Sunset on the Prairie

As the days grew shorter in November the sunsets came early and were so awesome over the prairie to the west of the house. As dusk appeared and Morris was still not home from his day’s work down at the Johnston Home Place, I would  stand at one of the south windows and watch and worrying as I searched for the headlights on his pickup truck to turn up the road and head north toward home.

 If the cows, all 18 of them, or just 17 of them and one still out there,  had not decided to come up to the barn for their evening feed, he would have to walk out in the pasture and herd them into the lot south of the barn and milk them before his days work was done and he could relax and eat his supper. His days work were long and tiring.

As I watched from the south window in the nursery for his truck to appear I would hear the coyotes singing their evening song, which was frightening to this small town gal! Morris would laugh at me for being afraid and tell me they were far away from the house and only calling to each other. I sometimes heard them howling and yapping at each other off and on all night long.

Their song is a very high-pitched wail, sharp howls and "screams", which go up and down scale very rapidly. They have often been reported as "a sound like something being killed." Coyotes can be seen traveling alone or in pairs. On occasion large groups are present, and they sometimes hunt in packs.

The preferred habitat for coyotes is a prairie or grassland habitat that provides the food and shelter they most desire. Their diet consists mostly of small mammals such as rabbits, mice, carrion, fruits, and plants. If the rabbit population was slim and they got the taste of a new born calf, it was sometimes beyond changing their habits and then they were hunted down!  For the most part coyotes live both on the edge of our physical environments as well as on the fringes of our imaginations, cunning, wary, and the epitome of a true survivor. They are the tricksters in numerous Native American legends.

The ducks flying overhead in their V formation were also a reminder that winter was on its way. It was a delight to watch them. I always wondered where they had summered and where they were headed for the winter.

Once Morris shot a couple of Geese  out of season and I had to clean them before the game warden came by! I had never even cleaned a chicken before in my life, and the feathers on those geese were very stubborn. It was indeed a learning experience for both of us! I decided the taste of them was not worth the work to clean them.  He soon learned that he would rather shot the wildlife with a camera than with a gun.

When the works all done this fall…

 Mike and Ken visiting Grandma Bergman in Nashville, MO.

Now that the crops were all in the work was slowing down some.   The cattle had been moved down to the Johnston Home Place for the winter and grain feed, then hauled to the Joplin Stockyard when they had fattened.

On a day when there were no work scheduled, Morris and I would take the day to visit the Grandma’s.

Grandmother Morgan lived with her daughter Florence, on the Morgan home place that had once been the Liberal Brick Yard, just across the railroad tracks on the south side of Liberal, MO. Her husband Ira P. Morgan had suffered a heart attack at the age of 52 and left her with 8 children and one not yet born. Her oldest son was working as an apprentice pharmacist and with his help and the help of her older daughters she managed to raise them all. Her life story is another book!

Grandmother Morgan always served us hot green tea when we came to visit.  It was so strong! She put the tea in the kettle on the stove when we first arrived and boiled it! Of course she served it with about half milk. How I’d love to get some green tea like that once again. We have searched for tea like that and have not found it anywhere.

Florence was a school teacher then so usually she was not home on weekdays.

Some days we would go and visit Grandma Johnston while Morris saw to some chores around the home place. She was always sitting in her rocking chair and usually crocheting. She saved all the string from the feed sacks and would tie the pieces together and make lovely lace for edging on blouses for Isabel or Morris’s Mom, Dorothy. For pillow cases and table runners. She even made table clothes from those feed sacks. 

She had bad feet from wearing shoes with those pointed toes when she was younger and now in her old age she didn’t wear shoes at home. She made herself cloth booties from the old denim overalls her son’s John and Jake had wore out. She had a quilt in the frame most of the time. She would give a new quilt to each family for Christmas. How I wish I had saved mine. I used them all the time and wore them out!

If she was not sewing she was reading as she was a very learned lady. She wrote to her daughter Isabel at least every other day and sometimes every day. She cut articles from the daily newspaper she thought Isabel might enjoy as well as poems she thought she would enjoy also.

She kept a weather journal and recorded the temperature every day! What a different life she lived from our life here in the 2000’s!

It was only 7 miles farther to my Mom and Dad’s in Nashville, MO. She was always delighted for us to stop by with the babies. She quite often had made or purchased some little outfit for them to wear.

Of course Morris still had those 18 cows to milk, so we would hurry home for him to do that and I would have to fix supper for us, then with their tummies full, and tired from the days journeys those little guys would sometimes fall asleep in their highchairs. Although they both were still having their "baba", and with their warm jammies on and a bottle they were asleep soon.

“As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that the things that are truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder

I so agree with Laura now!

