Go Green

By John Sutter

In Sunday’s paper, I wrote about the people of the Oklahoma Panhandle — they’re a gritty, stubborn bunch, who are doing their best to survive a record drought. Last week government forecasters upgraded last week to their most severe category, and old timers comparing the situation to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. (see video at bottom of post; and check out a slideshow with pictures of the drought.)

I talked at length with a man named Millard Fowler, who survived the dirty thirties. He’s 95, and when I tried to call him this afternoon to check in, a friend answered his phone to say Millard was out on his combine, harvesting wheat.

When I last checked in with him on Friday morning, Millard had told me he’d just gotten out of the hospital after having trouble with his heart. He said he was in the hospital overnight, but otherwise was doing just fine. He said he was just getting old.

Then, today, he’s back out on the combine. Friends say he won’t let anyone else touch it.

You find this kind of resiliency, tenacity (even hardheadedness) in many people who live out in Cimarron County, at the western end of the Panhandle. When I first met Millard, we talked for a short while and then I asked him if we could go see his wheat fields, which he says will yield about a third of what they normally do because of the drought. I offered to drive, but he insisted he would. So we hopped in his big, red pickup truck.

“Buckle your seatbelt, you’ll be fine,” the 95-year-old said.

Some people in the Panhandle say this drought will be the end of many farmers and ranchers. Some ranchers already have sold off all of their cattle. Some wheat fields are barren. But there are other locals, like Millard, who downplay the impacts of the drought. Things in the Panhandle have always been hard, they say, and these tough people always seem to find a way to make it through.

They did it during the Dust Bowl, and they’ll do it again now.

Still, even Millard says he’s going to have to lease out his farmland this fall.

He’s getting too old, he said, and it’s too hard to break even without any rain.