# Dust Bowl Diary  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Ann Marie Low]] - Full Title:: Dust Bowl Diary - Category: #books ## Highlights > Bill was lying on the other side of the barn beneath my saddle and saddle blanket, looking as surprised as a dog with his first porcupine. ([Location 68](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=68)) > They could run like deer and kick a cat off a fence post without touching the post. ([Location 86](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=86)) > On November 6, I noted that was the day either Herbert Hoover or Al Smith would be elected president. Dad thought the farmers would get no help from either. He said that because of government monkey business the railroads were allowed to set freight rates too high on everything the farmer had to ship in and out of Dakota, and the buyers of beef and wheat set arbitrary prices the farmer had to take. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=177)) > Dad and his oldest sister, Em, had reached college age and longed to go to college to fit themselves for a different life. They had not even had a chance to go to high school. ([Location 235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=235)) > It is lucky I bought the typewriter. The rest of my money is gone. The bank failed last Friday, so the whole community is pretty blue. ([Location 288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=288)) > Typewriters are as scarce in this town as people who can type. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=299)) > Far away a coyote is howling in a silver world. ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=324)) > distance-purpled Coteau du Missouri. ([Location 408](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=408)) > A cannon was fired over the water to raise the body. It didn’t. A soiled shirt of his was floated on the water with the supposition it would halt above his body. It didn’t. ([Location 418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=418)) - Note: Tom Sawyer & luck finn > baths are apt to be sponge baths, which we refer to as “a lick and a promise.” ([Location 436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=436)) > the sunset was flashing opal over the rim of the hills and a full moon drifting up in the east. ([Location 470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=470)) > He and Dad discussed the Farmers Union starting up here. ([Location 556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=556)) > Their songs are beautiful and unique. They seem to throw their voices—they can sound far away or very near, and just one coyote can sound like several part of the time, and like a single singer the rest of the time. ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=573)) > Mama’s heart is set on good educations for her children. ([Location 642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=642)) > The speech was based on the class motto: “The one thing better than making a living is making a life.” ([Location 654](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=654)) > foxtail. The men were busy in the field, so I had to get her home and tied in a stall to lance her abscessed jaw. ([Location 659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=659)) > hot bed ([Location 690](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=690)) > If it was a windy day—as it nearly always was—Dad’s bees in the hives west of the house were apt to attack us because the flapping sheets annoyed them. ([Location 708](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=708)) > He has not been strong since the flu epidemic of 1918, which apparently affected his heart. ([Location 856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=856)) > All we will ever know about John is that he was a nice old man we all liked. ([Location 1019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1019)) > I knew what Dad was thinking, what Bud was thinking, and what I was thinking. But no one in this family ever says anything. ([Location 1213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1213)) > Explaining might have done no good. To the coach, basketball practice would probably seem more important than fixing the windmill to get the livestock water. City people have different priorities than we do. ([Location 1410](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1410)) > I don’t get homesick for people, but do for spring in the Stony Brook country. ([Location 1480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1480)) > After breakfast we went to the Historical Society building and the Roosevelt cabin, Theodore Roosevelt’s home when he ranched in the Badlands. ([Location 1563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1563)) > My remark about the cats referred to the fact that on cold winter nights the cats slept in the barn on the backs of the horses. ([Location 1670](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1670)) > Newspapers say the deaths of many babies and old people are attributed to breathing in so much dirt. ([Location 1714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1714)) > The newspapers report that on May 10 there was such a strong wind the experts in Chicago estimated 12,000,000 tons of Plains soil was dumped on that city. ([Location 1737](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1737)) > Life in what the newspapers call “the Dust Bowl’ is becoming a gritty nightmare. ([Location 1764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1764)) > Suddenly I seemed to see what his face will be someday—a tombstone on which is written the epitaph of dead dreams. I shivered. ([Location 1812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1812)) > Our bountiful and interfering government sometimes creates awful messes. ([Location 1859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1859)) > The broken lives and broken hearts that caused was criminal. People back East had no idea a 160-acre tract here does not make a viable farm. ([Location 1861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1861)) > It was a man-killing struggle, but his family managed to hang on until the prosperous times after 1900. ([Location 1864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1864)) > Chautauqua show in Wisconsin. ([Location 2139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=2139)) > the fire roared on like Hell’s delight. ([Location 2303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=2303)) > This week I’m busy as two pups with a feather duster. ([Location 2589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=2589)) > The hotel is as noisy as a calf corral, ([Location 2969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=2969)) > I got up early because two men were waiting for my bed. ([Location 3003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3003)) > scoria, ([Location 3027](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3027)) > Meat packers farther east considered him a threat who must be put out of business and called upon Wall Street to ruin him. Railroads held up his beef shipments. ([Location 3100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3100)) > By that time everyone I had known there had died or moved away. ([Location 3292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3292)) > “This kind of weather keeps the riff-raff out.” ([Location 3370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3370)) > The 1983 wheat price of three dollars and sixty cents a bushel makes the thirty-two-cents-a-bushel wheat of the 1930s seem incredible. But by 1983 it cost sixty dollars per acre to produce wheat, and the farmer needed four dollars a bushel to make a profit. Cattle prices had changed, too, from one cent a pound for canners to thirty-two cents, and from four cents for steers to sixty cents. Calves such as those the government bought for four dollars apiece in the 1930s brought three hundred to three hundred and fifty dollars in the fall of 1983. ([Location 3408](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3408)) # Dust Bowl Diary  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Ann Marie Low]] - Full Title:: Dust Bowl Diary - Category: #books ## Highlights > Bill was lying on the other side of the barn beneath my saddle and saddle blanket, looking as surprised as a dog with his first porcupine. ([Location 68](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=68)) > They could run like deer and kick a cat off a fence post without touching the post. ([Location 86](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=86)) > On November 6, I noted that was the day either Herbert Hoover or Al Smith would be elected president. Dad thought the farmers would get no help from either. He said that because of government monkey business the railroads were allowed to set freight rates too high on everything the farmer had to ship in and out of Dakota, and the buyers of beef and wheat set arbitrary prices the farmer had to take. