Its was Time to Travel Back those 70 years

I recall clearly, my Grandparent’s farm on the rattlesnake butte near Bonesteel, South Dakota near the Missouri river. Grandfather, a lawyer practiced law in Bonesteel South Dakota and represented the Lakota tribal members in front of Congress. Patrick Joseph, PJ, was a 9 times delegate to the Democratic National Convention and when he died in 1943, FDR sent grandmother a personal note of condolence and the Sioux nation gave him a tribal burial after the local catholic Priest said the last prayers. He was the only white man ever to be given title as chief by the Dakota Sioux.

PJ and the family lived in town with a hired man and his family to live out on the farm. He'd drive his Ford everyday during the cropping season to watch the cattle grow and the corn and alfalfa mature. He loved the farm and it kept his five daughters and 2 sons, all college educated, in food during the deep depression when cash was scarce.

Visiting the dry prairies of South Dakota as a child was completely foreign than the lush green river hill of my northern Illinois upbringing. For one, people were few far in between in Bonesteel and the continual silence of the grandparents’ big pririre house scared me at night. You always seemed alone and on your own with nothing to do unless you went swimming or watched my grandmother, aunts and mom play bridge. Even walking to Mass on Sunday was an outing I looked forward toward.

This cycle repeat itself every year until I was 14. We took the Hiawathia from Milwakee to Siouz City each summer visiting for 2 month the Aunts and Uncles in Nebraska and South Dakota. My father stayed in Illinois and wouldn’t invade this space unless he was willing to comitt to playing bridge or being the dummy.

I have 34 first cousin and all our aunts behaved like Mom. There was little I could get away with and I used to tell the Dominican Nuns at St. Anne’s in Barrinton that another of my mums was pregnant somewhere out in Nebraska or South Dakota.TheNuns understood these closeknit Irish families of the upper Midwest and approved.

The heat of those Dakota days eased somewhat at night and then the locust would begin their incessant buzz. Sleeping without covers was the only way to fall asleep on hot the upper screened porch that often housed 6 to 10 cousins who where visting the Praire house. I never got accustomed to the Locust noise or the lightning and thunder at night. To this day, those sounds have never abated and so before sleep even in the dead of winter I listen to the TV or radio to fall asleep.

And the day light stayed forever. Falling asleep at 8 with the sun still out was trying at best. We were all well feed with fresh corn, snap beans and tomatoes from the farm. It seemed we had steak or pork ribs most night and so hot dogs and chips with cold orange Kool Aid was special. My mother was home here at theis three story praire home with her four sisters sometimes a brother or two playing bridge 24/7 talking and gossiping and visiting like small town folks can master. I was happy because Mom was very happy.

The short grass vastness and silence and the small town talk infected me like a polio virus. I never knew how bad it was until years later I ventured to the Canadian Prairies with my own family seeking a peace I had lost during my intense graduate work and research projects. I felt comfortable in Saskatchewan with prairie farmers and town folks. These town support the farmers and were the size of my grandparents’ town and farm back in the 1950’s. I found Indiana like my northern Illinois roots but the great vistas of the Dakota could only be satisfied with the compelling landscape of the West. I tried but couldn’t find or feel that sense of place in America as small towns and sense of community had vanished under the weight of modern Agriculture and the corporate tax structure. Crossing to Saskatchewan was revisiting my youth and I have been traveling there 6 weeks each fall for the past 20 years.