The full moon crept over the treeless plain. John Clark sat on his broken porch step and watched it rise. Clouds left eerie shadows across the yard. It was All Hallow’s Eve. There was no thought of candy or spooks and goblins.
The dry Oklahoma winds had blown away much of the topsoil. The wheat, this year, dried up in the fields. Last year, it was the swarm of grasshoppers that ate every green thing in sight.These fields were once covered with tall grasses and ranging bison. Now they were lifeless and dusty as a desert. “This is the barrenness of harvest or pestilence.”
John had no choice, but to load his wife and four children in his old Model T Ford, and travel West. They took what they could, hoping to make it to California before the Snow arrived in the mountains.
Dust Bowl Photo: Saturday Evening Post
Bjorn at d’Verse asked us to write a prose piece of not more than 144 words. He took a line from a Louise Gluck poem, which we had to include in our writing. It was also to include the holiday theme of All Hallow’s Eve and Halloween. It was, “This is the barrenness of harvest or pestilence.” I attempted to apply this line to the sad times of the Dust Bowl.
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