God, my mom could tell you about prairie life—the loneliness
and isolation—no neighbours for miles and miles.
And winds—always winds—blowing the top soil away, or
packing the snow into drifts sometimes as high as the house and so hard the
cattle and horses could walk on them without breaking through.
And the poverty; fried potatoes and eggs
three times a day all winter because that was all they had, walking nine
miles to town with a dime to buy a box of corn flakes and taking the penny
change home to her mother.
Wearing hand-me-downs from her aunts—flapper dresses that
didn't fit, the neckline hanging much too low on her gangly teen body. Wearing
her brothers' long johns under her dresses—long johns that bagged and sagged
under those flapper dresses (imagine how lovely that looked), her legs rubbed
raw from her rubber boots—the only boots she had. Using goose fat to try to
cure chapped skin.
And the terrible depression that ensued from it all.
We moved to the city with its modern conveniences when I was
ten. Mom was not sorry to leave those “good old days” behind.
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