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=177)) > Dad and his oldest sister, Em, had reached college age and longed to go to college to fit themselves for a different life. They had not even had a chance to go to high school. ([Location 235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=235)) > It is lucky I bought the typewriter. The rest of my money is gone. The bank failed last Friday, so the whole community is pretty blue. ([Location 288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=288)) > Typewriters are as scarce in this town as people who can type. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=299)) > Far away a coyote is howling in a silver world. ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=324)) > distance-purpled Coteau du Missouri. ([Location 408](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=408)) > A cannon was fired over the water to raise the body. It didn’t. A soiled shirt of his was floated on the water with the supposition it would halt above his body. It didn’t. ([Location 418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=418)) - Note: Tom Sawyer & luck finn > baths are apt to be sponge baths, which we refer to as “a lick and a promise.” ([Location 436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=436)) > the sunset was flashing opal over the rim of the hills and a full moon drifting up in the east. ([Location 470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=470)) > He and Dad discussed the Farmers Union starting up here. ([Location 556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=556)) > Their songs are beautiful and unique. They seem to throw their voices—they can sound far away or very near, and just one coyote can sound like several part of the time, and like a single singer the rest of the time. ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=573)) > Mama’s heart is set on good educations for her children. ([Location 642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=642)) > The speech was based on the class motto: “The one thing better than making a living is making a life.” ([Location 654](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=654)) > foxtail. The men were busy in the field, so I had to get her home and tied in a stall to lance her abscessed jaw. ([Location 659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=659)) > hot bed ([Location 690](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=690)) > If it was a windy day—as it nearly always was—Dad’s bees in the hives west of the house were apt to attack us because the flapping sheets annoyed them. ([Location 708](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=708)) > He has not been strong since the flu epidemic of 1918, which apparently affected his heart. ([Location 856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=856)) > All we will ever know about John is that he was a nice old man we all liked. ([Location 1019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1019)) > I knew what Dad was thinking, what Bud was thinking, and what I was thinking. But no one in this family ever says anything. ([Location 1213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1213)) > Explaining might have done no good. To the coach, basketball practice would probably seem more important than fixing the windmill to get the livestock water. City people have different priorities than we do. ([Location 1410](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1410)) > I don’t get homesick for people, but do for spring in the Stony Brook country. ([Location 1480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1480)) > After breakfast we went to the Historical Society building and the Roosevelt cabin, Theodore Roosevelt’s home when he ranched in the Badlands. ([Location 1563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1563)) > My remark about the cats referred to the fact that on cold winter nights the cats slept in the barn on the backs of the horses. ([Location 1670](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1670)) > Newspapers say the deaths of many babies and old people are attributed to breathing in so much dirt. ([Location 1714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1714)) > The newspapers report that on May 10 there was such a strong wind the experts in Chicago estimated 12,000,000 tons of Plains soil was dumped on that city. ([Location 1737](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1737)) > Life in what the newspapers call “the Dust Bowl’ is becoming a gritty nightmare. ([Location 1764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1764)) > Suddenly I seemed to see what his face will be someday—a tombstone on which is written the epitaph of dead dreams. I shivered. ([Location 1812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1812)) > Our bountiful and interfering government sometimes creates awful messes. ([Location 1859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1859)) > The broken lives and broken hearts that caused was criminal. People back East had no idea a 160-acre tract here does not make a viable farm. ([Location 1861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1861)) > It was a man-killing struggle, but his family managed to hang on until the prosperous times after 1900. ([Location 1864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=1864)) > Chautauqua show in Wisconsin. ([Location 2139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=2139)) > the fire roared on like Hell’s delight. ([Location 2303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=2303)) > This week I’m busy as two pups with a feather duster. ([Location 2589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=2589)) > The hotel is as noisy as a calf corral, ([Location 2969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=2969)) > I got up early because two men were waiting for my bed. ([Location 3003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3003)) > scoria, ([Location 3027](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3027)) > Meat packers farther east considered him a threat who must be put out of business and called upon Wall Street to ruin him. Railroads held up his beef shipments. ([Location 3100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3100)) > By that time everyone I had known there had died or moved away. ([Location 3292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3292)) > “This kind of weather keeps the riff-raff out.” ([Location 3370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3370)) > The 1983 wheat price of three dollars and sixty cents a bushel makes the thirty-two-cents-a-bushel wheat of the 1930s seem incredible. But by 1983 it cost sixty dollars per acre to produce wheat, and the farmer needed four dollars a bushel to make a profit. Cattle prices had changed, too, from one cent a pound for canners to thirty-two cents, and from four cents for steers to sixty cents. Calves such as those the government bought for four dollars apiece in the 1930s brought three hundred to three hundred and fifty dollars in the fall of 1983. ([Location 3408](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JK549DA&location=3408))