Having grown up in the 1950s, hearing about various droughts, I was a bit surprised to learn that the 1950 to 1957 drought was so significant. It was certainly influential in my life, shaped not only my sense of nature, the harshness, the need to conserve, but also the importance of hope – that formerly tendency to avoid claiming “the best crop in years,” to become obsessed with the weather or at least surround yourself with people who are, and to celebrate moisture from the core of one’s soul.
Our town was a little bit like Rio Seco, a “livestock and dryland crops trading post: with measured growth. Kelmer’ description -- "men work hard there, but the hard work is for naught without God to provide water for the crops which the hardworking men plan” struck a cord with me.
Other places might have several drouths in a single summer. Texas was more likely to have several summers in a single drouth. Drouth here did not mean a complete absence of rain. It meant extended periods of deficient rainfall, when the effects of one rain wore off long before the next one came so that there was no carryover of benefits, no continuity."
As I said, I grew up in the drought of the 1950s. That said, I was an adult before I understood drought’s larger impact on rural economies, communities, and on one’s relationship with forces beyond our control. My parents were in business, but my dad and grandfather farmed almost as an intense hobby. They loved growing things, driving the tractor or the combine around and around the neatly parsed quarters they owned or leased at various sites around a 100 mile region.
This was dryland and again, while I never knew the import of their discussions, I remember their joy at harvesting 35 bushels. And, I also remember how sacred the weather was in our home. I was eight years old when we got our first television set – the outside antenna allowing us to receive Channel Six – and I remember the six of us around the kitchen table, when at the exact moment the weather emerged from the low murmuring newscast in the living room, my dad’s hand would raise – all activity, all conversation stopped. A family around the dinner table frozen while my parents tried to interpret the weather, wondered about the drought, wondered over and over again whether we just might get some rain.
What I know today is that I often cry when I inhale the scent of rain, feel it upon my face. Maybe everyone cries at rain, but my response is profound. I’ve never understood umbrellas, not ever once having wanted to protect myself from the rain and for several years, I lived in New Orleans where an afternoon rain was a part of every day.
A few weeks ago, I read East of Liberal: Notes on the Land by Raylene Hinz-Penner, a contemporary who grew up about an hour from my hometown near Liberal, Kansas. She described her response to rain in a chapter by that name. I knew the smell, she described, the clouds she described, and the joy with which she and her siblings cavorted in the pools and ponds, celebrating rain, cherishing the relief..
Kelton said that The Time it Never Rained was inspired by actual events, when the longest and most severe drought in living memory pressed ranchers and farmers to the outer limits of courage and endurance.” Raylene Hinz-Penner lived it and I lived it, too.
I’m Kathleen Holt for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club, watching the sky, waiting for rain.
