The Ancestors: Final Chapter

Neither the children nor I had been near a railroad nor a store since we went out in April of 1914.  When Clyde got home he felt somewhat better.

Clyde's uncle and aunt, both dentist in Sioux City had urged me to come to them to have my dental work done.  Aunt Clara did children.  I was all ready when Clyde got home, so he took Mildred and me to the train right away.  Uncle Will did my work and I spent two or three hours every day in his dental chair.  They were taking care of their two little grandchildren, so had a good baby sitter who also took care of Mildred while I had to leave for my appointments.  It was very hot in the city, but after dinner Uncle Will took us all for a ride in his big Cadillac to cool off.  Both he and Aunt Clara were just wonderful to me and my baby, but as soon as my work was finished I felt that I must go down to Kansas and get Ruth and Richard and take them home.

The children were so glad to see me -- they had never been away from us for so long and seemed to me to have grown in the month that they had been with their grandparents.

Grandpa Decided to go home with me, which was a pleasant surprise.  Clyde had been lonesome while we were gone and didn't seem at all well.  He and his father did a lot of talking and I knew they were discussing perhaps selling our home, cattle and all.  It had taken so much work and planning to get where we were that I could hardly bear to think of leaving it now.  But our country was into the war, and beef cattle were higher now than they ever had been.  We had several offers for our section as soon as people heard that we were thinking of selling.

That fall is kind of a blur to me.  I think that when one survives something that hurts badly, he or she tends to try to forget.  That place had meant our own home and independence to me and I loved it.  First we sold the cattle, then the horses.  I so hated to see the little grey team that Clyde bought the year before we were married, leave the place.  They seemed to know they were leaving when I went out to tell them good-bye.  Clyde hated to part with Chap, his good saddle horse.  We even sold our house goods.   But we did keep Beauty.  Clyde crated her and shipped her, express, to his father, who was to care for her until we got back home.  I don't like to remember how I felt, leaving that place in the Grant car that Clyde had bought.  We stopped at Grand Island for a day or so to visit the Corls and Rosses, who were busy with their new "Basket Grocery Stores."  I bought a few clothes while there and we went to our first good picture show -- "The Birth of a Nation."

I had decided to go back to Illinois to visit my parents and sister who had recently moved back there.  It was really like going home to me, for I had spent my grade school years in a suburb of Peoria, Illinois.  My folks were on a farm across the Illinois river from Peoria and my sister and her family in the little town of Washington, 10 miles east.

The Breakup of the Family

Clyde was tired and thin when we got back to Kansas, but seemed happy to be home where he was born and raised.  I went to visit my family very soon after returning to Kansas; Ruth went to the country school for a few weeks and got sort of regulated.  The teacher put her in the fifth grade and she did very well.  Her teacher thought she was a very bright little girl -- she was so interested in everything.

The new home in Marysville

Clyde came back at Christmas time to take us back home.  Oscar (Tara's note: my great grandfather) and his family had moved to Marysville so there was an empty house for us. We had left the best of our furniture stored in the barn loft when we went out to the homestead so we didn't have to buy everything.  Clyde was much better and had promised his father that he would stay to him until they got the new house built that Grandma had wanted for so long.  It hadn't been very noticeable but as spring came on and the work on the new house was begun, Grandpa didn't seem as well as usual.  He tried to cover it up -- a mean cough had developed and he got tired so easily.  He was only 60 years old and had never been sick and wouldn't acknowledge that he was sick until the middle of the summer.  Clyde's sister had come home from her music teaching in Chicago to help plan the house and influenced her parents to build a much more elaborate house than they needed.  When it was finished Grandpa was much too ill to enjoy it.  He died two weeks after they moved in.  It was a hard blow to the family.  Pearle had a floral piece made for the funeral that symbolized the effect it had on the family.  It was in the form of a wheel with spokes but no hub in the center.

First Grandma decided to go home with Myra, the older half-sister of the other three.  Then Pearle went down to Kansas University to take a years work that she expected to use.  Oscar hadn't done too well with his garage in Marysville and decided to go to California where Ada's parents and sister had settled.  It left us to take care of the home and stock until the family members had time to decide what they wanted to do.  It really took two years, but they finally made up their minds to sell everything and each go his own way.

Clyde also had the automobile bug and wanted to try his hand at working on them.  I have always thought the the automobile ruined two well-trained farmers and stock men.  Neither one of them were geared to the tough competition of the city.  They had grown up in a sharing, uncompetitive life among relatives and friends.

We moved to Sioux City, Iowa, and Clyde went to work for a big Dodge dealer.  He handled men well and always was made foreman wherever he worked.

********
Clyde Ray Tilley
Graveside service for Clyde Ray Tilley, a resident of Portland for the past 40 years, will be at 1 p.m. Monday in Lincoln Memorial Park.  Mr. Tilley, born October 8, 1884, in Frankfort, and died June 17 in a local hospital.  He was retired from Billingsley Pontiac Co., where he had been body shop manager.

Lois Elizabeth Tilley
Born January 20, 1890 in Peoria, Illinois, was one of four children of Arthur and Nellie Patee.  The family moved to a farm in Kansas about 1896.  At 17 years of age Lois attended Teacher's Institute and for a year taught in a one room school house before marrying Cyde Tilley, the son of a neighboring farmer.

In 1914 they set out with two small children for a great and challenging adventure as homesteaders -- a rich source of many stories she wrote in later years.  They stayed for four years, one year more than required to prove their claim.

By 1922 there were four children, Ruth, Richard, Mildred and Frances.  They moved to Iowa, New Mexico, and finally to the Pacific Northwest where they remained.

Lois died January 10, 1987 and is survived by a son, Richard, and a daughter, Francis.  She was a loving grandmother of nine, great grandmother of thirteen and great-great grandmother of two.

The Ancestors, Part 21

This country was really into the war by the summer 1917. Grandpa wrote that the oldest grandson had enlisted in the navy and that government buyers had commandeered several of the big black walnut trees for the manufacture of gunstocks.  It wasn’t long until the army discovered our big mules. 

Clyde didn’t want to give them up, but finally did, so we had to buy a team of horses.  We were becoming more aware of what the war was doing to our country.  Prices were going up on everything and there was a grim shadow spreading over the entire country, even penetrating our isolated position.

Floyd Corl decided to go back to Grand Island, Neb., his original home, to go into the grocery business with his brother.  The Rosses also decided to move to Grand Island.  We had had an opportunity to buy a section of wet valley (land that was low enough to be covered with water in the spring but was dry by fall) and would cut hay enough for winter feed for about as many cattle as we planned to run for the next four or five years.

