OKLAHOMA DUST BOWL DAYS

Lois Caywood Guffy

Our 1934 Turkey Brooder Home. Mama snapped the reins of ole Tom and Kate as they struggled to pull the old lumber wagon through a soft spot in the lane. She raised her voice and yelled, “Gitty Up. The startled horses made the wagon lurch forward causing our loose board seat across the back of the wagon slip off of it’s base. I was so frightened that I was going to fall, I clutched the old weathered gray sideboard as tight as my little hands would let me. My brother Willis held our baby sister Lila tightly on his lap. Willis helped me aright myself and put the seat back in place.

Mama drove the team and wagon around the corner into the long sandy driveway toward our new home. I could see the little house in the distance, not yet aware this would be the place that I would call home for the next 13 years. The strong Oklahoma breeze drifted the pungent odor of the leather harness and sweat from the horses to the back of the wagon where we sat. As the wagon wheels churned in the sand, the dust and sand whipped all around us. I let loose of my tight grip on the sideboards to wipe the dirt from my eyes. The Dust Bowl days were just beginning.

Mama pulled the horses and wagon up to the house, unhitched the harness and told us to go inside. Reluctantly, I entered our new home. Daddy was already waiting for us there. I did not want to be here. I choked back my tears, I just wanted my own bed. I wanted to go back to our farm near Sand Creek, the only home I ever knew, back to my old familiar surroundings. I was a very sad little girl at that moment.

I was born on January 23, 1931 on a farm near the small town of Nash in the far north central part of Oklahoma. A year later we moved to another farm a few miles north near Sand Creek. The Depression Days had been in full swing when I was born on that cold January day. Babies born at that time were known as “Depression Babies” I wasn’t old enough to be depressed, but...

The first thing I saw as I entered our new home was a flat-topped heating stove with two teakettles sitting on top. The kettles were whistling away with a steady steam escaping from the spouts. One of the teakettles was tan with a green stripe trim. The other was a mottled gray enameled one. The little two-foot tall wood stove was what Mama would be cooking on for some time to come. It also served as our heating stove. I always liked that stove.

The house was made up of two pre-fab buildings that Grandpa and Daddy had ordered from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. They set them up on the east half of Grandpa and Grandma Caywood’s farm. The brooder houses were set about 12 feet apart so another makeshift room could be placed in the center and a back wall placed on the north. The front of that room had just a tent covering. It was made with a flap on one side so it could be opened in the summer for a cool breeze to flow in. In the fall it was closed to keep the cold air out during the oncoming winter months. One turkey brooder was our kitchen and living quarters. We stayed in that room most of the time. The other two rooms were where we slept. When it was very cold we slept on the floor in the kitchen where the little wood stove was.

The next summer when Lila was still very small, my brother opened the little turkey entry door of our brooder home and she would crawl right outside. We were too large to crawl through the small opening ourselves, but enjoyed watching Lila do it. Mama found out what we had done and secured the trap door again after admonishing us about the dangers Lila could face being outdoors.

This three room makeshift home was to be our temporary home until a house could be built. The two brooder houses would be used for chicken houses later. We lived there for almost two years. There were only a couple of small windows on the front sides of the buildings so Mama white washed the inside walls to make the rooms lighter. It also made it look more like a real home. Daddy made a little swing for Lila from a small board and attached the ropes to the rafters. Willis and I were forewarned that it would not support our weight, so we did not even try to sneak in a little swinging when our parents were not around.

We were living in those brooder houses when the worst of the dirt storms hit our area of Oklahoma. The Oklahoma and Texas panhandles were the center of the Dust Bowl. We lived at the edge of one big sand pile there in Grant Co, Oklahoma.

