 Well this is a prologue to the time it never rained, which more or less sets the tome for the whole book. It crept up out of Mexico, touching first along the brackish-pacus and spreading in in all directions, a cancerous blight burning a scarf on the land. Just another dry spellmen said at first, ranchers watched waterholes recede the brown puddles of mud that their livestock wouldn't touch. They watched the rankweed shrivel as the west wind relentlessly salt them out and smothered them with its hot breath. They watched the grass slowly lose its green, then curl and fire up like dying cornstalks. Farmers watched their cotton make an early bloom in its stunted top, produce a few half-hearted bowls and then wither. Men grumbled, but you learned to live with the dry spells if you stayed in West Texas. There were more dry spells than wet ones. No one expected another drought like that of 33. And the really big drys like 1918 came once in a lifetime. Why worry they said it would rain this fall, it always had, but it didn't. And many a boy would become a man before the land was green again.