ESPANSIONI DI TESTO

MODULE D - The Dust Bowl and Route 66 (p. 191)

TASK
Read the texts below and say if the following sentences are true (T) or false (F).

1 The Dust Bowl is a kind of tornado.
2 Rainfall is scarce in the Great Plains.
3 Forests are the natural vegetation of the area.
4 Dust storms are created by the cutting of the trees.
5 In the 1930s many farmers had to leave their land because of dust storms.
6 Route 66 is the main road from Chicago to Los Angeles.
7 It is connected to the farmers' migration to California in the 1930s.
8 It is considered part of America's history.

The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a part of the Great Plains region of the southwestern United States. Much of the soil there had been damaged by wind and rain, and many severe dust storms occurred. The soil in this area was subjected to water and wind damage because the protective cover of vegetation was impaired or destroyed through poor farming practices and the grazing of too many animals.
The area included parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma. Rainfall has always been scanty in this region. When rain does fall, it is usually accompanied by strong winds. The temperature rises or falls rapidly. The natural vegetation of the area is short grass, which furnish good grazing for animals, and also helps to keep the soil from washing or blowing away.
Much of the Dust Bowl was sown in wheat during World War I, to meet the great demand for this grain. The wheat, as then grown, did not adequately protect the ground from winds, and the soil began to drift.
The most severe dust storms began in the Dust Bowl in the early 1930s. In 1934 great curtains of dust were carried clear across the continent to the Atlantic coast and far out into the Gulf of Mexico. During such a storm it was impossible to see for more than a few feet, and some persons in the area wore masks to protect throat and lungs. Farmhouses were sometimes nearly hidden behind drifts of dust. Many farm families left the region.

(Abridged from The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 4, by Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, Chicago, Ill.,1963.)

Route 66
Fabled Route 66 is the only road that has become a national monument in the United States (1994). Crossing eight states and three time zones, Mother Road, as John Steinbeck called it in his novel The Grapes of Wrath, linked Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California.
J. Steinbeck's novel, and the 1940 film version, served to immortalize Route 66 in the American consciousness. An estimated 210,000 people migrated to California to escape the despair of the Dust Bowl. Along its 2,248 miles travelled the hopes of a generation of poor farmers who regarded this road as the road to the 'American Dream'.
The highway was started in the 1920s, when road traffic was growing. It was completed in 1938. It entered a period of slow decline in the 1970s and was finally replaced by the Interstate road in 1984. In about ten years a whole landscape disappeared. Along its surviving parts you can see the remains of a whole age: rusty old cars, faded signs, useless machines, and abandoned motels, shops and gas stations.