Ron Nelson took these photos of fall turning to winter on Lake Preston last month. Nelson is a portrait photographer in the little town in Kingsbury County. You can view more of his work here.
Frost on Lake Preston
Tag: kingsbury county
Thanksgiving on the Prairie
When Charles and Caroline Ingalls brought their family to Dakota Territory in 1879, they found a winter home in a railroad surveyor’s house on the shore of Silver Lake, near DeSmet. All the surveyor asked was that Charles guard the company tools.
The Ingalls lived cozily in the house (which has since been restored by the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society and is open to visitors to DeSmet.) It must have been a memorable winter, because Laura — who went on to become famous for her Little House writings — wrote about it 37 years later (1916) in a Thanksgiving column for The Missouri Ruralist. We first published her account in our November/December 1988 issue, and are pleased to have the opportunity to share it with you again.
As Thanksgiving Day draws near again, I am reminded of an occurrence of my childhood. To tell the truth, it is a yearly habit of mine to think of it about this time and to smile at it once more.
We were living on the frontier in South Dakota then. There’s no more frontier within the boundaries of the United States, more’s the pity, but then we were ahead of the railroad in a new unsettled country. Our nearest and only neighbor was 12 miles away and the store was 40 miles distant.
Father had laid in a supply of provisions for the winter and among them were salt meats, but for fresh meat we depended on father’s gun and the antelope which fed in herds across the prairie. So we were quite excited, one day near Thanksgiving, when father hurried into the house for his gun and then away again to try for a shot at a belated flock of wild geese hurrying south.
We would have roast goose for Thanksgiving dinner! “Roast goose and dressing seasoned with sage,” said sister Mary. “No, not sage! I don’t like sage and we won’t have it in the dressing,” I exclaimed. Then we quarreled, sister Mary and I, she insisting that there should be sage in the dressing and I declaring there should not be sage in the dressing, until father returned — without the goose!
I remember saying in a meek voice to sister Mary, “I wish I had let you have the sage,” and to this day when I think of it I feel again just as I felt then and realize how thankful I would have been for roast goose and dressing with sage seasoning — with or without any seasoning — I could even have gotten along without the dressing. Just plain goose roasted would have been plenty good enough.
This little happening has helped me to be properly thankful even tho at times the seasoning of my blessings has not been just such as I would have chosen.
“I suppose I should be thankful for what we have, but I can’t feel very thankful when I have to pay $2.60 for a little flour and the price still going up,” writes a friend, and in the same letter she says, “We are in our usual health.” The family is so used to good health that it is not even taken into consideration as a cause of thanksgiving. We are so inclined to take for granted the blessings we possess and to look for something peculiar, some special good luck for which to be thankful.
I read a Thanksgiving story the other day in which a woman sent her little boy out to walk around the block and look for something for which to be thankful. One would think that the fact of his being able to walk around the block and that he had a mother to send him would have been sufficient cause for thankfulness.
We are nearly all afflicted with mental farsightedness and so easily overlook the thing which is obvious and near. There are our hands and feet — who ever thinks of giving thanks for them, until indeed they, or the use of them, are lost. We usually accept them as a matter of course, without a thought, but a year of being crippled has taught me the value of my feet and two perfectly good feet are now among my dearest possessions. Why! There is greater occasion for thankfulness just in the unimpaired possession of one of the five senses than there would be if some one left us a fortune. Indeed, how could the value of one be reckoned? When we have all five in good working condition we surely need not make a search for anything else in order to feel that we should give thanks to Whom thanks are due.
I once remarked upon how happy and cheerful a new acquaintance seemed always to be and the young man to whom I spoke replied, “Oh he’s just glad that he is alive.” Upon inquiry, I learned that several years before this man had been seriously ill, that there had been no hope of his living, but to everyone’s surprise he had made a complete recovery and since then he had always been remarkably happy and cheerful.
So if for nothing else, let’s “just be glad that we are alive” and be doubly thankful if, like the Scotch poet, we have a good appetite and the means to gratify it.
Some hae meat that canna eat
And some want meat that lack it.
But I hae meat and I can eat,
And sae the Lord be thanked.
Cows on Parade
De Smet was a busy prairie town in 1917. Many trains passed through each day, and the three blocks of Main Street hummed with business. Both teams of horses and automobiles could be found on the streets. It was a pleasant town in which to live. There was quiet order to the days. The neat, well-kept houses that faced the street had barns that faced the alley. Some barns were used as garages for the new automobiles and some still sheltered horses. In residence in many of the barns was a milk cow. Refrigeration wasn’t great yet, and although you could order milk delivered from the dairy, many people still preferred their own supply.