Spot, The Guard Dog

 

As you can see, Spot took it on himself to be the boy’s bodyguard dog! Where the boys were, Spot was, and that was a relief for me! Michael was so little out in that tall grass in the front year, but Spot was guarding him!

Spots love of riding in the truck though created a dilemma for him sometimes. Rather than stay at home with the boys his desire to ride in that truck pulled him to jump in and ride to wherever Morris was going that day. If the work was at the Johnston Home place, 7 miles away, Morris would leave for the day to work down there and Spot was right with him. So you can see Spot liked to be with the boys but his love for working with Morris and riding in that truck pulled him away

If Morris was plowing or disking, Spot was right with him. Once Morris was plowing up some grassland down by the timber that had never been plowed before and with every furrow he made, he dug up rat tunnels and the rats were running wild. Spot would grab one up in his mouth and shake it until it died. However they soon began coming out in such numbers that he would just grab one and throw it over his shoulder and go on to the next one. He was so tired he could hardly walk and climb into the truck that evening to come home!

Morris was headed to Pittsburg one day for something  and the boys and I went with him. He had the stock rack on the truck for I guess he and John had taken just one or two head of cattle to the stockyards and he hadn’t taken it off.

He told Spot to “Stay” and guard the house as we pulled out and headed for town. For some reason we had to stop at the bank in Minden and Spot appeared on the sidewalk in front of the truck! The tail gate had been down on the truck as it would not go up with the stock rack on and Spot had jumped on and ridden that three miles into Minden standing on that narrow gate! I don’t remember Morris slowing down for some of the bumps in the road coming into Minden either.

Morris just put Spot inside the stock rack and he traveled to town with us. Thank goodness he was quiet as we parked in town to do our shopping.

We had traded our car for the pickup truck as it was needed more for hauling things on the Ranch than a car would, and the boys were small enough so we four could ride easily in it then, but Ken even before he was two years old did NOT like that truck. He thought that day that we were going to town to get our car back and he was so disappointed when we didn’t get the car that day that he cried about it!

It was Spots delight when Morris would have John’s big truck stacked tall with hay bails. He would climb to the top and ride up front with his nose sticking out in the wind as far as he could stretch his neck!

Spot had long hair that we sheared off in summer to keep him from getting it just full of cockleburs. He would sometimes come in with the burs so thick in the hair under his tummy and on his tail that he would yelp as he lay down. That was when we got the hair clippers out and trimmed him. What a difference it made! Wish we had gotten some pictures of him then.

 After a few years he gave up his job of guarding the boys and was for the rest of his life strictly Morris’s dog until the day he just lay down and died. He was about 14 years old when he passed away.

Spot was not a house dog. He slept in the back porch or in the shed where we had piled hay for him to burry under when it got cold. And winters was getting closer now.

Every little boy needs a dog!

Earlier in that first summer, I heard a car pulling into our drive and with Little Mike in my arms and Ken by my side, I hurried to the back door as my Mom and Dad drove up.

Dad got out of the car with a grin on his face and said, “I have something here for the boys!” He opened the back door of the car and out jumped a medium sized Rat Terrier. She immediately spied Ken and ran to him and licked his face to say “Hello!”

Ken petted her and said, “Bow!” and that is how we came to call her Bow!

Our neighbors, who lived about a mile north, had a collie dog and he began coming down to visit Bow! Soon we could see that she was going to have a family!

Bow slept in the shed just east of the house and as her time to have these puppies became close, I checked on her and could see that she was struggling to deliver these little Collie puppies that were a little large for her small body! Not wanting her to be in pain I managed to get her to swallow a couple of aspirin in some water.

As I related this story to the family later they all laughed at me for my concern with this mother dog doing what nature had always handled without any pain meds. But I could see the pain she was going through and knew I would want help if I was in her condition!

The first little guy to appear was definitely a look-a-like for his father, the collie up the road! Then came a little tan guy and three little girl puppies. Bow licked each one like she was so proud of this little family she now had!

It was clear that here was more dogs than we could feed and care for, so the next morning the three little girl dogs were taken off to a new home.

Ken called the brown and white dog “Spot”, and the tan dog “Brownie.” Bow continued to care for them and without the other three dogs she had enough milk to feed these growing puppies.

Spot and Brownie each had a different disposition. Spot would lay by the boys and let them crawl all over him. Brownie was constantly out exploring new territory and smells.

Soon he decided that chasing the chickens was fun and catching one in his mouth he got the taste of blood and as Morris saw this he caught him and flopped that dead chicken in his face, then whipped him hard! He whimpered and stocked away. But that didn’t stop him the next day as we found 2 more dead chickens in the yard! He had not eaten them, he had just found it fun and exciting catching them in his mouth and flipping them side to side until they quit struggling!

