Baby, it's cold outside!

I’ve been reading The Children’s Blizzard and I’m about one third of the way into it. Fascinating! Of course I have to find a way to relate to it, I needed something to make it real to me and that’s when I remembered that our grandmother was born in Tower, Minnesota in 1890. That’s just two years after this tragedy. And Nana experienced blizzards; they were part of her story. Since she lived up on the Iron Range of Minnesota, she didn’t have to suffer through a winter living in a ‘soddie’, but she knew for a fact that a blizzard would kill her. I’m sure that Grandpa (x3) Seymour drilled that fact into her. Children were vulnerable.

And I’ve seen the prairie. Once, when driving west towards home from Kansas City, just after the 9/11 attack. I took the low road, Interstate 70 and saw the vastness of mid-America. And I have taken short trips from KC up to Iowa and Nebraska. Even today, with roads criss-crossing the plains and grain elevators seen on every horizon, it’s still an amazing sight. And one that we should all see at some point in our lives.

A great book to read if you want to get a good taste of prairie life would be PrairyErth by William Least Heat Moon.

photo from the Library of Congress...colorized. Family in front of their soddie.