It's on a Sunday afternoon about six o'clock. And we was gittin' prepared to go to church and went to church in a team and wagon. And I'd gone out to kinda tend the chickens and stuff and back in the north it was just a little bank, oh, like about eight or ten feet high. We had one of those headers out on each end, you know. And I did a few things there around the chickens and everything and went back in the house and I said, "Dad, we ain't goin' to be able to go to church tonight." And he said, "Why?" And that's how fast it's travelin'. And we was livin' in an old house that was 14 feet wide, 36 foot long, just one room, board and batten with a washed roof on it. It kept gittin' worse and worse and wind blowin' harder and harder and it kept gittin' darker and darker. And the old house was just a-vibratin' like it was gonna blow away. And I started tryin' to see my hand. And I kept bringin' my hand up closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and I finally touched the end of my nose and I still couldn't see my hand. That's how black it was. And we burned kerosene lamps and Dad lit an old kerosene lamp, set it on the kitchen table and it was just across the room from me, about -- about 14 feet. And I could just barely see that lamp flame across the room. That's how dark it was and it was six o'clock in the afternoon. It was the 14th of April, 1935. The sun was still up, but it was totally black and that was blackest, worst dust storm, sand storm we had durin' the whole time.

A lot of people died. A lot of children, especially, died of dust pneumonia. They'd take little kids and cover 'em with sheets and sprinkle water on the sheets to filter the dust out. But we had to haul water. We had a team and we had water barrels. We hauled stock water and household water both. And we didn't have the water to use for that, so we just had to suffer through it. And lots of mornin's we'd get up and strain our drinkin' water like people strain milk, through a cloth, to strain the debris out of it. But then, of course, a lotta grit went through and settled to the bottom of the bucket, but you had have drinkin' water. And when you got you a little dipper of water, you drink it. You didn't take a sip and throw it away, because it was a very precious thing to us because we had to haul it.

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