DESPERATELY SEEKING JUPITER PLUVIUS
By L. F. Barry Barrington
Delivered to The
November 5, 2001
William Cullen Bryant,
These are the gardens of the Desert, these the unshorn
fields,
boundless and beautiful for which the speech of
Desert prairies of the
All of humanity claims, through anecdote, that "We lived through tough,
gritty times." We hearken to old timers: "Wal, Ah recall one yee-ar
when we dint have enuf cash tuh buy straw fer tha settin henz an th eggs wuz
scrambled as soon as they wuz lade." Under the circumstance of childhood,
what child can object "to lack of money or to bad weather" Some of us
did object, but we did not often know of means -- any means -- to improve our
conditions. In the case of drought, there were rumors of rain-making studies at
a big corporation, and there were community prayer meetings for rain, for work,
for blessings, and some asking for the end of the world, to escape the fates. Equally
as often, charlatans appeared to assert the end times, the prospect that the
next year would bring us home to God, on the final day, the day of great
rewards with flowers, showers, rainbows and the absolute end of all wanting.
To give an example: my parents, in desperate financial straits from the effects
of dust storms, drought, and global depression, learned of an abandoned house
in Plevna in late Summer 1935. The house was a structure reputed to have
running water, electricity and a single telephone line.
When the real estate agent stopped his old
The Reverend Father Arthur Patrick Ryan, Rector-priest of Saint Agnes"s
mission church chants his Canticle of the Dust which commences with the call:
Hear me, Water, bound to the clouds that scudder,
Element of misty sky, Lost among the winds that dry;
Carrier of Life, Lubricant supreme;
Return, Oh Water, Embodiment of Rain!
Father Ryan's prayer for precipitation fails to seduce
ol Pluvius. Instead, the dust invades, a rain shower offering scanty relief. A
large cloud in the Southwest sky looms over the parched land, failing to
deliver on its implied promise, as grandfather had murmured, prayerfully,
evening after evening: "Bound to rain." The drought continues, the
parched pastures offering no grazing for the cattle, the garden greens too hot
to support themselves.
Dust, unsettled, blinding cloud;
Dust, all settled, choking shroud;
Dust-laden winds, all modeled in Tajikstan and exported with a virtual cargo of
sand from the deserts of Uzbekistan, far, far away;
Duststorms, Blinding sandstorms, Pelting hailstones, drought, followed by
torrential rains, and deep drifts of snow from minimal-snowfall blizzards, all
in association with La Ciega.
Let us commence with the Litany of the Kansas
Sandhills:
La Ciega, Dark witch of duststorms, spare us!
La Ciega, Wicked Queen of the pomps of Dry Snows, hear our prayer!
La Ciega, whose drought and searing winds we renounce with ineffable opprobium,
hasten to an everlasting confinement... Oh, most abhorrent Ciega, we deplore
and shun you, pleading for the blessings of Jupiter Pluvius, to whom we ascribe
the power of raining...
Jupiter Pluvius and the rain gods: Heavy rain,
downpours, leading to major flooding problems and an early examination of
relativity.
Relativity was invented in Pearlette, Meade County, Kansas, in 1879 -- long
before Doctor Einstein formulated it. It was based on pioneer housewives"
Relativity Scale of Abhorrence, and the topic was chips:: cow chips or buffalo
chips, gathered and consumed in cooking and heating fires. Use of that fuel was
mentioned in the first issue of the "Pearlette Call", which also
acknowledged the economics of drought in reporting the 30% increase in the
relatively high price of local flour "on account of the dry weather".
That was the first year for several settler families, but only the first of
many wounds they would suffer from lack of rain.
As a son of the Sunflower State, I looking at the record. I find that Pearlette
was ordained by a group of potential colonists in rain-plentiful Muskingum
County, Ohio, in 1878, with the migration to relatively dry Meade County Kansas
and the flag-raising at "SUNSHINE", immediately renamed "Pearlette",
as a commemoration of the Atkinson baby who had been relatively ill on arrival
and died the next day. Pearlette"s citizens were few, so few that the
Pearlette Call wilted in the relatively hot wind and ceased publication in
1880, with the town "drying up and blowing away" in 1887.
Here endeth the first lesson in Relativity: wind, sand, dust and drought.
The second lesson in Relativity speaks to the relative surpluses in
agriculture, which factored into the rapid drop in prices for swine and grains
in the early years of the Depression. What had been regarded as obnoxious
surpluses in 1933 had to be drawn upon in 1934 to avoid shortages resulting
from the retreat or disappearance of Jupiter Pluvius.
