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Ma, where will we be for Christmas this year?
In the Salt Lake Valley.
Will we get there before Christmas?
I hope so, little one.
But isn’t it Christmas right now?
No, dear, not yet.
But there is so much snow.
I know. Come along.
My feet hurt.
Let me see. I have a little flour sack. Let me wrap them.
I’m hungry too.
We all are. I have a little leather left. Chew it as we walk.
Will Pa be home for Christmas?
No, love, he can’t be with us anymore.
Where is he?
We had to leave him with the others.
Will the wolves hurt him?
We covered him good with sage brush.
Will we see him again, Ma?
Yes.
Will he miss us?
I think he will be sad to not be with us. Do you know who was born on Christmas?
Jesus?
Yes. And His Mother and Father loved Him very much.
Did He grow big like me?
Yes, He did. And one day Jesus had to leave His family even when He didn’t want to leave.
Just like Pa.
Yes, and Pa is with Jesus in Heaven.
Pa gets to spend Christmas with Jesus?
He does.
He gets to have the best Christmas.
I think you’re right.
I still wish Pa was with us, pulling me in the handcart.
Do you want to get in the handcart now?
May I? The rocks are hurting my feet.
Let me put you in with sister.
Sister is so cold, Ma.
Wrap your arms around her and hold her close.
Will she spend Christmas with Jesus, too?
I would miss her terribly if she did, dear.
Can you hear the singing?
It must be the other Saints singing.
I can’t see no other handcarts. Didn’t angels sing when Jesus was born?
Yes.
I think the angels are singing for us tonight so we are not alone.
I believe you are right, little one.
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By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 2/13/2013
Blog:
Caroline by line
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As I mentioned in the previous post, sod walls were typically two-feet thick. If you compare the exterior window pictures to this one, you'll see a generous ledge on both sides. Also notice the plastered walls. In MAY B. I make mention of this nicety through a conversation with Mrs. Oblinger, the new bride from the city, and May, the frontier girl.
from poem 29:
"I hate this place," she whispers.
Before I think better, I say,
"He's left a shade tree out front,
he's plastered the walls,
and he's putting in a proper floor."
"What'd you say?"
Does she even remember I'm here?
"Mr. Oblinger's a good man," I try again.
"He wants to make this home for you."
She stands over me now.
"You think plaster makes a difference in this place?
Look at this."
She holds out her mud-caked skirt.
"It's filthy here!
The ceiling leaks.
Sometimes snakes get through!"
The cool sod's where they like to nest.
"They help with mice," I offer.
She glares.
Sod houses were one room with little to no privacy. Here you see a bed right up against the stove, a tree trunk meant to support the roof also used to hang clothing.
These benches are made from hewed logs and are a great example of the wood used for puncheon floors (the proper flooring May mentions above -- many lived with packed earth underfoot) : the smooth side of a log faced up, the curved side down.
One way families kept dirt from falling from the sod above was to cover the ceiling in muslin.
How would you fare living this way?
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 2/11/2013
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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.
This sod house is located outside Gaithersburg, Kansas. You can see the family had access to enough wood -- perhaps a sawmill nearby? -- to build a door, frame out several windows, and lay lumber for a roof (though they still chose to place sod on top).
A pitched roof would have made rainstorms more comfortable, as it was typical for water to seep through flat-roofed sod houses, where it would continue to "rain" inside well after a storm.
Sod bricks were typically 1' x 2' x 4". They weighed roughly fifty pounds and were stacked, grass-side down, so that walls were two-feet thick. These sturdy homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Structurally, they weren't especially neat and tidy. This poor wall looks like it's melting.
While researching for MAY B., I'd read about women who'd left comfortable lives determined to make this new world as familiar and lovely as possible. My mother included a note with this picture, the words of her tour guide:
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.
In an effort to give readers a taste of MAY B., I'm sharing books with similar genres and themes. Today's topic: frontier stories. All descriptions are taken from Amazon.com.
The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder
The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, Carrie, and little Grace bravely face the hard winter of 1880-81 in their little house in the Dakota Territory. Blizzards cover the little town with snow, cutting off all supplies from the outside. Soon there is almost no food left, so young Almanzo Wilder and a friend make a dangerous trip across the prairie to find some wheat. Finally a joyous Christmas is celebrated in a very unusual way in this most exciting of all the Little House books.
Pioneer Girl: A True Story of Growing up on the Prairie - Andrea Warren
Pioneer Girl is the true story of Grace McCance Snyder. In 1885, when Grace was three, she and her family became homesteaders on the windswept prairie of central Nebraska. They settled into a small sod house and hauled their water in barrels. Together they endured violent storms, drought, blizzards, and prairie fires.
