•March 13, 2019•

By Jerry L. Ginther
NP Guest Columnist

I’ll concede that viewing the past from my vantage point necessarily presents a somewhat different concept than the ones of my children and grandchildren. Most of them see those times as an adventure not unlike the TV episodes of “Little House on the Prairie.” What young boy would not appreciate going to town with his father in a horse-drawn wagon to load up supplies. When they were younger, they were thrilled by the adventure and dismissed the hardships and dangers that were common to that era.
With the knowledge I have acquired from my immediate ancestor’s stories, I know that it was a time of perpetual, laborious activity with few tools to mitigate the difficulty of farming the prairie lands. Some of their recollections were of tough times. They were the pioneers of their era braving the elements. Illness and injury were frequent companions. The weather, often unpredictable, caused additional hardships. In those days they could hardly forecast the weather for the next day with any degree of accuracy. However realistic my perception may be, it was not just from the years of my life, but also from the chronicles of my parents and grandparents.
My grandparents were born before 1900. As a matter of fact, my father’s parents were 19 and 20 years old at the turn of the 20th century. I suppose that what they did not have impressed me more than what they had. When I realized they had no automobiles or telephones and had never heard of an airplane, their history became all the more interesting to me.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.