LyrArc Article Gist
Steinbeck describes a universal truth in the way human beings respond to long periods of agricultural plenty in wet years followed by the dry years and drought. In the economic crises such as the boom and bust years in the economy of countries people tend to forget about the rich years during a bust, and in the wet years or boom years "lose all memory" of the devastation wrought during the dry years. Some are seared by the dry years, as Jill Ker Conway, as she describes leaving the western plains of New South Wales, Australia, where she lost her father years before in an extended drought. She describes her story in "The Road from Coorain." She is looking for the dry years for a final parting years later and only finds a wet period. Yet she remembers everything that happened here in the drought years. In 2006-2007 thousands of farmers on the western plains of New South Wales and Victoria suffered a drought that lasted 11 years in a row. Jill Ker lost her father in 1944 in the drought that started in 1941.