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In the years I've been blogging, no topic has drawn more visitors here than sod houses. I hope this post, showing the exterior of a Kansas soddy, and the next, its interior, will satisfy the curious!
My mother took these pictures while on an Elderhostel tour in 2009, just as I was putting some finishing touches on MAY B.
Bird cages were kept to show some gentility or civility attesting to their previous lifestyle.I included a stanza in MAY B.'s poem 80 that was inspired by this bird cage picture:
I button Ma's fine boots.
I wish I had insisted on keeping Hiram's old ones,
but I know Ma gave me hers
for herself as much as me,
a message to Mrs. Oblinger,
fresh from the city,
showing that women out here still have some grace.
My feet will hurt, I reckon,
before I make it far.
Come back Wednesday for views of the interior.
11 Comments on Soddies: Homes on the Plain, last added: 2/13/2013
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They really are amazing. It must have taken a lot of gumption to decide to live in one! Prairie women would laugh at my petty complaints about vacuuming. :)
Exactly and exactly and exactly.
Wow, interesting pics. I think everyone who's read Little House on the Prairie has imagined living in one of these. The reality is far different from the imagination!
Agreed. We're traveling in the midwest this summer, and I'm hoping to see some of my own!
Love this glimpse into the past, Caroline! Can't wait to see the interior.
Thank you for these pictures. I connect my memeories of soddies, with Little House on the Prairie. But they might have also come from Bess Streeter Aldrich.
I love seeing these. The give visuals to the words stored in my mind.
I want to know more about the bird cages! There's something so intriguing about that being the thing to represent gentility... I mean, here's this family, living in the WILD. And it's an image of something that traps that represents a place more civilized? I might have to write a poem. :) Thanks for sharing, Caroline.
I love those pictures. They have so much history and character to them.
I look forward to reading that poem!
I loved reading about soddies in your book May B. The description of the soddies during torrential rain was so vivid as was the fear of the roof collapsing. You made living in a sod so very memorable! I feel sorry for anyone who actually had to live in one.
Thank you, Mia. I really wanted to be true to the first-hand accounts I read.