While all native Iowans recognize that any Iowa winter is one to prepare for, some winters become more of a challenge than others. Weather in Iowa, with its unpredictable changes, can be a constant subject of conversation; when.. memories of the weather are recalled, some oldsters tell about the drought of 1894, but most recall the awful combination of severe drought, bitter winters along with the Depression of the early and middle 1930's.

The Great Depression was spawned by the 1929 stock market crash. The Des Moines Register of October 25, 1929, announced in black headlines, "12,800,000 Shares Are Sold," "Police Called, Ambulances Clang as Stocks Crash." In dollars and cents, the loss was estimated at $5 billion, or one-fourth the cost to the U.S. of World War 1.

In 1932 the voting public became disillusioned with the Hoover administration and elected Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt as president. Hard times had already forced a severe strain on the financial institutions throughout the entire nation. On February 2, 1933, due to uneasy rumors and heavy withdrawals, Mayor A.D. Wiese of Manning issued a proclamation declaring a "bank holiday" from January 30 to February 13 for our two local banks, the First National and the Manning Trust & Savings.

A group of prominent local businessmen formed a committee to promote the signing of a depositors' agreement whereby a depositor in either bank would agree to leave 60% of his deposit with accrued interest until such time as the trustees felt the crisis was over, but no longer than until February 1, 1936. The remaining 40% would be assigned to the trustees to purchase the assets and keep the banks open.

The committee was composed of Dr. O.W. Wyatt, J.R. Hansen, J.A. Bruck, Dr. J.J. Sinn, G.A. Rober, Albert Dietz, H.E. Kuhl, F.D. Ross, W.E. Sander, and M.F. Enenbach. Mayor A.D. Wiese served as chairman and J.R. Hansen was secretary.

A mass meeting was called to be held at the Opera House with attorney Douglas Rogers as moderator. Almost fifty percent of the depositors signed agreements at that meeting and with a few more days work, the two banks were reopened.

Then in March, 1933, President Roosevelt declared a national bank holiday.

Resourceful local merchants decided to keep the economy in Manning going by issuing script money. A committee of H.A. Schelldorf, F.D. Ross, and Peter F. Hansen was named to set the plan in motion. The committee selected Hansen to serve as administrator. Merchants paid a membership fee of $5. Trade checks in various denominations were printed, with the names of the participants included. Businesses bought the trade checks and posted a check or note. The plan operated like a co-operative bank issuing its own money. When the banks re-opened the trade checks were redeemed with U.S. currency.

Congress also responded to the need to help the economy with the passage of various acts, such as the NRA, the Relief and Construction Act, which pumped $300 million into various relief programs, to be paid back by the states by withholding federal aid for roads. Another $11/2 billion went toward work projects. Referral to the various acts of Congress by using first letters, such as NRA, ERC, REA, WPA, RFC, NRC, etc., was the beginning of our modern usage of using initials to identify various acts and titles involving several words.

While man used all his resources to negotiate himself through a period of economic problems, he could not maneuver the weather to his advantage and the dry summers took their toll of economic setbacks.

The summers of 1933, '34, '35, and '36 will not be forgotten by those who struggled through them. As the summers got drier the winters became more severe, as though nature was trying to deliver a knockout punch to those already staggering from the economic battle.

Summer saw hopeless scanning of the skies for a sign of rain for parched fields, while chinchbugs and grasshoppers began their invasion of already meager crops. One recalls the migration of chinchbugs across the Airport Road so thick that cars slid as they ran over them. Some farmers dug trenches around their cropland, lined them with tar paper and poured old crankcase oil in them to try to stop the invasion.

Twenty-one states were victims of a grasshopper invation in 1936. Government appropriations furnished money for poison bait to help kill grasshoppers. Carroll County received 1600 sacks

as an allotment which didn't help much. Newspaper headlines carried the news of the searing midwest heat wave and on July 4, 1936, Manning registered 111 degrees. Carroll had a circus that day and the Manning Band went up to appear in the parade but the intense heat prevented their performance. That same day the town of Remsen lost several business blocks in a,big fire and the Ben Franklin store owned by Mr. and Mrs. Harold Goedert (the former Ethel Martens of Manning) burned to the ground. A stray skyrocket also ignited the roof of the H.D. Hinz home here.

Previous summers had already created the nationally publicized dust storms, created by parched land so badly wind blown that dust piled in drifts against fence rows and low farm buildings in South Dakota, Nebraska and the panhandle. Crops in Iowa were hardly worth harvesting and in some instances the corn price was so low that farmers burned corn for fuel.

We still hear stories about the winter of '36. It began the last week in January with a snowstorm and temperature at 25 below zero. Roads were opened again but on February 8 a blizzard with high winds blocked everything. Trains ran 8 to 10 hours late. Two Milwaukee trains were snowbound at Madrid and no mail or newspapers came into Manning for days. Because of blocked roads a coal shortage became evident and by February 13, the Manning schools were closed. Sunday, February 9, the No. 14 NorthWestern train became snowbound one mile east of Arcadia. About 200 men from the area shoveled 25-foot drifts from 5 p.m. until 2 a.m. to clear the train. Radio was the chief means of news from the outside world and all activities involving the extra use of heat were cancelled because of the coal shortage. Neighboring farmers shared supplies and some hitched horses to a bobsled and came to town cross-country and over fences.

The American Legion post appointed Henry Grelck to oversee game preservation and with the assistance of O.V. Schelldorf, Harry Hoffman, Bob Zerwas and Leonard Williams, solicited money to buy grit and feed for the pheasants. The men walked to areas where they could fashion shelters from tree branches and distribute the feed.

Mrs. Peter Roggendorf in south Manning kept a temperature record from January 18 to February 18 and recorded just one day above zero, three degrees. The next day it dropped to minus 27 degrees.

Business in Manning was at a standstill that February. Tractors with scoops cleared a path down the center of Main Street, making a continuous pile of snow along each curb about ten feet high. As a relief from boredom many merchants bundled up, brought a shovel, met at the old fire station, climbed on a truck and went out west or east of town to try to open up Highway 141. They had plenty of chances to do this because the prevailing high winds would blow anything shut over night.

The Wyatt Hospital used about a ton of coal a day. Bill Smith, a maintenance employee, got his truck through to coal mines east of Jefferson but got stranded in a mine shack with some other truckers. Word somehow got to Jefferson and food was brought to them by dogsled. Snowmobiles would have been very welcome in those days.

Farm sales of John J. Struve and Emil Ress were postponed several times and on March 5 the Alfred Vehrs farm sale was postponed due to heavy flooding of country roads and lowlands.

Thus the long awaited spring came but it too presented its problems of excessive flooding and washouts. Still, it was a relief from the rigors of the past winter; little did we realize that the coming month of July would present us with 14 days of temperatures of 100 degrees or above.