"You are filled with dirt."

Excerpt from The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Excerpts from The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan (C) Timothy Egan 
Reproduced with permission: Houghton Mifflin,Company 

One Dirt-filled day blended into another. Starting at the first day of March, there was a duster every day for thirty straight days. according to the weather bureau. In Dodge City, Kansas the Health Board counted only thirteen dust free days in the first four months of 1935. 

People were stuffed with topsoil. In a report delivered to the Southern  Medical Association, Dr. John H. Blue of Guymon, Oklahoma said he treated fifty-six patients for dust pneumonia, and all of them showed signs of silicosis; others were suffering early symptoms of tuberculosis. 

He was blunt. The doctor had looked inside an otherwise healthy farm hand, a man in his early twenties and told him what he saw.

"You are filled with dirt." the doctor said. The young man died within the day. 

All photos (C) Steve Douglass 

Dust Bowl saga set to film in Amarillo area, starring Willie Nelson

By BRITTANY NUNN

brittany.nunn@amarillo.com

“Cottonwood,” an independent film set in West Texas during the Dust Bowl, is to be partially filmed in the Texas Panhandle starting this fall, the production team from Mark Campbell Productions said Tuesday morning at a news conference.

The movie will star country music superstar Willie Nelson, whose production company, Luck Films, is co-producing.

Most of the interior scenes will be shot in Austin, but Stacy Dean Campbell, the author of the 2004 novel “Cottonwood” and director of the film, said he wanted the outside shots to feel authentic.

“I want the film to feel open and big and wide, what it was intended to be,” he said.

The team — Stacy Dean Campbell; producer Julie Campbell; executive producer John “J.C.” Elsinger, an Amarillo native, of Mark Campbell Productions; and screenwriter Decker of NYCe Pictures — will be in Amarillo scouting locations through Thursday.

Stacy Dean Campbell, a musician and television host originally from Carlsbad, N.M., said his grandfather used to tell him stories of life during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

“That’s what really sparked me to start the project of writing the book,” he said.

The story takes place in 1937 in Wellington and centers around county Sheriff Rube Whitlock, who struggles to raise his two sons after his daughter dies and leaves his wife mentally unable to cope with the loss.

As the pressure of raising his children becomes too much, he hires Esther, a black woman whose husband, P.V., is hated by locals for attempting to establish himself as a successful cotton producer.

“It really stirs up a lot of racial tensions in the community,” Stacy Dean Campbell said. “People don’t want to see him prosper.”

As the tension rises and relationships develop, Rube is forced to choose between upholding the law and following his moral convictions.

Julie Campbell said it’s the complex characters blended with history, social issues and a surprise ending that make the film worth watching.

“A lot of it is the relationships and how they’re built, the bonds,” she said.

“One thing that the film has, that we still have in society today, is racial injustice, and that’s one of the subject matters of the story. So I think a lot of people will relate to that.”

She said many of the people who read the screenplay said the story reminds them of the books-turned-movies “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Grapes of Wrath.”

“Then I realized, geez, we really do have something here,” she said. “So we’ve been working for the last 18 months producing and in development, getting this project off the ground.”

Eslinger said when he first read the screenplay, he was struck by how accurately it portrayed the voice and feel of West Texas during the Great Depression.

“When Julie sent me the script, I couldn’t put it down because I grew up on the tail end of the Dust Bowl when there was still mountains of sand and it was real flat and dry,” Eslinger said.

“That’s all I heard about until I left home, so when I read this script I was like, ‘Wow.’”

“Cottonwood” is also slated to star Anthony Michael Hall, Academy Award-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr., Ethan Suplee, Alison Eastwood, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and others, according to Julie Campbell and material provided by the production team.

Dust storms and dead cows ...

Photos by Steve Douglass - webbfeatproductions.com

Excerpts from The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan (C) Timothy Egan 
Reproduced with permission: Houghton Mifflin,Company 

PAGE 121: The dust storm that blew up from Amarillo at the start of 1932 was treated as a freak of nature, a High Plains anomaly. In March the wind was often at its most fierce, and when it blew in the late winter of 1932, it picked up the earth in No Man's Land and scattered it all over the High Plains. These storms were shorter and smaller that the big duster of January, but they were similar in other ways: black, rolling, sharp, and cutting on the skin. The cows bawled when a duster rolled in and hit like the swipe from the edges of a big file. The dirt got in their eyes and blinded them, got in their noses and mouths, matted up their hide and caused skin rashes and infections. 

PAGE 145: The government men came to the high Plains in the second year of the new president's term with a plan to kill as many farm animals as possible. There was not a buyer in the hemisphere for the wretched-looking cattle stumbling across the prairie with sores, and their insides all bound up with dust. It made silent men cry to see herbivores on what had been the greatest grassland under the heavens dying cruel deaths from the lifeless,cursed turf. A cow could only live so long chewing salted tumbleweeds and swallowing mud.

Woody Guthrie: " Dust Bowl Troubadour"

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land." Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress.^[1] Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg and Tom Paxton have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence.

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour."^[2]Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was seemingly not a member of any.^[3]

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie.^[4] Guthrie died from complications of Huntington's disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. 

During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

Woody Guthrie was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 1997.

See a list of his "Dust Bowl Ballads HERE

Amarillo Museum of Art to display FSA photos

Timed to coincide with the premier of Ken Burns/Florentine Films production, The Dust Bowl, the Amarillo Museum of Art will be hosting a display of FSA (Farm Service Administration) photographs taken during the Great Depression and including The Dust Bowl.


The FSA built a remarkable collection of more than 80,000 photographs of America during the Depression because they hired great photographers and a great administrator to lead them. 


