Prairie School

by Lois Lenski

  “In October that was,” said Oscar.

  “We been burning it for three months already,” said Mama. “It can’t last forever. That furnace is a big hog, the way it eats it up.”

  Delores said, “There’s no coal at school either,” but her father did not seem to hear her.

  “Fine time to tell me we’re out of coal,” he shouted, “right in the middle of a big snowstorm. A fine time, I say.”

  “I’ve told you a dozen times, Johannes,” said Mama, “but always you are too busy. What we going to burn now? The sideboard? Our dresser set we got for our bedroom when we was ten years married?” Mama Wagner was a good-natured woman but her dark eyes flashed when she was angry. “Get me some wood. No wood—no dinner today.”

  Johannes ate his breakfast quickly and started toward the back door.

  “Wake that lazy Phil up, Darrell,” he said, “and you boys come on out. We’ll get fuel all right, even in a snowstorm. You come too, Ozzie.”

  “You tear down the barn for fuel?” Mama called after them. As soon as the door closed, she looked at Delores and laughed. “Your Papa he know he should have got the coal long time ago. He is ashamed, but he won’t admit it. It is fun to rub it in a little.”

  “What’ll we burn?” asked Delores, lifting the stove lid. “This fire’s going out.”

  “Your Papa, he find fuel all right,” chuckled Mama, “and he find it quick, Ozzie will see to that. Get your coat and Christy’s and put them on. Bring me my old red sweater.”

  Delores took Christy on her lap and put his coat on him. She looked out the window and showed him the snow coming down. She was glad it was vacation and she did not have to make the effort to get to school. After Christy jumped down from her lap, she slumped lazily in her chair.

  What would she get for Mama for Christmas? She wanted something nice this year. But with all this snow, when would she be able to go to town? The snow wasn’t coming down at all. It was coming sideways, straight from the north, pushed along by the wind. In some places the ground was swept clean. In other places, drifts were piling up against the farm machinery which stood in the barnyard. The wheels of the tractor were half-covered already.

  “If the tractor costs so much money,” asked Delores, “why don’t Papa take care of it and put it in the barn? It’s getting snowed under, and so are the plows and the drill and the disc and the drag and both the combines.”

  “How big a barn you think we got?” asked Mama. After washing up the dishes, she started preparations for dinner. “I was going to bake bread today, but how can I with no fuel?”

  Christy ran to his mother and hung on her apron. He coughed and his nose was running.

  “Hold him, Delores,” said Mama. “Keep him out from under my feet.”

  Delores held Christy again. “Listen!” she said. The sound of sawing and chopping could be heard. “They’re chopping, Mama.”

  “Ach!” laughed Mama. “The railroad ties—I thought so. We are lucky we have land on both sides of the railroad track, so we have plenty of ties. Sawing ties—that will be good exercise for a cold day.”

  Discarded railroad ties had been left along the tracks by the section men who kept the road in repair. In return for plowing a fireguard two furrows wide along the track, the farmers were allowed to take the ties. Johannes Wagner had hauled a large pile into the barnyard and unloaded them by the chicken coop. He intended to build a “tie shed” out of them, posts and supports covered with straw, for shade for the cattle in summer and protection from snow in winter. But now he had to use them for fuel.

  The door soon opened and Darrell and Philip brought in big armfuls of chopped wood, sawed chunks of ties split for the stove.

  “Make us a good hot dinner, Mom,” begged Darrell.

  “I’ll think about it,” said Mama.

  “We had to shovel all the way to the chicken coop,” said Darrell.

  “Jeepers!” complained Philip. “No fun sawin’ wood with snow blowin’ up in your face.” The boys hurried out again.

  “Delores, you scrub the floor,” said Mama. “I’ll go down cellar and see if I can find something to eat. The cellar’s so cold, I’m afraid my canned stuff will freeze.’’

  Delores swished the mop over the linoleum and Christy crawled in the puddles of water she made. Mama came upstairs with a basket full of canned goods. She set the jars on the floor back of the stove.

  “Make Christy stay out of the water, Mama,” said Delores.

  “Mama, take me up,” screamed Christy. “Gimme candy. Buy me candy bar.”

