A man from the bank arrived without warning one day to load the tractor up onto the bed of a truck. The only sign we’d ever even owned it was the mound of debt it left behind. Around the same time, we could no longer justify the cost of running the Model T. We tried to sell it, but with so many cars for sale, no one wanted to pay a fair price. Henry and I removed the engine and then took out every bit of glass and superfluous metal from its body, making it as light as possible. When we finished, we rigged up a mechanism to fix the horses to it—turning the car into an elaborate cart. Plenty of others had the same idea. We called them Hoover wagons, after the president we loved to blame for our miserable circumstances.

“Come on, Lizzie,” Henry called impatiently, as I petted Jesse’s nose. She was taking us to church that day, and Henry was already in the “driver’s seat,” holding the reins.

Mother beamed at me from the front passenger’s seat, pleased with his enthusiasm, and I sighed and made my way to the back. The week’s eggs were all packed carefully onto the seat beside me, ready to go to the grocer on the way to church. I wiped my side of the seat with the towel before I climbed in. As Henry steered the cart along the drive, dust billowed up around us, and I looked down at the white dress and felt a pang of despair.

“Dusty today,” Mother said, but the ambient dust those wheels were stirring up was the least of our worries. Dust and sandstorms were blowing through with such regularity that we had a whole routine when we saw one on the horizon. Henry would lock the horses in the barn, Mother would hurry to take any clothes off the line, and I’d run from room to room checking that windows were closed. It was Dad’s job to prepare his bedroom for us all to shelter in. By the time we all ran inside, he’d be ready to close the door behind us and put a wet towel down against the gap beneath it. He’d have food and water inside his closet, tucked under a blanket to shelter it from the dust. Dad would hang a damp sheet over the window to catch the dirt that threatened the gaps. On the bed, he’d have a pail waiting with wet dish towels for us to put over our mouths, and a little tub of Vaseline for us to smear into our nostrils. The dirt in the air during one summer storm had irritated the lining of our noses such that we all had nosebleeds for days.