DUST STORM OF '39

From: Murder Incorporated - In a Keg

by Harold J. Treherne

he Nineteen-Thirties in Saskatchewan were notorious for several reasons: low prices for everything, below average crops, below average rainfall but abundant dust storms, the "abundant" in this case being a decidedly negative asset. The third Sunday in April 1939 was a red letter day for me. I acquired a little rubber-tired tractor, brand new, which should have been delivered the day before but the truck hauling it became stuck in blow-sand. (This was the Thirties for you.) Believing in the saying, "One good turn deserves another," the rider was unloaded and hooked on to his benefactor. He pulled him out of a hole and after that they stood on their own feet and, to cut a long story short, Sunday afternoon showed a thin trail of dust along our road and the romping red tractor ahead of it.

When Spring opened in '39 I was reduced to one horse, maybe mostly my own fault for not raising colts when my three mares were younger. But pausing a minute to think back hard I hereby entirely disagree with myself which is a good basis for an argument. It's true, however, and I now remember distinctly the many times we had professional visits in those days besides the use of local talent. I guess my three mares weren't in the mood, were psychologically frustrated or something, or past their prime. Who knows! It appeared they were destined to a lonely old age; the frisky antics of match-stick legs, swishy tails and frolicsome torsos would never add that nostalgic touch to their declining years. Pardon me, but I have done a great wrong. One of them had a colt, donkeys' years ago, before I took over in fact. She was named Dinah, a long-legged dark bay and by the time she was four years old, to spruce her up properly a curry comb and a stepladder were needed. But, like the rest of the outfit, they have all gone their rotten way. Don't get me wrong. I had a great affection for them - at times.

To come back to reality: one horse and one man behind walking plow doesn't disturb much ground and hardly enough motive power (with the best motives in the world) to work a half-section. The year before, one of my neighbors had kindly loaned me a mare to give m e a fourth so I made out all right. Throwing a lifebelt to a drowning man is a good and worthy gesture. I'm sure they were all surmising on my chances of survival the following Spring - and so was I! We were really hard up those days and I'm not putting on a false front. A quarter then looked a lot bigger than a dollar ever does today. I had the choice of two alternatives: either acquire another outfit of horses or make a complete change and beg, borrow, or steal a tractor. Life without horses presented the ultimate in contentment to me at the time. It had been a partnership of uneasy peace; a cold war of seemingly indefinite duration where the lid blew off the pot once in a while, then to simmer down and a calm period to follow. At such times with my limited understanding I marveled at that complete rapport. Things would go along just swimmingly and again a carbuncle of little pin pricks would stew and suddenly erupt in a rash. I'll admit then I was as bullheaded as they were.

Just about here Providence or coincidence stepped in and I am happy to believe the former. Unexpectedly I received some financial backing from the Old Country and, with a little more assistance from another good neighbor, I handed over a first payment on the tractor. There, large as life was my "John Henry" on the famous dotted line and I was as tickled as any pup with two tails. Don't think I didn't appreciate everything. Didn't William of literary fame write: "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." It would be unwise to jump to conclusions. I am still looking.

This story is supposed to be about a dust storm and all the foregoing is just blabber, so please start reading from here. The tractor should be relegated to second place. During the first two weeks of May the fields were dry; the wheat wasn't all seeded by any means and every wind lifted its quota of dust. On the 18th, I was discing a quarter mile South and three quarters of a mile farther on would bring me to the South end of the round. It was a beautiful May morning clear and warm where a man for no apparent reason at all just bursts into song. (I didn't say melody, that's a matter of opinion.) The afternoon was a repeat performance till - but I'll come to that later. Looking back on events, it is always the small diversions, nothing much taken singly that upset the over-all patter.