  Mama picked the boy up and held him on her lap. She sat down in the kitchen rocker and rocked until he fell asleep. Then she put him back to bed in the side room again. At noon, she made macaroni salad, boiled potatoes and opened canned chicken. Papa and Oscar and the boys ate quickly and went out again. The house got colder and colder. There seemed to be no let-up in the storm.

  In the afternoon, Chris Bieber appeared on his tractor, bringing cousin Reinhold Wagner. Reinhold was a tall, lanky town boy, sixteen years old, Uncle August’s son. Uncle August ran a barber shop in town.

  “I came to spend Christmas vacation on the farm,” laughed Reinhold.

  “You brought us a fine storm from town,” said Delores.

  Chris Bieber was a neighbor who lived two miles from the Wagners. “I was in town buyin’ groceries,” he said, “and I ran into Reinhold. He was crazy to get out to the farm, and his Pop wouldn’t bring him, so I did.” He turned to Mrs. Wagner. “Got any coal?”

  “What? You folks out too?” Minna laughed.

  “Vera Mae’s been givin’ me heck,” said Chris. “I thought Johannes and I could take his truck to town and get some coal for both of us.”

  “Fine time you pick for hauling coal,” grinned Delores.

  “Where’s the men-folks?” asked Chris.

  “Out sawin’ railroad ties,” said Minna. “The furnace is out and the house is cold. No coal even for the kitchen range. We’re burning tie wood today.”

  Chris Bieber laughed. “Reiny, guess we better go help.”

  By nightfall, the cellar had wood in it, and the downstairs was warm from a wood fire in the furnace. Even though he knew his wife, Vera Mae, would worry, Chris Bieber stayed all night so he could help get the coal in the morning.

  When morning came, it was still snowing. After an early breakfast, Johannes said: “Ozzie, you take the tractor and the hayrack and go out to the stacks and get a load of hay. Here’s three big boys to help you. Clear the snow off one of the stacks and drive the range cattle down there to eat. Bring a load of hay back to the barn for the saddle-horses and milk-cows. Don’t know how long this storm will last. Phil, you can drive the tractor part of the way for Ozzie. Reiny and Darrell, you’ll have to shovel some.”

  “Oh boy! Shovel some? I’ll say so,” said Darrell.

  “Yippee!” , exclaimed Reiny. “I been dyin’ to buck a few drifts.”

  “Criminy sakes!” growled Philip. “I’d like to stay in and keep warm. What we got a warm house for?”

  “Come on, boys,” called Oscar, opening the door.

  “Can I go with the boys, Papa?” asked Delores. “I can shovel some.”

  “Nope, you stay in and help your Mama,” said Papa. “You know how she gets in a storm like this. Try and keep her cheered up.”

  “Oh shoot!” cried Delores. “The boys get to have all the fun.”

  “Ain’t you comin’ with us, Pop?” asked Darrell.

  “Nope, Chris and I are taking his tractor and my truck and we’re goin’ after a load of coal,” said Papa Wagner. “We got to load the truck with wheat, to hold it down on the road. No tellin’ when we’ll get back.”

  After the boys and men left the house, Delores was left alone with her mother and little brother.

  “The men’ll get in a ditch,” sighed Mama, “and the boys’ll never make it. The stacks are two miles away across the prairie. They’ll have to shovel every inch.”
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  “Don’t you worry none,” said Delores. “They’ll make it all right.”

  The house was quiet now except for Christy’s coughing. Delores went down cellar and filled the furnace with wood, then into the front room to listen to the battery radio. It was still cold there, with the northwest wind blowing around the corner. She had to put both coat and snowpants on to keep from shivering.

  “You come out of that cold room,” called Mama. “You’ll catch cold.”

  “Just a minute,” said Delores. “It’s time for the news—maybe I can get the weather report. If it stops snowing, we’ll go to town tomorrow and I’ll do my Christmas shopping.”

  The radio sputtered, but the battery was not dead. Delores could hear what the man was saying:

  “…bad storm over the Great Plains…from Nebraska to Montana…cattle and sheep drifting before the storm…huddled in fence corners beneath the drifts…miles from their home ranges…wet snow…freezing on their eyes, ears and bodies…many reported dead…” That was all. It faded out again.

