Little House on the Prairie

Three years ago, almost to the day, I packed everything that could fit in my car and headed from the East Coast to the West Coast. In hind sight this may not have been the best decision I have ever made, but the trip itself was great. This was also not exactly a straight line.

I bobbed and weaved across the country, visiting friends in a number spots, and seeing sight that I wanted to see. Once I got passed Minneapolis there was a lot I had not seen.

Along the way, of course when you travel three thousand miles a lot is along the way, there was a friend of my dad’s from the army that I was to visit. I have always been shy, introverted, insecure, pick your word for not being the most adventurous when it came to meeting folks when anyone, especially my family, would say “hey so and so lives out there you should look him up.” I just have never really felt that a total stranger from someone else’s past would be entertained by meeting me??

Anyway, I had said that I would make this stop, and it seemed to mean a lot to my dad and I also figured what is a few hours out of nine days on the road.

My father’s friend lived on a very large farm in South Dakota, so I was actually going right by there, sort of, on my way across the state, and since there is absolutely nothing to see or do from when you cross the river to when you reach the Badlands, I decided it was something I should do. However, it happened to be 115 ° all the way across the state, and was not cooling off much in the evenings. I also discovered that South Dakota was uphill while driving East to West, ever so slightly, but uphill all the way, into a head wind. When you added all of this up, it meant that gas was essentially being siphoned out of the car all the way across the state. When I hit South Dakota I had been averaging right around twenty two miles per hour pretty consistently. When I left South Dakota that average had dropped to eighteen miles per hour, it was like someone was steeling the gas out of the car as I drove.

So it is the end of July. I am in the middle of South Dakota, and it is 115 ° in the shade. The state is practically on fire and any time you get out of the car it is like stepping into a pizza oven. I get off the highway at the proper exit. I follow the directions that I had printed out ahead of time, drive so many miles on this long straight dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and then turn left onto the next long straight dirt road in the middle of nowhere. It was like playing checkers in a car. These roads were dirt, but there was absolutely no dust kicked up by the car because between the insane heat, and the constant wind across the plains, these roads had essentially turned into blacktop.

Finally I found my destination. There was a little, white house next to a tree, a tree, and then behind the house were a number of different buildings, very plane and nondescript. As it turns out each one had different equipment, a couple of old cars, and so on as you moved your way back. I pulled up along the side of the house, stopped the car, and as I got out this little man came out of the back of the house with jeans on and some kind of work shirt. He walked up and introduced himself extending his hand to me. I swear this man was made of leather. He had that look that all the cowboys in the old westerns try to achieve only this was not on film, not achieved with make-up, his faced just looked as though it had been stretched and dried with branded lines and cracks.

We said hello and the door opened again and a smaller, female figure came out to join us. This was his wife of a lifetime, and she was just a smaller version of him, essentially. The most obvious feature they both had was these big, broad smiles, again showing their age and years of being in the same place working all day long every day, but with a genuineness to them that I honestly had never encountered. These were good, honest, happy, pleasant people, with no justifiable reason.

Please understand, I am not saying that these folks were wrong to be happy, I am simply saying that given today’s world and the way people are, anyone else in their situation would not be able to handle their life, let alone be happy about it. This is reality TV show waiting to happen. Can you last a year on a farm in South Dakota, never mind, make that a day. One of the first things they told me was that they had been out since before dawn, yes I said before dawn, we just lost most of our contestants right there, watering the cattle, watering the cattle. When you are seven years into a drought and you are trying to hang onto as many head of cattle as you can you load up tanks of water in the morning and you drive out to the watering holes where the ground water is supposed to naturally fill, and you water the cattle so they don’t die. Maybe we should have started the bailout process with farmers and then banks.

So, after I was greater, I was shown around and then we went into the house and sat at the kitchen table and visited. They showed me pictures of the family, his kids, and grandkids, and they told me about every one of them, where they were and what they were doing now. They also spoke of their life there and how they were working to preserve what they had known all their lives, they did not put it this way, I am, but that is what they were doing. Again, to me that is what they were doing, to them they were just living their lives and enjoying.

We had a little bite of something, I honestly don’t remember what, and we drank homemade iced tea, and visited for about an hour in the kitchen, their little kitchen, very dark with all the shades drawn to keep the heat out, and the sound of the old window unit in the one bedroom off to the side running away. On the entire property, in the absolute middle of South Dakota, with one shade tree and acres and acres of parched land, they had one window AC unit in one room of their house.

After a very pleasant visit, and knowing I had another four or five hours to drive that day, we walked outside to say goodbye. That is when the most extraordinary thing happened. As we stepped back outside, into that sun and heat, at about four o’ clock in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, this man of unknown age, who had worked every day of his entire life, been in the army, come back and picked up right where he left off with no break, ever, said to me “at least there is a nice breeze today.” This was like walking straight into a blast furnace, but to these people it was a nice breeze.

I wish I could have learned a long time ago to view life in this way.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.