I had an uncle in Waterville, Kansas, who had money and whom I knew would loan us the cash to buy the section.  He even sent the money out to the Keystone bank, but the rancher suddenly changed his mind at the last minute; he found out that we were kinkaiders and he had been mad at the government for opening up the land to homesteaders, so he wouldn’t sell to us.  We had to send the money back to Uncle Will.  Clyde was so disappointed that it really made him sick, I think.  He didn’t try to get others to play music with him after the Corls and Rosses left in the early fall, and had lost weight so the first time he went to Keystone he went to a doctor who told him that though he might have T.B.  That really scared us.  T.B. was not controlled at that time and Clyde’s older sister Myra, had developed it several years before.  He decided to go back home to the doctors there that he knew and trusted.  I had been planning to go to Sioux City, Iowa to have my teeth taken care of so Clyde decided to take Ruth and Richard with him to stay with his folks.  He would find out what was the matter with him, come back to the sand hills alone, then I would go to Sioux City, have my work done, taking Mildred with me and go down to Frankfort, pick the children up and come back home.  That way one of us was there to take care of the stock all of the time

The Ancestors, Part 20

Our third Christmas was spent with the Corl family and Possum Ross.  Mrs. Ross (Rossie) the children called her, had been called back east to be with her daughter who was very ill.  Possum got us a real Christmas tree that year.  We drove up to their place the day before Christmas, which happened to be Sunday, so we stopped at the school house for Sunday school on the way to the Corls. We took the children's gifts and the xmas decorations my mother had sent the first year and spent a wonderful Christmas eve, and the next day together.  During the we had a beautiful white frost the decorated every building, every fencepost, even the ugly barbed wire.  I never had seen such a thick white frost before.  It just transformed everything.  Clyde had to go back home Christmas to take care of the animals, but came back early.  The children had a wonderful holiday and we had lots of music.  Christmas night the musicians played for a dance in Arthur.  I stayed with the kids and had a tooth-ache.  I had had a good deal of that ever since Mildred was born, but we were 45 miles from a dentist and it didn't seem possible to make the long trip.  Fortunately we didn't have much candy to promote the pain.  I had started out with such good teeth, but lack of dental care and probably not the proper good during pregnancy.
Clyde bought a young pig each fall to feed and butcher soon after the holidays.  We made a smoke house out of a big box and smoked our Bacon and hams, made sausage.  We also made sauerkraut.  We had learned home to make craut from Clyde's mother.  It tasted especially good out there.
We named our pigs Tipperary from the wartime song.  The children always made pets of them and it was hard for them to lose them when we butchered.  I had to help with the dressing of the animal the first time we butchered, because Gene Wilson didn't show up when Clyde was ready for him.  A hog has to be scaled and scraped and after the processed is started, it has to proceed.
I didn't want the children to watch us and had them settled on the other side of the house, but we got so busy that I didn't see them watching.   When we finished, there they were, having cried while the watch the whole process, but not loud enough for us to to hear them.  Children on the farm have to learn some hard lessons.  I am surprised now that they seemed to forget them as they grew older.
Clyde often cam in on winter afternoons and and, "If you will stir up some doughnuts, I'll fry them" and while I fried the doughnuts, the children waited for the little round balls that were the holes.  We read a good many books.  Clyde like to read Zane Grey.  He hadn't read very much as a boy and I liked to have him do it.
Ruth learned to play my guitar that I never mastered.  She couldn't reach around the neck of the instrument, so she laid it flat in her lap and pressed the strings down in the right positions.  Clyde show the chords and she was able to play with  him.  We knew that she needed a piano at that age, but it wasn't possible at that time.  Clyde made a diagram of the key board of the piano, so she could learn the names and positions of notes.  By the time that we did get a piano she was really ready for a teacher.

Next week:  a long wrap up (first of two parts) as the ancestors move on with their lives, beyond the farm.

The Ancestors, Part 19

The third fall that we were out there we had another rather frightening experience.  Clyde's little dance band had a job at the Flats where the Haines' son had built a new hall.  They decided to all go together for Mrs. Corl's two daughters were going and a young school teacher, who lived near the Rosses.  I still stayed home with my three children, although that time they urged me to go.  They put two teams on the wagon I remember. 

Another photo of the ancestors in a wagon

The next morning, when I woke up at about four o'clock they hadn't returned, but when I looked out the window I saw them coming and quickly dressed and started a fire in the range to heat water for coffee for them.  By that time they were at the door.

At least Possum Ross was at the door -- the others were all too sick to get our of the wagon.  Grandpa and Grandma Tilley were there and as soon as I saw how ill Clyde was, I got them up.  They had been served chicken sandwiches and coffee at midnight and started home soon after eating.  Possum had gotten sick first but walked behind the wagon, threw up and felt better.  Mr. Corl and the girls hadn't eaten much; Mrs. Corl detected a peculiar taste and warned her girls not to eat much.  They were mildly sick, but the teacher and Clyde, Mrs. Ross, too, were desperately sick.  They wanted water but were going through cattle range.  Finally they came to a small lake and got Clyde out of the wagon, only to have him go into such severe pain that they loaded him back in the wagon and came as fast as they could to get him home.  Grandpa was very good to help.  They got Clyde inside and in bed but he was almost unconscious.  A young doctor had established himself in Arthur, the new county seat, so we tried to call him on the phone, but it was out and didn't work.  One of Clyde's nephews had come with his parents.  He and Jim Matuska, our neighbor from Cheyenne got on Beauty and Chap and started to ride the telephone line till they found one that would work.  While they were doing that we fixed warm mustard water and poured it down Clyde first, then Mrs. Ross and the teacher.  It made them throw up of course, but Clyde had evidently eaten more than the others, or was more susceptible to the poison and he was so sick.  The doctor finally came with a stomach pump and pumped both Clyde's stomach and the teacher's.  The boys had fixed the telephone wire and let Floyd Corl know so he came and got his family and, the the Rosses took the teacher home.  Clyde was all right by the next morning, but it was frightening for a while.  But always it seemed we were looked after.  There was no other security.  There were others who had been poisoned that night on the chicken sandwiches.  It as warm weather and evidently the food hadn't been as fresh as it should have been, but we didn't hear of it being fatal to anyone.

(My note:  some things don't change much.  A couple of years ago after a wedding I, and others, suffered from food poisoning.  It started about 3 a.m. and I was violently ill for six hours.  So was the mother of the bride!)

The Ancestors, Part 18

Our little herd was increasing each year.  Clyde built a corral joining the shed that he had put up the first year, so that we could hold them if we had really bad weather.  The third winter we did have a couple of really bad blizzards.  One that I especially remember:  Clyde had promised Floyd Corl that he would go with him to buy some horses down near McCook, about a hundred miles south of us.  The day they left, in a little Ford with no top that one of Floyd's friends had about and wanted to try it out.  The day they left was a cloudy rainy day in January, really quite warm.  Clyde put a big load of hay on the hay rack and told me if it stormed not to turn the cattle to graze, but to call Bud McMullen and ask him to come down and pitch it into the corral to the cattle.  Ruth drove the cattle in that night and I shut them in and milked our one cow that was giving milk at the time.  When I was putting the two little ones to bed, I noticed that it was colder in the bedroom and it had begun to snow a little.  After the children were asleep, Ruth and I decided to go outside and put Beauty in the barn.  She was huddled against the house.  We brought in extra fuel and I let down the curtains in the chicken house to keep in the heat.  It had definitely turned very cold.

http://community.agriculture.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/501i3CA66B84F1596444/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&px=-1

