Gene's right in saying no one who is trying to explain today's problems has mentioned the Dust Bowl adding to the problems of the Great Depression.
Our daughter (history major) sent me a book on the Dust Bowl. The price of wheat was good in the late 1920's and millions of acres of native grasslands in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and southern Nebraska were plowed up to be planted in wheat. Anyone who had a tractor and plow was in great demand. Kids as young as 12 were making big money by borrowing their father's or grandfather's tractor and putting in 12 hour days plowing up grassland that should never have been touched by a plow. Then when the drouth came, the soil was unprotected and began to blow in dust storms.
I was born in 1934 and can remember the tail end of the Depression and drouth years, and the financial stress my parents endured. Every Saturday, they took their eggs, cream, and other produce to town, sold it, and bought supplies and groceries for the coming week. They considered themselves secure if they had $3.00 left over each week.
For the last several years, I've been appalled watching HGTV when they would follow young couples buying their first house. These kids would buy a $300,000 house with zero down and an adjustable rate mortgage, interest only initially, to balloon in several years. They were upside down when they signed the papers. You could give them a written guarantee they'd be on the street in two or three years. And that was before prices declined and their house lost a fourth of its value.
I'm normally an optimist, but I have this edgy feeling the worst is yet to come.
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Today's Featured Article - Chores - by Frank Young. The ceaseless passing of time! It is at once our friend and our enemy. It measures our progress and it makes us old. Like most features of our life, few things are all good or all bad, and most such judgments depend on our own perspective or viewpoint. In our particular hobby, we enjoy the nostalgic return to the days of our youth as we recreate many of the scenes that took place on the family farm that served as the stage for the first few acts of the play that is our live
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