Life on the Prairie

Once Upon the Prairie

 

 

Life on the Prairie

 

 Rylie

 

Rylie is a ten-year-old writer.

She uses her stories to make her brother’s life brighter.

Her brother, George, has gone to fight in the Great War.

Rylie prays daily the war will be no more.

Her family and she know George is not a fighter.

 

Family, friends and neighbors dread the knock at the door.

It could mean the family’s soldier is injured or more.

George does safely return at war’s end

Giving Rylie, her family and the world time to mend.

Everyone must try to understand the pain the soldiers bore.

 

 

 

Rylie: the Imaginative Girl took first place at the Heart of America Christian Writer’s Conference 2014 Writing Contest in the children’s story division.

 

Please note this blog posts the first and third weeks of the month.

 

 

 

 

 

Prairie Girls

Rylie

It’s Rylie again, and I got into trouble today. There is a big tree right outside the window of my classroom. Since I sit by the window, it is very hard not to look at what is happening in the tree. I got caught daydreaming, and teacher decided I should write an essay for punishment. My friend Bertha suggested I write a story about what I saw out the window. That’s how “Sammy, the Squirrel” stories started.

I have to tell Papa about the bullying going on at my school, and I don’t know what to do about it. Several of the fifth grade boys are picking on a second grader who is the son of the grocery store owner in my neighborhood. They pick on him because he is German. Maybe Papa will have an answer for me.

What Storm?

    By Judy

Like Rylie, I occasionally daydreamed in school when I should have paid attention. I attended a one-room school, and there were times it was all right to daydream. When I was in the younger grades, if my school work was completed, I could pass the time listening to an upper class’s lesson, read, draw pictures, or just daydream.

There was more time to daydream when I was in the upper classes as I felt I already knew everything the younger grades were learning. Today, I know listening to and reviewing the subjects the younger kids studied might have been a good idea. While I daydreamed some, my favorite activity was to read during the younger classes’ lessons.

My reading provided the entire school (possibly there were 12 students in all eight grades that year) a good laugh one rainy afternoon. Our school was built before electricity was available in rural areas, and there were rows of large windows on each side to provide enough light for learning. The school did not have running water either, and the teacher or an older student pumped a bucket of water at the outside cistern for use during the day.

It rained hard and the wind roared one spring day. Raindrops pounded on the window panes and the old roof of the school building. I was lost in Little Women. The other students and the teacher had stopped their activities to watch the storm.  I continued to read. “Judy, will you go pump a bucket of water?” my teacher asked thinking it a funny joke. I still continued to read, unaware it was storming. Three times the teacher asked me to go outside and pump a bucket of water.

After the fourth time, she walked back to my desk, tapped me on the shoulder and repeated her request for me to get a bucket of water from the cistern outdoors. By now all the students were aware I was focused on my book and not concerned about the possibility of a Kansas storm or the teacher’s voice. I jumped when she tapped me on the shoulder, and every student laughed. The teacher laughed, and I even laughed, happy I had provided my fellow schoolmates some fun during the bad storm.

How hurt I would have been, though, if everyone had laughed at me or made fun of me because I was a different color, a different nationality, unable to learn, had a different family structure, or for any of a hundred other different reasons….  

Over Here

Over Here

                                     By Collette

President Woodrow Wilson had promised the electorate the United States would stay out of the Great War that engulfed Europe. Economically, our industrial production was needed by the countries considered allies. In April of 1917, the President officially asked Congress to declare war on the Axis Powers of Europe. The declaration allowed America to move to full-time war production on the home front.

As men were drafted to serve in the army and left for the warfront, women replaced them at every level. They worked in munitions, produced equipment and replaced men in factories. The general public supported national drives that declared “fuel less Mondays,” “meatless Tuesdays,” “wheat less Wednesdays,” and “gasless Sundays.” Children actively collected money for government bonds to help finance the war effort. Every family that could planted a “victory garden” so food could be sent to Europe. All the while propaganda was used to influence the home front and a cessation of civil liberties was allowed to protect America from foreign intervention and spying.

For more information about how America fought on the home front, the following might be helpful.

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_front_during_World_War_I
www.archives.gov/boston/exhibits/homefront
www.authentichistory.com/1914-1920/2-homefront/1-propaganda
https://docs.askives.com/home-front-us-ww1.html

 

 

 

 

Main Dish Recipes from the 1920's

 

Main Dish Recipes from the 1920’s

                                                      By Collette

The following might have been served at Rylie’s table.

Stuffed Flank Steak

2 pounds flank steak                                  1 small onion, chopped

¼ teaspoon salt                                          1 garlic clove, chopped
¼ teaspoon pepper                                     1 bouillon cube
½ cup diced carrots                                    2 tablespoons catsup
1/3 cup small green peas                            2 tablespoons Worcestershire
½ cup chopped celery                                     sauce

Score steak in several places; season with salt and pepper. Place vegetables on top.
Roll steak; tie together in several places. Place in baking pan. Dissolve bouillon cube in ¾ cup of hot water; add catsup and Worcestershire sauce. Pour in baking pan. Bake in preheated 325 degree oven for about one hour or until tender.