The next morning the thermometer was down to zero and a north wind was blowing.  Although sheltered as we were by the hills on the north and west sides, we did not get the full effect of the cold north winds.  I did not turn the cattle out to graze but called Bud on our wire fence telephone.  He didn't get over until noon.  The thermometer had continued to drop and by that time it was 20 degrees below zero.  The wagon which had sunk in the wet ground when Clyde drove it into the barn lot was frozen tight and Bud's team could not move it.  He had to chop the wheels out with an axe.  So the cattle were fed that day and we expected the horse buyers home the next day.  But although they started home that day, they did not get home.  They left on Monday, planning to get home Wednesday.  It hadn't snowed enough to cover the grass too deeply, so Bud advised me to turn the cattle out.  They immediately drifted down to the hills in the south, out of the piercing wind.  When Clyde didn't get home by 4 o'clock I decided that we would have to get the cattle back to the corral.  It was 32 degrees below and I had to keep a hot fire going in the house.  I really agonized over whether to go myself send Ruth.  She was much better at driving cattle than I was , and Chap didn't seem to mind the blanket that I folded length-wise and put in the saddle to wrap Ruth's little legs in.  I knew that it wasn't the safest way to ride but the cold was just biting.  I had chosen Clyde's trained cattle horse for her to use for he would know how to urge the cattle on against the wind.  I wrapped Ruth up until only her eyes were showing and she was as confident as Clyde would have been that she would get back all right.  After it seemed like a long time to me, I could see her coming.  Old Chap was going back and forth, keeping the herd together and urging them once in awhile by biting them on the tail.  I wrapped up, put the little ones in the window to watch me go out to get them inside the corral and get the gate shut and Ruth in the house.  She was as happy as a bird and not too cold.  She said she "grinned" all of the time for fear her face would freeze, which we thought very funny.  It was very hard to milk the cow in the cold, but I tried.  I had never milked a cow until we went out there, but it was always a two day trip to Keystone so I had to learn: cows have to be milked twice a day and the children needed milk.
We had about a dozen pullets (young hens) that were just beginning to lay and I had to go out to the hen house every hour to get the eggs or they would be frozen or burst open.

Clyde had left on Monday, and Thursday came with no word of them.  Bud told me to turn the cattle out each morning and they would head immediately for the south hills where there was good buffalo grass that was good winter feed.  Ruth went after them each night.  I was worried all right, but knew that Clyde was warmly dressed:  wool underwear, shirt, socks and pants, a calfskin coat and fur gloves, and he was resourceful.  Mrs. Corl didn't have the faith that I did and was sure that the men were frozen to death somewhere.  Thursday night, the p hone rang and it was Clyde, worried about how we had fared.  They had had a rugged time all right.  They had started home the second day, but the first little gully they hit, the icy wind-shield broke, so they had no shelter from that vicious north wind and had to take turns driving and walking.  They stayed all night in a herders camp that night and got as far as an abandoned Soddy the next night.  Thursday night they got to the end of our telephone line and got in touch with their worried families.  It was a bitter experience that had a happy ending.

Next week:  food poisoning followed by Christmas.

The Ancestors, Part 17

A farm, photo from Nebraska Studies Organization

That summer of 1915 was full of problems -- a new baby, the arrival of the cattle, the tragic fire, the house moving and the building of the new school house.  Grandpa came out for a week or so and helped get another barn built for the horses and a shed for the cattle.  We didn't want to risk losing any in winter storms.  I'm afraid I've run this story a little ahead of time.  We didn't get Beauty until the early spring of 1916.  Ruth didn't have anything to ride the winter after the fire.

Grandpa and Grandma Tilley came out the fall after the fire and Grandpa must have helped Clyde with the finances, although I just don't remember any details.  At that time the Tilley men kept finances to themselves.

In the spring of 1916 we got a real carpenter to help us put our two frame buildings together, making a large kitchen out of the frame room that Clyde had the first fall and using the two rooms of the Haines house for the bedroom and living room.  In the L formed by joining of the rooms Clyde added a nice porch where the children could have a swing and a sheltered place to play.  Clyde's mother had sent out a new rag carpet for the living room.  It was bright and cozy looking and I was happy to be organized again.

While our neighbor was still out on his claim he helped Clyde dig a "cyclone cave."  They plastered it on the inside and put a strong wooden door on it, so if we needed to shelter from a bad storm we would have it.  It also provided wonderful storage space for our winter supply of root vegetables.

I'm afraid I didn't appreciate Clyde's energy and ability to create the many conveniences that he added to our home, with few tools and no professional training except working with his father at home.  He added shelves and cupboards to the kitchen and paneling to the wall board ceiling.

Our country was getting more and more involved in World War I,  although the news was always several days old when it reached us, I don't think that it seemed as real to us as it did in the populated areas where the boys were drafted and being trained in the neighboring camps.  Even the cow boys were not drafted in the sandhills for they were involved in important work: that of raising beef to feed the army.

The Ancestors, Part 16

Our cattle had done very well during the summer.  All but one of the young cows had had a nice calf and they had grown so fast.  I love to see the calves all lying in the sun on a little flat sunny place that their mothers would leave them.  When they had had their naps, just like all babies, they would all stand up and bawl for their mothers.  Their clean little white faces and tiny white curls on their tails -- they were so cute and their mothers would come running around the hills from where they had been feeding.  These were not milk cows, but were just raised for beef.  We had brought two milk cows and a couple of heifers that we hoped would make good milkers, but only the two older cows were really good to be milked.  Most of the time we had plenty of milk but there were two or three times when we were low on enough milk and would have to get butter for a neighbor.  We had a cream separator and I remember how all three children would catch the warm separator milk while Clyde was turning the crank.  I used a wood churn with a wood dash that I worked up and down.  To keep milk and cream cool I put it in half gallon jars, sealed them up tight and dropped them in the barrel that the cold pumped water ran through to the cattle tank.  When I wanted to churn butter I would take the jars of cream out in the evening, mix them together and let it stand until morning.  We always had cool nights out there.

We took a washing machine out with us, a wooden tub on legs with sort of a milk stool fastened to the underside of the wooden lid.  When the lid was closed there was machinery on the top that revolved the milkstool in the water in the tub and cleaned the clothes if one turned the wheel long enough.  It was better than rubbing everything on a washboard to get clothes clean, as our mothers had done.  But it fell off the wagon in moving, breaking the wheel off and couldn't be fixed, so I had to use the wash-board after all.  The water was so much better than we had had in Kansas, soft and clear, that I didn't mind too much.  Of course all of the water had to be carried from the windmill and

I had to heat it on the stove in the kitchen in a big copper boiler.  Clyde made me a good bench for my wash tubs and I had a hand ringer.  Not much like our beautiful electric equipment these days.  Clothes had to be hung on the line and out doors, no matter what the weather was, but I learned to heat my clothes pins in cold weather.  It kept my hands warm and kept the clothes from freezing on the line.

When my dear Aunt May Talbot, back in Kansas, heard about Ruth's little horse being burned up in the barn, she sent her a check to buy another one.  Clyde heard of some ponies, half Shetland and half Welsh, being raised up in Grant county; he decided to go up and look at them.  He brought home a little grey mare, only two years old.  She was pretty wild for awhile, and we had to send to Denver for a saddle to fit her, but she soon became a member of the family.  We kept her in the house yard because she seemed so lonesome.  She had never been away from her mother and the little herd of ponies where she was raised.  She tried to go home several times.  Once she got several miles away, for people would think she was a lost colt and let her through their gates.  She finally learned to love the children and always wanted to share their snacks, anything that they were eating she wanted.  Mildred was just learning to walk and would get up and walk under her, but Beauty never once stepped on her.  When Ruth first started to ride her she threw her several times over her head.  Ruth would get right back on and let her go as fast as she wanted to  They soon learned to understand each other.  She would let all three children ride around in the yard on her back, but we never let them try it out in the valley.  She learned to help drive the cattle when Clyde needed help.  Ruth loved to help her father drive the cattle.

