By the time I was about 10 years old, three of my sisters lived in Cedar Rapids. Merry was the only one who did not, but eventually, even she had moved there. So, when we had holidays and family gatherings, it was a real crowd!
Just about a year later, here are the Cooper sisters again, with Merry's baby bump fairly evident! Back row, left to right, Dorothy Ann holding Butchie, Margaret holding Susan, and Jean holding Jill. On the bench is Merry with Michael on her left and Scott on her right. That's me, down in front, mugging for the camera...
When I was still in elementary school, probably in sixth grade, my parents decided to take a trip to the Dakotas to see where my father had lived. We visited Buffalo, South Dakota, and Bowman, North Dakota. While we were at Bowman, we stayed with a relative of my Uncle Marvin Peters, on the 10,000 acre Claude Olson ranch. That was quite an experience for me.
The Olson ranch was huge! They had acres and acres of land, with fences where they kept the cattle. But, where the dirt road went through the fence, there was no gate. Instead, they had installed 'cattle crossings' in the road. These were about three slats of wood with about an inch of space between each board. Cattle are very suspicious animals, and since the boards were not close together, they were afraid to walk across them. Thus, the ranch hands could drive right between the fence posts on either side of the road, and the cattle would not go through there because of their fear of the spaces between the 'cattle crossing' boards! Imagine...thousands of head of cattle, avoiding escape because they feared walking across boards with spaces between them! Pretty ingenious 'gates,' I would say!
Also, when we rode into town with Mr. and Mrs. Olson, we drove across a shallow creek several times as it meandered around that part of their ranch. There were no bridges, but one just drove right into the water (as I said above, shallow...) and out on the other side. I imagine if they ever got a heavy rain, that would not have been a good idea, but everything I've seen of that part of the Dakotas tells me that heavy rain is not something they often have to deal with...
Also, when we rode into town with Mr. and Mrs. Olson, we drove across a shallow creek several times as it meandered around that part of their ranch. There were no bridges, but one just drove right into the water (as I said above, shallow...) and out on the other side. I imagine if they ever got a heavy rain, that would not have been a good idea, but everything I've seen of that part of the Dakotas tells me that heavy rain is not something they often have to deal with...
The land owned by Claude Olson was pretty flat, with some rolling hills and buttes scattered here and there. One very interesting feature they had found on their land was a cave-like area near a creek that was littered with lots of huge bones and pieces of bones. Mr. Olson gave me a segment of round bones that were somehow connected together in a 'stack.' This piece was about 6 inches in diameter and about 10 inches long. At the time, I didn't realize what it probably was, but now that I know dinosaurs roamed all over that part of this country, I am guessing it was a section of dinosaur tail or spine. I remember I took it to school to show after we got home, but I don't know what happened to it after that. Too bad...it would probably be worth cash today! In fact, the Tyrannosaurus Rex named 'Sue' was discovered embedded in a mesa not too far east of where my father lived in the sod house. That dinosaur was found in the late 1990's near Faith, South Dakota. That skeleton (because it was nearly whole) sold for over $5,000,000.00, after a legal struggle to discover who owned it (it was legally owned by a Cheyenne man).
More to come...
Here's a photo of the 'reconstructed' skeleton of 'Sue,' the T. Rex found in northwestern South Dakota...you can 'google' the words 't. rex' and find articles about this specimen. It now resides in the Field Museum in Chicago.
When we were at the Olson ranch, I had several unique experiences that I will not forget. One was that I was asked if I wanted to help pick potatoes. I did that with one of the daughters of the ranch manager, and with a young fellow who also worked at the ranch. To tease me, the boy picked up a rotten potato, and I found out those can be fairly easily squeezed which causes a really stinky juice to squirt out quite a long distance! I don't think he hit me with that smelly juice, but he came close! We spent about an hour picking potatoes, and after that, my dad got to ride a very frisky horse from the corral.