Ten-year-old Harold Fritzel had developed a business. In partnership with his father, the two had decided that the Fritzel pasture on the edge of town could accommodate eight or ten milk cows. For $1.50 a month, young Harold would pick the cows up from their barns after morning milking, herd them to the pasture and return them to their barns in time for evening milking. Harold became a successful businessman. He had eight customers.
For the first few days, Harold’s father helped him. Once the cows knew where they were going, they would march out of their barns as Harold opened the door, join the cow parade and swing their tails in good style. None of the cows were above grabbing a bite here and there as they went. A small Jersey was the worst offender and the worst kicker. The tall, thin boy carrying a long stick and following his herd became a familiar alley sight.
In later years, Harold Fritzel recalled, “I knew every step of the alleys and most of the barns in De Smet. Along my route was a house shared by a widow and her blind daughter, Mary. They had neither cow nor barn. Their back yard was as neatly kept as the front. A rope was strung across the yard so the blind girl could walk around. The widow raised a large vegetable garden.
“Every morning and evening as I passed their house the old lady stood between her garden and the alley with a hoe in her hand. They had no alley fence, but I just figured she spent a lot of time working in her garden. I can shut my eyes and see her yet, the clothes she wore, the look on her face, the way she held her hoe.
“I always said … ‘Good Morning Mrs. Ingalls.’ She would reply, ‘Hello Harold.’ It didn’t dawn on me until years later that she stood there with the hoe in her hand to guard her garden, guard it from my cows.
“Of course, no one in De Smet had any idea that Caroline Ingalls’ daughter, Laura, would put us all on the map. “In those day I was just a kid and Ma Ingalls was a polite old lady, an old lady with a hoe, watching over her garden.”
Editor’s Note: Harold Fritzell recalled his daily encounter with Ma Ingalls in July of 1989. He died in 2002. Marian Cramer of Bryant, South Dakota shared his story with our readers in our May/June 1990 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
Sunrise or Sunset
South Dakota’s open prairies and idyllic lakes make optimal settings for capturing the start and end to the day.
A Birthday Surprise
A part of my duties at South Dakota Magazine involves sifting through story ideas from readers and freelance writers. We receive so many great ideas that we often don’t have room for them all. But this is a special one I wanted to share. Janet Holland of De Smet contacted us about a surprise birthday gift she received in December. Donna Palmlund of the De Smet News recently wrote about the gift. The following is gleaned from Palmlund’s article.
Janet and Gordie Holland, married 52 years, were at the United Church of Christ’s annual potato feed and bazaar in November 2010 when a quilt being raffled caught Janet’s eye.
“I fell in love with it and told Gordie I was going to buy six tickets,” Janet said. Janet, a quilter herself, said she really didn’t need it. She didn’t expect to win, but thought the quilt was beautiful.
Pam Spader won the raffle and Janet recalled teasing Spader about winning her quilt. But the quilt didn’t match any of Spader’s dÈcor and she put it up for sale on a household auction last August.
Spader’s sister, Brittani Wilkinson, told Gordie that the quilt his wife liked was being sold. He bought it and told Wilkinson he was going to give it to Janet for her birthday in December. Janet saw the quilt on the sale earlier in the day and went back to buy it but, of course, it was gone.”My sisters and I fibbed. We told her someone we didn’t know already bought it,” Spader said.
But Gordie died unexpectantly in September. After his death, Spader told Gordie’s daughter, Bonnie Menzel, about the quilt. Finding it became a scavenger hunt for Menzel and her three brothers. They finally found it on a shelf in Holland’s home office. Holland had been a building contractor, and had secured the quilt in a box taped shut with heavy Tyvek tape.
The four siblings decided to wait until their mother’s birthday in December to give her the special gift left by her husband. One of the son’s took the box to his pickup to keep it hidden, but realized his mother might notice it was missing and returned it to its original location.
“I tried not to tell anybody in town [about the quilt],” Menzel said.”I didn’t want it to accidentally slip.”
Janet said she wondered about the contents of the box.”I’d noticed it on the shelf a few times,” she said.”Gordie had been cleaning out cupboards and going through old checks and receipts so I just assumed that was what was in there,” Janet said.”The day of my birthday party, I was planning to look in that box to see what was in there but never got around to it,” she said.
The family took Janet out for a birthday supper at the Carthage Cabaret.”Bonnie handed me this box and said, ‘This is a birthday present from dad,’ and she was crying,” Janet said.”When I opened it, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”
Janet was shocked. She said her husband never bought gifts ahead of time.
Thank you to Janet, Donna and the De Smet News for sharing this heartwarming story!