My memorable events of the Dust Bowl were horrifying. One storm in particular, was when the huge black clouds came in from the West. At first, we thought it was a bad thunderstorm. The black clouds billowed high up in the air, and quickly moved closer and closer to us. Mama scrambled to grab blankets, gunny sacks, and flour sacks to place over the windows and doors after she dampened them with water. Cracks were stuffed full of rags or paper to keep out the relentless blowing sand. Still, the finely sifted sand seeped through the cracks and into the house. It was frightening to hear the wind blow and the sounds from the grains of sand beating against the house. The wind made even stranger sounds as it howled around our house. We huddled beside our parents during the worst of the storms. It was so dark in our little abode that we lit kerosene lamps. The lights flickered eerily from what little breeze made its way through the cracks in the board walls.

During one such storm, it got so dark from the blackened skies, our chickens went to roost at mid-day. Every thing from a blade of grass or weed to a tumbleweed caught the sand and soon became a sand mound. Cattle and horses had to weather the elements and stood facing away from the storm. Still, their nostrils filled with dirt and some died later from dust pneumonia. Birds could not fly and fell from the sky and were suffocated, as were many of the smaller animals.

Our sandy driveway was impassable in places but mattered very little to us, as we didn't have anywhere to go anyway. We could shovel the sand away one day and the next it would all be back, sometimes even deeper. Our fences were partially covered with sand letting the cattle walk right over them. It seemed that nothing escaped the perils of those horrible dirt storms. We used wet handkerchiefs over our noses and mouths when we had to go outside. The sand would pelt your skin until it was red and quite painful during those dirt storms, so we did not tarry long to do any outside chore. Visibility was at a minimum. Even Goggles did not help much for eye protection, another reason to stay inside.

Mama wore one of my daddy’s old felt hats to keep her long dark auburn hair from getting tangled and dirt away from her scalp. Willis and I laughed at her when her hat blew off and she would run after it with the hat skipping a jump ahead of her each time she reached down for it. Both Mama and Daddy wore long sleeved shirts and over-alls to cover and protect their bodies when they went outside to bring in wood for the stove or care for the livestock.

Willis learned to ride a bicycle by practicing on our daddy’s useless old 1920 Harley Davidson Motor Cycle. After he got a real bike, he left the cycle lying down on its side by the shed. The drifting sand completely covered it. To this day, it is still at the farm under a mound of sand. Someday, someone, perhaps I may just dig it out.

Daddy built a larger two-room house just a few yards away from the brooder houses, so we moved out of the brooder houses and the chickens moved in. Mama was to raise many chickens in our vacated home for many more years to come.

Although many “Okies” packed up their meager belongings and headed for California, my parents stayed in Oklahoma and so did all of the relatives that lived around us. We endured the dirt storms, droughts and bad crops on this farm for several years. Happy were the days when the drought ended and the land became productive again.

In the next few years, my parents added a milk shed and a pole lined dirt cellar. Mama worked right along side of daddy most of the time. Daddy planted many trees, wild rose bushes and another wild plants around the once desolate yard. He built an arbor and planted a nontoxic five leaf ivy on each side. He found the ivy in the grove of trees that he and my grandfather planted for firewood and fence posts. We had all kinds of fruit and shade trees, a large blackberry patch and a Concord grape vine. They made a large garden each year and during the dry spells watered it by hand. Mama canned the fruit and vegetables which we ate all year long. Mama and daddy hand dug a well just a few feet outside of our kitchen after our neighbor water witched the grounds for the best water source. It produced some of the coolest and best tasting soft water for miles around. Not only was our farm productive, it was a beautiful place to live with plenty of shade for us as well as our livestock.

I married and left the farm in 1947, but my parents lived there long enough after the Dust Bowl Days to see the land grow fertile again. They finally grew prosperous crops and had a big herd of cattle. Daddy died suddenly from a heart attack in 1960. Mama was very lonely and stayed on the farm three years longer before selling out and moving to Cherokee. She often reminisced about the hard times and living in the brooder houses until she died at age 91.

It was somewhat of a quandary - life in the brooders, but especially fun to tell about now that I live in a nice modern home just 17 miles away from where I was raised. I never felt neglected nor cramped in the small living quarters we lived in. I have since raised my own chickens in a brooder house almost identical to the one I once lived in so many years ago.