Waiting, And Praying, for Rain

By MARGARET CARLSON

Los Angeles restaurants are placing a picture of a glass of water on diners' tables instead of the real thing. Ohio's Governor Richard Celeste, surveying his once lush farm fields, sadly compares them to "sand dunes." In the South, where all outdoor watering has been banned, residents are using "gray water" -- what is left after bathing and showering -- to sprinkle plants and flowers. Along the normally wet Columbia River basin in Washington and Oregon, there is not enough water to irrigate all the fruit orchards.

It is not the Dust Bowl yet, but the country's midsection and parts of the South and the Great Plains are suffering through the worst drought since 1934, when farmers in protective masks watched as whole fields of crops simply blew away. Without substantial rainfall soon, Secretary of Agriculture Richard Lyng said, the country's farms could become a national disaster.

The weather report is not encouraging. Says National Weather Service Meteorologist Lyle Alexander: "We're not looking forward to a great deal of shower activity." The spring wheat crop in the northern Great Plains could be salvaged if rains come in the next week or two, but a large high-pressure ridge makes that unlikely. Crops are surviving now on moisture stored in the soil. "There's about two minutes left in the game," says County Agent Carl Wilbourn of Leflore County, Miss. "But there's still a chance."

) Already commodity prices have soared. Corn and soybeans are at a two-year high. Livestock, with nowhere to graze and no water to drink, are being sent to slaughter early. The sudden glut of meat on the market has caused hog prices to fall 10% in the past three weeks and feeder-cattle prices to plunge 9% in five weeks; even so, consumers will soon face higher food costs.

The drought is also depleting rivers, lakes and canals, ruining recreation areas and threatening inland transportation. On the Great Lakes, ships are carrying 5% lighter loads. River gridlock has hit the mighty Mississippi. As spring water levels reached their lowest point on record, 1,200 barges were stranded after they ran aground at Greenville, Miss. According to Michael Logue, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, twice as many barges could become mired this week, creating the aquatic equivalent of a "traffic jam of semitrucks bumper to bumper from New Orleans to Philadelphia."

Fire is an ever present danger. Lightning in the eastern Sierra Nevada has sparked more than 80 fires. In Wisconsin, where 87 fires charred 250 acres last week, the state has ordered a ban on all types of outdoor fires, including barbecues and cigarette smoking, in rural areas.

Cattle raisers have appealed to Secretary Lyng to allow haying and grazing on "set aside" land -- acreage that farmers took out of production this year to be eligible for Government price supports. The Secretary has responded by opening such reserved lands in more than 1,000 counties in 24 states. If the drought continues, the Federal Government may dip into its store of surplus feed grains -- 1.3 billion bushels of corn and 563 million bushels of sorghum, oats and barley -- for sale to distressed farmers at reduced prices. Lyng told the Senate Agriculture Committee last week to wait and see what the full impact of the drought is before taking any further action. In the meantime, he recommended appealing to a higher authority. "The best thing for us to do," he said, "is pray for rain."

Many drought victims were doing just that. South of Toledo, 200 farmers prayed while a priest shook holy water on the crops and blessed the fields. In southeastern Iowa, 150 farmers gathered in a public prayer session; two days later they got 1.1 in. of rain. In Clyde, Ohio, the locals have paid $2,000 to Leonard Crow Dog, a Sioux Indian from the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, to perform a rain dance over the weekend along with eight of his tribesmen. Whether or not their gyrations produce a shower, it will take a heap more praying, dancing -- and raining -- before the drought-stricken farmers can breathe easy again.

With reporting by Gisela Bolte/Washington, with other bureaus