The Worst Hard Time

Egan has an abundance of references to children suffering from the disastrous effects of the Dust Bowl throughout The Worst Hard Time. Children become victims of either cruel weather conditions, poverty, desperation, or their parents' emotional trauma. The son of the German Russian immigrant George Ehrlich, Georgie, dies as thick airborne sand blocks a car's view, and the car runs over Georgie. Both Hazel Lucas Shaw's baby, Ruth Nell, and the abandoned baby Shaw finds in a coffee-box across the street die of dust pneumonia.

Egan gives numerous accounts of abandoned and neglected children. In Don Hartwell's private diary, there is a case of a baby being abandoned: “In Chicago, a man offered to give his baby so he could keep his car and, of course, there is much righteous indignation. But at least he dares to be honest. I'll bet anything that thousands of others would do the same thing, if only they dared to and could” (275). Many parents are unable to supervise their children, so many children “ran the streets, dirty and hungry” (167). Egan gives a detailed account of how a destitute thirty-five-year-old widow is found wandering the streets of Dalhart, babbling incoherently. Her children are forced to be separated from their mother when the judge commits her to an insane asylum.