On at least two occasions I remember, a gigantic calico cloud of locusts as far as the eye could see descended without warning on Dhahran, abruptly turning morning into midnight.
Years later, watching documentary films showing monster dust storms in the American Midwest during devastating droughts in the 1930s (the “Dirty Thirties”), I was struck by how similar they appeared to locust invasions that periodically descended on Dhahran. Locusts—prairie farmers call them “hoppers”—also used to commonly bedevil the American heartland.
When the giant cloud of fat insects fell on Dhahran, the swarm seemed to snuff out the sun. The sound of a billion locust wings flapping sounded like a billion decks of playing cards madly shuffling. In the enveloping darkness, people shuddered, their hysterical yelling adding anxiety to the din. The human apprehension was entirely rational: A dense swirl of locusts can strip a town of greenery in minutes.
Author's Bio: With his recently-published set of colorful recollections, 3,001 Arabian Days: Growing up in an American Oil Camp in Saudi Arabia (1953-1962), A Memoir, Aramco Brat and annuitant Rick Snedeker (Badge Number 199932) joins a distinguished list of Aramcons who have captured their memories of life in the Kingdom on paper. As the title indicates, Rick focuses on his growing-up years in Dhahran as the son of Albert Coleman Snedeker—known as “Big Al” to his friends—a manager in the Aramco Traffic Department responsible for keeping company camps well-supplied with the foodstuffs and sundry necessities of daily life throughout Aramco’s critical growing-up years in the ’50s and ’60s. As Aramco grew to maturity, so did Rick.