The Drought of 1936

The Des Moines Register looks back at the worst drought in Iowa in recorded history:

Irma J. Long of Woodbury County wrote a journal entry on July 18, 1936, expressing the distress in her state. The document, on file with the State Historical Society, provides a glimpse into rural life before air conditioning, electricity and running water.
“Heat, heat, heat!” she wrote. “It stifles and burns and saturates everything. The beds feel actually hot most of the night. The furniture, too, is not immune. Sometimes we seek stools or chairs without backs in order to get away from the heat on our backs. People all over the countryside are sleeping out of doors, for the houses do not cool off in the evening.”
Morris Stamps, 96, remembers sleeping outside in the yard of his Seymour farm, close to the house or on a porch. He still lives on the farm today.
“The house never cooled down,” Stamps said. “You had an old cookstove, and you had to use it to make meals. There was no refrigeration or deep freezes like they have today. We had to can food for the winter. There was no relief. You just endured it.”
Heat ravaged farm animals as much as humans. Many farmers still plowed with horses and mules. The intense heat caused fatigue, shortening the animals’ workdays and lifespans.
“The chickens would just die — right in the yard,” Rose Stoops of Grinnell told Iowa Public Television in an oral history given in 1979. “I had my hens walk from the house to the (water) pump ... and die on the way. They just flocked around you when you came out the door — they wanted water. Boy, our well went dry, and we hauled water up out of the creek. Oh — I’ve never seen such time. If my husband would have come in and said all the livestock lay down and died that night, I wouldn’t have been surprised because it seemed just one thing after another.”

I generally remember they didn't have air conditioning back then, but I often forget they cooked on wood stoves.   It is really hard to imagine today.