  Alarmed, the girl ran to the kitchen.

  “The cattle are freezing to death,” she cried. “The man said the drifts are getting so high they are burying the cattle and they can’t get out.”

  “Ach! So!” cried Mama. “That must be north of here, up in Canada.”

  “He said in Nebraska,” replied Delores. “That’s south of here.” .

  “Nebraska!” exclaimed Mama. “They always get bad blizzards in Nebraska. I always read it in the paper.”

  “We better put our cattle in the barn, Mama,” said Delores, “before they freeze to death.’’

  Mama laughed. “How big a barn you think we got, hey? First you put all the farm machinery in, and now seventy head of range cattle. What you think? You talk like a dumb town girl.”

  “Don’t they get cold staying out all winter long, with no food and no shelter?” asked Delores.

  “Some of them die,” said Mama sadly. “One winter they all died—three thousand dollars we lost. Plenty farmers lose their whole herd. Even if they live through the winter, they’re poor skinny creatures by spring.” Mama brought out her sewing basket and a pile of clothes to mend.

  “If the hay lasts out,” she said, “they’ll live. That is, if they can get to the stacks. In a storm like this, they start going with the wind at their backs, and they keep going till they get stopped by a fence and get banked up against it, or till they all get drowned in a creek. The Herefords are the best ones to nose the snow away and try to eat the prairie grass underneath, like the horses do. The others got to get to the stacks.” Mama sewed quietly, then she added, “When summer comes, they eat grass again and grow strong.”

  “I don’t see why Pop couldn’t let me go out,” said Delores. “I’m stronger’n Darrell is. I can throw him wrastling.”

  “You’d go off and leave me here alone?” said Mama. “Go get your embroidery and do a little work on it.”

  Delores brought out her dresser scarf, replaced the embroidery hoops, and started to work on the design of wild roses.

  “Jeepers!” she cried impatiently. “My thread always gets knots in it.”

  Mama did not answer. Her face looked sad. The needle and thread in her hand went steadily up and down. The kitchen grew dark as the afternoon wore on. Christy was sleeping on the bed in the next room. He stirred restlessly and began to cough. Mama put down her mending when she could no longer see.

  “Light the lamp, Delores,” she said. “Did you clean the chimney?”

  “Criminy, no,” said the girl. “I forgot.”

  “Go do it quick then.”

  Delores washed the blackened lamp chimney and polished it with a dry, clean cloth.

  “It gets dark early in a storm,” said Mama. “Is plenty oil in all the lamps?”

  “Yah, I filled them full,” said Delores. “Now if we had electricity—”

  “If we had electricity,” Mama interrupted sternly, “we would have no light at all. The people in town have no lights when the storms come. Lavina tells me so, and Grandma Wagner and Mrs. Thiel and all the ladies. In town they sit in darkness till the storm is over. They eat cold food and sit in a cold kitchen. Electric stoves do not burn wood.” Mama got up and put more wood on the fire.

  “I wish we had a pretty little house like Grandma’s just the same,” said Delores. She jerked her embroidery thread impatiently.

  Mama sighed. “The house must wait—so your Papa says. The farm machinery must first be paid for. Last year a new tractor and a new truck too. All this machinery, it eats up all the money.”

  “Why do we buy so much?”

  “Oh, the men—the men, they put their heads together, they say they got to have more and more.”

  Delores looked out the window. “Everything’s white,” she said. “I can’t see a thing but a white blur. Blizzards are so white.”

  “Except when they are black,” said Mama.

  “Black!” said Delores. “Whoever heard of a black blizzard?”

  “I have seen one,” said Mama. “I have seen plenty of them and tasted them too.”

  She went into the bedroom to look at Christy. She put her hand on his head, and came back, shaking her own.

  “The baby is sick,” she said, “and at a time like this.”

  “What’s a black blizzard?” asked Delores.

  “Sand, dirt, gravel blowing up and hitting you in the face instead of clean snow,” said Mama, sitting down in the rocker. “You are too young. It was before you were born, in the thirties—1935, 1936 and 1937.”

