Elmer Kelton, of San Angelo, wrote the book, “The Time it Never Rained,” about the seven-year drought in the 1950s. He imagined the droughts of 1893, 1918, 1933, and the big one the the 50s as something that “crept up out of Mexico, touching first along the brackish Pecos and spreading then in all directions, a cancerous blight burning a scar upon the land. Just another dry spell, men said at first. Ranchers watched waterholes recede to brown puddle of mud that their livestock would not touch. They watched the rank weeds shrivel as the west wind relentlessly sought them out and smothered them with its hot breath. They watched the grass slowly lose its green, then curl and fire up like drying cornstalks. . . Why worry? They said. It would rain this fall. . . but it didn’t. And many a boy would become a man before the land was green again.