Section D·Page 22
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, August 16, 1999
Dust Bowl leaves lasting legacy in Kansas
The Associated Press
FORT DODGE, Kan. — Battered by months of unrelenting wind and sweltering heat, Harley "Doc" Holladay woke up to a gloriously clear Sunday that April 14, 1935.
His parents figured the calm day with blue skies was perfect for hanging out laundry and for taking out those upholstered chairs to pound out the dust.
And there was even time for the 13-year-old Kansas farm boy to head out to a muddy pond just 300 yards from the house to skip a few rocks across its receding waters.
He saw it coming first: an immense black wall of dust rolling toward the farmhouse.
"I took off running for the house," he said. "We got everything inside as quick as we can."
His family made it inside safely before they were engulfed by the blackness. Young Harley, still clutching an armful of clothes, fell to his knees just outside the porch. He crawled into the house in the total darkness.
It lasted nearly 20 minutes. Gradually, an orange cast shone
through the windows as the storm abated.
"This was the worst one," he said.
The day would go down in the history books as Black Sunday, the most terrible "black blizzard" of the Dust Bowl era.
The drought began in 1933 and continued year after year until 1940. A 400-mile-long, 300-mile-wide region — covering 100 million acres of western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas
was battered by ceaseless winds which carried away clouds of farmland.
Many farmers were forced to abandon their land, their plight immortalized in John Steinbeck's 1939 novel "Grapes of Wrath." Some 100,000 people each year headed west, never to return.
Among those choosing to wait it out was the Holladay family. At the time, Harley and his parents were living on his grandparent's farm 16 miles northeast of Dodge City. The families were farming 1,700 acres and raised registered Herefords, pigs, chickens, mules and horses.
"They had to much invested in the area" to leave. Holiday said.
the area to leave, Holladay said. Back then, farmers believed pulverized ground made the best seed bed for their crops. Holladay, now 76, recalled how he and his brother used to stand at each end of a field so their father could see them through dusty haze in order to drill the wheat in straight rows, all in the hopes it would rain.
But the fine soil made fields more vulnerable to erosion, with dirt blowing so bad it collected like huge snowdrifts along fence rows. Today, you can still see the ridges it formed along the fence rows.
School children had to light kerosene lanterns in the middle of the day to read because the dust made it so dark. Wives kneaded their bread dough inside partially closed drawers to keep it as clean as possible. Dishes were turned upside down as the table was set.
If a dish was left uncovered for just 30 minutes, it collected so much dust you could write your name on it with your finger, Holladay said.
He can still remember the awe
of watching a ring of electricity formed around the windmill blades created as the wind-driven dust particles struck the metal blades. The humidity was so low, that you could see sparks of static electricity flying from wire to wire along barbed wire fences as the dusty wind blew.
Wet handkerchiefs tied around the face served as dust masks. During dust storms, windows and doors were chalked shut with wet paper.
And it was so unmercifully hot that Holladay's family would hang wun ganny sacks across open windows to dampen the blasts of hot air. Holladay would dip his shirts in water before putting them on to help keep cool.
Today's low till and no-till farming practices came out of the Dust Bowl era as farmers sought ways to control erosion.
"I think the thing that is important to remember is not farm the way they did back in those days," Holladay said. "If they don't farm properly, there could be another Dust Bowl."
State climatologist Mary Knapp said another Dust Bowl is unlike
ly because three major components need to be present: bare soil, dry conditions and wind.
Farmland cropping techniques today don't leave as much ground bare, she said.
"It could happen again, but it hasn't happened since then," she said.
One of the things that people tend to forget about the Dust Bowl era is that it was also extremely hot, she said.
Average high temperatures in much of Kansas were more than 100 degrees, and thermometers even hit 121 degrees in 1936. In Manhattan, for example, temperatures were above 100 degrees for 30 out of 31 days in July 1936.
But not everyone agrees another Dust Bowl is that unlikely.
A study released last December by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed droughts as bad as the 1930s occur once or twice a century, and there were longer and more severe droughts in the 13th and 16th centuries.
Scientists reviewed historical documents and data on tree rings, archeological remains and lake sediments.
Infamous crimes dark side of Sunflower State
The Associated Press
PITTSBURG —On a warm, peaceful spring afternoon, Max McCoy sits in a near-empty cafe in a quiet college town and begins to spin stories of murder and madness.
They're stories that have been told across the country - in some cases, around the world.
They go something like this:
Robbers enter a rural home — and slaughter the four people who live there, all for less than $50 and a radio.
A mysterious killer leaves messages for police — and then vanishes.
A love affair between a pastor and a member of his congregation leads to the murder of their spouses.
They all have something in common: They took place in Kansas, whose criminal history is often overshadowed — thankfully, some say — by its vibrant agriculture and political heroes.
McCoy, a former journalist and author, says there are two unofficial Kansas history books. One plays up the state's wholesome image, with notables like former president Dwight D. Eisenhower and longtime Sen. Bob Dole.
