By: Diana Johnsen
djohnsen@kcautv.com
It was the summer of 1936. It was hot, humid, dusty and dry, very similar to the conditions we're experiencing today, only worse.
As you can imagine, it was tough for anybody to stay outside, working in the high heat.
So, when Pearl Linden of Moville, did get a break, she wrote.
That summer, she recorded the drought day for day.
"July 5th, never had a worst night. It seemed like it stayed one hundred degrees all night," Pearl said as she read from her diary.
Pearl's diary illustrates many sleepless nights having to "tough it out" without any cooling source or fans.
"To stay cool?" she said. "There was nothing you could do to stay cool."
No matter where you went in Iowa, the drought of 1936 was definitely a hard one to escape.
It was so dry, President Roosevelt himself traveled to Des Moines to hold a national news conference on the heat.
So what ended up being recorded as the second driest summer in Iowa's history, was also recorded as one that Pearl will never forget.
Her daughter Grace said, "I didn't know she had kept any diary at all. And then to have it from that summer, wow. It was really hot, and I understand that winter it was really cold that year too. It was really interested to look through all those entries. I never would have guessed she had done that."
