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for farmers, and 100-degreeplus temperatures parched the prairie powder-dry from mid-June to mid-August.
Frazzled and flushed, persons hoped for cool nights of "only” 80 degrees. Farm ponds dried up. The Great Lakes' water level dropped a foot. A newspaper photo of an egg frying on the sidewalk became a sign of the times. Electric fan sales boomed, and "air cooled” movie theaters—often the only places in town that were—became havens for the hot and bonanzas for the owners.
Forty thousand families were dusted out between the Mexican border and North. Dakota during the years of the drought. And in 1934, in August alone, 1,500 persons died from the heat.
On Broadway, Irving Berlin immortalized the obvious with Ethel Waters belting out, "We’re havin’ a heat wave, a tropical heat •
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