"You look at Kansas history, you get people who do great things. But you also get people who get messages from God, people who do despicable things — people with unfathomable motives," he said.
The other depicts what he calls the "raw, rough and true" version. In fact, that's the title of his upcoming book: "Kansas: Raw, Rough and True: A Gallery of Notorious Kansans."
"I think there's a tendency among some historians to overlook that part of it," McCoy said. "There are the toners-down, and the ones who want to present how it really was. 'We're not all waving wheat fields.'"
The latest installment in the state's ongoing crime story didn't begin here, but Kansas has quickly found itself in the thick of the fight.
The villain is methamphetamine, an illegal stimulant that moved in from the West Coast and quickly found a home.
It's cheap, made from easily obtainable ingredients and can be quickly — if dangerously — cooked up in small mobile labs that go from vehicles to motel rooms to open fields.
A major difference between meth and the introduction of previous illicit drugs is how deeply it affects those who aren't part of the criminal culture.
Farmers, for example, often have their anhydrous ammonia—a common fertilizer and key ingredient in the drug—raided by meth-makers.
And pharmacists, by state law, will soon be required to limit the amount of over-the-counter cold medications that can be sold to one customer at one time.
"You look back at history, and Kansas has been a real leader in a lot of things," said Manhattan historian Cheryl Collins. "The Populist movement of the late 1800s had a lot to do with Kansas, the temperance movement, the civil rights movement." Crime is no exception.
But if history is any indication, Kansas's stringent anti-meth measures may be a portent of what's ahead in the nation's battle against the drug.
When Stephanie Schmidt was murdered by a repeat sex offender in 1993, it set in motion a chain of events that led all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — and beyond, to statehouses around the nation.
Her parents pushed for a law that would allow the state to keep persons convicted of sex crimes locked up beyond their sentence time if psychiatric professionals conclude the offender is likely to strike again. Other states, including Missouri, Arizona, California, Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin, followed with similar laws.
The earliest high-profile crimes in Kansas were war crimes — Civil War crimes.
William Quanttrill's raid on Lawrence was the most famous incident of that time but McCoy would rather talk about a contemporary of Quanttrill's. Confederate guerrilla "Bloody Bill" Anderson, from Council Grove.
"He would ride into battle alternately crying and quoting Bible verses," McCoy said. "He kept scalks on the bridle of his horse."
A series of murders committed by the Bender family of Labette County, in southeast Kansas, drew national attention in the late spring of 1873.
But on Oct. 5, 1892, the gang's ambitions plan to rob two Coffeyville banks at once went awry. Five gang members rode into the southeast Kansas town; four died in the ensuing gun battle.
And in the last decade of the century, the Dalton Gang — which maintained a hideout at Meade, in southwest Kansas — made a name for itself with a series of robberies.
Dodge City plays up its Wild West heritage — Wyatt Earp and Bastmaster enforced the law there — with a "Boot Hill" museum, complete with a hanging tree.
The best-known Kansas killers of the century are most likely Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, hanged for the 1959 murders of four members of a Holcomb family — and immortalized in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."
Other writers in the true-crime genre have mined Kansas for material.
More recently, the story of the Rev. Thomas Bird of Emporia and his lover, Lorna Anderson — and the murders of their respective spouses — was made into a television miniseries.
Translators help find health options for minorities
The Associated Press
WICHITA — Sofia de la Pena speaks only Spanish. Her physician, Lewis Meline, speaks only English.
Yet, during a recent health checkup, Meline was able to tell her the news she wanted to hear — that everything was going well with her pregnancy.
Officials with the Wichita-Senegun County Department of Community Health say interpreters hired to translate during health exams and a bilingual advertising campaign have dramatically increased the number of Spanish- and Vietnamese-speaking clients using the department's services.
During the first six months of 1997, the health department served 470 Spanish-speaking clients, according to department records. During the same period in 1999, the department saw 1,696 Spanish-speaking clients.
The numbers were equally impressive for Vietnamese-American clients, with 152 served during the first six months of 1997, and 735 served during the first six months of this year.
Program director Margarita Hunt hopes to keep them busy for years to come, but she also has to search for ways to keep the program going. The grant that funded the department's three-year Bilingual/Bicultural Program expired at the end of June.
1990, it was a first in Kansas. Hunt said.
Since then, the department has aired commercials in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. It has trained health department employees in basic Spanish and cultural sensitivity, had pamphlets translated, and posted three billboards in, Spanish and Vietnamese to promote health department services.
When the program was launched in 1996, it was a first in Kansas. Hunt said
Officials say cultural differences make it difficult to persuade Hispanic and Vietnamese-Americans to seek health care when they come to the United States. Sometimes they don't know how much care is available.
An increasing population of minority groups in the Wichita area has department officials planning for the future, Hunt said. According to Census Bureau estimates, 10 percent of Sedgwick County residents will be Hispanic-American by 2025, and 4 percent will be Asian-American.
To help meet demands, the health department joined the Multicultural Mobilization Coalition, a new group of 30 Wichita-area health care and social service agencies pooling their resources to help increase health services for minorities.
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