I'm in the middle of reading a book by Timothy Egan called The
Worst Hard Time. If you're interested in American history
surrounding the plight of the farmers and townspeople of the
Oklahoma and Texas panhandles during the Dust Bowl years of the
1930's, this is a great read. I had heard stories of the dirty
thirties from my grandparents, who lived through this era on the
farm in Brown County. Their stories of dry fields and dust
clouds seemed like they came from a different world. In his
book, Egan does an extraordinary job of bringing these stories
to life. You can almost taste the dust in your mouth and feel it
in your eyes, as he recounts the dusters. These enormous storms
lifted topsoil from bare ground and carried it hundreds of miles
to rain down and blow in on houses, barns, and roads in the
country as well as in the economically depressed cities of the
Plains. As a veterinarian, the most interesting passages of the
book had to do with the effect of dust on the livestock. Cattle
out on the plains alrea