Archive photo: Source: Library of Congress
"Black Sunday" -1935
So what was it like? I asked myself as I tried to visualize Black Sunday.
Yes, we've had our recent wave of dust storms that kind of sort of gave me an idea what it must have felt like to live through the "Dirty 30s" but what about Black Sunday itself?
Imagine a wall of dirt, boiling, thousands of feet high, undulating and moving at you at 60 mph. As it closes it slowly blots out the sun - you can see a dark border - like a window shade being drawn across the landscape - passing over the grasslands.
No wonder Dust Bowl survivors describe it as looking "like the end of the world" coming.
When I interviewed one dust Bowl survivor he said:
"It started as a beautiful Spring day. We skipped church and decided to go for a picnic. We grabbed some sandwiches and bought some sodas at the five and dime and headed out north of town to a field filled with wild flowers.
We ate our lunch and were just enjoying the day - when suddenly a huge flock of birds - vultures - then crows - sparrows - and about anything that could fly - suddenly appeared in waves flying toward town.
And then I saw it - this dark line on the horizon. It looked like a clear glass jug filling up with muddy water - but it wasn't water. It was dirt.
The closer it came the blacker it became. Prudence being the better part of survival Dad decided we'd better head back into town. We had seen our share of black blizzards but this storm was like nothing we had ever seen.
It looked like the end and it was coming our way.
We quickly packed the car and headed toward Spearman - hoping the Model T could outrun the storm. We rattled toward town - not even slowing down for the bone-shaking ruts. I watched through the back window as the duster gained on us - and finally overtook us, however we were just on the leading edge so visibility wasn't zero.
By the time we hit the main road we could make enough speed to put almost a mile between us and the duster. I breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the edge of town.
Daddy, who always liked watching the weather, turned the Ford around to watch the storm roll in - now that we were close to buildings to take shelter in. Mom took us into the General store where dozens of town folk had gathered to take shelter.
I remember worrying about my father, although I could see him through the window sitting in the Ford.
It started getting darker and dustier and harder to breathe. The store owner took some cloth off a roll and we cut it into strips to put over our mouth and noses to filter out the dust.
Just before it was almost so dark we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces - and I was sure our father was lost - he and about ten other men came through the door and into the store, followed closely by a wave of thick dust.
And then midnight struck at midday. The dust was so thick that even the lamps inside could barely be seen. It was like living inside a coal bin. Father huddled behind the counter with us and we waited out the black. It would be four hours before we could see our hands again." - Spearman Texas dust bowl survivor.
With this story this story etched in my mind - I began my "Black Sunday Photo Project." my attempt to re-create (digitally) what the day might have looked like.
To accomplish this - I poured over hundreds of historical photos and descriptions and through using a combination of digital photography and Photoshop - do my best to create the photos I would have taken if I had lived during Black Sunday.
My first idea was to I call my good friend Ken Hanson - who owns several vintage automobiles of the Dust Bowl Era - a 1927 Ford Model T - a 1934 Ford Flat Head Ford Truck and a 1931 Model A Ford.
We took out the Model T first, on a dusty day in March. We found some rutted back roads and I shot several hundred frames. I then imported them into my computer and set to work. Using some amazing NIK filter plugins I began digitally altering the pristine color images that more matched the vision of Black Sunday inside my head.
This first image shows the Model T as it may have looked - straddling the road and watching the storm approach, much like a modern-day storm spotter would. I imagined "dad" as being the 1930s version of a storm chaser: I added noise and sepia to age the photo digitally.
My second attempt was at illustrating the Ford fleeing the duster. I combined a shot of Ken's Model T with a shot I had taken years earlier of the top of a severe thunderstorm. I also softened the image to match the not-so-sharp lenses of the day - like maybe one on a box Brownie.
My next attempt hardly required any editing - the Model T enveloped in dust. Ken just drove down the dirt road until he had kicked up enough dirt. I did add some sepia filters and some noise to muddy the image.
And finally I tried to replicate the look of the approaching Black Blizzard - using a frame I had shot of a Dust Bowl era abandoned building I found in Dallam County. I merged that photo with another I had taken of an approaching storm front.
Again I digitally aged it - sepia toned it although most images from the era are black and white - unless they weren't fixed properly or faded by the sun. I also added some faux-lint and a few faux negative scratches just for good measure.
One more - again using a severe thunderstorm I photographed as a stand-in for our black duster. Also shot in rural Dallam County, in the northwest Texas Panhandle.
Stay tuned for more photos soon.
-Steve Douglass
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