Well the prairie in the first few years of my life were pretty carefree. Being brought up on a farm, we never went hungry and the security of the home stayed with me all my life. Our home was filled with love. My mother was the greatest person that there ever was. She had married during wartime and I imagine that dad's nerves probably must have been pretty raw but I never heard my parents really ever quarrel.
I did what most farm kids did those first few years - our share of chores, and going to school at a one room school - grades one to eight. Bullying was rampant then too although I did not get bullied, but my older brother did. George was a genius, and the louts that bullied were jealous as George passed grade eight at twelve when most of the bullies were15 or so.
Along came the thirties, depression, terrible dust storms that blew your farm into the next municipality, and if you were lucky maybe the wind changed and some blew back. The soil blew away leaving rocks sitting on pedestals of earth six inches in the air. The ditches drifted full, machinery and buildings were banked with drifted soil. The lamps would be lighted some days at noon. Hard to tell anyone how terrible those days were. The wind sighed, howled, and blew twenty fours hours a day, day after day. Some folk lost their senses and were committed to mental hospitals. Cattle and horses stood around with tears of mud running down their faces. My mother always felt so sorry for the animals. They would stand with their backs to the wind and their coats were blown full of sand.
Dinner is on more later......
Gordie
