Life By the Drop: When the Sky Ran Dry
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- Eugene âBoobâ Kelton, 80, is an Upton County rancher and the brother of Elmer Kelton. âFifteen dollars was the price for a ton of hay, and [the U.S. Department of Agriculture] was paying half of it,â Kelton says. âBut whenever the government went to pay more, the producers just raised the price of the feed. So we didnât realize any more help from the government, but the farmers that were growing the feed, they realized a little more profit. Thatâs kind of the way things go.â
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- Sandy Whittley, 74, grew up in San Angelo and is the executive secretary of the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisersâ Association. âThe first year it was âNah, not too bad,ââ she remembers. âAnd then it was a little drier the next year. By about the third year, it was beginning to get really interesting, and then it got really serious. From then on it was just tough.â
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- Preston Wright, 90, has been ranching in West Texas since 1948. He lives in Junction. âIt didnât start overnightâwe just kinda eased into it,â Wright says. âAnd when we got into it, it just stayed for a while.â
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- Mort Mertz, 88, has been ranching in West Texas since 1954. He lives in San Angelo. âIt started out west,â Mertz recalls. âIt tended to get dry out there and not rain, and that lack of rainfall just moved east. My dad kept saying, âWe have these things; theyâll just go about eighteen months. Itâll break.â But thatâs what caught everybody off guard: it didnât break. It just kept on going, and it lasted about seven years.â
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- Brother and sister Nancy Hagood Nunns, 70, and Charles Hagood, 59, grew up in a ranch family that has had operations in West Texas since the nineteenth century. âThere were no ticks in the fifties,â Nancy remembers. âIt was just too dry for them.â Charles has been a banker and rancher in Junction since 1979. âI grew up in Junction and then went into the banking business, and I would visit with men that Iâd always known as carpenters, painters, merchants,â he says. âAnd then visiting with them in deeper detail, Iâd find out that they had been ranchers until the drought. Just like my daddy. The drought drove us to town. And that happened all over West Texasâit drove people to town.
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- Stanley Mayfield, 93, is the owner of the Mayfield Ranch in Sutton, Edwards, and Hudspeth counties, where it was so dry that when his son was born in 1956, he called him âSecoâ (Spanish for âdryâ). âWhen it gets dry, it gets dry,â he says. âYou try to live with it till it rains. And you look every day to see if itâs gonna rain.â
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- Bill Schneemann, 77, has been raising cattle in West Texas since 1954. He lives in Big Lake and describes himself as a âsemi-tired, wore-out rancher.â âAfter my wife and I got married, her brother drove home from Texas Tech through a duster in Lamesa,â Schneemann recalls. âThe first thing I noticed was that his license plate was as shiny as could be. It didnât have any paint left on it.â
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- âBoobâ Kelton had to sell off his herds during the drought of record. âAfter you feed a few years and it doesnât seem like thereâs any relief a-cominâ, youâve spent most all your money on feed, so itâs best to sell âem,â he says. âAnd thatâs what we did. They were all gone, and youâd just look out there in the pasture and there wasnât anything. Kind of depressing. Itâs kind of like losing your children. Itâs just bad. Theyâre part of the family just like everybody else.â
While the drought weâre only now making real progress out of is still fresh in every Texanâs mind, thereâs a whole generation in the state that can remember a time that was arguably more trying.
The drought of record in the 1950s lasted for seven years. Imagine seven 2009s or 2011s back to back and youâll get the idea. It was an event that changed the state forever.
The voices of that drought can still teach us something today. NPRâs John Burnett traveled to West Texas to hear firsthand from the survivors of the drought of record, and in his audio report below (and the slideshow above), you can listen to what those voices remember. And you can read the full story in Texas Monthly.