The Ancestors, Part 15

That fall, we also had some uninvited company.  Dwight Ingalls and his wife drove their new Ford up from eastern Colorado.  He said he didn't let us know because he didn't know whether his car would make it or not.  Cars were just beginning to be used then, and there were no roads built for them yet.  It was just at the time when ducks were migrating south.  I had never seen them come into the lakes out there, and Clyde took us all up to see them come in and land on the lake at sundown.  They made a cloud.  I had never seen anything like it.  He and Dwight went back the next day, too Don to retrieve what they shot and brought back all that we could eat.  I picked the down off and saved it for pillows.

As soon as the school house was finished, a teacher was needed of course.  There were only about a dozen youngsters and wages were very low, so it was not easy to find a teacher, but one of our neighbors had a certificate that was still good.  She also had a little two year old daughter, but she took the job and her husband tried to take care of the baby.  When he just couldn't have her with him, he brought her down to me.  It was too far for Ruth to walk to school alone, and in the cold weather, so I kept on teaching her.

We had a much better organized Christmas that year, were home alone on Christmas day, but went to the Corls' for New Years day.  They had two daughters, 14 and 15 years old, a pair of twins Ruth's age, a boy Richard's age and a baby Mildred's age.  They had come out from Grand Island for Floyd's health with only the two older girls and taken a homestead north of the land in the drawing.  The were educated, gentle people, and we enjoyed them very much.  Evidently they had income coming to them fro back home, for Floyd was not a rancher.

After Christmas that year, some of the Kinkaiders go together and decided to try building a telephone line using the barbed wire fences.  Clyde had helped build the rural line that led to their home back in Kansas, so he knew how to put the insulators on the wires and they used poles to carry the wire over the gates.  They built it to the new county seat and it really worked unless some nosey cow went through a fence -- then someone had to ride until he found the break and mended it.  It was wonderful when it worked.

The Ancestors, Part 14

Thirty-five for Thanksgiving Dinner

The house consisted of two good-sized rooms with a double partition between them that made closet and cupboard space.  It made a lot of closet room, which I surely appreciated.  The walls had been lath and plaster but the jerking of the move had cracked the plaster unit it all had to be removed.  Clyde found plastering much more difficult than carpenter work.

We were still able to live in the sod kitchen and living room.  We also used the frame room that Clyde had built for a bedroom, so for another month Clyde had time to put up all of the hay that he could cut in our valley and the pockets between the hills.  That was his main problem: to have enough winter feed.  The owner of the steers that we were taking care of took them to a feed lot, so we didn't have them to worry about.  The weather stayed nice so that Clyde was able to get another little barn put up and a long shed built to protect the cattle in the coldest weather.

All of this time there were dances that were really part of our living.  Clyde had found a good drummer and he found a fine piano player.  She was the mother of six children and glad to be doing something with her music.  "Possum" Ross, the drummer, had a section about five miles from us, and Grace Corl and her husband Floyd live about nine miles away.  I don't remember what Possum's real given name was for even his wife called him Possum.  They were both nice families and we became good friends.

Another big job came up that fall.  There were more children now and the state had set aside land for a school house in our area, but the Kinkaiders, as were were called, had to haul the building materials and build the school house ourselves.  Clyde hauled load of lumber and bought winter supplies while at the railroad.  He bought flour enough to last all winter, canned goods that we would need, kerosene for our lamps and lanterns, two big five gallon cans of it.  We also bought some coal that fall.  I guess it was because Clyde didn't have the time to pick up chips.  They didn't get the school house started until the first of November, but the weather stayed good and by Thanksgiving they had it enclosed and made plans for a neighborhood Thanksgiving dinner in it.

By this time Clyde has plastered the Haine house.  I think it was the hardest job that he tackled out there, for he didn't really know how.  I mixed the plaster and kept the children out of the way, and he finally got onto the knack of it, and we moved into the two rooms for the winter.

When Thanksgiving day came it turned out to be a cold windy day and the men working on the building that morning decided that it would be too cold for children, so Clyde asked them to come down to our house to eat.  Of course I had no way of knowing the change of plans and was getting the children wrapped up for the trip when the gal that Clyde said he'd send after me came in and said they were all coming down to our house.  I had chickens, salad and pie ready and of course every one else had food.  We put all of the leaves in the dining table and I got out a long linen table cloth and really had a wonderful dinner.  We fed the men first so they could go back to work, so we had to eat in shifts, but it was a nice way to get acquainted.  I have always looked back with pleasure to the time that we had thirty five guests for dinner, that we hadn't planned for.

The Ancestors, Part 13

Our Barn Burns

As Clyde was harnessing the mules, Gene Wilson rode up and stood in the barn door talking to him.  Then we loaded into the wagon and started out, around the west hills.  We noticed a group of hunters stop at our windmill to water their horses, we thought, but that was customary out there.  After we had gone about a mile, Clyde turned to look back and saw smoke rising over the hill from our buildings.  He turned the mules around and used the ends of the long lines to put them into a little run.  The children were in the back of the wagon and I raced out and put my arm around Richard, but Ruth was straddling a short extension of the center beam of the wagon in the back.  All I could do was say, "Hang on tight!" and she did.  The ground was so bumpy that most youngsters would have fallen off, but not Ruth.  When we got in sight of the buildings, the barn was a mass of flames.  Our dear Molly horse and her 6 month old colt were in it and our valuable young Hereford bull also.  Neighbors had seen the smoke and were there in no time to help us carry water to protect the house and the grass around the house.  Prairie fires were so easily started in the dry grass and could run for miles.

I will never forget the shock of that fire -- the loss of Molly and her cute colt, and also the very valuable head of our herd.  Clyde had tied him up for a few days.  His stall had a strong post in the center and he was tied to it, that way he got some exercise going around it.  When Grandpa had been there a few weeks before, he had hung an old vest on a harness hook in that stall.  We thought it possible that the bull had knocked it to the floor and trampled on it.  Grandpa smoke a pipe and always carried matches, the big wooden kind.  The restless animal could have stepped on a match and set fire to the straw on the floor.  The only other possibilities were careless smokers.  Clyde also smoked at that time and Gene Wilson had stood in the doorway talking to Clyde as he harnessed the mules.  Neither thought they were smoking at the time.  There was the possibility also that one of the hunters who we had seen stopping at the windmill had gone into the barn, but there was no way of knowing how it started.  I have always been thankful that it didn't happen when I was alone with the children.  I think that I would have tried to save the animals and the little barn went up in flames like a cardboard box.

The plans were all set for that big job of moving the house the next day and Clyde decided to go ahead with it.  The neighbors all came with their teams and by noon they had it as far as our valley.  I had dinner ready for them, then they back for the last mile.  It was easier than the morning pull for there were smalls hills to get over, but the valley was comparatively smooth.  It was slow work moving those poles that the house was rolling on.  Finally they got it in our yard and leveled on some railroad ties that Clyde has for that purpose.

Next week: Thirty-five for Thanksgiving dinner.

