Allen Thrower

I spent part of the summer of 1947 in Andrews. It was desert country. The air was hot & dry there. When one sweated, the moisture dried instead of making soggy clothing. I loved that dry climate! I loved to hear the wind sing in the eves of the houses or in the wires between the telephone poles. It was a spooky sound, but somehow it just sounded like home to me. I loved it!

I hadn’t been in Andrews long when a carnival came to town. David Brown and Bobby and I went to it. They had all kinds of fun things to do. We were there a long time and were having a really good time. One thing I liked was shooting the moving ducks with a rifle. (The bullets were .22 shorts.) We were all good at that. Suddenly the mood all around us changed. It seemed as though panic had seized the entire carnival all at once. People were yelling and running every which way. Many people were running away from the carnival, toward their cars. Everyone was running. Everyone! All the games and rides stopped, and the carnival people were closing up their tents as fast as they could. But, it was too early in the evening for closing time. What was wrong? Bobby looked up and pointed at the sky. A hundred feet above us the town lights and the carnival lights lit up huge fast-moving boiling clouds of red, and sounds I had never heard before roared out at us. It was really scary! I had no idea what was going on. Bobby yelled out, “It’s a sandstorm!” Half a minute later it hit with all its fury. Vision was down to just a few feet. I was scared, but Bobby and David took us all to a safe place. I don’t remember anything else about that night except having learned that everyone there had proper respect for those sandstorms. This was only my first one, with many more to come.

Not long after that I was walking west from downtown on the highway toward home. One of those sandstorms hit suddenly, and I was surprised at how strong the wind was and how thick the sand was in the air. A car pulled off the road just ahead of me and the driver motioned frantically for me to get in, so I ran and got in. It was a very hot day. Inside the car the temperature was almost unbearable; but outside, the storm was even more unbearable. There were times we couldn’t even see the hood ornament on the front of the car. The sand blew for a long, long time that afternoon.

Another time I was walking somewhere when a sandstorm hit. After a few minutes it began to rain. The rain, wind and sand stopped almost as soon as it started. It was a very brief storm. But the white shirt I was wearing was now sand-red, and the red color really never did wash completely out of that shirt.

Sandstorms were an oddity, but I can’t say I ever got to where I enjoyed them. I recall one storm that lasted for three days and nights. Daytime temperatures in the house were 105 degrees, and the dust was so thick in the house we wore wet handkerchiefs over our mouths to breathe. Like wearing a fur coat on a hot, hot day, it really felt good when we were finally out of it.