The next morning he and his mother both left for a new home and only Spot was left. He didn’t seem to miss either his mother or his brother and stayed close to the children. Their constant companion when outside, for dogs were not allowed in the house then.

Spot loved to ride in the back of the pick-up and on top of loads of hay on Uncle John’s big truck also. He would climb to the front of the load of hay with his nose in the air and what looked like a smile on his face as they drove down the road!

This dog would become an important member of our family and I have several stories to tell you about “Spot!”  

Time to start using the Coal Stove!

As the cool days of fall turned the prairie grass brown, the wind blew briskly from the north west, and rattled the west windows. Of course there were no storm windows on the house, and it was drafty around the windows that steamed over when we began to heat with the coal stove.

Morris was the one who always got up and started the fire before he went out to milk the cows. It was my job to have his breakfast ready for him when he came in from milking so he could start the winter chores of the day.

The fire had to be remade each morning which was the coldest time of the day. The first task was to remove the old ash from beneath the fire grate (a cast iron grid or basket which held the coal). The grate was raised up to allow air in and to let the ashes fall into a pan, and this pan had to be taken out and emptied into the dustbin, a process which created clouds of dust. Although most of the ashes did collect in the pan, the space below still needed to be swept out, which made more dust.
Laying a new fire was a skill which most people in the 1940s and 50’s knew and understood because it was so common-place. You had to start with a few sheets of crumpled newspaper which would burn easily. Next came something like dry twigs or thin shavings of wood, known as 'kindling', stacked loosely up round the paper so that enough air would be drawn though it by the heat of the flame. Wood shavings or dry twigs were often just bi-products of gardening or carpentry, and sticks of firewood could be bought quite cheaply at the local ironmongers. After the kindling came the coal.
The paper was lit in several places with a match or a lighted wax taper.
Sometimes the fire needed help to start. This could be because the wind down the chimney was in the wrong direction, or there was not enough or too much of it, or there was not enough kindling, or the coal was damp, or it was a poor batch of coal, or for any one of a thousand and one other reasons.
As the days grew shorter, and the nights longer, sometimes Morris would have to get up in the night to add more coal to the fire. That made it much easier in those cold frosty morning to get the house warmed up again.
After he left to work down at the Johnston Home place, or whatever his job was for the day, it was my job to keep those home fires burning through the day to keep myself and the boys warm.
Reminiscing about all the work that went with keeping the house warm with that old cold stove makes me appreciate the electric heat we have now! Just turn the switch and it starts warming the house!

Fall is here!

There was always a “breeze” on the hill where our Little Prairie Home sat! With the days getting colder the boys had to be bundled up to go out and play.

Taking pictures was not as easy as it is today with our camera phones. That little box camera we owned took 120 film and the expense of film was sometimes more than our budget would allow. We did capture a few photos of the boys then however.

My Mom and Dad were always bringing something up for them when they came to visit. They brought them a stroller that we could put both of them in and Morris use to push them out on the road between the house and the barn on a warm day when he was home.

Preparing for winter

Doing laundry out on that open back porch began to be a chilly job as winter approached. The heated wash water soon cooled off and felt even colder on the hands as I grabbed those clothes out of the washing machine and ran them through the wringer into that cold rinse water!

Morris decided to enclose the north end of the porch for a ‘Mud and laundry room’. He left enough room south of the door into the kitchen to hang coats on hooks and leave the boots sitting under them. He built screen covered windows all across the east side then covered this with clear plastic for the winter.  This still left about 12 foot of open porch on the south of the door into this enclosed part.  Of course the steps that had been in the center of the porch were moved down in front of the open porch now.

The North side of the porch had no windows in it and this kept that cold wind from whipping around the house in those cold winter day and blowing right through there. This made it so much nicer for me and now the two little boys could be out there with Mom too.

I usually held baby Michael on my left hip and pulled the clothes out of the water with my right hand and pushed them into the wringer. Once he put his little hand into the wringer. He never let out a cry as I quickly released it! It scared me more than it did him I think. However this had taught him a lesson even though he was only about 6 months old, and he never did that again.

I had a rope cloths line that I ran from one side of the kitchen ceiling to the other where I hung the cloths to dry when it was freezing cold out and I couldn’t leave the boys to go out and hang them on the outdoor cloths line that was north of the house.

Morris brought a load of gravel up and dumped it in front of the porch and south of the well to keep out that mud and dirt some.

Ken and Mike loved to play in that gravel. Mike was sitting on the gravel and of course put his little hand down and grabbed a handful and put it in his mouth. Morris came by about that time and tapped him on the head and said -”Spit that out!”

Ken said…”What you trying to do? Killed Him?”

Morris had to turn his head to hide the grin on his face from Ken!

I don’t think Mike spit it all out. I had to put my finger in his mouth and clear it all out!

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