Tom, a neighbor was holding a sack of potatoes for me and as I was only a mile and a half from his place at the end of the round, I decided to go after them. Phoning earlier would have been much simpler but it's one of the frailties of human nature to be wise after the event. Nearing the end of the round I could see a thin line of cloud across the Northwest; didn't look anything unusual, so I set out. Of course, as I half expected, the spuds hadn't arrived but I thought there was a chance. Pleasantries were out on this trip and I was soon away back to discing again.

The weather was cooling off and the clouds were appreciably closer and heavier looking. There was no breeze at all but I hadn't disced over two hundred yards almost before I realized a showdown was close at hand. That mass of cloud gathering momentum was a blackish grey pall of dust. Like a combine picking up grain, so was the dust being sucked up ahead of that driving wind. It was still a few miles away. The rest of the sky was all blue and serene but it wouldn't be long before a change for the worse would set in. Unhooking the disc in double quick time I buzzed up the road in high gear but I was just three minutes late. With a brief chilly whisper and then a full scale slam, a fifty mile wind chockful of grit and sand, hit me broadside. A little more than half a mile from the house the tractor stopped dead, the ignition shorted by static electricity.

I tried the starter again but nothing doing. It was as dead as last year's tater tops.

I had an old raincoat with me, always was optimistic and thought it might rain one day by accident. I hadn't prayed for dust; the wires must have crossed somewhere. Grabbing the coat from under the seat I danced around trying to catch the whirling sleeves as it billowed out and threatened to take off. If I faced the foul wind the tails flew up like horizontal sails flapping like a hawk on take-off. The coat collar seemed to be anchored firm six inches below my neck. Backing up to the grimy stuff was worse still; the old and sentimental "mack" held me so close and tight I was abashed. From the rear I was an artist's dream. (What a hope!) In the front I accentuated the positive. I was ballooned to enormous proportions, chesty as all get out and my falsies were entirely swamped. As for my feet I didn't possess any. I was exactly like the very fat man, his legs ajar, scanning the distance with a hand to his eyes looking for his small dog. A sudden shower had come on and you know of course where the pup was.

Returning to my coat; I had given up all further attempts to yank my collar up. I think I would ascend first. So I went around at half mast and it didn't matter anyway, I was the only one left in the whole of creation right now. Sitting down close in by the big wheel of the tractor I pulled my ear flaps down, drew on my mitts and was all ready to visit - with last Winter's tardy guest or next Winter's advance guard. July 1st I found was always a nice day to lay aside my Winter cap and mitts and I always mark the spot in case of urgent necessity. The change in weather in just fifteen minutes was hard to imagine except to these prairie stoics.

I thought I would sit this one out.

It had started in one mad rush maybe it would end the same way. Everything was blotted out except within a radius of a few yards. The sun, sky, house, railroad tracks, all had vanished. Nothing but cold and roaring wind charged with grit and sand, stinging like miniature arrows. It whistled round the motor and tore at the mudguards brooking no interference. Overhead, successive layers of dust whipped by in a frenzy. The temperature was down to 34 or 36 and within half an hour the late afternoon was reduced to twilight. It was somewhere around 5 and could have been the end of a Winter's day instead of May the 18th. I was stuffed with dust, all except my mouth which I had already learned to keep shut. The eddies and whirlwinds set up by the tractor didn't help at all. I was sitting in a cyclonic sac and the sooner I vacated the spot the better.

There was no sign of a break so I decided to leave everything and take to the road. Draining the water I braced myself and set out at a small angle into the wind walking half sideways and leaning backwards. Horrors, if that wind had suddenly quit I would have been out for the count. As it was the road was just wide enough for me to stay on it while inwardly I groused at the cantankerous wind - "Quit yer shoving!" Several times it had me over the brink of the ditch but each time I remembered Custer's last stand and rallied. Defunct mustard and Russian thistles, wiry skeletons whipped past in front and behind me in gang formation on top level and urgent business. The telegraph and telephone lines zoomed and sang in vibrating low and high sounding pitch, the furious wind playing the tortured wires as a mournful and moaning sounding board. The poles groaned under the strain. I was eating sand by now and I would say it would make excellent valve grinding material.