The Ancestors, Part 12

The year of 1915 turned out to be a very cool wet year.  But it was good for the grass and the garden. We had beautiful lettuce, radishes, carrots, peas, beans, tomatoes, cabbage, onions and lots of potatoes. Potatoes and all root vegetables all came out of that sandy so so clean; no muddy washing after they were gathered. We had a very bad wind storm one night, probably a small tornado that took the roof off the nice big living room.  Clyde was watching the storm and opened the outside door just as the wind hit.  He had Richard in his arms and I was in bed with Mildred.  Clyde got the door shut and I grabbed my baby and with Ruth in tow we went into the little sod kitchen.  We opened out the table.  I had brought the bedding off my bed with the baby, so we made the children comfortable on the table and the next day we carried the we furniture out in the warm sunshine and Clyde put a new roof on the living room.  It was two or three layers of tar-paper over wide boards held in place with strips of sod. We had plenty of that, thank goodness.

Clyde had an opportunity to pasture a small herd of steers for a small rancher and we had plenty of razing land for both our little herd of forty cows, because we had Jim's section fenced, too, now.  They did cause us some trouble with our garden.  One night just before dark, Don began to bark and found one of the steers had leaned so hard on the wire fence, trying to get at the cabbage, that he pushed it down and was in our precious garden.  Clyde put extra pots and wire on that side.
Grandma Tilley had sent us seeds of the wild cucumber that grows abundantly in Kansas. I planted it all along the east side of the sod kitchen.  It grew fast with the plentiful rain and soon covered the outside to the roof.  It was a pretty vine that had small white flowers in the fall.  It really looked beautiful, but coming home from Sunday school on day, Clyde notice that the whole wall was leaning outward.  Then we knew that it wasn't going to last very long.

Mr. and Mrs. Haines had decided to move back to Omaha in the fall and offered to sell us their little two room frame house, so we were looking forward to having to move it over a long stretch of quite rough land.  Clyde did tackle the most complicated jobs out there with the most confidence.  I don't think I appreciated his abilities then.  He got competent neighbors to help him and used the tools that he was able t assemble in the area.  Somewhere he found sound old telephone poles and with those for rollers and with the equipment and six teems of horses, he planned to move the Haines house.

Then the first tragedy that had come our way happened.

Next Monday:  Our Barn Burns.

The Ancestors, Part 11

Spring of 1915 and a New Baby

After Christmas we began to plan for spring.  Nearly all of the Kinkaiders except the Haines and the Wilsons had gone home for the coldest months.  Few of them had any stock yet so they were not tied to their places.  The Sunday School was deferred till spring, too.  We had a few books and the Wilsons had a whole library with them and kept us supplied with reading material.  Clyde liked to read aloud and when he wasn't busy outside he would read while I sewed or ironed.   My work went on, no matter what the weather was.  Ruth was so anxious to have school that we put a little back board in a corner in the little kitchen and every afternoon we had school.  I had the magazines that I used the year that I taught school and we ordered a primer from a teachers catalogue that I had.  Sometimes I had Richard in my lap while we had class but she never let me forget her school.
Another thing that we did once in a while was to make doughnuts.  Clyde would come in from the cold snowy afternoon and say, "If you will make the doughnuts, I'll fry them." so the children stood by to get the little round holes when the were cooked.  It is a good thing we were young and healthy.
There was one thing that was beginning to be very evident and it was something we hadn't planned.  We found out that I was pregnant in the fall before Grandpa went back home.  It was something that we had hoped wouldn't happen out there 45 miles from a doctor and in the first year out there.  I had not told my parents, for I knew that my mother would worry about me, be we just prayed that when the time came we would find help.  Faith is a wonderful help, and I had a great deal of it.  We were comfortable and well -- the children didn't even have any colds that first winter.
We ordered seed catalogues and poured over them, planning a big garden.  Clyde fenced a plot below the water tanks, so it would be easy to put water on it if it got dry.  He also build a cold frame to get plants ready to out early.  We had a nice warm March and planted early.  Then April came -- so did the rains.  Our baby was due to put in an appearance the last of April.  Then in answer to our prayers, Clyde heard of a nurse who was visiting her sister about 10 miles north of us.  He rode up to see her and she said she would come when we needed her.  She, Miss Frederickson, was a registered nurse, about 40 years old, who had delivered babies before and seemed competent.  Also her sister knew of a girl whom we we could get to do the housework for us.  Miss Frederickson offered to come a few days ahead of my time and it was well that she did for it was pouring down rain the morning that Mildred decided to make her appearance.  I have to wonder where I put every one at night, but we had cots that could be folded up during the day and I had made green muslin curtains to divide the living room so I would have some privacy.

The Ancestors, Part 10

The weather stayed beautiful that first fall until after Thanksgiving.  Then suddenly we had winter snow and very cold weather.  There was an older couple on the section cornering us on the northeast who had come out from the east to be near a son who had a little store and a post office in a place about 15 miles east of us.  Clyde and Mr. Haines had made  couple of trips to Keystone together and Mr. Haines had helped in the Sunday school so when their son planned a turkey shoot in early December, the Haines asked to go over to it with them.  It turned out to be much colder when we got out in the valley and when we got to the Haines place, Mrs. Haines had a supply of nice turkeys on hand and a Blue rock machine.  They didn't shoot the turkeys, but shot the rocks and they were shot out of the machine.  Clyde had done that kind of shooting back in Kansas and was lucky enough to get three turkeys, which he won by good shooting.  Gene Wilson had ridden over, but he didn't get a turkey, nor did Mr. Haines, but we kept one and gave the other two to our neighbors.  Mrs. Haines cooked hers for Christmas and had the Wilsons and us to dinner.  Then I had them all for New Years and cooked our turkey, and Mrs. Wilson followed with her turkey dinner a week later.

Our First Christmas in the Sand-hills

Getting together with our older neighbors on Christmas was ok for Clyde and me, but the children were expecting Santa Claus.  We had a little program at the tiny tar paper school house and Ruth sang her first little solo, accompanied by her father on the violin.  She had been practicing around home so loud that we had to quiet her but before the little audience she started out almost in a whisper but soon got her voice and sang all four verses very well.  All the way home she especially talked about Santa Claus coming and we were just heartsick for the few things that we had ordered for they hadn't come, nor a package from the grand parents.  I had written to my mother in Illinois or a doll head (we could buy such things then) and some overshoes for both children around Thanksgiving time.  My folks were living near Peoria, but I didn't realize how hard it was for them to get to the city.  Anyway, nothing had come.
When we got home from the program, Clyde saddled his horse, picked up a big sack in hopes for some mail at the box, two miles away.  He was playing for a dance at Arthur that night so had to hurry.  When he saw the packages piled up around our box he realized that he would have to make a second trip to get everything.  We put all of the boxes in the frame room which we used for a bedroom that winter, and after the second trip it was time for Clyde to leave for Arthur.  Ruth was so excited to see so many packages, so I let the children stay up for awhile.  In my mother's box, there were many flat packages of Japanese paper holly when opened and out I really decorated our living room.  We festooned strings of paper holly from the center of the room to the corners and hung a big red paper bell in the center.  My mother had included some of the lovely ornaments that we had used on our xmas trees when I was child, but we had no tree so I took the books out of the shelf over the double window, lined the shelf with cotton and pretty Christmas scene with the decorations, a couple of little deer and a sleigh.
By that time Ruth was tired and little Richard asleep, so I got them to bed and unpacked the rest of the boxes.  I put the head on the doll body.  There were dolls from Aunts for Ruth and toys for Dick, and clothes for both children - the overshoes that I had asked for full of hickory nuts from my father's trees.  I worked until midnight putting things together and enjoying the first Christmas that was a complete surprise.   Clyde was surely surprised when he came home.  He hardly had a hours sleep until the children were awake and having to show him what Santa had brought, then the chores had to be done, too, but he slept some before we went over to the Haines for dinner which was a real treat for me especially.  I so seldom had a meal I didn't cook.

