One Small Voice: The ghost of Dust Bowl visits Arizona

by Lynn Mandaville

There is a horrid wail coming from the television, and a broad red band with a severe weather warning appears at the bottom of the screen.

If we were back in Michigan, this wailing would signify a watch or warning for a thunderstorm or tornado in spring, summer or fall, or a severe winter advisory in winter. Here, in Chandler, Arizona, and throughout the valley of this southern-central area of the state, we are being alerted to high winds accompanied by serious dust storms.

Before I lived here I had absolutely no appreciation for the dangers of a dust/sand storm. Those were the things of old-timey Westerns, where the cowboys wore bandannas over their mouths and noses and plowed headlong into the wind. And they were over in a trice.

Here, they cause small dust tornadoes without warning, and dust gales spring up with the intensity of snow white-outs, blinding traffic and causing accidents by compromising visibility. Cars drive with their lights on at midday. Kids get off their school buses and trudge through curtains of dust toward home. If you were to look out toward the mountains you would find you could not see them. The air looks as if it is filled with the smoke of a thousand fires. And it lasts for hours, sometimes a couple of days.

As I was making my way through the morning’s chores and activities, blinking the grit from my eyes and imagining the mud that will wash off me in the shower tonight, I thought back to a couple of books I read several years ago about the Great Dust Bowl of the early 1900s.

Just the inconvenience of these occasional dust storms annoys me. So it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine the relentlessness of dust that never ends. In the 1920s in and around Oklahoma the wind blew constantly, and the soil and dust blew with such force that it forced its way into clapboard homes between the boards and around the window sashes without mercy. No matter how often they swept or washed or dusted, there was always a film of sand and grit over everything. Men and women repeatedly papered over the cracks in the clapboards with newsprint and a paste of flour and water in an attempt to stay ahead of the sand and soil.

People and farm animals developed dust-induced pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. During particularly horrid storms animals suffocated to death from the dirt that literally filled their lungs as they struggled to breathe.

In some instances people became mentally unstable from the lack of respite from the month upon month of the Dust Bowl’s oppression. Some went insane, some committed suicide. Such was life during that awful period in history.

Fortunately for us, in this Eden in the desert, dusts storms and high winds only last a short time compared to the Dust Bowl. Even as bad as it is today, there are men and women out on the golf courses swinging away in the gusting sand. Bikers and joggers are still doing their things, folks are walking their dogs.

As for me, I’m happily secluded in my airtight home, watching the wind chimes rattling in the wind, enjoying the spinners whirling in the trees.

There will be time enough tomorrow to pick up the leaves and twigs that are being shaken from the trees. Our neighbors will take the time to harvest the lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit that get blown from their stems.  Everyone will wash the coat of grime from their vehicles. And we will resume our lives in the Valley of the Sun as we await the next big desert blow.

[Note:  Since the day I wrote this I’ve watched the weather for our old home town, Wayland, MI. You’ve sure been having a time of it with prolonged winter. We’ve lived it, too, for 35 years there, and many years prior in the northeast. All I can say is that you find your Eden where you can. Weather may not be the be-all and end-all. White-outs or dust-outs, neither amounts to a hill of beans when you have family and friends close by. Keep warm and safe, friends!]