19. Witnesses

HE STARTED HIS DIARY on New Year's Day, 1936. If Don Hartwell was going to be buried under this sea of dust, he wanted to leave something behind. He and his wife, Verna, had lived through four years of drought, four years without a crop, four years of deeper debt. Black Sunday had nearly snuffed out the farm for good, the winds blowing with the force of a tornado, followed later in the spring by a flash flood that nudged his house off its foundation, and then a summer of dusters that buried the corn and alfalfa he had been able to raise in the floodplain. At age forty-seven, Hartwell was not going down without a fight, but if the elements finally beat him, he wanted a record of his struggle; maybe it would serve as a warning to some future nester. The problem with history was that it was written by the survivors, and they usually wrote in the sunshine, on harvest day, from victory stands. So Hartwell started his diary at the darkest hour. This would not be a narrative of courage, grit, and the good cheer of God-fearing people who had chased away the Indians, killed the bison, and produced the biggest wheat crop the world had ever seen. Don Hartwell had no intention of being the toast of the Chamber of Commerce or even of being invited to their regular luncheon. His story was not Little House on the Prairie, but one farmer's life on the Kansas-Nebraska border during a decade when homesteads became graveyards. And he kept his diary secret, never showing it to anybody, not even his wife.

"You hear a great deal about the 'noble pioneers' building up the country, and to a certain extent this is probably true," he wrote in the introduction to the diary. "But the women and children of those times were the ones who faced the real hardships and privations. Women's place in those days was in the home, which usually meant having 2 kids every 3 years and doing as much work as 2 ordinary men and living amid conditions which would cause a common hobo to breathe the open air and face the open road with 'thanksgiving.' The men were, in many cases, drunken, or ingrown religious fanatics who were worse to live with and deal with even than the drunks."

Hartwell's family had come to Nebraska in 1880, and it was never explained why. "My mother didn't like Nebraska and she despised my father's folks (not without some justification). I remember I used to tremble at night after one of their quarrels, too nervous to sleep." School was difficult. "I want to say right here that innocent childhood is generally anything but that—lying, stealing, inordinate cruelty (especially to animals) utter selfishness, homosexuality, masturbation, and various other sexual activities, sometimes even murder, are some of the activities of 'innocent childhood.'"

His father died in 1934, a year when Nebraska got just fourteen inches of rain, the lowest amount since 1864. The old man had raised hogs and cattle on a piece of land he claimed near the town of Inavale, Nebraska, not far from Willa Cather's childhood home in Red Cloud, where the Republican River drains a broad table of the prairie, several hundred miles northeast of No Man's Land. The town flourished during the wheat boom, with a lumberyard, a meat market, two general stores, a bank, a pool hall, a school, a post office, and a small music hall. Its decline started with the crash in farm prices, and it was further staggered by the Depression and drought. The bank closed in 1932, never to open again, and took the farmers' deposits down with it. Hartwell worked his little family farm outside of Inavale, in the sliver of Nebraska that was identified by the government as being a part of the larger Dust Bowl. He earned spare change playing piano at dances and lodges along the Republican River, and his wife brought in extra income making dresses for people in town. They had no children. Hartwell wrote every day. A selection of his thoughts shows his drift in the worst years.

Jan 6

Did you ever see a middle aged man working for his board on a farm?

Feb 8

Last night was one of the worse nights I have seen in this country in many years, a terrific gale of blowing snow and 15 below zero. We moved our bed out in the dining room beside the stove, the first time we ever did that. The horses in the N. pasture seem to be alright today, although we have no barns for them anymore.

Feb 14

I have often thought of sending valentines (as who hasn't) but I never have.

Feb 21

I haven't much ambition anymore. When one sees all he has slipping away, his ambition seems to gradually go along with the rest.