The Ancestors, Part 9

Prairie Dogs and Other Animals

When we first saw the prairie dog "town" on the McNamara place we were very interested in the fat little animals, but as we saw the damage that they could do we were glad that there weren't any on our land, but by fall we were surprised on morning to see three or four of the little hills that they made when they made their burrows, and almost overnight there were a dozen of the hills.  A group from the big town had decided to start a new town.  After the first dozen or more they seemed to quit coming and Clyde didn't do anything to get rid of them until the next spring, when he poisoned them with liquid gas put on corn cobs and into the burrows and the entrances and exits sealed up.  We never had any more move in on us.  That fall when Lloyd was out there he spent hours trying to shoot one, but they were too quick for him.  He never got one.

Long billed Cerlew

We missed the little owls though.  They sounded so cheerful.  But we had meadow larks the year around, and they sang all winter, too.  Sometimes it seemed like there was a meadow lark on every fence post.  Then there were cerleews, a large bird with a wing spread of nearly two feet.  Once when we were riding along, Clyde spied some baby cerlews beside the road and brought one to the wagon to show the children and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the mother bird flew a Clyde's face, snapping her long slender bill.  He put her baby down in a hurry.  I have read since that there are very few of them left.  There were chicken hawks to menace our nice big chickens in the summertime, too.
In the fall there were just millions of migrating ducks and geese.  Once in awhile a flight would light in our valley, but they mostly settled on the lakes ten or fifteen miles north of us.  Clyde used to take our dog Don with him to go into the water to retrieve the birds that he shot.  I had a big roaster that just held six small teal ducks or three big mallards or redheads.  I always pick the down off the birds and saved it for pillows.
Clyde had brought Don home when he was just a puppy when we lived back in Kansas.  He was a short-hair English pointer.  His mother was fine hunting dog and when Don was old enough Clyde used to take him down to Pottawatomie county to hunt quail with him.  He trained easily and I got my first demonstration of his skill one Sunday afternoon when we started up to look a the area that we were planning to build on.  We were horseback, Clyde riding one of the little grey team with Ruth on behind him and me riding the more gentle one with Dick in the big saddle with me.  All of a sudden Don made a point, nose straight ahead, right foot raised and tail straight out behind.  Clyde hadn't brought his gun, but he put Ruth on behind me and told me not to move, and tore back for his gun.  My horse stood still as Clyde thought he would and when he got back, Don was still standing in the same position.  Clyde walked up slowly behind Don and then Don too some steps toward the prairie chicken that was crouched in the grass, until the bird flew up and Clyde got it.  Then Don turned toward another chicken that he could smell and flushed it out.  He did this until he had raised eight birds.  When there were no more, he obeyed Clyde's order to pick them up and bring them to him.  I had never seen such work by a dog.  He wouldn't work for anybody else at first, but we had a neighbor, the young man who had drawn the section that joined outs on the north, who spent a great deal of time and our home and seemed like family to Don.  His name was Jim Matusy, a railroad man for Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Jim had built a little one room sod house, that he lived in the required seven months until he proved up on his land.  He loved our kids, read the funnies to them.  He made a deal with Clyde to let us run our cattle on his section in exchange for help in fencing his place.  Clyde had wire and posts enough to fence three sides of his section and our adjoining north fence served his, too.  We were expecting a carload of cattle in the spring.  Clyde wanted to run them on Jim's land during the summer months and use our pasture for winter grazing.

The Ancestors, Part 8

The windmill that was in our valley when we arrived was still there after our well was operating, and we really needed one.  Clyde talked to the rancher who owned it, hoping to buy it, but he said, "Go ahead and use it this winter," so Clyde and Bob moved it up over our well and pump.  We had never heard of borrowing a windmill before.  We had to buy a new one the next spring, the kind that controlled itself so that we could leave it on all of the time.  Clyde ran the water into a covered barrel for house use, then into a big galvanized tank for the horses and our few cows.  Later he build a big low cattle tank of cement and wooden staves.
The garden that we had planted that first spring hadn't done much.  We didn't really know how to plant in sod, but we did think we had a good crop of watermelons, but just as fast as the watermelons ripened the coyotes broke them open and ate them.  We were able to buy potatoes, dry beans, cabbage, rutabagas and beets very cheaply from neighbors to the east who had learned how to garden out there.  It was necessary to have water available during the hottest weather and to build up the soil.  The next year we really had a wonderful garden, even tomatoes, which others didn't really grow, but my aunt in eastern Colorado sent me some very early seed which produced ripe tomatoes by the first of August which were a real treat out there.  Clyde built a really good cold frame to start the plants, which helped a lot.  Tomatoes took the place of fresh fruit.
By Thanksgiving time we were pretty well ready for cold weather, but didn't realize how close it was.  Clyde had picked up loads of chips and piled and covered them with some pieces of canvas and he made his last trip to the railroad, we hoped.  We ordered necessary warm clothes from Sears in Omaha to be delivered parcel post and delivered to our mailbox, which was two miles east of our east line.  Hopefully it was delivered twice a week.  There were four mailboxes standing together on a lonely trail.  Ruth had learned to go for the mail when the weather was good.  She had to get off Molly to open and shut a cattle gate, but Clyde had taught her to close the gate so the cattle could not open it and she never failed to do it right.

Next week: Prairie Dogs and Other Animals.

The Ancestors, Part 7

Our barrel of meat that we brought didn’t last as long as we expected it to, because of the extra meals that I got for the travelers who stayed all night at the McNamara place, but Clyde found a very good substitute for it.  While we were haying they went through the cornfield that Bob had plated.  By that time the corn was just in the roasting ear stage and the young prairie chickens had founds them good to eat.  Clyde would take his shotgun, a handful of shells, and Don, and on the way home would get a half dozen young fryers.  Bob showed me how to skin them very easily, so there was no scalding and plucking and they were delicious.  Clyde really got enough for the Frosts, too.  Frostie didn’t have a gun or dog to point the chickens out and knew nothing about hunting.  He finally got enough lumber together to frame a one-room sod house.  When the haying was finished, Clyde, Bob, and another man by the name of Gunn too their tools and really built a sod house for the Frosts.  Little Mrs. Frost had been company for me and enjoyed rocking her baby in one of our rocking chairs every day.  They didn’t get their well down right away and had to carry water from the McNamara place, a full mile, so I loaned our baby buggy to push little Emma.  She wore it out pushing it over the rough ground and next year I wished that I had it myself.

Clyde and Bob spent week cutting hay on our valley for our stock and the stacks they put up looked so small in that big valley.  Then we chose our building spot, up in the northwest corner of our section with hills around on both north and west so we would be protected from the coldest winds.  The building spot was on a slight slope toward the narrow neck of our valley leading into the Wilson place.

Then the well had to be put down.  Clyde had the necessary pipe and a post-hole digger on hand, also some screens that they would need.  He and Bob hauled the materials over one morning and came back at noon very happy that they had reached water at 16 feet and only had to go a little deeper to get good coarse gravel so that the water was clear and cold.  They put a hand pump in and we had all of the best water in the world for as long as we lived there, and I hope it is still as plentiful now as then.  Not long ago I read something that makes me wonder if it will be as plentiful, for the writer said that the Ogallala Aquifer had been tapped for irrigation in three states.  They just called it sheet water when we were there but seems it is really a huge lake that is fed by underground springs.  I somehow feel that they have invaded the water rights of the cattlemen who still live out there and raise cattle for a living.

