Built On The Back Of Hope

I watched a documentary the other day about the Dust Bowl years. I often heard my grandparents and other ol’ timers telling stories about the most epic drought in American history while growing up in my small hometown in Kansas. I remember thinking that they were greatly embellishing how bad it was. It didn’t really click with me until I watched this documentary recently how very wrong I was. Yes, major dust storms really did turn day into night, bury homes, barns and animals in graves of deadly dust, and created static electricity that built up so much between the ground and airborne dust that blue flames leapt from barbed wire fences and knocked people shaking hands to the ground. One of the things that really jumped out at me while watching the Dust Bowl documentary, besides the horrors that these people endured, was the fact that those people, those farmers and ranchers who stuck it out, became known as “the next year people” - people hoping against hope, and isn’t that what true survival is all about. There are those that find this kind of hope fool hardy, but without hope what are we? If generations of people before us had not had hope, where would we be? Progress is built on the back of hope.