I blew in on a fierce South Dakota blizzard in January 1919. My father rode his horse across what my mother always called the “godforsaken prairie” to fetch the doctor, who arrived after my grandmother had both delivered me and prepared a fine chicken dinner. The doctor pronounced me healthy, ate dinner, submitted his bill and rode back through the snowbanks. I was a pretty big kid before I realized “godforsaken prairie” wasn’t all one word.
My brother was two and a half years older than I, and as he approached his sixth birthday, my mother declared she wasn’t going to send her little first-grader alone on a horse across the aforementioned prairie. So we moved into the very small town of Midland, where my brother and I grew up. One day, a couple of years after the move, we rode in the buggy out to see the cabin where Daddy had homesteaded. It had never been much of a house, and two years of neglect hadn’t improved it.
I stood there, looking at it, and asked, “Is this really where I was born?” Mama said it was. I shook my head in dismay and said, “No wonder I don’t know nuffin.” This was recited back to me often.
The best thing about Midland was its proximity to the Black Hills, where Daddy built a cabin, along with two other couples. We kids roamed all over the hills and swam in the dammed-up creek near our cabin. It was a wonderful haven, and a beautiful place to spend our summers.