Feb 29

Well, ordinarily today would be Mar. 1, but this year gives us one more day to hold to the place which has meant so much to me in life and tradition in the last 35 years, from the scent of the wild plum bush and the violets and the blue grass in April, to the little dry thunder showers in June which break away late in the afternoon, with the meadow larks singing and the wild roses which seem to be brighter and smell sweeter when wet with rain than any other time.

Mar 7

A horse sale was held at the stock yard in the afternoon. I sold one of ours. There are six left now, I don't know how long I can keep them. When one has to buy all the grain he feeds and has very little to buy with, it is uncertain. The 'stock yard' at the R.R. is a bare, deserted looking place.

Mar 15

Mostly cloudy, cold, heavy dusty looking clouds and rather chilly s.w. wind. Very dry everywhere. The alfalfa sowed in the field w. of the feed yard is about all dead.

Mar 17

This is St. Patrick's day so every one is supposed to wear something green or act that way. It was pleasant in the afternoon, but cold, dusty s.w. wind in the afternoon.

Mar 20

Spring began today at 12:58 pm we heard it announced over the radio. Spring's coming was an important event to me years ago. Spring and summer was when I really lived, especially in May and June when the flowers were in bloom, the fruit trees, the grass getting green along the creeks, the frogs singing in the evening, and there was the possibility of a 'big rain' which seldom comes. Fair today, dry dusty NW wind.

Mar 21

Very dusty, windy, mean.

Mar 22

Very dusty, warm strong s.w. wind at times dead still at 4 pm the air and sky filled with dust, the sun only faintly visible all day.

April 8

These dust storms are getting serious in this country, fences in some places almost entirely covered. Further W. and S. much land is entirely ruined. And no rain in sight.

April 15

The air is filled with dust ... The whole country is rapidly becoming an area of shifting dust and sand, blowing South one day and North the next. Fences, in some places, are covered with drifting, blowing dirt.

April 20

At 2 p.m. a terrific wind and dirt storm from the No. Impossible to see much or do anything, a few clouds, but so much dirt and wind you can't see them.

April 28

I got the piano Davis used to have in the pool hall in the afternoon. I don't know how long we will keep it—how long we can.

May 21

15 years ago the whole Republican R. bottom was a vast expanse of alfalfa and corn fields. Now it is practically a desert of wasted, shifting sand, washed out ditches, cockle burrs and devastation. I doubt if very much of it can ever be reclaimed.

June 2

I wish I knew where we will be a year from now.

June 15

Vic C., Artie and the kids left for California this morning. They say they are coming back, but I don't know. Many are leaving the country. Drouth, hard times are driving many out.

June 27

I took a thermometer out in the W. corn field today, at the ground surface it registered 142!

July 4

Today is one of the worst storms I ever saw, even here. It is 100 degrees and a S.W. wind and dust of gale proportions at times. Red Cloud 'celebrated' today but it was such a terrible day we didn't go anywhere.

July 14

I have cultivated corn every summer since 1908 but I wonder sometimes if I will ever cultivate any corn on this place again.

July 15

102 degrees. Corn and every thing is mostly destroyed ... It is really too hot, dry, discouraging and devilish to do anything. Over 2500 have died in this 'great middle west' of the effects of this Hellish weather and country since July 1st.

July 21

I have seen a good many bad years in this country, more, in fact than any other. But I never saw any worse than this one. Corn is practically all destroyed now, pastures are as bare as January.

July 30

Charlotte Lambrecht was in this afternoon. Charlotte is quite the stickler for morals and temperance, nearly all of us go through that stage at some time in our life. Too many times life slips apart and we find that is all we have left to us.

July 31

July was the worst month (so far) of the worst year ever known.

Sept 1

Well, another summer is about gone, and I wonder, some times what we will be doing a year from now. I always dread to see summer go, no matter how bad it is. Winter with its sickness seems to last so long.

Sept 10

I took down 3 pigs to the sale in the afternoon they sold for $12.05 or about $4 each. These sales are remarkable. An old can and kittens sold for .05. Ducks sold for .30 each. One horse sold for $11 another for $7.