Roy Stryker was an economist from Columbia University before he was hired to head the "Historical Section" of the FSA. His job, according to his boss Rexford Tugwell, was to "show the city people what it's like to live on the farm."

The exhibition will run from October 4th through October 28th,

For more information on the FSA follow this LINK

KVII: Ken Burns previews The Dust Bowl in Amarillo

The kidnaping of Ken Burns - Part 2 - a different perspective.

Brush With Greatness
By Ken Hanson

Okay Steve, since you spilled the beans and told everyone about “The Kidnapping of Ken Burns”, I feel the need to tell my side of the story!

When Steve called and told me about the invitation to “An Evening With Ken Burns”, and invited me to accompany him to the reception, I immediately thought about taking the Model T. What could be better than showing up in an actual survivor of the Dust Bowl.

I have often wondered where this car was on Black Sunday.

Did it get caught in the infamous duster, or was it in some other part of the country. Since it came from an estate auction in Lincoln Kansas when I acquired it, most likely it did breathe the dust running from the storm that day.

Steve told you, in another story, about recreating the image of a Dustbowl survivor by taking it to a rural road in Armstrong County. He photographed it in various settings, and using Photoshop, combined it with photos of supercell thunderstorms to simulate what it might have looked like that day.

He posted those images on this blog, so I’m sure that Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan have probably seen them. Wouldn’t it be cool to show up in the same car, and hopefully, give them a ride in it? Steve was thinking the same thing. We hatched our plan to show up early and park it out front where everyone could see it as they entered.

Kathy Jones from KACV was already out front to welcome everyone and show where the reception would be.   When she spotted our car in the lot, she said, “You should park that right here in front of the entrance so everyone can see it”.

Great idea, we thought, but there’s a catering van parked there. “Oh, I can get that moved!”, she said.

For the next hour, she enthusiastically greeted everyone and told them about the Model T and the history it had in common with the Dust Bowl. The guests were an impressive list of who’s who in Amarillo, from city and state government officials, to the President and Board of Regents of Amarillo College, supporters of KACV, center city supporters, the founding families of our city, far too many to list them all.

After awhile, we saw Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan and their entourage approaching across the parking lot. We believed they would enter the side door, but instead followed Ken when he spotted the old Ford and diverted course.

My wildest dreams were about to come true. The car was parked by the curb with the passenger door open so everyone could see inside. Ken approached with a big smile and said something like, “Now there’s a Dust Bowl car!”

I said, “It’s a 1927 Model T Ford Coupe, wanna’ go for a ride?”

He answered, “Sure!”

I slid across the seat and he followed me in. Less than a minute after arriving, we were pulling away from the curb.

Steve later told me that someone in his entourage looked around and said, “Where did Ken go?”

Dayton Duncan said, “I think that guy in the Model T just kidnapped him!”

Laughing, Steve reassured them, “That’s a friend of mine, they’ll be right back - I think.

We drove down the block and stopped at a stop sign to let quite a few cars go by. I figured we would circle the small lake and head back to the event, since it was time for the reception to begin.

While stopped, I explained the operation of the controls to Ken. One reason I like the Model T so much is because it is so different from a modern car. There’s no clutch, no gear shift, and no gas pedal.

The throttle is a lever on the steering column, along with the spark control which no modern car has. The transmission is a manually operated two speed planetary transmission with three pedals on the floor.

The left pedal is like a clutch and gearshift in one. When pushed down, it constricts a band in the transmission which engages the low speed planetary gear set. When released, it compresses the clutch pack which engages the clutch discs for a one to one direct drive high gear. Halfway depressed in neither low nor high, kind of like neutral.

The transmission planetary gear set is always in mesh, there is no true neutral position like a normal transmission. The middle pedal is reverse. Hold down the left pedal half way and depress the reverse pedal to back up.

The right pedal is the service brakes which are in the transmission instead of on the wheels. The transmission brake stops the drive shaft, and if one rear wheel is on ice or gravel, it could turn backwards due to the differential action and you can find yourself unable to stop.

Model T brakes are nothing but a strip of oil soaked cloth band around the drive shaft hub inside the transmission, about the poorest brakes of any vehicle since the stage coach, but they were adequate for their time since speeds were so low on the dirt roads of the day.

To the left of the floor pedals is a lever. Pull it halfway back and it forces the left pedal into the neutral half way position for starting the car, Pull it all the way back and it also engages the rear wheel brakes, there are no brakes on the front axel. The rear wheel brakes are used to hold the car still for starting, and can be used to stop the car in an emergency.

The 1927 Model T was the first to have an electric starter standard. This car also has the hand crank, but on a cold day when the transmission has a lot of drag due to the thick oil, the electric starter is nice to have.

It also has one windshield wiper in front of the driver which is operated by hand with a lever inside the car. This car also has an air conditioner! Loosen the screws and tip the bottom of the windshield out, very nice on a warm day.

I explained all of this to Ken while we were riding around the lake. I know what a history buff he is from all of his excellent documentaries, but I didn’t know he was such a car enthusiast until Steve showed me Horatio’s Drive, a documentary by Ken and Dayton produced 20 years ago about the first coast to coast trip in an automobile.

The staggering amount of research that went into that production proves that he is indeed a car guy.

It was my intention to stop and convince Ken to drive the Model T, and then do the same for Dayton, but everyone was waiting and we just didn’t have the time. Maybe some other day.

I heard later that someone was a little ticked off at me for stealing the man of the hour and holding up the reception. It was worth it.

After an excellent meal and an hour long sneak peek of Dust Bowl previews, it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I can remember.

Thank you Steve for including me in this brush with greatness I will remember for the rest of my life.    
                                                             - Ken Hanson