Hi everybody,
This is a work in progress based on a family story a dear friend shared with me when she was in a nursing before she died several weeks later. Her husband, Wil, 86, and a former pastor and professor at Duquesne University, and I have fleshed it out to hopefully become a childrenss book. To become a picture book, it really should be around 1,200 words. This weighs in at a hefty draft horse size 3,000! PRESS (a National Writing Project term for "let me have it") on all aspects, particularly, putting it on a "diet," or what things can an illustration tell! Also, if you have a great idea for a title, I would be so appreciative. I'm in my home "sanctuary" an upstairs room with a television, table and computer as my achiles tendon heals inside a purple plaster cast. I'm doing the crutches thing better, so if my husband can bring me, HOPE to see you all on Monday. Love,Jane
Life on the Prairie
By Willard Mecklenburg and Jane Miller
Inez glanced at the thermostat on the back porch post. It read 34 degrees. She flicked it with her gloved hand.
“Must be broken,” she mused to herself, knowing that the snow would be melting if it were correct, and snow nearly covered her broom as she swept a path to wooden barrels that held 50-pound bags of sugar and flour. Inez opened the barrels, scooped out dry ingredients and brought inside the tin can of lard to begin making breakfast.
Barbara awoke to the smell of bacon cooking and the sound of her father, Harold, stomping his boots outside the door of her family’s 100-year-old prairie cabin. Before dawn, he had trudged to the barn to feed the livestock, including the team of horses.
A big job lay ahead today. The family’s coal bin was nearly empty. He must get more coal that day. Like most families that lived in Montana during the Great Depression, coal was used for a cook stove that also warmed the house. Montana storms were severe. The previous blizzard, with 60-mile velocity winds ripped tar paper off the outside of the cabin, and the winds that blew between the mud and log walls blew out the kerosene lamp.
Just like the horses, Harold needed a hearty breakfast, too. He ate a stack of three wheat pancakes that filled his dinner plate and several pieces of his home cured pork cut into strips of bacon, covered with Inez’ home made syrup that she made by boiling brown sugar in water.
Harold arose from the oak table. “I’ll be back this afternoon, Barbie-girl,” he said to his daughter, lifting her into the air. She giggled. He another layer of clothing over hid of woolen long longs, overalls, and shirts before pulling on his mackinaw. At the door, Inez handed him a scarf.
“You’ll need this. I just finished it last night before the wind blew out the kerosene lamp,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ll wear it for luck!” said Harold, making a flourishing sweep as he tossed the scarf end across his shoulder.
Harold harnessed Don and Buster together and hitched them to his grainery wagon sleigh. He planned to haul bituminous or soft coal, for their home. He would drive the team to his neighbor’s farm where two summers ago he had helped Mr. Olson dig a well. An outcropping of rock had concealed the shallow bed of coal about two feet below the surface of the sod. Mr. Olson had told him to help himself anytime he needed coal because “That’s what Prairie folk do. We need each other,” Mr. Olson told him when he offered to pay.
The sleigh bells jingled. The team headed across the prairie to an above-ground coal mine. At the mine there was a Fresno, which is like a wheel barrow, used to take off the top soil to get to the coal.
Back in the cabin, Inez began to teach Barbara how to thread a needle.
“Some women tell you to lick it. I say phooey,” Inez said to her daughter.
“Foo-ey,” Barbara repeated and giggled. In the warm weather months, they tended the garden where the family raised much of their food. This was the time to prepare for the year ahead. Together they made shirts and dresses out of the bright feed sacks bought each month with sugar, flour, and livestock grain.
The telephone rang. Inez stood to pick up the metal mouthpiece off the wall-mounted phone.
“Good morning, Stella!” Inez said into the mouthpiece. Their closest neighbor lived almost two miles away. Every day the two women talked on the party line phone that the farmers maintained by running a telephone wire on the top of their fences.
Barbara threaded a needle the way her mom showed her to sew her own sampler beneath her mom’s quilt frame. She and Tipper, her dog, pretended they were in a boat at sea, like pictures they had seen in books.
“You don’t say. It's so cold school has closed? Harold just headed out to get coal.”
“WOMAN, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE TEMPERATURE IS OUTSIDE?” Stella’s voice boomed.
“No, our thermometer is broken,” and Inez started to explain, but Stella interrupted.
“Woman, it’s dropping to 30 degrees below zero—and another blizzard is blowing in!” Inez looked worriedly toward the frost-etched window.
“Harold will be all right. He’s got his team, and--,” but she was interrupted, again.
“Woman, don’t you know? Two frozen calves were found this morning,” said Stella.
“I’ll talk with you tomorrow,” said Inez quickly, as she watched Barbara, bent over her piece of fabric, stitching faster. Inez began stitching faster, too.
The sun had been shining brightly when the team reached the mine. The air was still. The wool scarf Inez made for him as well combined with his own breath warmed his face. Montana people and horses are accustomed to cold, he thought. He gave his team a rest from the harness, and opened a bale of hay for them to munch on while he dug away a layer of soft snow. Harold worked up a sweat as he dug.
