Jan/Feb 2023 (Volume 15, Issue 1)
By Michael Swanger
We are wimps.
Remember that this winter when you complain about the cold, icy conditions as you climb into your four-wheeled vehicle with heated seats, or lounge in comfortable clothing inside your climate controlled home, or complete a day of work or school online because it snowed an inch or two.
By comparison to Iowa’s pioneers we are pampered. And I doubt that anyone 100 years from now will look back on this time in our history and feel much pity for us as we are swaddled in the creature comforts of modern civilization.
These days it is easy to mythologize our ancestors when you imagine the hardships that they endured. With each passing year the myths are perpetuated and sometimes become more exaggerated.
Then there are the writings of Hamlin Garland (1860-1940) to take into consideration. An American novelist, essayist, poet and short story writer best known for his fiction and nonfiction works about Midwest farmers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer has sometimes been accused of painting an unflattering picture of pioneer life. It is a refreshing viewpoint given the proliferation of nostalgic history that is being written today.
The best example of Garland’s work is his 1917 autobiography, “A Son of the Middle Border.”
Garland was born in Wisconsin and lived on various Midwestern farms during his youth, including one located between Osage and St. Ansgar. Much of his work was informed by this period of his life when his family occupied a cabin on their rented Iowa farm that was a “mere shanty … a shell of pine boards, which needed re-enforcing to make it habitable,” he wrote in his autobiography’s chapter entitled “Our First Winter on the Prairie.”
The house was an unpainted square cottage that stood bare on the sod at the edge of Dry Run ravine. It included a main floor with a sitting room, bedroom and kitchen, and a low un-plastered chamber overhead in which the children slept. The attic was warmed by a stove-pipe and Garland and his siblings on especially cold days hurried down stairs to dress beside the kitchen fire in their “cheap and ill fitting” attire that included home-made cotton flannel, trousers, overalls, suspenders and high-topped boots. The furniture was crude, but effective. “It was all cheap and worn, for this was the middle border, and nearly all our neighbors had moved as we had done in covered wagons. Farms were new, houses were shanties, and money was scarce.”
Garland recalls the winter that he and his family spent in Mitchell County near the Iowa-Minnesota border when he was 10 years old with great detail.
“Finally the day came when the ground rang like iron under the feet of the horses, and a bitter wind, raw and gusty, swept out of the northwest, bearing gray veils of sleet. Winter had come! Work in the furrow had ended. The plow was brought in, cleaned and greased to prevent its rusting, and while the horses munched their hay in well-earned holiday, father and I helped farmer Button husk the last of his corn.”
One night while seated around the kerosene lamp, Garland’s father proclaimed it was time for he and his wife to take their children to town to “fit ‘em out for school.”
“Those words so calmly uttered filled our minds with visions of new boots, new caps and new books, and though we obediently went to bed we hardly slept, so excited were we, and at breakfast next morning not one of us could think of food. All our desires converged upon the wondrous expedition—our first visit to town.”
The family made the trek to town in its lumber wagon that sported two spring seats, one for the parents, the other for the children. The family possessed two buffalo robes for use in their winter sleigh.
“We drove away across the frosty prairie toward Osage—moderately comfortable and perfectly happy.”
Osage was a town of about 1,200 when the Garland family drove down Main Street. Jars of pink and white candy caught the eyes of the children as they sought out boots and buckskin mittens. After shopping for clothes, each child was treated to a candy marble. For the young Garland, it was sensory overload.
“Oh! The marvellous (sic) exotic smells!,” he wrote. “Odors of salt codfish and spices, calico and kerosene, apples and ginger-snaps mingle in my mind as I write.”
But the crowning joy of the day, wrote Garland, was buying new boots which their father insisted would be one size too large to allow for growth in the coming year.
“They were real boots,” he wrote. “No one but a Congressman wore ‘gaiters’ in those days. War fashions still dominated the shoe-shops, and high-topped cavalry boots were all but universal … The ones I selected had red tops with a golden moon in the center. Oh! That deliciously oily new smell! My heart glowed every time I look at mine.”
Then came buying books for school. Garland described them as having a delightful new smell and “there was singular charm in the smooth surface of the unmarked slates. I was eager to carve my name in the frame. At last with our treasures under the seat (so near that we could feel them), with our slates and books in our laps we jolted home, dreaming of school and snow. To wade in the drifts with our fine high-topped boots was now our desire.”
The schoolhouse which Garland attended stood on the bare prairie about a mile away without any trees to afford it relief from the relentless prairie winds during the winter. Yet it was the center of the town’s social life, whether it was hosting classes or religious revivals.
“It was merely a square pine box painted a glaring white on the outside and a desolate drab within; at least drab was the original color, but the benches were mainly so greasy and hacked that original intentions were obscured,” Garland wrote. “It had two doors on the eastern end and three windows on each side … A long square stove, a wooden chair, and a rude table in one corner, for use of the teacher, completed the movable furniture. The walls were roughly plastered and the windows had no curtains.”
Nonetheless, the experience of attending school at such a “barren temple of the arts” was not as harsh as Garland might lead the reader to believe. Children are more resilient to adversity than adults in some ways.
“In spite of the cold, the boys played open air games all winter. ‘Dog and Deer,’ ‘Dare Gool’ and ‘Fox and Geese’ were our favorite diversions, and the wonder is that we did not all die of pneumonia, for we battled so furiously during each recess that we often came in wet with perspiration and coughing so hard that for several minutes recitations were quite impossible. But we were a hardy lot and none of us seemed the worse for our colds.”
Like I said. We are wimps.
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