At last the house loomed up out of this murk of dust and grit, a shadow, now nothing, a silhouette, and at last an abiding haven and I was home; the trees round about bowing and scraping in recognition of superior might while the bully of a wind burglarized and whistled his way through them in high C. I stood for a minute in the calm of the tree shelter belt, a bulwark between me and the storm.

It raved and screamed and tore to high Heaven; it lashed the trees with the fury of a gale at sea, grit and choking dust in lieu of spray. It low moaned and high moaned and with my bloodshot eyes closed the depths of the ocean were out there somewhere beyond the trees and the murderous gale swept over timeless and vast solitudes of white capped rollers and deep valleys of green water and (MY EYES OPEN) over great expanses of scarred and unresisting prairie. The sun yet high in his domain shone on this inpenetrable canopy of confusion and dark, his outer beams unfettered and unbound explored its thinning limits and burst over its trailing confines in ecstasies of renewed light while reversely he suffered defeat.

The birds of the air, meadowlarks, king birds, swallows, red-wing blackbirds and all the rest, large and small, even the lowly sparrow were all grounded. The billowing smoke from a fire yet leaves a breathing space, uncertain for sure between it and the ground. The wind-charger on his tower added his mighty but little swish as he manfully faced the gale, the governor hard-pressed to curb his mad twirling. The lights were all on to ease his built-up amp pressure, also to light up the semi-darkness. The bulbs were sorely taxed containing the white light. Dust and the smell of dust was everywhere, on the inside of every window, on every ledge, the bannisters were evenly sanded and door cracks allowed the persistent beggar wind to sift in his grime insiduously and without let up. It suspended itself a fine mist in every room and, unaware of time, without conscious motion yet lays down to rest, film on dusty film. By nightfall it could be swept up and footprints and fingerprints were everywhere impressed in the sand.

I looked at my visage in the mirror and the mirror always, without fear or favor, throws back truth, naked and unvarnished. What an awful imposition! At first I thought the wrong man had come home but my wife seemed to recognize me and nobody has fooled her yet. She won't even admit she was duped into marrying the wrong man but there of course her ego is involved. Red eyes, bloodshot and dust-shot, dirty nose from rubbing it on my sleeve and a spot of solidified mud on the end of it, crusty whiskers, potato ears and a line of demarcation at the cap limits. Add to this a couple of staring bleary orbs in a dirty brown mug and you have it - I have it.

The destructive door rattling Nor'wester swept past for hours jiggling the house in little tremors, flinging and cramping himself under the eaves, screaming mad as he escapes, bashing the windows with grit, whirling dust and paper in spirals and eddies as he endeavors to escape confined spaces then roars away free and untrammeled. We swept, talked and ate dust; I guess it put iron into our souls. Overnight the wind relented and moaning and sighing, died. The rains came and the night wept copiously atoning for the wind. It washed away the dust, thrust new life into struggling seeds, rejuvenated and renewed our sagging hopes and bearable the muss and confusion when the barometer of hope rises.

The morning was clear as a bell but still chilly and a fair wind rose again. It improved in the afternoon and I lugged a pail of water down to the tractor. The air cleaner was choked with dust and the ignition key would hardly turn. After cleaning everything out I pressed the starter and the old boy came to life. Old boy indeed! This was just a whippersnapper. I looked to my labors of yesterday. The sand had drifted two feet deep in places along the edge of the field where tall grass and weeds held the dirt. The disc was half buried and little hummocks of fine sand crowded round each individual weed. The field itself was smoothed as with a fine tooth comb and thousands of small stones showed up where the wind had whipped off the top soil. In spite of every hazard we threshed and combined a better than average crop.

I ran the tractor home, musing: yesterday it was as dry as a bone, later chilly Winter had returned and now it's too wet. Any betting on tomorrow?