Mom's Early Years

My mother has told me snippits about what it was like to be a child in rural South Dakota 90 years ago and I remember some of what she told me.

I asked her about the winters and the dust storms in the thirtys and such and will try to relate a little of what she told me.

She was raised in the Britton area on several farms, none of which her parents owned. I guess they rented them.

My mother was the oldest and is about to turn 90 but all the rest are still alive except Charles who died a couple years ago at the age of 84 or 85. He was a nose gunner on a bomber on those runs against the Germans and the Romanian oil fields. I posted that story a couple years ago.

Life had to be tough back then. They lived in small houses, No insulation and heated with a cook stove. Outhouses and of course no electricity.

She said that now days people complain about the smell of horse manure but she said back then they would bank it against the houses in the winter for insulation.

She told me about the winters. Winters that would overwelm people now days but they took it in stride. In the winter they had a rope strung between the house, barn, outhouse and any other out buildings because in a blizzard it was impossible to see from one to the other. Many people got lost and died and these lessons were learned. They did the same thing during the dust storms too.

She said that it was so cold some winter days that when they went to the outhouse to pee it would freeze before it hit the bottom. I can believe that because I saw on TV a few years ago a guy throw a cup of hot water in the air and it instantly turned to snow. That is cold!

She said that she loved school but being the oldest child she was forced to leave school after the eighth grade. She was needed on the farm. There were six kids in her family. She said she cried and cried, begging her parents to let her go to school but that is the way it was back then.

She was a tough farm girl but she was not allowed to scrap. He mother was very mean it seems and had a bit of a mental condition. She told my mother that she would beat her if she fought.

There were the usual bullies in school and they used to torment her. The pigtails in the ink was real!

One day this bully started shoving her around on the way home from school. He knocked her down and tore her dress. My grandma had just made it for her (I never met my grandma) When she got home a crying and all torn up her mother was really pissed, as can be imagined. She told her that if they picked on her again that she would get an asskicking if she did not fight back.

That is all she needed. This bully was a boy and always had friends with him, as cowardly bullys usually do. Mom said she was ready for the sucker as she had been wanting to kick his ass for a while but was afraid of her mother.

That day after school the bully started on her again and she moped the deck with his arse. She came home with blood on the old dress she wore. Here mother asked who's it was and when she told her, grandma just smiled. She was not picked on again.

She said she could clearly remember the dust storms. She said she would sometimes be going from their farm to Clairmont, a tiny community where they sold veg and such, and her father would look to the sky and say, "We gotta get home" and turn around and head home as fast as the nasty old road would allow.

The sky would be bright and clear but the wind would be picking up and on the hoizon there would be a darkness coming their way. They just had to be home before it hit because when it did you could not see the road. She said she could remember the dark sky, the sand and the tumbleweeds rolling in on them.

The would get in the house and close everything up. Of course in those days the house was not tight an there was no thing such as storm windows. They had to set it out. Dust an such everywhere and when they would get up in the morning the outline of their heads would easily show on the pillow.

They would sweep the house and use a scoop shovel to get the dirt out but nothing was ever really clean.

I asked her how often it happened and she looked at me and said three times a week!! Sometimes more. There was absolutely no rain. She can remember watching her dad stand outside and watch a lonely cloud come by and pray for a little rain. It didn't come.

She said that the animals suffered terribly. There was really no food for them and they were pretty much kept in the barn. They were eventually butchered and eaten but it was almost impossible to feed themselves.

She said they had some barn cats, as most did at that time. They were also starving but had to fend for themselves. That is the object of having a barn cat, to keep the rats out of the barn.

She said that one day one of the scrawny suckers climbed up high in the barn. They were watching it because her father was surprised it had the strength to climb up there. Well it was so weak that it fell and the other cats instantly jumped on it and tore it apart, eating it.

My mothers dad killed most of the cats that day and just left a couple.

My mother said that during the dust storms it was a big problem keeping any stock in pastures. The tumble weeds would back up against the fences and then catch the sand. Over night the stock could just walk over the fences, which were buried by then.


It was a rough life back then and I think I am gonna pump her for some more storys about that time.

I posted a story a few years ago that she wrote for her youngest brothers 70th birthday. It was about the day he was born. The doctor had to come out by sley in a blizzard.

This is all I can remember right now