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These Stories Came From The Simple Things

These stories are memories. I am now 63 years old and Ma and Pa are gone but the wonderful background they gave me and all my wisdom for simple things remain. Ma was 42 when I was born and Pa was 45. They didn't have the worries of today's parents so our life was so quiet and caring. We lived on a farm, 160 acres of South Dakota black dirt. The farm has been in our family since the homesteading in the mid 1800's. It still remains in our family. My sister owns the "Home Place" and I live on another farm, (acreage) just a short mile East of it.

The pictures you see are taken in the 40's. As you can see our clothes were made of flour sacks and no one really cared about how "spiffy" we were. We were happy and loved and that is all that was important to anyone back then.

Pa worked hard in the fields and Ma was right beside him. I watched her shovel grain into the end gate seeder while Pa drove the tractor. We, Lyle and I sat in the grain. There weren't babysitters in those days. We ate our lunch out in the field with them and when it got dark we'd all go home and do the milking chores. We always had about 20 cows. Ma separated the milk, took the cream off, with the DeLaval cream separator. I fed the skimmed milk to the calves. While she washed the milk disks. There were about 20 calves also. When the sun had gone down and nothing more could be done outside, we'd head to the house. It was then that Ma would read the "Funny Papers" to us. She'd change her voice to make each person in the story more interesting. I loved to look at the pictures and Lyle loved the stories. It is there that I got my love of drawing. I began to draw all the cartoon characters on the back of a brown paper sack from the grocery store. New paper just wasn't to be had. Sometimes I could use an old letter back. White paper was a luxury to this day when I sit before a clean piece of canvas or paper. This is how my Ma looked back then. She never wore a pair of jeans. They were for men to wear, and she was always a lady, even when she done the chores or worked in the field. An old country tradition, which I appreciate. I remember how to appreciate the simple things.

This is me and Ma in 1946.

Thank you for reading my story and come back soon
for some real down-home stories.

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