Later, as it was getting dark, the ranch manager took his daughter and me in a pickup truck out onto the prairie so he could talk to one of the hands who was living out there in a trailer house. As we came back to the ranch, it was really dark (no street lights out there!...only the lights from the pickup truck as it jostled along on the bare land - no road out to that trailer, either!), and we saw several jack rabbits, and a couple coyotes.
After dinner, several of the cowboys, along with a couple of kids who belonged to them, sat around in the Olson's living room, playing guitars and singing songs they might sing when they were out on the prairie tending the cattle. They also told of rodeos they sometimes entered during the 'off season,' and what kind of challenges they undertook to see if they could win a little money. The hired hands had their own bunk house, and I'm not sure where the ranch manager lived, but he probably had his own house on the ranch. We stayed in a guest room at the Olson's house. In the morning, we went downstairs to eat breakfast. It was a busy work time at the ranch, with some kind of round-up going on, so all the hands came to the big house for breakfast. I think there were about 20 people eating at their huge dining table. Mrs. Olson and some ladies who helped her served ham, eggs, pancakes, rolls, oatmeal, toast, coffee, juice and a whole lot of filling food so these hard-working cowboys would have energy for the job ahead. I was amazed!
I had such a good time there that after we got back home to Cedar Rapids, and I got mad at my mother for some silly thing or other, I wrote a letter to Mrs. Olson, asking her if I could come and live with them... My mother kept the letter for a long time...and now that I think of it, I will have to search my box of photos to see if it is still in there! (I'm not sure if it ever got mailed, but if it did, Mrs. Olson sent it back to my mother so she would know what I was scheming about...) If I recall, the argument with my mother was about her not handing me a piece of silverware from the drawer, when her chair was closer to the drawer than mine.... Oh my goodness...already I was demonstrating my willfulness!
I had such a good time there that after we got back home to Cedar Rapids, and I got mad at my mother for some silly thing or other, I wrote a letter to Mrs. Olson, asking her if I could come and live with them... My mother kept the letter for a long time...and now that I think of it, I will have to search my box of photos to see if it is still in there! (I'm not sure if it ever got mailed, but if it did, Mrs. Olson sent it back to my mother so she would know what I was scheming about...) If I recall, the argument with my mother was about her not handing me a piece of silverware from the drawer, when her chair was closer to the drawer than mine.... Oh my goodness...already I was demonstrating my willfulness!
When we visited Buffalo, we drove to the land where my father had lived in the sod house. There was still a depression in the land where the house had once stood, but the house was gone. I think we did find a few broken fragments of some dishes, but they were not any my dad recognized. Keep in mind that he lived there in the early 1900's and our trip was in about 1951. You can be sure that my father told me many of the stories that I have already related in this blog while we were traveling along on this trip. His early life was quite an adventure, and as I have said before, he always thought of himself as a 'cowboy.'
After stopping at the homestead land, we traveled south to the Black Hills. The Dakotas can be a barren-looking landscape in places, but parts of it are amazing, including the Black Hills in South Dakota, the Badlands east of the Black Hills, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. Travel makes a person more aware of the great diversity of land forms and cultures we have in these United States...
Me and my mother on our trip through the Black Hills. The notations are my mother's.
Meanwhile, back in Cedar Rapids, the family continued to enjoy gatherings and celebrations together. Even as all of our lives changed, we kept spending a lot of time together, and I felt as if I were a part of a really big 'tribe.'
Continuing my mother's biography, she goes on...
"In 1955, we moved to Toledo, Iowa, because by then the mail service was not on the trains, but on large highway post office buses. Wayne's run was from Tama to Albert Lea, Minnesota, He was on this run for four years, and then decided to retire at age 62, partly for health reasons."
My mother does not spend a lot of time writing about our life in Toledo, so I will fill in with some of that history.... but that will have to wait until tomorrow...but before I go into a lot of detail about our lives in Toledo, I have a couple of other stories to tell about living in Cedar Rapids...
More to come...
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