November 4, 2016 | Three songs from the Kat Eggleston’s play “The Cyclone Line”.

RAIN
My father was born in Michigan in 1923. When his family moved back to their original home in Oklahoma five years later, dad met kids who had never seen rain. This song is a recounting of his attempts to describe rain and the difference it could make to the dry devastation of the
dustbowl.

AFRICA
As a kid in the dustbowl, dad used his terrific imagination to color aworld that had gone grey. Because of Tarzan and another favorite character in the Sunday comics, he loved to pretend that the landscape around his house was actually Africa. I picture him talking to his youngest sister,
trying to bring a sense of adventure to her life.

THE CYCLONE LINE
In the Oklahoma dustbowl, the telephone was often called the cyclone line. It was a party line, stretched over the barbed wire fence, and the when cyclones or dust storms kicked up, the neighbors would all get on the line, their voices becoming ghostly and distant as more of them joined in. The image is a powerful one that I use to listen to the voices of the past and bring them forward to our lives today.

Filmed by Michael Monteleone.