gives the reader a springtime pasture for the setting. There are leaves on the ground, and cows are roaming the land. Also, Frost gives the reader the feeling of springtime with the image of a thawed pond and baby calf (Savant 3). Frost used this setting to convey a soft setting in order to connect with the reader. The speaker of the poem is talking to an unknown character. He tells the other unknown character that he was cleaning the pasture and he will stop only to rake or to watch the water. The speaker says that he will not be gone long. At this moment, he invites the unknown character to join him. Next the speaker says that he is going to get a little calf with its mother. The calf is so small that it totters when its mother licks him. Finally, the speaker explains that it will not be a long trip to the pasture and invited the reader to join him (Savant 2).