L to R: Cleophus McNutt, wife Nellie Cowdrey sons Grover and James C.
Myrtle and Dorathy Mae in Porterville, California 1932
My grandfather is Grover Hershal “Pat”
McNutt. He was born January 13, 1916 in 
Grover’s father,
Cleophus
McNutt worked as a farmer in those early years.
Then the Great Depression came and the American Bread basket turned
into a Dust Bowl.
"The Dust Bowl was the result of a series
of dust
storms in the central United
States and Canada from 1931 to 1939,
caused by decades of inappropriate farming techniques, with buffalo
herds that fertilized the soil displaced by wheat farming, followed by
a severe drought.
The fertile soil of the Great
Plains was exposed through removal of grass during plowing. During
the drought, the soil dried out, became dust, and
blew away eastwards, mostly in large black clouds. At times, the clouds
blackened the sky all the way to Chicago,
and much of the soil was completely lost into the Atlantic Ocean. This ecological disaster
caused an exodus from Texas, Arkansas,
Oklahoma, and the surrounding Great
Plains, with over 500,000 Americans left homeless. Many migrated
west looking for work." - Wikipedia
Buried machinery in a Dallas, South Dakota farmyard
"My
father, like so many thousands of others during the depression, was
following the harvest looking for work.
Those
that were able had a regular route
around the U.S.
Florida,
Texas, Southern Calif, up the coast to Yakima, Washington.
He was in Yakima in 1936, where he met and
married my Mother,
it seems it was her idea to get married."- Carl McNutt
was the daughter of Swedish immigrant Karl Bro.
Grover and Effie were married June 1, 1936 in
From that union came the
three children
Dawn, Carl and Evelyn Roberta born
February 8, 1943.
Grover and Effie [Bro] McNutt
with their three children
Dawn, Carl and Evelyn
Grover did different kinds of work as
others
did in the wake of the Great Depression. He eventually moved on to
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