His effort uncovered the coal he had helped to mine two summers ago. He used a shovel and a digging bar, which is like a long crow bar to reach the coal, about two feet below the surface of Mr. Olson’s yard. It was hard to digging in the blizzard-hardened snow.
The wagon mostly loaded, they broke for lunch. At noon Harold opened a colorful grain bag of oats and poured part of it into two large buckets, so that his hungry team could devour it while he ate the bacon sandwiches and drank the cold thermos of coffee Inez had packed for him.
The wind began to blow snow into freezing drifts, so Harold knew he better not delay. Within minutes the blizzard increased, and the temperature had dropped even lower. It was now bitter cold and Harold was glad for the new muffler that shielded his face, as he hitched his horses to the running gear and climbed into the driver’s seat. He could barely see as he looked across the prairie.
“Gee, boys!” Harold called as he pulled the reins left. The drifting snow was quickly making the road disappear, so he would take the tree-lined road along the rocky creek which was easier to travel in a storm than the shorter, main road they traveled that morning.
Don and Buster steadily pulled the load. Their efforts kept them warmer, but sitting on the driver’s seat, Harold was becoming chilled even through his heavy winter clothing. After riding his load for a couple of miles, he stopped.
“Whoa,” he called, pulling back on the reins. Still holding onto the leather straps, he climbed off the wagon and began walking between the horses and wagon. It would lighten the load for his horses, now laboring to pull against the wind. Harold was almost warm as he took large strides to keep up with his horses, but now they were struggling again against a wind like none he had ever known or heard about from other Montana farmers.
“We’ll come back here next week boys. It’ll still be here,” Harold thought. He wanted to say the words aloud, as he always talked to his team, but ice penetrated the scarf and it hurt to even breathe.
He grabbed the harness strap that united the three as a team. But it was a hard and brutal hike, and his strength was leaving his limbs. Home was still two miles away. Even without a load, he felt the horses’ burden. He was holding them back.
He pondered what to do. From his days as a cowboy trick rider, he knew he could find the strength to climb atop one of the horses. But he knew his weight would be too much in these strong winds. If they stayed where they were, and tried to wait the storm out, surely they would all die.
Harold thought of spring plowing days when his team faithfully followed his commands. His hands numb and shaking, knowing his own fate, he unfastened the harness that made them a team.
“Go home!” He could barely mouth the words and knew he needed to save every ounce of energy. He couldn’t see his way, but his horses would have an instinct for how to return to the barn.
“Get on home!” he commanded. Both horses stood still.
“Get home!” he tried to shout. They must leave. He swatted Buster on his rump, and the horse gave a little jump, obeyed the command, and started out at with a high step through the drifts. Don neighed, but stayed firmly planted.
“I said, ‘Go get on home!’” shouted Harold, finding an unknown source of strength. He struck Don’s rump. It would be foolish for them to stay there. The snow had covered Don’s legs. Don nickered to his master, yet would not move.
“You blame fool horse,” Harold said, his strength sagging, yet his heart soaring. He wanted to cry; he wanted to grab the dappled horse around his neck, but he grabbed Don’s tail and with barely a whisper said, “Let’s go home.”
The driving blizzard left him unable to see landmarks, but he trusted Don’s instincts. Don’s enormous body with dinner-platter feet cleared a path for Harold to follow behind.
But a horse goes faster than a man, and Harold couldn’t keep up.
“Go home, Boy!” he shouted against the winds, and let go. This time Don obeyed. In the driving winds, he likely didn’t notice that Harold no longer held onto his tail.
Yet as Don plowed ahead, he cleared a path. Harold still had an ounce of strength. What did he have to lose if he followed? He knew home was two miles away, but you never knew when storm might let up. And if the snow stopped, he would see the Gallatin Mountains and there he would find home.
But the snow kept swirling, and soon the path in the snow began to disappear. Which way was home? His head bent low, Harold persevered, but the path was gone. He might walk in a circle and not know it. Maybe he should accept his dire fate. But through the driving ice, ahead he could see a thick, gray mass. His heart skipped a beat. There stood Don.
“You waited for me, Boy! You waited! You blame fool of a horse!” he wanted to shout. Harold reached out and grabbed Don’s icy, snow covered tail.
“C’mon, boy. Let’s go home,” he mouthed silently. Don moved forward. Harold’s steps became automatic. His legs and arms were numb, but he moved forward. His heart pounded in rhythm with Don’s steps. But as he gasped for a breath, he lost contact with Don’s tail. The horse moved ahead without him. Harold couldn’t go on, yet a path in the snow lay before him. He trudged achingly forward.
In a little while the sound of sleigh bells alerted Inez. It was a sharp contrast to the winds. She had feared the worst had happened. She put down her fabric, imbedding the needle and thread. “C’mon, Barbara, we’ll get bundled up and surprise Pa at the barn,” she said.
