Hard Times

Keith and LeRoy Walls, a few years after the difficult summer of 1954. We were raised on a 120-acre dairy, hog and chicken farm in the Ozark hill country. The years 1951 through 1954 were drought years in southcentral Missouri. One July day in 1954, temperatures reached 113 degrees which (over 47 years later) is still our area’s hottest day on record. 

Photo by

  
Margaret Walls  

Written by 
LeRoy Walls 
CEO 

The years 1951, '52 and '53 had been drought years in our area but the summer of 1954 was by far the worst. It was not only dry but had many days with temperature well over 100 degrees.

Our crops were failures, our pastures, ponds and wells dried up during the summer of ‘54. Our one-acre garden produced some food but not enough to feed our family of six. By early summer our family was in a state of crisis. Fortunately, my Dad, Mom and an older brother knew what had to be done and they did it.

My Dad, always the dependable provider, found work in St. Louis. My Mom and older brother, Keith, shouldered the farm work, with help from my two sisters, Carolyn and Donna, and me. My younger brother, Glen, who always reminds me how much younger he is than I am, hadn’t been born yet.

It was during this long, hot summer that I watched a 15 year-old brother become a man. Besides our daily milking chores, Keith and I hauled water daily by tractor from a spring a mile away to water our 12 milk cows. Twice a day Keith used an axe to cut down oak trees. I would then chop the limbs off so the cows could reach and eat the leaves.

Several years later in a vocational agriculture class that was studying food nutrients, several students questioned why oak leaves were listed. The nutrients were slight but this student remembered quite clearly how those oak leaves had kept our small dairy herd from starving one long dry summer.

By mid October in 1954 the fall rains had finally arrived and changed the face of our Ozark fields and pastures back to a wonderful green. My dad found work within driving distance of home and we had so very much to be thankful for. This difficult time had drawn us closer together and made us appreciate the things we did have. It was during this hot and dry summer of 1954 that I was given my greatest lesson on facing the difficulties of Life.

November 1990

12/31/1999