Breaded Pork Chops

pork chops                                                 eggs, beaten

salt and pepper to taste                              cracker meal

Sprinkle both sides of pork chops with salt and pepper. Dip pork chops into eggs; roll in cracker meal. Place pork chops in skillet in small amount of fat; cook over medium heat, turning to brown both sides. Remove from skillet; place in roasting pan. Cover top with waxed paper; place lid over paper. Trim excess paper from around lid. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for an hour.

Old Fashioned Meat Loaf

1 pound ground steak                                          1/3 cup milk
½ pound ground, fresh pork butt                         ½ cup water
1 cup cracker crumbs                                           salt & pepper to taste
2 eggs

Mix meats, eggs, crumbs and milk; shape into loaf. Place in baking pan; add water, salt and pepper. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for one hour and thirty minutes to two hours, covering with foil the first half of baking time.

The Water Gun Incident

 

The Water Gun Incident

                             By Collette

I did not get into trouble at school when I was growing up. I believed my parents when they said, “You get into trouble at school, and you are in trouble at home.” There was one time when I got sent to the principal’s office, however. I was a freshman in high school, and we had a foreign language teacher who barely spoke enough English to teach us Spanish. He had very poor discipline in the classroom, and many took advantage of him on a daily basis.

If I remember right, the trouble started outside in front of the school with some bushes that grew berries. Some of the boys brought them to class and started lobbing berries at each other when the Spanish teacher had his back to the class. Of course, girls were getting hit in the process. The next thing I knew people were bringing water guns to school to use in retaliation. On the way home my friends and I stopped by a grocery store, and there was a display with little pistol water guns.

I sure wish I could remember what my thinking process was, but at my friends’ urging, I bought a pistol. This was out of character because I was a mouse about getting into trouble. The next day I stuck it in my purse and carried it to school. I never loaded it with water, but… I did have my purse in Spanish class. Well, a water fight ensued shortly after the bell rang to start class. The boys got caught and were sent to the office.

The parting shot from one of the guys as he left for the punishment was to check the girls’ purses for water guns. Three of us girls were armed, so we were sent to the office. I remember one of the guys told the teacher he wanted to go to see what would happen to us, and he chose to go see the principal, as well. The interest was because one of the girls was the principal’s daughter. I was pretty sure my parents would be getting a phone call before I got home. Of course, we girls cried as soon as we hit the office door.

Today, we would have been expelled from school, but then the sentence was pretty light. We were to write a theme (I don’t remember how many words it was to be) explaining why we thought we were privileged enough to carry water guns when no one else could. Because I wasn’t sure if my parents were called, I decided to fess up to the fact I was a felon. Of course, the principal had not called, and I shared my guilt for nothing. I am quite sure the principal had a good laugh, and because he had the best memory for names of any human being I have ever met, it would probably still make him chuckle.

 

 

Trouble

  

 

                    Trouble
by Judy

I will not write about the few times I may or may not have received phone calls from school officials about any of my children getting into trouble at school. I will not write about the few times I may or may not have displeased school officials myself. I want to remain in my adult children’s lives, and I do not wish to jeopardize my reputation as Nana. There were a couple of students in my class who probably managed to graduate from high school without having seen the inside of the principal’s office, but I was not one of them. I will state my offenses were miner. I thought so at the time, and I still do. Yet, to this day, I do not talk while the vehicle I am in is crossing a railroad track.  

While I don’t wish to talk about any further school troubles I may or may not have had, my parents are no longer living, so I can fess up to a few of my misdeeds at home.

1.  It was I who spelled the bottle of white shoe polish on the brown carpet and managed to cover it with the footstool for a couple of weeks by volunteering to vacuum each week.
2. It was I who while hoeing the garden swung the hoe back and struck my little brother in the forehead. Wait…I guess my parents did know about that because my little brother tattled. In his defense he did carry the scar with him to his grave. He was justified in tattling, I guess. It was an accident which I sincerely regretted.
3. It was I who failed to turn the electric water pump off one hot summer night which caused the cattle tank to overflow and the well to go dry. Fortunately, the well had a natural spring and refilled within a day. While I never confessed to this, I was punished for the crime. Again, one of my brothers probably tattled.
4.  It was I who always ate the marshmallows when left in the house alone.  
5.  It was I who drank the last of what I thought was pineapple juice in a glass in the refrigerator. (Warning, be aware that pineapple juice and chicken broth look a lot alike in the dark. I should have just gone for a couple of spoons of applesauce.)

Parenting was difficult when I was a child, and it was difficult when my children were young. It remains a hard task today. Most parents do the best they can parenting given their circumstances and knowledge at the time. At least that’s what I tell myself when my children confess some of their heretofore unknown antics over the family’s Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner tables. I try not to act too surprised either.