The Mother of a Thousand Summers did not arrive until 1936, but weather myths
began to insert themselves into the everyday life by 1934, when my local
jurist, Judge J.G. Somers, forecast that it would rain within 24 hours, because
his courtroom ceiling was wrinkling. He said that it never fails to rain within
a day, when his ceiling wrinkles. Well, it failed this time, as everyone knows,
with a local boy pointing out that All Signs Fail in Dry Weather.
"Dust or drought" take your choice and make ready for tall tales and
anecdotes, as follow. "My old Ford's tail lights don't work anymore,"
the neighbor boy told my father, anxiety apparent. "No one, comin up on me
from behind would know I was there," he said. "That may save yer
life, son, and also the lives of occupants in that other car," Papa
replied -- continuing, "since the others aren't going to follow you and
crash into you -- not so likely as it is when they take a bead on yer tail
lights, wuz they workin. Some times ya could hardly see, and -- strange to me,
that may be one of the survival tactics for dust-storms." Thus, the
weirdness of non-working weather gods"
* * *
In a twist of who's weather god is winning
"Pluvius or Powder" the storms of April the Ninth, 1935, gave us a
day that made Toto and the other dogs wonder if they were still in Kansas. They
were, and the results of still being in the Sunflower State were not pretty:
Invisibility at Noon in Garden City was the overture to a march across the
state, producing dramatic cooling and electrical discharges that resulted in
"mud-ball rain" east of Dodge City, blinding snow at Goodland and the
accumulation of a blockade of dust on the Santa Fe tracks near Scott City, such
that a wrecker could not recover the locomotive that the dust had derailed. A
local philanthropist, Mister Meredith, who had died the previous day, could not
enjoy his funeral because the mourners could not see to attend it.
My sister was not yet 10 years old, and her imagination helped us see the
lighter side of a very murky picture, as she gave a viability to the sifting
dust that crept down our windows, whispering like soft rain as it piled up on
the floor along the west and north walls. She and I made silly songs about it:
Dribble, drop and drift;
Listen! Hear it sift;
Dribble, dribble, drift;
The rain is dusting, sift;
Dust is raining, drift
-- Chickens choked and the piles of dust obstructed
our passage to the road, down the road, across the road. Smothering, gagging
clouds of silt became dunes of doom.
Yes, dust was one of the unwelcome components of the Weather of those years:
one of three that produced the depression. If we had been fascinated with the
terrible beauty of alliteration, we had 4 D's: Depression as the consequence of
Drought, Dust, and Deadly Heat. Now, for another look at the heat:-
We take note of one family's struggle: LISTEN! .. about The EMERGENCY PAYMENT
OF JULY 1935
Of all the years that tore and bled her people, 1935 was almost the worst
Kansas ever required of them. Late in the Spring, Oklahoma sent dust storms
that closed the deep-rutted Jayhawk roads, smothered the young wheat and
brutally buried my mother"s hopes for a flower bed; a ragged stand of
sunflowers would have been acceptable, but by mid-June, crops that had survived
the assault of hungry grasshoppers all wilted from heat and lack of rain. On
the 24th, the all-time high temperature record for Kansas was tied at 121
degrees, after a string of days when it went above 100, scorching the sand and
sending wounded plants to perishing. The list of catastrophes went on and on.
Because we owned four horses and crop needs required only two, we could have
sold the other two, perhaps then buying new tires and a full set of new shoes
for the family. However, one July morning, both of the horses Papa planned to
sell died in the corral behind the barn. They died from the dry-country
disorder called "sanding". I had gone out the previous evening and
watched the sorrel dying, lying beside him on the sand. On that morning, after
the rendering truck drove off with the carcasses of the dead sorrel and bay, Papa
worked ferociously with Clyde-Horse and Beauty-Horse in the South field. Mother
helped Lucy and me look ahead with a hope that we would surely harvest enough
from the South field's millet to carry the chickens through.
We had customarily butchered a shoat every four months or so, but last month,
had to sell all the pigs at eight weeks age, to help raise the emergency
payment. Lucy and I had overheard Papa trying to bargain with Russell Borders,
who ended up paying two dollars each. Saying, "August, I'm really doing
you a favor (Papa had set a price of three dollars for each of the Poland China
squealers) .. doing you a favor," Borders repeated, "because of your
situation." After Mister Borders trucked the piglets away, I asked about
our "situation", and Mother told us that we might lose the farm. Lucy
and I, both of us, could not understand how anyone could lose a farm; Lucy
vowed that she would not let it happen: We would pray, she promised; we would
protect the farm, I added. We absolutely would not let the little farm be lost;
how could we then find it again?
