The Dust Bowl

Excerpt 11 of The Comfort Bird, a translation of De treastf ûgel by Hylke Speerstra.

Here the scene shifts back to immigrant family in the Dakotas.

The Twenties … Douwe as the American David puts himself behind the wheel of his third-hand Model A Ford, and Geertsje sits behind her American pedal sewing machine made by Singer. …   Grandma Ytsje, who sticks to psalms and hymns, tries by warnings and admonitions to keep her flock on the narrow path.  “Douwe in a passenger car!  Oh vanity of vanities, it is all vanity.”

…

The courage and the persistence of Douwe and Geartsje Hiemstra were rewarded: … they enjoy a favorable spring three years in a row.  The farm production in the Midwest is doubled, the production of the David Hiemstra Farm as well.  … In the meantime almost every village now has a bank branch.

“Well Geartsje, I’m inclined to make an investment too.”

“Go ahead!”  And there goes Douwe, behind the wheel of Henry Ford’s miracle, on the way to Avon to make an investment.  In the backseat are the twins Nammen and Lolke, born in the snowstorm at the end of November 1919.  …  The twins are already farming their own little place, even if it’s just for fun: their Frisian pedigree is assembled by black-white painted pieces of cow bone.  …

Old doctor Greendale from Avon came up with a nickname for the small gentleman farmers: “The Blizzard Boys.”  The doctor feels attached to these twins; a picture of both boys hangs in his consulting office.

When in the spring of 1925 the twins Nammen and Lolke scurry to the wooden school on the other side of the hill, an upsetting message awaits them.  The teacher stands by the door and says in English: “From now on Nammen will be called Nanno and Lolke Lawrence!”  …

In March 1926 the family gets hit by tragedy.  Brother Jacob, who as a boy of barely four came to America nearly naked, so to speak, loses control of horse and wagon and is killed at age nineteen….  On November 10 another Jacob is born.  And that with Geartsje well on the way to age fifty.  

…

It is Thursday, 24 October 1929, the day that will afterward be known as Black Thursday. The New York Stock Exchange crashes on Wall Street.  …The first thing that father Douwe thinks of is to get his money from the bank in Avon, that very same Thursday. 

Son Nanno some eighty years later: “I still remember, Lawrence and me were sitting in the back of the little Ford, we arrived at the bank and there was a piece of paper on the door – “Closed.”

“The bank is closed, Dad.”

“Is that really what it says?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Then we’re in big trouble, we’ll become dirt poor.”  Douwe Hiemstra is so shaken, he hardly dares to drive home in his Ford.

…

It turns into a grinding poverty.  Nanno in 2012: “...  Dad and Mom had sacrificed nearly everything and crossed the ocean to make a better life.  …now they were caught in a poverty that was even worse than that around 1885 in the Frisian countryside.

…

The drought hangs on. …

If something does grow, like some leaves on a bush or tree, then the grasshoppers approach like an enormous green cloud.  Whatever is left on earth to plunder is consumed in a half hour’s time.  And then the coup de grace is still coming: the dust storms – the Dust Bowl – which are more destructive than the worst snowstorm.

…

Three-fourths of the herd dies from splenic fever and lung disease, and the animals that escape this death-dance contract foot-and-mouth disease.  The milk cows dry up. 

…

Nanne: “And then came the terrible day….  That morning we were about a mile and a half on the way to school and noticed that there was something odd about the sky.  At first we thought there was a thunderstorm brewing; later we figured it was a tornado.  The kids wanted to hustle back home.  But Lawrence and I were about eleven, twelve, and said: ‘Nothing doing, the school is closest!’  So we ran as fast as we could.  And then, all of a sudden, it became dark from the dust storm.  If there hadn’t been a barbed wire strung along the school path, we would’ve completely lost our way.  Fortunately our teacher pulled us one by one inside the school.

…

It went on and on, and then the door sprung open and someone stumbled into the room.  Completely covered with dust, it looked like the devil himself.  I saw that he had blood on his hands and that tears were rolling down his blackened cheeks.

‘Dad!’ Lawrence cried.  And it was our dad!  Nearly blind from the dust, Dad had followed the barbed wire fence.  He wanted to find out if we had made it safe and sound to the school.

…

In the icy winter of the Depression year 1934, Beppe Ytsje Namminga-Wytsma begins to fail; soon she can’t be on her feet anymore.  …

On 13 February 1934, in de darkest time of the Depression, Ytsje Namminga-Wytsma passes on at age 83.  A few days later she is entrusted to the soil of her Land of Deliverance.

…

After that winter, spring follows again, and a summer, and a fall, and a long winter, and then at last some improvement comes. 

…

The Hiemstras regain courage.  …

Nanno hears that there’s a great place for rent near Sharon in Wisconsin.

On December 5, 1941, a Santa Claus (Sinterklaas) evening is celebrated in a new, comfortable place near Sharon.  The voice of Beppe Ytsje can still be heard… “Beppe would say, ‘The crisis has passed, good, a Second World War has taken its place, but that’s happening on the other side of the ocean.’”

Two days after the Sinterklaas celebration the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; WWII had now started for the Americans too.  Only nine days later they’ve located Nanno in the village of Sharon, WI.  He’s dressed in his old overalls with patches over the knees, compliments of Beppe Ytsje, when the mailman personally hands him the draft notice for military service. 

…

Nanno Hiemstra travels with the train to the training camp, Camp Barkley in Texas, …. The military training is super tough and long.  Nanno and Alice (the love he had discovered in the meanwhile) look each other in the eyes and decide to get married.  He is 21 now, she almost two years younger.

…

Life goes on till a telegram reaches them from Wisconsin.  Nanno’s older brother Charles has unexpectedly died from an internal hemorrhage.  Nammen and Alice decide to take a train back to Sharon, WI immediately. … Two days later they stand by the grave of the brother who was also their best friend.  Beside them a young mother with two small children.  Next to them his deeply grieving parents who for the third time must bury a child:. first their twins in Hichtum, then a grown son in Avon, SD, and now again a wonderful boy who already had a family.

And then, that same evening, a farewell at the little station of Sharon, WI.  Mother says: “And now you have to cross the ocean soon to fight to your death.”

“No, Mom, I promise that I will come back.”

…

At the beginning of March 1944, Nanno finds out that he will be shipped out to an unknown destination.  First he may go on leave, back with Alice to Wisconsin.  Then on to the war.

Goodbyes at the small station of Sharon.  “I pressed myself to Alice’s bulging belly. ‘Can you feel the baby?’ she wanted to know.  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I can feel it move.’  She had been expecting for seven, eight months already.

   “And then, at a short distance, I saw Dad and Mom standing there, crying, holding hands.”