The Worst Hard Time

Every October is national book month. The Utah Humanities Council is a big supporter of national book month. This year is the 15th Annual Utah Humanities Book Festival, with events all over Utah. The OPL participates every year in the book festival through Orem Reads (formally known as Orem's Big Read).

Each year, a single book is selected. This year, Orem Reads is focusing on the book The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan. For the month long event, OPL has pulled together a fantastic program featuring authors, professors, and other experts speaking on the themes and events surrounding the book. There are also movie screenings and exhibits. This year's program includes square dancing and a canning how-to.

Last night, at the good, old OPL I had the opportunity to hear Timothy Egan talk about his book in the kickoff event of Orem Reads. This nonfiction book, winner of National Book Award in 2006, follows five people through the dust bowl, the worst environmental disaster to hit the US. Ever.

Egan said the dust bowl was played out in 3 acts.

Act I - before the misery. The dust bowl used to be the greatest sweep of grasslands found the world over. The nation was determined to settle it and offered a mile square to anyone willing to farm the land. It was difficult to find a plant that would grow there, but the Germans from Russia brought turkey red wheat with them which grew well in the grassland conditions. At first they prospered. People who had never owned anything had land and enough money to buy nice clothes for their children.

Act 2 - the crash. Prices for the wheat fell dramatically. There was too much of it. The stock market crashed. Banks closed all across the plains and the farmers, who couldn't sell their wheat, no longer had any savings. Then the drought and the wind hit. There had always been droughts in that region of the country and there is always wind down there. The only difference was the plowed up fields. All that grassland with nothing to hold it down blew up and became the dust bowl. Some of the dust bowl storms were so awful they carried dust through Chicago, past New York, and 100 miles out into the Atlantic.

Act 3 - trying to fix it. This was the first time the federal government stepped in and tried to help in a natural disaster. They planted 200 million trees and tried to reinstate the grasslands. Nothing they did helped much. All the people could do that stuck it out and didn't move to other states (where, by the way, they were not very welcome; think Grapes of Wrath), was wait for the drought and the storms to end.

Timothy Egan called this living history. It's a story within our memory, but just barely. All five of the people he followed in the book have passed away since its publishing.

I've wanted to read The Worst Hard Time since it was first published. I've also always had a vague interest in Orem's Big Read and have attended events here and there, though I've never read the selected book (often I have already read the book selected, making participation in the events easy).

This year I'm going for it. My copy of The Worst Hard Time is currently whizzing to me through the magical medium of Internet purchasing. I've got my schedule of events at the OPL pinned up and hope to be back there at least a couple of more times.

I'm so excited I almost can't stand it.