Letters from the Dust Bowl Quotes

“The last few days, including today, of wind and dust have finished any lingering hope of wheat for us and I feel myself that we simply threw away the carefully hoarded barley seed. Hardly any hope that it had time to sprout or could survive if it had under present 'dust bowl' conditions. I always said I was the only one who could remember those dreadful days - for any practical purpose. People have simply assumed it couldn't happen again (1951)”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“In attacking the problem of erosion control, one great handicap lies in the scarcity of people left to do the essential work. On a recent drive to our county seat thirty miles away, we could count only sixteen occupied homes, including those within half a mile on either side of the federal highway.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“It seems impossible to dispense with that little word hope, even though at times we are conscious of the pain of hopes too long deferred.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“Nothing that you see or hear or read will be likely to exaggerate the physical discomfort or material losses due to these storms. Less emphasis is usually given to the mental effect, the confusion of mind resulting from the overthrow of all plans for improvement or normal farm work.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“Farmers are not looking for special favors. They ask only an even chance as compared with other workers. But people don't understand. Perhaps the many books on pioneer life with the usual successful and happy outcome have helped to give a wrong impression and perpetuate the idea that country people live on wild game and fish and fruits and in general on the free bounty of heaven. Many people have no idea of the cash expense of operating a farm to-day, or the work and planning required to keep the wheels going round, to say nothing of a decent living or suitable education for the children.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“The longing for rain has become almost an obsession. We remember the gentle all-night rains that used to make a grateful music on the shingles close above our heads... But we waken to another day of wind and dust and hopes deferred, of attempts to use to the utmost every small resource, to care for the stock and poultry as well as we can with our scanty supplies, to keep our balance and to trust that upon some happier day our wage may even yet come in.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“Self-appointed defenders of freedom seem to know nothing of the loss of liberty attendant upon seriously adverse economic conditions. No regimentation is more cruel than that of extreme poverty. The cramped and barren lives of millions of sharecroppers in the southern states, the deplorable conditions in some of the coal-mining areas, the slum districts in almost any large city, are a pitiful contradiction to our boasted 'inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“Many cherished plans have failed. Not only radio and telephone, but running water in the house, furnace heat, modern lighting and refrigeration, have all passed beyond our dreaming. Even the three-cent postage is a burden.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“But of all our losses in recent years, the most distressing is the loss of our self-respect. How can we feel that our work here has any dignity or importance when the world places so low a value on the products of our toil?”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“The same week another disaster overtook us... vicious pelting of hail...What to do? We hardly know, but, as the saying goes, we have the bear by the tail and it looks like a poor time to let go.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“Through this most lonely and disheartening of all winters, I have found my greatest inspiration and encouragement in the blossoming plants in our windows... Insignificant little things these are, I realize; yet they have seemed to reassure me that sunshine and rain, the laws of life and growth, seedtime and harvest, are in a general way dependable; that our earthly heritage is still rich in possibilities.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“In nothing that we can produce here is there at present the slightest chance of any return on our labor. Yet we keep on working -- really harder than ever. I wonder sometimes whether we are any wiser than the ants.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“Few things in every-day experience are harder than just to keep pegging away at a task which seems doomed to failure, yet which we cannot in conscience abandon.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“Sometimes we speak and feel too much as if 'an education' were a finished product, to be bought and paid for, often with great sacrifice, and bestowed. In reality, education can only be attained by personal effort, and should be for each a continuing process, ending only with life itself, or possibly then just well begun. There are fortunately many roads to personal culture and usefulness, and not all lead through the college campus.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“All through the fall we were greatly worried about Eleanor. An overlooked 'sticker' in a finger, though poulticed and removed as soon as noticed, led to a case of blood poisoning in a sort of local form. It affected the glands of the lymphatic system of her whole arm and for a time looked very bad. We are so far from any reliable help that I felt exceedingly anxious.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“It is our custom to close the day with a reading from the Bible. Often when we have indeed seemed heavy-laden, we have found in its words new life and courage. Here on our lonely prairie we have felt a sense of nearness to Him who 'giveth power to the faint,' and have realized anew that 'to them that hath no might He increaseth strength.' However it may be for others, I feel that no homesteaders equipment would be complete without this book of books.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl

“We are homesteading a claim here in old No Man's Land... In spite of droughts and hot winds, blizzards, dirt storms, hail storms, grasshoppers, and in fact almost every form of discouragement, the fascination of being so near the beginning of things, of finding ourselves not quite mastered by various calamities, has held us. We have always felt that if we could hold out a few more years we should succeed; our homestead would really become a home.”
― Caroline Henderson, Letters from the Dust Bowl