episodes in human history when fortunes were said to go only one way.
"The uncertainties of 1919 were over," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald,
the most insightful chronicler of the hubris of the 1920s. "America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history."
For a young family casting about for a way to make good money out of nearly nothing to start, the dryland wheat game looked like an easy gamble.
Indeed. The self-described wheat queen of Kansas, Ida Watkins, told everyone she made a profit of $75,000 on her two thousand acres of bony soil in 1926âbigger than the salary of any baseball player but Babe Ruth, more money than the president of the United States made.
Hazel Lucas married the boy she had fallen for, Charles Shaw, when she was eighteen. They were both schoolteachers, but Charles wanted to try something else. They left the Panhandle for Ohio in the spring of 1929, driving up through the Midwest in their Model-T Ford. At one point, the young couple from a county without a stoplight found themselves in downtown St. Louis with a broken car, in a river of traffic. Horns honked, people cursed, and Charles and Hazel looked at each other and laughed. They made their way to Cincinnati, where Charles studied mortuary science. Hazel took to the city. She visited Cincy's National Zoo, parks, museums. By the end of summer, the Shaws were low on money, and they decided that Hazel should return to Oklahoma while Charles stayed on at the school. She had arranged for another teaching job, which came with extra duties as a school bus driver. Hazel took the train home, arriving in early September 1929, a time when the country was in a fever of fast moneymaking, and the Oklahoma Panhandle was busting its britches. Hazel was going to get a teacher's job that paid enough to save some money. She wanted to start a family, too. Stepping off the train in Texhoma, she walked a few steps away from the tracks and spun around, staring out in every direction at the big land, the soft light, with the smell of wheat loading from elevators. The sky, the horizon, the earth itself had no end. She knew she belonged in No Man's Land; the lonely prairie felt
right.
Women were scarce in No Man's Land, so much so that a newspaper advertisement was placed in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
by sixty-five
"lonely men with dugouts and a willingness to work." One of the bachelors, Will Crawford, lived alone in his hole in the ground outside Boise City. He had come west from Missouri on the free train, but he had never found a bride and did not do much to prove up his land. Crawford was a rare sight: a fat man on the prairie. He was fatter than any man in three states, it was said. When children tried to guess his weight, he would never reveal the exact amountâsomewhere between 300 and 700 pounds, he said. A farmhand, Will worked for all the food he could eat.
The fat man sat for lunch at the table of his neighbors one day, consuming a meal of sausages, potato soup, and canned tomatoes. When he was done, he reached into the front pocket of his bib overalls and produced a slip of paper.
What to think of this? He showed them the note:
"Wanted, a real man. Sadie White, 419 Locust, Wichita, Kansas."
Crawford's overalls were so big they had to be ordered special through the general store, which received them from the clothing factory in Wichita. Sadie worked in the factory and had been taken by the size of the garment. Will was curious about the note but afraid to write back; the postmaster's office was in the general store, and they might intercept the letter and tease him. He summoned all his courage and wrote to Sadie White, sending the letter from another location, in Texhoma. Months passed. Then during the wheat harvest, the big man was spitting watermelon seeds through his mustache after an enormous dinner, when he mentioned that he might build a house next to his dugout. It seemed odd; he had never before shown much ambition beyond what to
"The uncertainties of 1919 were over," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald,
the most insightful chronicler of the hubris of the 1920s. "America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history."
For a young family casting about for a way to make good money out of nearly nothing to start, the dryland wheat game looked like an easy gamble.
Indeed. The self-described wheat queen of Kansas, Ida Watkins, told everyone she made a profit of $75,000 on her two thousand acres of bony soil in 1926âbigger than the salary of any baseball player but Babe Ruth, more money than the president of the United States made.
Hazel Lucas married the boy she had fallen for, Charles Shaw, when she was eighteen. They were both schoolteachers, but Charles wanted to try something else. They left the Panhandle for Ohio in the spring of 1929, driving up through the Midwest in their Model-T Ford. At one point, the young couple from a county without a stoplight found themselves in downtown St. Louis with a broken car, in a river of traffic. Horns honked, people cursed, and Charles and Hazel looked at each other and laughed. They made their way to Cincinnati, where Charles studied mortuary science. Hazel took to the city. She visited Cincy's National Zoo, parks, museums. By the end of summer, the Shaws were low on money, and they decided that Hazel should return to Oklahoma while Charles stayed on at the school. She had arranged for another teaching job, which came with extra duties as a school bus driver. Hazel took the train home, arriving in early September 1929, a time when the country was in a fever of fast moneymaking, and the Oklahoma Panhandle was busting its britches. Hazel was going to get a teacher's job that paid enough to save some money. She wanted to start a family, too. Stepping off the train in Texhoma, she walked a few steps away from the tracks and spun around, staring out in every direction at the big land, the soft light, with the smell of wheat loading from elevators. The sky, the horizon, the earth itself had no end. She knew she belonged in No Man's Land; the lonely prairie felt
right.
Women were scarce in No Man's Land, so much so that a newspaper advertisement was placed in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
by sixty-five
"lonely men with dugouts and a willingness to work." One of the bachelors, Will Crawford, lived alone in his hole in the ground outside Boise City. He had come west from Missouri on the free train, but he had never found a bride and did not do much to prove up his land. Crawford was a rare sight: a fat man on the prairie. He was fatter than any man in three states, it was said. When children tried to guess his weight, he would never reveal the exact amountâsomewhere between 300 and 700 pounds, he said. A farmhand, Will worked for all the food he could eat.
The fat man sat for lunch at the table of his neighbors one day, consuming a meal of sausages, potato soup, and canned tomatoes. When he was done, he reached into the front pocket of his bib overalls and produced a slip of paper.
What to think of this? He showed them the note:
"Wanted, a real man. Sadie White, 419 Locust, Wichita, Kansas."
Crawford's overalls were so big they had to be ordered special through the general store, which received them from the clothing factory in Wichita. Sadie worked in the factory and had been taken by the size of the garment. Will was curious about the note but afraid to write back; the postmaster's office was in the general store, and they might intercept the letter and tease him. He summoned all his courage and wrote to Sadie White, sending the letter from another location, in Texhoma. Months passed. Then during the wheat harvest, the big man was spitting watermelon seeds through his mustache after an enormous dinner, when he mentioned that he might build a house next to his dugout. It seemed odd; he had never before shown much ambition beyond what to
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