  “Oh, the dust storms,” said Delores. “We studied about them in school. But I didn’t know they happened here. I thought they were in Kansas and Nebraska.”

  “Yes, and here too, in the Dakotas,” said Mama. “The wind don’t stop at the state line. They were all over the Great Plains from Texas to Montana. The Sioux Indians say the prairie grass should never have been broken up. Maybe they are right. Maybe the first settlers shouldn’t have broken the sod and planted big fields of wheat. When so many dry summers came in a row, the wind blew day and night and whoof—the air was full of dirt. It blew in our eyes, our noses, our throats, our lungs. Many died of tuberculosis, children too. Ach! The hard time, the trouble, the sickness…five years in a row we made no crop…not a blade of wheat came up. Ach! it was terrible…” Tears came in Minna Wagner’s eyes, as she looked out the window.

  “I don’t like the snow,” she said. “I don’t like the wind. But whenever I see a white blizzard blowing, I thank God it is not a black one.” Christy began to cough in the bedroom. “Bring him to me,” said Mama.

  Delores carried the boy out and put him in his mother’s lap. Christy, usually so full of life and spirit, was limp and sickly now.

  “He’s had fever all day,” said Mama. “And on such a day we run out of coal and have a cold house.”

  “The boys—why do they stay so long?” said Delores. “Soon it will be dark.”

  “In warm weather, they can chase the cattle down to the stacks,” “said Mama. “But now the stacks are covered with snow. They must shovel all that long way.”

  “Does Christy need a doctor?” asked Delores.

  “All summer, all fall, we run to town two-three times a week for nothing at all,” Mama said. “All summer, we go twice a week to take you kids to the show. What is a show when a baby lies sick of the fever?”

  Delores stood beside her mother, looking down at her little brother.

  “So many times we run,” Mama went on, “we use gas, we have the old car, the truck, the tractor. We can take one or the other and run off to town. We can run in after supper and get home before bedtime. Nine miles—it is nothing. But in the winter time, when the big blizzard comes, and the baby lies sick, there is no car to take him to the doctor.”

  “The old car—it’s broke down,” said Delores.

  “Oh yes, the old car, it’s broke down, it’s got a flat tire, it’s got this and that wr
ong with it,” said Mama, “and the truck and the tractor, they are gone.”

  The tears ran down Mama’s cheeks, and Delores could not bear to see it. She wanted to cheer her up but she did not know how.

  “What for? What is all this machinery for?” There was despair in Mama’s voice. “Always more and more machinery to get out of order, to break down when we need it most. The men are not farmers any more. They are mechanics, and poor ones at that.’’

  Delores got up and put more wood on the stove.

  “Maybe Christy will be better tomorrow,” she said. “What’ll we fix for supper?”

  “I’m making sour knipfla,” said Mama. “Are the potatoes done?”

  “Yah,” said Delores, trying them with a fork.

  “The roll of dough is ready,” said Mama. “Take the scissors and cut little pieces off and put them into the potato-and-water mixture. Let it cook till the knipfla get done. Then I’ll put the sour cream and vinegar in.”

  Suddenly a rush came against the outside door. The dog, Rover, barked and a scuffle was heard. The door burst open, and in rushed the three boys, followed by the hired man.

  “Shut the door! Shut the door quick!” called Delores. “Brush that snow off outside.”

  “Jeepers!” cried Darrell. “It’s nice and warm in here. My cheek’s frozen. Let me get it thawed out.” He brought in a panful of snow and held handfuls up to his cheek.

  “Did you get some hay?” asked Mama, as she put Christy back to bed.

  “No,” said Oscar. “Pretty big job gettin’ hay in weather like this.”

  “Got stuck a dozen times,” said Phil. “Had to unhitch the hayrack and leave it out there. Maybe we can drive the cattle up to it tomorrow and let them eat.”

  “Tractor was always gettin’ stuck and we had to dig it out,” said Reiny.

  “The snow blew up in our faces and then froze,” said Darrell. “We had to stop and pull the ice from our eyes and warm our hands on the exhaust from the tractor. We couldn’t see the road ahead of us.”

  “Jeepers!” exclaimed Delores. “Wish I could have been out. You guys have all the fun.”