"The Dustbowl" by Ken Burns on PBS.
 

I have just watched part two and cannot recommend this enough. It is by far the best documentary that I have seen regarding this man made calamity on the southern Great Plains. It'll break your heart and leave you weepin' (fair warning) but it will also leave you with a sense of pride and disgust in your fellow Americans. Pride that these farmers who through no real fault of their own suffered but persevered through the Great Depression, disgust in how they were driven from their homes by the bankers and the drought and how they were treated once they arrived here in California.

Everyone with a lick of education has read the "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. There's another author by the name of Sanora Babbs whose work detailing the travails of the Dustbowl refugees in California was shared with Steinbeck by her FSA (Farm Security Administration) boss Tom Collins that inspired Steinbeck. Her own novel was shelved by Random House until publication in 2004. "Whose Names Are Unknown" is the title. I'll be putting this one on my reading list.

I think I'll spin me up some Woody Guthrie here on this Thanksgiving 2012, almost eighty years after it started and think about this hard tale.

Peace, Bob

Just could not continue watching.......too depressing!

The folks who did much of The Dustbowl's soundtrack, Al Petteway and Amy White, played recently at a nearby 1870's chapel converted to an acoustic roots music venue. Very entertaining and talented.

I have seen it too, it is a very well done piece of American history.


Carl

Just wait until the factory farmers drain the Ogallala aquifer. Then it'll be back. You'll be breathing Oklahoma dirt even in New York, sorry.:(

That was a well done series. I had some relatives that went through the Dust Bowl period. Of course, I found the Men That Made America" much more uplifting. :D

Every time the storms here move in from the Southwest it literally rains mud from the drought, and soot from wildfires in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The new dust bowl is already starting. NW Arkansas is 14" down on annual rainfall.

I saw the Ken Burns documentary and it was very powerful, but not as powerful as the stories my grandfather told me about the Dustbowl.

After graduating from the U of Missouri, he bought a farm 35 miles from the NE Oklahoma border. He left the area at the start of the Dustbowl and became a professor of agriculture at the U of Missouri. His family was very wealthy so he did OK and eventually moved back to his farm in Arkansas when he retired just in time for the severe droughts of the mid 50's in the Midwest. Things got better and he got to work his farm until his death in 1971. My fondest memories of childhood were the Summers I spent on Grandpa's farm.

Then you would no doubt like to see PBS privatized. :)

John

If they don't drop the obvious slanted programs, yes.

I talked with my dad abou the Dust Bowl (I saw a little of it). He mentioned people now can't begin to understand how bad it could be, how much more real poverty was then.

Pete