History Lesson 
Bone Dry
Ruined crops, depleted herds, raging wildfires, and water rationing: I thought I had lived through our most devastating drought forty years ago, but this one may be worse.
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In the San Angelo auctions, some ranchers fortunate enough to have green grass—and there are some, scattered here and there according to the vagaries of rainfall—have taken advantage of low prices to buy younger cows and their calves as pairs to take home, sometimes replacing older cows to “young up” their herds. If the ranchers get rain, they win their bet. If drought retakes their pastures, they lose their gamble, for in all likelihood they will sell out for less than they paid and may have to swallow a feed bill as well.
Up to a point, sheep usually endure dry weather better than cattle, and so far sheep prices have not suffered. Lambs have sold at or near record prices because of scarcity, and slaughter demand from Mexico has maintained good prices on older ewes. Though feed costs are high, fed lambs at $85 to $90 cwt pay out better than fed steers at $60 or $62. For a time in late April, fed steers dropped as low as $55, and feedlots suffered losses of $100 to $150 per head. Feedlot operators say they need $63 to $64 cwt just to break even.
Whether higher costs of production on farms and ranches will eventually translate to higher consumer prices remains to be seen. In theory they should, but in real life the cost of production has little to do with the wholesale price paid to the producer or with the supermarket price of agricultural commodities, except in the long term, when it influences farmers and ranchers either to produce more or to cut back.
Urban dwellers sometimes feel insulated from dry weather’s effects, but this is an illusion. Economic hardship in rural flyover areas and towns insinuates itself into the cities that depend upon those regions for trade. Bank deposits fall off, business declines, and rural customers curtail visits to Dallas and Houston, Fort Worth and Austin. A number of Texas cities, among them San Antonio and Corpus Christi, have restricted water usage as the shortage of rain pinches municipal supplies. Urbanites who muster no sympathy for the farmer’s crop failure may share a bit of his pain when they mourn the demise of flower beds and green lawns. Water usage increases in the summer, at the very time when supply is usually tightest, and especially so during a drought. It is like spending down a bank account when nothing is coming in.
Many of the state’s lakes have already sunk far below capacity. For instance, the Sam Rayburn Reservoir on the Angelina River is rated at 114,500 acres. In mid-May it was down to 80,000 and falling. Many of its boat ramps were closed, the water having receded far beyond them. For the first time in 31 years, Lake Tawakoni on the Sabine River failed to fill during the winter and spring.
The recharge rate for the Edwards Aquifer, which supplies water to about 1.5 million Central Texans, has been down 20 percent in the past year, while usage has been up 15 percent. Drought always focuses more public attention on Texas’ growing water problem and the shortages that appear inevitable in the not-too-distant future, but the plans made in dry times tend to be laid aside when the rains come.
Though some assume the word “drought” to signify a total absence of rain, that is not necessarily so. Even the driest parts of Texas during the fifties received at least a little rain periodically, but never enough for sustained vegetative growth. Farmers would make a crop of sorts, but usually it was far below normal. Rains tend to be spotty during a drought. Once in the fifties I drove through a hard shower, then came out of it so suddenly I had to stop and look back. The line between wet pavement and dry was almost as straight as if it had been drawn using a ruler. I backed my car into the curtain of rain, took out my camera, walked back out into the dry, and took the picture. We used it in the newspaper the next day. A friend in Uvalde told me once that he was having a barbecue for guests in the back yard when it began to rain. They moved to the front yard, where it was dry, and went on with the entertainment.
In drought times it is common for spotty rains to perk up one area temporarily while others remain parched and burned. This May a motorist driving between San Angelo and Fort Worth could see lush green color along the roadside and might wonder what all the talk of drought was about. April and early-May showers had revived grass and weeds, but the soil moisture was shallow. Late-May storms were widely scattered and brought hail damage that negated much of their benefit. Without timely follow-up rains, such temporary relief could be expected to disappear like a summer mirage under a baking sun, leaving shriveled weeds and scorched grass that crunch underfoot like shredded wheat.
For Texans, recurring drought will always be a fact of life. Dry years outnumber the wet ones, especially beyond the ninety-eighth meridian, roughly everything west of Interstate 35. Dryness is the norm; those eagerly anticipated periods of adequate rainfall are the exception. My forebears came to West Texas some 120 years ago, and every generation has struggled in its own way for survival against the dry times.
Many valiant efforts have been made over the years to thwart drought, but most have had limited success if they have not failed altogether. Farmers have seen irrigation as their “drought insurance,” but persistent hot, dry winds can cripple a crop no matter how much water is pumped onto it. Dryland farmers have approached the drought problem by seeking crop varieties that mature with a minimum of moisture. Ranchers have tried various “miracle” grasses, hoping these grasses will outperform native vegetation, but by and large, these efforts have fallen short. Nature’s own selection process has already chosen plants best suited to each area’s soil type and weather pattern.
Government programs are a mixed blessing. Farmers Home Administration loans helped many farmers and ranchers survive the fifties drought after their normal lines of credit had been exhausted. On the other hand, feed-assistance programs were often counterproductive because they had an inflationary effect that outstripped the discounts they offered.
Droughts have also inspired rainmaking efforts, from cereal magnate C. W. Post’s first attempts at dynamiting rainfall from the clouds in 1911 to today’s more scientifically based treatment with silver iodide. This May, cloud seeding was being considered in the Lubbock and San Angelo areas. Also that month, the Amarillo National Bank made its own effort to influence the weather. It began offering a Rainmaker CD, paying 4.75 percent initially and promising to push the rate up as high as 6.75 percent in the event of substantial rain.
It would be nice to see those CDs pay off big.
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