The date was January 3, 1931 and times were hard across the South. Months after the stock market collapsed, drought hit the mid-west. Dust clouds blew the plowed soil into the air creating billows of dark grit in the sky. Thousands of people packed up and moved from the parched lands of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas. Those remaining faced hard times as the crops that they relied on for food and income produced such meager fare that there was nothing to eat and no money to buy more.