“Today is a terrible day. A glaring sun, a few little clouds and a deliberate, deadly southwest breeze which has set out to destroy everything again this year…God in his infinite wisdom might have made a more discouraging place than Webster County, Nebraska–but so far as I know, God never did.”
-1937 diary entry of Nebraska farmer, Don Hartwell, as recorded in Timothy Egan’s, The Worst Hard Time.
Standing on the very soil in Webster County that Don Hartwell wrote about 70 years earlier was an eerie thing. And just like seven decades before, the wind was hot out of the southwest and the earth was dry and cracked. But it was the corn itself that made the biggest impression. For as far as the eye could see–indeed right up to the horizon itself and maybe even beyond–the entire crop was brittle and lifeless.
Having succumbed to the bone dry months of July and August, acres and acres of parched corn no doubt had consumed the thoughts, prayers and tomorrows of many a farmer. And standing in the middle of it, I couldn’t help but feel desperately sorry for all those who have chosen to follow in the footsteps of Don Hartwell.
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