Sept 19

I finished mowing the Russian Thistles on the place W. of Stick-neys. I would like to be some place or see the time when something would grow besides Russian Thistles.

Oct 2

I listened to the 'World Series' baseball game over the radio. The N.Y. 'Yankees' beat the N.Y. 'Giants' 18 to 4. One can hear the ball game in N.Y. City from the radio (wireless transmission) in his own home. You can hear the crack of the bat and the ball hit the catcher's glove. Who would have thought it possible 25 years ago!

Dec 3

Verna & I went to R. Cloud today and took down another shoal to the sale. She brought $9 and weighed 120 pounds. Mrs. Vance & John (her son) rode back with us. John was returning from jail from one of his periodic 'drunks.' But drinking is about the only recreation left around here & you have to do that by yourself.

Dec 25

I believe today is the warmest Christmas morning I have ever seen ... We swept & dusted & made some candy in the forenoon. We had dinner by ourselves at home.

While Don Hartwell was scribbling descriptions of daily life on a dusted-over piece of ground, others were trying to record similar details with cameras. It was a son of Kansas, Roy Emerson Stryker, who came up with the idea of creating a record of American decay for the files of the Farm Security Administration. The motives were not journalistic: Roosevelt was running for a second term, facing an increasingly hostile Supreme Court, and having documentary support for conditions that called for programs deemed radical and un-American by critics could be invaluable. But as it turned out, perhaps by accident or perhaps because of the talent that Roy Stryker hired, the government photo unit proved to be one of the lasting and most popular contributions of the New Deal, far outliving its propaganda purposes. The wire services had moved pictures of Black Sunday and other big storms, but their lenses had been aimed at the sky. It was rare to see the lines in a sandblasted face, or look into the eyes of a broken nester, or see a woman nursing her child slumped next to a jalopy loaded with all her worldly goods. Stryker sent his photographers out to the heart of the Dust Bowl to get the faces of the desperate. He told his shooters that they should do more than drive by and hustle back to the city. They should taste the dirt, get to know the people, live with the dusters. A kid from New York City, Arthur Rothstein, was just out of college, twenty-one years old, when Stryker sent him to Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma in the spring of 1936. It was like sending George Catlin on one of the first explorations of the West, for Rothstein returned with images that most of America had never seen.

Outside Dalhart, he shot a picture of a lone car running just ahead of a black blizzard on an open road; the car is dwarfed by the dark cloud on its tail. In Boise City, Rothstein found a town slouching away from the sand pummeling, its buildings unpainted, the windows brown, so much dirt floating around that it was impossible to tell a street or front lawn or sidewalk from the drifting prairie. All that was visible in a picture he took of one abandoned house was a rooftop and stovepipe poking through the sand, like the scope of a submarine rising above the sea. Roaming through No Man's Land, Rothstein stopped his car outside the shack of Arthur Coble's family. Coble was digging out fence posts and hauling water to a couple of starving cattle. When a sudden wind carried a wave of soil up from the south, Coble and his sons fled for shelter. One of the boys, Darrel, had been a student of Hazel Lucas Shaw's when she taught for grocery scrip in Boise City. Rothstein's picture caught father and son, face into the wind, running for cover to a ramshackle, half-buried outbuilding; it looks as if the very earth is swallowing them. Just the tops of fence posts are visible in the foreground, and the background is shapeless beige. It became one of the most significant images of the time.