Papa held his head, which always seemed to throb when he was worried-blue, and
he told us our grit was good to see, but "Grit alone," he said,
"Grit alone will not win when the emergency payment falls due at the Land
Bank on the 31st. We have to send a $27 payment, but we don't have that much,
do we Alice?" he asked Mother. Mother agreed; she had checked the fruit
jar on the shelf in the storm cellar yesterday, and reported, "We have
exactly 25 dollars and 63 cents, Praise God."
"You may praise God all you want, but I have to hold back," Papa
stormed. "I wish I knew how to walk away from this and just start over --
start over completely. We have nothing but grief for our efforts! No praise!
Hear me -- No praise from me; my throat is parched, and our tongues have dried
to the point where we can't even sing anymore."
"I can sing, Papa," Lucy asserted. "Brother and I can sing --
" and my curly-haired sister grabbed my hand and smiled, urging me into a
short duet of "The Sunny Side of the Street". Abruptly, I pulled away
and stopped singing, remembering, "Papa, I have a dollar bill in the
Pearls of Prayer book, from Granpa Charlie, last Christmas." I ran to get
it; Mother then recalled three dimes in her favorite custard dish, and Lucy
hurried to get the seven pennies she had wrapped into the head scarf she wore
to Saint Agnes's chapel. We hooted our good fortune: We had the twenty-seven
dollars, so we could get a full night's rest, and go to the post office in the
morning. The emergency situation was over. We took our mattresses out under the
catalpa and slept until breakfast.
After mush and molasses, we heard Papa working on the car, cranking it to help
start it. Finally, it sputtered to a start, and he told us we could all get in
and go to town. "Honey, want to get the money jar" he pressed Mother
. She did.
Lucy and I got in the back seat and we all went popping down the road toward
Calista, three miles away. The whole world of Reno County could see us, since
the old Essex sent an enormous exhaust plume across the fields from the evil
mixture of coal-oil and water Papa used for fuel. Down the road about
three-quarters of a mile, twin explosions rang out and the Essex lurched into
the ditch from simultaneous blow-outs of both starboard tires. Each of us made
our private reactions of anguish: Lucy prayed, and her prayer reflected our
spiritual, physical and financial extremities as hopelessness hit her. Seeing
her shake from panic, I began to cry. I could not find a bright side for her or
point to a silver lining for us, fearing none shone -- not in that dizzying
heat.
Papa held his head and kicked the car. Mother recited the litany that begins,
"Blessed be God." A dust-devil swirled across the roadway. In the
blazing sun of that summer morning, the world curdled, darkened, turning sour
on its hot death bed.
After a few minutes, Papa took control again, saying, "We'll go on to town
on the horses; I'll walk; Frankie, ride Beauty with Lucy, and Alice, take
Clyde, OK"
Mamma said, "I'll not go; you don't need me there, not at all; no sense
you walkin in the hot sun. I'll just stay at home an pick cherries, what few're
still left on those two trees."
So, I saddled Clyde for Papa and Lucy and I got on Beauty -- truly beautiful
Black Beauty. Papa wrapped the money jar with burlap and handed me the
emergency payment. Mother cried as we rode away. About noon, we tied up at the
post office, and I handed the money jar down to Papa. He told us we could get
off Beauty and go water the horses. I knew where to find the horse-water tank,
so Lucy and I were back at the post office door in time to hear Papa and
Alberta Harlan counting the cash for the money order. It was obvious that this
count was already a re-count, and that Papa disagreed with the postmistress on
it.
"August LeeRoy", she pronounced both his forenames sadly, "You
have only twenty-seven dollars here."
"Miz Harlan, that's what I told you: a twenty-seven dollar money order to
the Land Bank in Wichita."
"But you still need fifty cents more, for the fee." For some reason,
the word FEE poleaxed my father. He fell to the floor, suddenly sobbing. Lucy
ran up to hug him, saying, "Don't cry, Papa LeeRoy; please don't
cry."
Alberta Harlan stepped around to the front area of the post office, waving a
dollar bill. She took Papa's hands and sort of lifted him from his knees. As he
stood, she smiled, saying. "I shall take care of the money order
fee."
After she'd given each of us a glass of water and, for Papa's headache, an
aspirin, we left the post office. Since we had a running account at Ward's
Grocery, Papa bought one can of pie cherries and a silk rose for Mother. We
brought the horses around and rode home. Mother was now ready to bake two cherry
pies -- one to give to Alberta Harlan.
The next morning, the First of August, Papa put Lucy on Beauty and me on Clyde
with Mother's second cherry pie for Miz Harlan. He handed Lucy some ribbon to
tie on the horse stanchion fence near the post office. On the following Sunday,
the four of us doubled up to ride Beauty and Clyde to early mass at Saint
Agnes's.