Theodore Roosevelt had had this land set aside for tree planting, and I really believe if the young trees had been taken care of for the first two or three years they would have lived, but nothing was ever done about his plan and the cattlemen rented the land for two cents an acre for many years.  Then a Nebraska senator by the name of Kinkaid pushed a bill through congress that resulted in the land drawing in 1913.  We who home steadied there were called Kinaiders.

When Clyde was busy one morning marking out his plan for the buildings, dear old Mr. Wilson came over apologetically to tell him that he was starting his buildings on the Wilson section.  Clyde had to take him up the hill to show him his corner pin.  Son Gene had told his parents of how our valley belonged to them.  Clyde hated to see the disappointment on the old man’s face.  Gene had misinformed them on many things.

Clyde built a small sod building, with the idea of using it for storage, but it took him longer to build and the more he worked with the sod the more he felt that it wasn’t strong enough to last.  There was just too much sand and too few grass roots to make solid building blocks.  But the small room would do as a kitchen so he floored it and plastered it and we moved our kitchen equipment into it the last of August.  Then he made a trip to Keystone and came home with lumber enough to build a big frame room that he joined to the sod kitchen.  Before he had it finished Grandpa and Lloyd, his fifteen-year-old grandson came out to see us.  Grandpa loved it.  The weather was beautiful and he would get up as soon as it was light.  He would get on Molly, the little mare that Bob had taught Ruth to ride, and he would ride all over the place.  We had bought Molly from Bob, and Ruth had been herding the four milk cows while we worked on the building.  We had put up the big tent and used to sleep in it and store thing, too.  When we brought the chickens up from the McNamara place we tried to get them to roost in a bi box that Clyde fixed for them, but the insisted on coming inside the new building every night.  They kept furnishing eggs for though, even if we did have to carry them to bed every night.

Grandpa was worried about the new frame room not being warm enough for the cold winter weather that he knew we would have.  He really wanted us to com back to Kansas with him, but there was no way we could get care for our animals and we wanted to get the fenced that fall before it got too cold.  Then he insisted that Clyde let him help build a sod living room between the sod kitchen and the big frame room.  So they cut for sod pulled the frame room away from the kitchen a built a comfortable room which we really did appreciate that very cold winter.  We had a big “Round Oak” heating stove that kept that room warm and comfortable but it took lots of chips and that was the only fuel we had that first winter.  While Grandpa and Lloyd were there they put up a small barn and fence a lot to keep the stock in, and they found time to hunt prairie chickens and wild ducks at some lakes north of us.  The ducks were flying south from over the Canada wheat fields and landing on the lakes over night.  They were fat and such good flavor.  Clyde too Don to retrieve them when they fell in the water.

As I look back, I realize how much help that Grandpa was that fall in getting us ready for winter, and in really warning us of conditions that we had never thought might exist.  The summer and fall had been so ideal, weather-wise.  But after they were gone and some of our neighbors went through our valley on their way home, we were glad that we had made preparations for a different kind of winter than we were used to farther east.

The Ancestors, Part 6

My Great Grandmother and Grandmother

Between two of Clyde’s trips to Keystone he stayed for ten days to haul sand for the new bank.  We really needed the money for we hadn’t had much money to bring with us and it was going to be at least two years before we could have income from the cattle that we hoped to raise.  First though, the place had to be fenced, a house and barn built and a well put down.  Clyde and Bob also took a contract to cut and stack some hay for a rancher living east of us.  We had brought a good mowing machine and rake and necessary hand tools.  Then there was Clyde’s violin.

On that first Fourth of July, the cowboys of the area really put on a big celebration in the new little town that was just started for a new county seat.  Rather County had been formed by the state when the land was opened for homesteaders.  By the Fourth of July there had been two buildings put up.  One was a big hall in which they could dance and Clyde and a young fellow who played guitar.  It was a hot day and someone had put up a big tent for people to eat in.  The smaller building was to be a store and they had a few supplies hauled in.  After dinner, everyone went out to watch the games the cowboys were putting on: horse races and potato races on horseback.  They put a big tub of potatoes at one end of the course and with long sharpened poles they tried to carry the most potatoes to another tub about a block across the street.  There was a wild time with the horse tearing back and forth and little boys trying to get out of their way.

I rode home with Bob and his wife, who had come over from their home to spend the Fourth.  The children were tired and so was I.  Clyde didn’t get home until nearly daylight.  If it was not moonlight the ranchers usually danced till it was light enough to see the trails.  This was the beginning of many long trips for Clyde to play for dances all over the area.  He often went on horseback, or sometimes was picked up by a crowd that got together to go a long way.  I tried going with them once or twice, but it was too hard on the children and me, too.  There was no such thing as a baby sitter in those days.  Clyde got a good trio together, a drummer, a good piano player and Clyde with his precious violin.  We practically lived on the money he earned that way.

We also had a Sunday school organized that summer.  A young missionary for the east came to the little tar-paper school house that had been built for the ranchers children, got a group together and organized a Sunday school that was as popular as the dances.  He held the first meeting in a bi tent, a picnic dinner affair.  There were seven different denominations represented.  Among the group was an elderly woman who was so right for the superintendent.  She was the mother of a young fellow that I had met when staying at the hotel in Keystone, and they turned out to be our adjoining neighbors on the west.  She and her husband made a radical change in their lives.  Mr. Wilson had been an officer at the big fort in Omaha.  Their young son who had come late in their lives wanted to be a cowboy, so they had bought a relinquishment, had a nice little four room house built on it and moved from their comfortable home in the city to this raw new country just to please their big red-headed son who knew nothing about cattle ranching and cows that he hadn’t learned at picture shows in Omaha.  He had a good little riding horse and a couple of wolfhounds to chase coyotes with.  But he did have beautiful manners.  His big hat always came off when he came in the house or met a lady and he automatically stood up when a lady was standing.  Gene Wilson was the object of many jokes, be he gradually learned the hard way.  And his mother was as good as a minister in our Sunday school meetings, which we kept going to as long as we were out there.  Later we had a larger schoolhouse, an organ, good songbooks and good membership.  It was the first Sunday school that some of the children had ever had the opportunity to attend.

The Ancestors, Part 5

(To read earlier parts of the story, click on The Ancestors link in the subject section at the bottom of the page.) 

The weather changed to beautiful spring and soon everything was green and birds were singing, mostly meadowlarks.  We had to learn to pick up chips for fuel for the cook-stove.  I had heard my parents talk about burning buffalo chips I eastern Colorado in the 1880s when they homesteaded.  They seemed to dry very soon after all of that rain.

There was a large prairie dog town in the McNamara valley, which was very interesting and entertaining for us.  They were such clean looking little animals, living under ground, but sitting outside until someone or something came near.  Then they scurried below so fast.  They ate the grass bare for several feet all around each borough, so were quite a menace.  Then there were the prairie chickens.  It was mating time for them and they gathered every morning in the valley for a strange ritual.  The little roosters gathered in the center of a large circle, while the hens circled around on the outside.  The roosters looked like little turkeys, spreading their tail feathers and making loud noise for an airbag that swelled up on their neck.  This strange dance went on for maybe an hour, then seemingly the hen chose her mate and two by two they disappeared over the hills.  This went on for nearly a month, but one had to wake up early to watch it.

