The Ancestors, Part 6

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.