Given the tendency for TV histories to range from lame to pathetic, I thought I'd mention that the Ken Burns series on the Dust Bowl begins this evening. He takes the unusual approach of consulting actual historians and trying to do fact-based work.
I'm watching it now. Very interesting documentary.
Yep. Me too. It's on a public TV channel here.
Very good. My parents remember the "dirty thirties" all to well. All my life they have reminded me of the hardships the dust bowl plus depression brought them. Dad turns 90 next month.
Very good programming, much different than last weeks program on H. Ford.
Why does Ken Burns have to dig up the dirt on the poor farmers....I have always liked Ken Burns work he did great job on the Civil War and others. I enjoyed the parts of this Dust Bowl series that I had time to view.
To all of us old people
I watched the "Dirty Thirties" and thought of my Dad but he missed those days, however he was in Garden City ,Ks in about the teens then on to California and worked in the oil fields around Taft , Fellows, and that area in the late teens th;en on to Tulare County in the 20's and in the 40's in the ship building and back to Missouri in the middle 40's. Then back to California in 1953 and was laid to rest in 1962. He said at one time he had made 18 1/2 trip between Missouri and California.
Bill Dugger
Bill, my Dad was born in Central Minnesota in 1920. He remembers the dust storms and having dirt and dust in everything. He died in 1999 and though I don't miss him much he sure went through hell in his life.
The History Channel did a 2 hr show on the dust bowl a few years ago which was pretty good I thought. The Ken Burns version should be good or better.
Yeah, I think the History Channel called theirs Black Blizzard or something like that. The one Ken Burns made brought tears to my eyes when that old man talked about people putting those twin babies in number 12 shoe boxes with cotton in them and putting them in the coffin. I remember Dad talking about trying to go out and feed the milk cows and putting hay down for their bedding and how the cows and the stanchions and everything was coated in dirt. He talked about having to find his way back to the house by going from the barn to the shed to the truck to the clothes line to the house to the front door. He said many times between blizzards in the winter and dust storms in the summer he had to know that route pretty darn good.
Excellent show, as all of Ken Burns are. My 96 year old grandmother often speaks of those days in Oklahoma. Said her family " had nothing, and very little of that"
One strong feature of the Ken Burns documentaries is the music. A recurring theme in this Dust Bowl program is Hard Times, Come Again No More.
"If you would like to have your heart broken, just come out here." ~ Ernie Pyle
My grandmother and mom always talked about how they'd run around the house and close all the windows but you could watch the dust just come through the cracks and pile up on the sills.
And there's nothing like the music of Woody Guthrie. What a story teller that guy was. And if I owned his guitar right now I could sell it for a fortune. And Arlo's a pretty good entertainer too.
I love Ken Burns films and this one is very good.
One disappointing theme is that the weather changed because of President Roosevelt's policies. That is not historically accurate of course. The weather changed because of changing sunspot activity, not because of anything man did or did not do. The dust bowl was a bigger catastrophe for the farmers who lost hundreds of acres of planted crops, but it was a catastrophe that would have happened regardless of the presence of man.
It's a drought. They happen throughout recorded history. Look in a bible some time.