One night after we had been there for about two weeks, we heard a rattling noise coming up the road that surprised us.  It was a man who was to be a wonderful help to us, in many ways during the first two years, but we hardly knew what to make of it a first.  He had come from his homestead about 30 miles east of us to farm a little on the McNamara place.  He put a cot in the little room that wasn’t occupied and next morning he brought a month’s supply of food in and piled it on my table and told me to divide it with Mrs. Frost, and that he would eat every other mean with us and the others with the Frosts.  We also had many hungry men stop at the end of the day to feed and water their horses and ask to stay in the barn all night.  Very few seemed to have food with them and I really depleted our stock of meant and fruit getting late meals for them.  The place was just a long day’s drive for them and they went on north to their homes with their loads.

Another attraction at the place was a habit of some of the cowboys for neighboring ranchers to gather with some unbroken horses and try to break them in the big corral connected to the barn.  They came with their chaps and spurs and ropes, outfits that I had never seen worn before.  Clyde just enjoyed all of this new and exciting way of living.  He had broken horses to ride at home and had learned to rope cattle and horses at home, so he could enter into the fun.

I marvel at the helpfulness of everyone when I think back, and also the complete honesty of all that helped unload our belongings in Keystone.  The hayloft in which our things were stored was without locks and it took a month at least to get it all hauled out.  Nothing was ever taken and there were so many that needed the very things that were stored.  Also the men drove the trail that went by the McNamara place were all strangers.  We never had anything taken.  They stayed in the barn overnight and left early the next morning with just what they had brought.  Even the house doors had no locks on them.

Bob Wilburn, the man who had moved into the little room and ate every other meal with us, provided to be a great help to Clyde.  He had lived out in western Nebraska for a long time and learned to build with sod, how to put a well down, how to plant in sod: so many things that were new to us.  He had brought a little mare with him to ride and it wasn’t long before he taut our five-year-old Ruth to ride her and was sending her out in the valley for the milk cows.  She loved to do it and learned to love Molly the little Mare, too.

The Ancestors, Part 4

from our family archives

Sunday the sun came up bright and clear and very chilly with a cold north wind.  There were four wagons going our way and we got started bright and early.  Clyde had our big mules on our loaded wagon and I had our little team on our light spring wagon with the children and our trunks and food.  There was a fairly goo dirt road for the first few miles, but when we hit the hills and sand, Clyde found that he ha loaded too heavily for the mules, so he stopped and came back to tell me that he needed by little horses and tied my buggy on behind the wagon.  It was really better for the children and me, for the wind was shut off by the wagon and we were more comfortable.

Mrs. Scully had fixed a lunch for us that first noon so we didn’t have to stop for long at noon but we found ourselves only about halfway when we realized that we would have to camp for the night.  We had been traveling on a very rough road, between many small hills, but came to a nice little valley with a windmill and small corral in it where, evidently, cattlemen put up for the night.  We had hired a boy in Keystone to drive our cattle and those that belonged to the three other men.  The grass was long and very damp from the two weeks of rain, but we spread canvas down and Mr. Eilers and I got our supper while the other three men worked at putting up our new stiff canvas tent.  Clyde had cut carefully shaped tent pins, but he hadn’t reckoned on the looseness of the sand.  When the had one side tightly pined down and started to pin the other side down up came the first side.  They finally put weights on the pins and made it stay up.  Mr. Eilers and I had been putting together a new kerosene cook stove and filling it, soaking up the wicks so that we could cook bacon when the sun went down – it got dark very quickly.  Fortunately mattresses had been packed on top of the loads.  The canvas was put in the tent, mattresses were put on the canvas and we all tried to get nights sleep.

One of the men who was with Mr. Eilers had been drinking all week while waiting in Keystone and had bad dreams and woke everyone up including the children, and I had to take Dick outside and walk around to quiet him.  The moon had come up and I never seen such bright moon and stars.  The altitude (4,000 ft) and clear clean air made both moon and starts seem close enough to reach.

We were all ready to get up and get started by daylight.  We got a good hot breakfast and packed up as fast as we could, anxious to reach our destinations as early as possible.  Mr. Eilers had been out earlier and built a cabin on his land and reached it a little after noon, hungry and tired.  We stopped long enough to eat a good lunch, and then Clyde and I started our alone.  We left our cows with the other stock that the boy had been driving and sent him back to Keystone where he lived.  The other wagons took another road to get to their places.

All of the bumping along the trail I had seen very few valleys but many hills and began wondering if there could really be a big valley like Clyde had remembered.  There wasn’t a tree nor a bush taller than a little wild rose bush about a foot high, and once in a while a yucca plant 15 to 18 inches high.  They were called soap weed out there.  But there was grass everywhere, and that was what made Clyde happy, for he intended to raise cattle, and this was cattle country.

About four o’clock we did enter a nice big valley and Clyde said this is the McNamara place and we could see the buildings ahead of us.  But as we got closer we could see smoke coming out of the chimney.  When we drove into the yard, a young fellow came out of the house to greet us.  He said, “You must be the folks that were going to live here.  We took one room, you can have the other.” Just like that.  Clyde was unhitching his four-horse team and said, “Well, that’s fine, you can help me unload my wagon.”  And young Mr. Frost really did help unload our big heavy kitchen range, table and chairs, beds and the first and most important things to get started on.  This young couple and their nine months old baby had driven a covered wagon from Iowa to try to get a start of the section that he had drawn, with nothing but a small stove, a bed, table and a couple of chairs.  No farming equipment, no money.  The house consisted of two huge rooms, built in an L shape with a small connection room.  When the Frosts go out that far, they asked a neighbor if he could move into the empty house and the neighbor, not knowing that we gotten permission from the owner that it would be all right.  We felt sorry for them and really had plenty of space in that big room, when we got it arranged.  As it turned out it was rather a good arrangement, for Clyde had many more trips to make to Keystone and I was not alone so many nights.  Also Clyde took a job in Keystone using his big team of mules to haul sand for a new cement bank they were building and I would have been alone for two weeks.  We needed the money for winter that he earned and he could spare the time.

Family archives: I love to think this is Ruth seeing her new home.

The morning after we got there and had nights sleep and some breakfast, Clyde said, “Well let’s go see our new home.”  I was almost afraid to go, for fear he would be disappointed.  We drove up a hill on a fireguard (a wide plowed strip that the government required the cattlemen to keep bare on the perimeters of the land that they had rented for grazing.  It was a beautiful morning, clear and bright, and we I saw our valley; it seemed even better than Clyde’s description.  It had a windmill and big cattle tank on it that the cattlemen hadn’t removed.  That made it look like a real ranch.  There were hills on the corners, but about 350 acres in the valley.  I had to shed a few tears of real joy.  We hadn’t had a home of our own and had given up building the new house in Kansas.  This just seemed an answer to my prayers – to be alone.

I have used first person in writing this so you might see us as two very confident ambitious farm-raised young people starting a new life.  Clyde was 29 and I was 24.  We had already seen some of the hard times of life, but felt this was a new opportunity, and a real challenge.  We stayed on top of that hill for quite a while, then went back to our borrowed house, grateful that we had a good roof over our heads.