I wish Father could find work and that Mother didn't have to work her fingers to the bone, just to try to keep the dust from settling in our house or on our clothes ....

We live in Oklahoma.  Times are bad.  Real bad.  We haven't had rain in weeks and everything is drying up and dying.  The days are the same: sunny, with extremely hot temperatures and now dust storms have started, coating everything with sand and turning skies as black as midnight.  It is a terrifying time.

Since the stock market crashed, people are leaving the Plains in droves, going to places further north and east.  Jobs are going belly up and people are ending up losing their homes or their very way of life.  My father, he used to sell cars; now he couldn't sell a tumble weed to a jackrabbit if he tried.  His car got taken away 'cause he couldn't keep up with the payments and now our cupboards at home are nearly bare.  I'll be lucky to eat the rest of this week, the way things look now.

I'm scared we're gonna lose our home and end up on the streets like the bums we see when we go to church or to the market.  I seen whole families livin' in shantytowns or in tents, even small kids like myself or little bitty babies.  

Father has been going to the soup kitchen in hopes of getting a meal, but the lines are too long; he usually ends up coming home, a look of sheer dejection on his face, and then having to tell Mother that he couldn't get any food today.  He has been asking people to spare him some change so he can get food, but most people, they'd as soon want him dead or to stop bothering them: they are more worried about themselves than to help a feller in need.

It's very frustrating.

Maybe I can find some work to do, even if it means sweeping the floors at Doc Martin's office or stamping post cards at the local post office.  I would love to be able to help my family out, but I'm only a kid.  I'm only thirteen, not even a man yet.  What would grown ups want with me, a snivelling, poor-as-dirt kid who only wants to help his struggling family out?

I am ready and willing to take anything, even if it means working in a coal field or a factory.  I can work hard and I am very good with my hands!

~To be continued.~