Memories of an Old Man is a series of memoirs written by West of 50 member, Ken Felts.
The event forming one of my earliest memories occurred when I was almost five years old. My father, mother, two brothers and I lived on a small farm on the west side of Dodge City, Kansas. My father worked for the Santa Fe Railroad as an engine mechanic.
On the several preceding days, we had seen varying amounts of dust in the sky, always limiting visibility. On this particular day, the wind began blowing the dust early in the morning, and by noon it was almost impossible to see streetlights in downtown Dodge City.
A wall of dust, over 600 feet high, was rolling across the prairie, pushed by winds blowing 50 to 60 miles an hour. We hurried to our fruit cellar near the back door and settled in for as long as necessary.
The rains had stopped in 1930, the year I was born, and for almost 10 years, the drought persisted in the Midwest, particularly in southwest Kansas. For several years we endured frequent dust storms. There were very few days on which our visibility exceeded 1000 feet, clear days were a rarity occurring only four or five times a month.
The devastation was widespread in terms of loss of livestock and crops. Dust pneumonia was rampant, and many died of the illness. Millions of acres of topsoil were blown away. Animals and fowl quickly suffocated if they were out in the open. People tied a rope around their waist and the other end was attached to the dwelling if they were going out to the barns or outhouse, as once in the dust, there was no sense of direction, and if you were lost, death was almost certain.
I became ill with pneumonia and was put to bed in the southwest corner bedroom. My father rigged poles above the bed, and to combat the dust he hung wet sheets over them to keep out as much powder dirt as possible where I lay asleep. The windows, both inside and outside, and doors were sealed as much as possible, but the fine particles of dirt could not be stopped, and by morning, small mounds of dust lay on the windowsills.
I soon recovered and was back in school in a short time. The storms continued without abatement until about 1938. But our salvation had come when my father accepted a promotion on the railroad and we moved to Raton, New Mexico, in 1937.