The drought broke somewhat, with light September rains in time to save the
millet in the south patch, and to invigorate the bean crop in our field across
the road. The chickens were fed through, and Mother sold them for three
treasured dollar bills, plus seven dimes for Lucy and me to buy Eskimo Pies at
the Calista Fair in early October.
On Autumn Sundays, we tied our horses at Saint Agnes"s stanchion fence.
"Praise God," Papa said. "And with Thy spirit," Lucy always
added... Regrettably, she could not foresee the disastrous weather of 1936,
lying ahead.
* * *
Crops require no less than 16 inches of rain to
germinate, grow, and produce the next generation, but, Southwest Kansas had
essentially no rain from late April until mid Autumn of 1936. We received only
12 inches each season from 1931 to 1938. Orchards did not produce; Trees died;
Crops failed, wilting in the summer heat, which "day-after-day"
ranged above 100 degrees. Swine and poultry collapsed and perished, looking for
the cooling side-effects of a visit from Jupiter Pluvius.. People of the Plains
enjoyed no better appeasement from the heat than their livestock and crops.
Although Willis Carrier had invented the air conditioner in 1902, its
application and installation in homes was hardly considered during the
Thirties... Fans did not qualify as effective air circulators, and even those
that were available were not affordable, so residents suffered in 1936, looking
for shaded places to cool their mattresses so they could sleep.
The Mother of a Thousand Summers had sent an inkling of what was to come when
the temperature climbed to 100 or higher for ten days in June, beginning on the
14th, and ranging as high as 109 degrees before the month ended. In July, the
cottonwood poplars began to whistle for stray dogs with overactive bladders,
and our cows began to give evaporated milk, according to the wags of Troy
Township. It was also said by some that "You can burn yer hand and brand a
steer, too, at th same time, by a slight twist of the brass ring hanging from
his nose." We doubt that it was so, as our brand never appeared on the
wrong steer. Just a limp joke, we guessed.
On days when the temperature threatened to reach the boiling point, Mother
asked us to help her carry the ratty old mattress from the bedroom to the shady
spot beneath the catalpa tree, which was losing its last leaves to drought.
Still, she had measured the temperature under the catalpa, finding it was only
105 degrees.(!) Then, she asked me to go to the well and bring a bucketful of
water out. "Toss it on the mattress," she said, knowing the water
would evaporate even as it ruined her only bedding.
By mid-July we were living through a period of daily record setting, and when
Papa met Mister Applegate on the road, they exchanged "High
Hundreds": Neighbor Applegate telling us that "yesterday's One
Hunnert set a record for Kansas : 18 days straight 100 or above." For the
year -- Yes, by the end of 1936, we had more that 80 days above 100 degrees on
MeinHerr Fahrenheit's scale.
The all-time record for Kansas (121 degrees) was set on the 18th of July, but
no cooling winds of autumn had yet come: It was 119 degrees on two days in
August of that year, laden with so many days of scathing heat. The effects of
those days are still visible in the scars to be seen among the social shifts,
as well as in amendments to micro-climates and soils of the High Plains region.
Poverty, that truly Draconian sociologist, drove the children of many former
Kansans to the West Coast and to the metropolises of the Great Lakes and the
East Coast, to prove both blessings and curses to the places they left as well
as those which became their new homes.
Furthermore, Mary Knapp, Kansas' current climatologist, observes that
"Kansas itself became and remains criss-crossed with wind breaks, strip
cropping and terraced land. Kansans still tend to be reverent about soil and
water conservation." And Knapp mentions that you can see signs of several
generations who were raised on the motto: "Make do. Wear it out. Use it up
and do without."
At a time of a war formalized in 2001, we are again concerned about
conservation of all our resources. It is appropriate in a summing up, to look
upon the failures of Jupiter Pluvius in a planetary and historical context. We
can do that, since more than one scholar of history has ranked the creation of
the Dust Bowl in a time of drought as one of the three worst ecological blunders
in recorded history. The other two are the deforestation of China's uplands
about 5000 years ago, and the destruction of Mediterranean vegetation about
4000 years ago, leaving once-fertile lands eroded and impoverished. Humanity
cannot afford a fourth such blunder.
Let's accept the reminder that the agricultural catastrophes of the 1930s
derived in part from drought and other acts of Nature, but they were largely
the outcomes of exploiting the land for all it was worth. It was not a
situation nor a process that Jupiter Pluvius alone could remedy, even if that
god or goddess might have been found and cornered. As now, the fault then lay
not in our Jupiters, but in ourselves.
The END
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