Despite the hardships and dangers, Grace loved her life on the prairie. Weaving Grace’s story into the history of America’s heartland, award-winning author Andrea Warren writes not just of one spirited girl but of all the children who homesteaded with their families in the late 1800s, sharing the heartbreaks and joys of pioneer life.
Prairie Song - Pam Conrad
3 Comments on Frontier Stories, last added: 1/25/2012
20 feet, 16 feet, 20 feet, and 12.5 feet
Find a room big enough and stretch the string out, making a rectangle with a door-sized opening at one side.
Measure a bed, a dresser, a table, a stove. Mark the furnitures' dimensions on butcher paper and arrange it inside your string rectangle.
What do you have?
A furnished soddy! Imagine a family living together in this small space.
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Wallis, Michael. (2011) The Wild West: 365 days. New York, NY: Abrams Press. ISBN 978-0810996892 All ages.
Publisher’s description: The Wild West: 365 Days is a day-by-day adventure that tells the stories of pioneers and cowboys, gold rushes and saloon shoot-outs in America’s frontier. The lure of land rich in minerals, fertile for farming, and plentiful with buffalo bred an all-out obsession with heading westward. The Wild West: 365 Days takes the reader back to these booming frontier towns that became the stuff of American legend, breeding characters such as Butch Cassidy and Jesse James. Author Michael Wallis spins a colorful narrative, separating myth from fact, in 365 vignettes. The reader will learn the stories of Davy Crockett, Wild Bill Hickok, and Annie Oakley; travel to the O.K. Corral and Dodge City; ride with the Pony Express; and witness the invention of the Colt revolver. The images are drawn from Robert G. McCubbin’s extensive collection of Western memorabilia, encompassing rare books, photographs, ephemera, and artifacts, including Billy the Kid’s knife.
Our thoughts:
This is one of the neatest books I’ve seen in a long time. The entire family will love it. Keep it on the coffee table but don’t let it gather dust!
Every page is a look back into history with a well-known cowboy, pioneer, outlaw, native American or other adventurer tale complete with numerous authentic art and photo reproductions. The book is worth owning just for the original pictures. But there is more…an index of its contents for easy reference too! Not only is this fun for the family, it is excellent for the school or home classroom use too. A really fun way to study the 19th century too and also well received as a gift. I highly recommend this captivating collection! See for yourself at the Litland.com Bookstore.
Thank you so much for your help in picking my author photo. Number one it is.
Since I've spent a lot of time thinking about
soddies lately (
first-round edits=lots of research review), I thought I'd share a few with you:
The grassy mid-section of our country, the Interior Plains, is actually made up of two very different environments: the wetter, cooler prairies of the east and the drier, hotter plains of the west.
Pioneers who settled on the prairies built homes from the wood available along riverbeds. Those who settled on the plains worked with what was most readily available: sod.
Kansas, where MAY B. takes place, happens to have both prairies and plains. Much of May's story takes place inside a soddy, like the one above (except she had a papered window instead of fancy glass).
The typical dimensions for a soddy were 20x16. Some soddies had pitched roofs made of wood or a combination of wood and sod. Older soddies had roofs of sod, supported only by twigs and occasional branches. Because of this, it was not unusual for ceilings to collapse after heavy rain.
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Today we have the renewal of the word "Pioneer" because I just finished this and by gosh I'm posting it. Now usually the new IF word is posted on Friday so I thought for sure I would at least have five minutes of fame from this by posting it on Thursday evening, but NOOOOOOOOO!...just call me trailblazer...
When you purchase an item from my
store, 10% of your purchase price will be donated to my favorite animal charities;
Last Chance Animal Rescue and
Horses Haven, both in lower MI. Which charity the donation goes to, will depend on the item purchased and I will love you forever from the bottom of my little black heart. They deserve a chance too.
Grab a cup of coffee and take a long luxurious gander at my website ArtQwerks
Benjamin Franklin was a pioneer in the study of electricity and renowned for his many contributions throughout history. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. Benjamin Franklin is truly one of America's most influential Founding Fathers.
I know - not very original. But, it's all I've got right now.
Amelia Mae was always the one to explore her surroundings. A true pioneer she was the first to discover the unusual tree at the top of the mountain, near the edge of the forest. The sound of tiny giggles drew her nearer and nearer. There she found tiny beings with wings. Much smaller than the birds of the forest it was clear that these creatures could actually be transported by those very birds. Seeing the future of flight in the various wings around her she decided right then that she would one day become the first woman to fly around the globe.
And, of course, she would do that with a set of her very own handcrafted, highly polished wings.
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I always wondered about the ceilings... Great pictures!
Wow, this really brings the image of living in a sod house to life! And I thought I had a pretty clear idea after reading May B. It's like living in a small cave; maybe even worse.
Yes, dark and cavelike. But the efforts to prettify things is really something.