The Worst Hard Time

Egan shifts back to the diary of Don Hartwell in this six-page chapter. Hartwell makes a little money on the Kansas-Nebraska border playing piano songs like “Don't Know Why, There's No Sun Up in the Sky,” which echoes his own fatalistic attitude. Examples of his fatalism are found in his April 4 entry: “contrary to popular belief, very many of the things we live in fear of DO happen,” and his June 22 entry: “Bad luck seems to follow me '' (275, 277).

Most of Hartwell's diary entries center around his failure to raise corn. Hartwell writes, “All the alfalfa and corn I put in last year was utterly destroyed by hot winds except a little fodder on the bottom,” and “Some Russian aviators flew from Moscow to California over the N. Pole today, that would be easy compared to raising corn in Webster C., Nebraska” (277). Hartwell struggles not to lose both his farm and his wife.

This chapter revolves around the late 1930s and the concluding stories of Egan's featured characters in Dalhart, Texas.

By 1937, Dalhart County has the largest and most exemplary soil conservation demonstration in the country, but the town experiences another serious black duster in 1938.