Monday, January 25, 2016

Retracing Family History

While looking in 2007 pictures for yesterday's blog page, I came across these from October 12th of that year. Elaine and I met Don and Gladys at Garland and took his pickup down Ridge Road and on a tour of "A" Twp. Then toured the farm where Don and I "grew-up". Our Dad was raised on the same farm and passed on many family stories to us. This rock in the native grass pasture was up a steep hill from the lane and pasture gate. Dad had told us of his younger sisters setting on the rock to rest after climbing up the steep hill. And, so did we as kids when we got cows from the pasture. There were no invasive cedar trees in those days. We walked on down the lane to the creek which was near the farmstead and were surprised at how the channel had deepened because of stream streightening. We recogniized some of the old Cottonwood trees where we hunted squirrels as kids. While up in the pasture, we got this picture of Don hanging on to my back pocket.
 We would walk up to get the cows by the time I was 8 or 9 years old and Don would have been about 4 or 5. He would hold on to my back pocket to keep up since I was always quite a bit bigger. Don always had a pony and by the time he was able to open the pasture gate, he would ride his pony up to get the cows. On one occasion, he and I were both on the pony and as we approached a tree on a fast trot, I leaned one way and he and the pony the other, and we both fell off. It was close to this big cottonwood. We were poor but had a rich childhood that we didn't fully appreciate at the time.

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