School must have been a great place to go on the frontier.
"School was like a vacation for us in the country. It meant early chores but an exclusion from the rest of the day till we got home."
"In the Winter, we walked 6 miles in waist deep snow. In the Spring, I had to fight off the wolves and bears with my speller and my belt to get there. Summer would have been better if the grasshoppers hadn't ate the Oak handle out of the hoe and the roof off the milk barn."
"Making a living was nothing like today, one summer we were working new ground and the blowing snow kept filling the furrows. By the time you got the team turned to do the next one you couldnt see where you had just been."
"The year we (he and his brother) went to California in that "A" model Ford, I lost count of the number of gates we had to go through on Highway 60 between here and there. A lot of times it wasn't much more than pair of goat trails."
"One time when 'the freighter' was coming through this country his wagon broke through the ice mid-way across The Black Bear Creek. He came up to the house for help and dad (my great g-pa) harnessed up Jyp and Maude. When we got there he hooked them to the beam and stepped them up to take out the skack and get a footing. He waited till they got their footing and set them to pulling. Maude let out a snort, Jyp let out a bellar. The horses didnt know what to think and reared back fighting them every step of the way out. If they hadn't been harnessed in they would have run off. Dads pair of draft mules pulled out a 4 pair team of horses and a loaded freight wagon. The next time that freighter came through there was 4 big mules pulling that wagon."
"Before paved roads , any travel was measured in days or weeks, not hours. St Louis was 2 weeks by horseback, Tulsa was 2 days hard ride. Then you still had to get back."
