Prairie Girls

 
No one said…

our good-byes would be so difficult and have to last forever.

our journey crossing the Atlantic would be so long.

trains rides lasting days would take us across vast America.

so many hardships and crisis could be experienced on the plains.

prairie grasses waved in the wind and beauty was found as far as the eyes could see.

the family would flourish and great bounty be realized.

the snows ran deep and a pioneer Christmas could be so perfect.

how important owning land would be for Papa.

nor how I would rejoice to be a prairie girl.

…But I did and I am.

 

Richelle

It’s Richelle again from the writers’ project. I was a prairie girl and had not been in America homesteading very long when I discovered serious problems could occur unlike anything I had ever experienced. I knew about droughts and floods which could hurt crops in the fields. On the Great Plains weather could totally destroy crops leaving the family with nothing.

In 1874, something happened I had only heard about from the Bible. A plague of locusts destroyed our garden and most of our neighbors’ crops. The grasshoppers came in a huge, black cloud and descended upon our home. We didn’t know how we would survive, but once again I am telling too much. I will continue this story later.

Grasshoppers

 

“Hoptykiller, hoptykiller,” my three-year old shouted as she jumped up and down. She was clearly scared of the “hoptykiller,” whatever it was. I ran outside to rescue her. I feared she had stepped on a snake, but did not see one. “Help, help, it’s a hoptykiller,” my daughter continued to shout. Finally, I caught her and held her still.

 

“Where?” I asked. “Where is the hoptykiller?”

 

“There,” she answered and pointed to her leg. On it was a large yellow and brown grasshopper clinging on for dear life, no doubt wondering what he had landed on that screeched so loudly and moved around so much.

 

Like Richelle, I grew up on a farm. Some years grasshoppers stripped most of the growing plants. They covered fence posts and even telephone poles in a bad year. Occasionally on a hot summer afternoon, my grandmother asked me to catch grasshoppers to use for fish bait if she wanted fish for supper. I don’t remember Grandma catching many fish. I do remember getting a brown, liquid substance I called “tobacco juice” on my hands from the grasshoppers.

 

I’m not sure either my daughter or I could have saved Richelle’s family’s seed wheat from grasshoppers…especially if we had to touch one.