From the Ocean to the Prairie

Mom and Dad's Wedding picture 1952

  She sat staring out the window on that old train, listening to the rhythmic clicking on the wheels along the track.  Every turn of the wheels would bring her further and further from all that was familiar and known to her as home.  The prairie stretched before her, and it was a land totally unknown to her and her seaside upbringing.

   But the young man sitting next to her had stolen her heart, or caused what she called, ‘heart problems.’  She had just changed her last name to match his on that cool winter evening in the small church on the South Buxton/Scarboro line.  Rev. Lovejoy had pronounced them man and wife. They had hopes that their lives would match the ministers name, and life would prove it did.  This was a life time commitment, so now she traveled with him to his home on the Dakota prairies, leaving her family and life behind.

   Life on the prairie soon proved to be hard. Even in the early 1950’s it wasn’t easy.  When the old family farm was purchased from his family as their new place of residency, it lacked some comforts of life. Indoor plumbing and electricity were being installed, to help this young bride adjust to life on the prairie.  By now she had three little girls all still in diapers and oh how she longed for indoor plumbing to help easy the chore of washing diapers for her little flock.

    That young man had been hired on at the Oil Refinery in Mandan, and worked long hard shifts, then came home and farmed though his eyes and body longed for sleep before his next shift back at the refinery.  The equipment on the farm was old, and required constant repairs, but it sure beat that old stubborn horse he had grown up using to work the fields.  Work was constant, and hard, never ending as so many farmers know.

    The young bride battled what any young bride would battle far from home. Her longing for her family and all that was familiar.  She was so homesick, so everyday she wrote a penny postcard telling of life on the prairie to her Mom so far away, knowing that this was the only form of communication she could afford.  Her kind hearted new Mother-in-law, took her in and loved her as her own daughter, often comforting this young bride.  Life will get better, just keep holding on.

    Years past, and two more children were added, and they all did what children do, they grew up and moved on with their lives.   By now, life by the sea was almost forgotten, and life on this Dakota prairie was home.  Once asked what her secret of a long happy marriage was, she replied, “It was a long walk home.”  

     She’d came a long way for love and for that young man.  They had many adventures along the way.  

   Their hair began to turn gray, and his curls disappeared from his head to be replaced as his one small granddaughter called, ‘bald hair.  They’d had their scares of sickness, and heart attacks that threatened to end his life, but love fought on and won.  

    Then early one morning on the eve of Easter, he called out "Honey!" one more time, and she came to his side, and held him as he breathed his last breath.  She had always been his Honey, everyday of their 65 years together.  Now, the prairie rang out a loneliness she had never known before, not even as a young bride. Now she was left alone.  The children rallied to her side, to assist her in her grief, as they watched that strong man they had called Dad be laid to rest.  He had been their 'Quiet Giant’ their whole lives, now their anchor gone.

    The howling of the wind still whistles through the trees on the old farmstead, as the family gathers to say goodbye.  Goodbye to life they had lived there for so many years, life must take on more adjustments and change, but none felt it more that young bride from sea coast land of Maine.

Mom in the Black Hills. July 2018. Her first trip without Dad.

Mom and Dad sitting in front of the old farm house 2012.