Dusty Winds

It was early March 1949,when my sister was very small. She wasn't quiet a year old. Where we lived then was an old house. It had a kitchen/dining room, a living room and one long room that had our beds. Our place was kind of open. There wasn't many trees to break the wind. The neighbor had an open field that he had plowed early to get ready for planting. And thats the year that March came in like a Lion. When the wind started blowing across the field, it blew sand and dust. We were right in the open and our windows were those with the small panes. The doors were just boards nailed together and hung on hinges with a pull latch. The dust and sand came in around the windows and doors and any cracks it could find. The living room was on the leeward side of the house, opposite the direction of the wind. So we moved in there and hung blankets on the doors and windows to filter the dust and sand. My sisters crib was moved in there too and when she slept a blanket was draped over it. Our meals were cooked in the fireplace. Our lights were coal oil lanterns. We didn't have electricty then. We slept on quilts and blankets spread on the floor. The wind blew and blew. I think it was five or six days that we lived in the living room, except for the daily chores we had to do like getting wood and feeding the stock. Then when it finally stopped we had to clean everything. We had to take our bedding out and clean all the sand and dust out of it. The house was full of sand everywhere. It took as long to clean as we were confined. That spring my mom and dad started planting shrubs and trees for wind breaks,and soon after we started building another house. One that was tighter. The shrubs and trees grew and we were protected the next time the winds blew so bad. I can imagine how the people struggled in the midwest during the forties, I think, when it was called the dust bowl. What we went through was a short time. They had it for years. No wonder so many of them moved away.

neon_sapphire