No Man's Land, photographed by Arthur Rothstein of the Farm Security Administration

Another documentarian, Pare Lorentz, wanted to tell a larger story, not just take snapshots of those trapped by the dead land. His idea was to film a narrative: how and why the Great Plains had been settled and then brought to ruination. Like a fable. Lorentz had never made a

Abandoned farm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma

film before, but he was sure of his vision. Hollywood was not. He was turned down by every major studio. But in 1935, after Stryker set up a documentary division, Lorentz found a backer for his film—the United States government. Now Hollywood took notice and did everything it could to stop him. The studio heads did not want government competing on their turf, for Lorentz planned to make a documentary that would play commercially in theaters across the country. Opponents said it was a dangerous thing for the Roosevelt Administration to be getting into the business of telling stories through pictures. They feared it would be propaganda. Lorentz said he wanted only to tell a story that needed to be told: as one arm of the government tried to save the plains, another arm would try to show how people had created the problem. After much debate, the film was given the green light. It would be one of the most influential documentaries ever made, the only peacetime production by the American government of a film intended for broad commercial release. To assuage critics, Lorentz said he would accept nothing but his salary of eighteen dollars a day. He ended up paying for some of the production out of his own pocket.

Hugh Bennett talking to farmers in Springfield, Colorado

Lorentz and his crew moved to the High Plains, catching dusters as they tumbled across the land, getting chased off the road, living with the grit, hearing the same story told over and over, in varying forms: the boom, the bust, the dust. They filmed in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. When he arrived in Dalhart, Lorentz found monstrous dunes and a town trying to rally itself even as it was swallowed by dirt. The most horrific footage of dusters came from the Texas Panhandle. Lorentz had been filming without a script, which angered his cinematographers, who complained of his peripatetic direction. He wanted everything in the frame. But as he filmed around Dalhart, a central image began to take shape: that of the iconic plainsman who first tore at the prairie earth. He asked around town if there was an old cowboy in these parts, somebody who still kept a wagon or a horse-drawn plow. People gave him the name of a couple of XIT hands. Those old boys had plenty of stories to tell but no horse-drawn plows. Then somebody tossed out the name of a little man with a handlebar mustache who lived in a two-room shack with his family at the edge of town—fellow by the name of Bam White.

White was everything Lorentz was looking for. He had a pair of tired-looking horses that he kept around to pull his wagon. He had an old plow, which was covered by drifts. He had a face with the hard years, heat, and gusts etched into it. Lorentz hired Bam White to hitch a horse to his plow and pull it in the fields. White was puzzled: that's all you want? Lorentz paid him twenty-five dollars for his effort. To White, it was two months' pay for two hours' work—more money than he ever earned in so little time. Bam White, silhouetted against blowing soil, became the lasting image of the film that Lorentz made: The Plow That Broke the Plains.

The film treated the Great Plains as a mythic place in a lost world. It opened with a map showing the immensity of the flatlands. This land had been paradise for bison and cattle. "Grasslands," the narrator says in poetic idiom, "a country of high winds and sun, high winds and sun." This Eden was never meant to be farmed as intensely as it was. "Settler, plow at your peril," the sodbusters were warned. They tore at the land with industrial-age armies of tractors and threshers, consuming the grass like locusts. When the rains stopped, the land blew, the sky filled with dirt. The score, composed by Virgil Thomson, who grew up in Missouri, was as powerful as the pictures. The music swelled with the first wondrous images of the prairie and turned dark and menacing, like the soundtrack of a Hitchcock thriller, when the land raged against the people.

The Plow That Broke the Plains showed alongside It Happened One Night at the Rialto Theater in New York. In Dalhart, it opened at the Mission Theater, where just a few years earlier a son of the southern plains, Gene Autry, had appeared in his first picture, In Old Santa Fe.Now the story on the screen was about a real cowboy. Bam White took his family; it was the first time young Melt had ever seen a movie. The boy kept staring up at the screen and then back at the little man sitting next to him—his daddy, bigger than life, bigger than Gene Autry in the movie posters still hanging in the lobby. The film moved Bam to tears. He always thought there was a reason why his horse had died in Dalhart, marooning the family on this wedge of desolate ground. Now he saw the answer, there for all the world. In March 1936, the film played at the White House and the president of the United States looked into the hard, sun-seared, dust-chipped face of Bam White, the wanderer, the Indian half-breed who was thereafter the visage of the High Plains at its lowest point.