They hummed a hymn as they pulled on boots and coats, and Inez tucked Barbara inside her mackinaw, and mother and child curled their faces together. They remembered the day the circus came to town and paraded down the main street. They pretended they were large, lumbering elephants marching to the barn.
As Inez cleared a spot to open the door, they could hear Buster’s urgent call. Inez thought another voice would greet them. Buster was alone. Barbara filled the tin can with grain and her mother lifted her to feed the big horse. They fed the cattle, pig, and chickens, as well.
Inez felt despair, but didn’t want to give up hope. An idea hit her. “Don will sure be hungry, when he gets back,” she said and Barbara ran again to the feed room to fill up the tin can. She walked into his stall and filled his bucket with grain, and Inez shook out a flake of hay.
On the way back to the house, they trumpeted to each other as momma and baby elephants. Barbara didn’t need to know how her mother’s heart sank deeper than their steps. Inez prayed silently, as she and Barbara warmed their fingers by the diminished coal fire.
“Pa’s going to be hungry too,” she said as she filled a black kettle with snow, and added beets, turnips and salt pork to her pot she placed on the hearth.
“Barbara, how about if we start a special quilt that will be for you someday. Let’s imagine it’s summer and you are a grown-up lady carrying a fancy parasol,” she said. Inez searched the cupboard for brown, butcher-block paper to draw a pattern.
Just as he felt that all he could do would be to lie down in the snow, Harold sensed a presence, like a wall, before him. He took a few more steps. There was Don, waiting for him, again.
“C’mon, boy. . . .” he said, barely in a whisper. Touching Don’s tale gave him strength. This horse was here for him. He wanted to shout. He wanted to cry. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to go home. His mind willed his feet to keep moving as horse and man fell into a rhythm together.
But again, Don’s pace was faster than Harold could manage behind the four-legged snowplow. “Go on home,” he gasped. If he stopped, he knew for certain he would die. His limbs tingled, no longer feeling cold. He kept his focus on his breath, and each step, as he bent his head against the winds. He nearly fell backwards as he bumped into a tree. But there couldn’t be a tree. No, it was Don.
“Let’s . . . go home,” he said as he shook ice from Don’s tale. That was Don’s signal to plod through drifts now belly high. Harold shuffled behind, feeling thankful for his faithful horse.
Time and time again, the rhythm of man and horse marked another mile to home. Then across a bed sheet of white pasture, he saw home. All he had to do was climb over the fence, and trudge on his own to the house that shone from a faint beacon of a kerosene lamp in the window.
But there was no opening for Don, his faithful horse. Don would know his way to the barn. All he had to do was to go a ways down the fence to the gate Harold opened we they left that morning. Don would go through the open gate and wait for Inez at the barn. So Harold dropped Don’s tail a final time.
“Go on home, Boy!” Howard said forcefully with renewed strength as he climbed the fence and turned to wave to Don. The winds had died down. A rosy glow of the sun setting in the west, beyond the house, beckoned to him. Harold could now taste the warm stew he was certain Inez had waiting for him. He swung his arms across his body to build momentum for each step that dug a path through the knee-high drifts. Nearly frozen, icicles hung from him his scarf he swung open the farm house door. “You’re home. You’re home,” Inez kept repeating over and over. Ignoring the melting ice, Barbara and her mom hugged him hard. Tipper jumped up and barked at his knees.
“I’m home,” Harold said hoarsely, his mouth dry despite the ice melting from his hair and face. He cradled the cup of coffee Inez handed him as he sat by the small fire. Inez quickly headed to the barn to greet Don. She expected him in the stall she had prepared. Buster called to her loudly. The other animals stirred, as the last gleams of light slanted into the ice-covered window. With great sadness, Inez returned to the house.
“Don isn’t in the barn,” she said with great, measured sadness. Harold was stunned. Don should have found his way to the barn from that short distance. After all, Don had led him the entire way. What could have happened?
“Inez, go and look out at the gate.” Inez, trembling, followed Harold’s short-cut path to the fence. The gate to the barn was wide open, yet there stood Don, standing in a drift that reached his belly. She stroked his face, cleaning it of snow and ice, and reached as far as she could around his neck.
“Harold is home. C’mon, Boy, you can go home, too.” And that was enough for Don to leave his post and head to the barn.
That night the family found enough pieces of coal and wood kindling to keep the fire burning. The next day the weather cleared, Mr. Olson’s grown son saw the abandoned wagon loaded with coal. He and his dad hitched up their team of horses and brought it to the Gavin family, “because that’s what Prairie folk do,” as Mr. Olson always said.
As the prairie families visited, Harold shared his tale of the big horse that saved his life on the prairie.
Harold lived to be 91 years-old. All of his days he would tell the story of Don, the devoted draft horse, who saved his life in a storm. When Barbara grew up, she too, told this story all of her days. She always repeated what her father said to her, “If you take care of your animals, they will take care of you. We’re here to take care of each other.”
