Chapter I: From a Long Line of Survivors

"Memories of the past hundred years"
June 18, 2059

Proverbs 28:19 He who works the land will have abundant food…

I was born on August 9th, 1956 to a hard working, God fearing, farming family trying to scrape out a living on the windswept plains of southwestern North Dakota. I was born into a community of hardened survivors. Most were first and second generation immigrants from the Black Sea area of South Russia. ‘Germans from Russia’ they were called. My ancestors were originally peasant farmers for their feudal lords of the German Federation during the Middle Ages. In the late 1700s, Catherine the Great, Czar (I don’t know how to spell the female version of Czar--hehehe) of Russia, promised free land, freedom of religion, limited self government, their own schools and courts, exemption from the draft and other freedoms if these hard working farmers and craftsmen would immigrate to these empty Russian lands.

My ancestors moved as an entire extended family clan to escape their feudal masters and gain these freedoms! Several like minded German peasant families banded together and formed a Old West style, wagon train to travel the thousand miles to reach this ‘promised’ land. The German nobility was only too happy to see them go as they felt there were too many mouths to feed on their lands the way it was. Starting the long journey in the spring, reaching their new home in the fall, left little time to prepare for the coming winter. As you can imagine, that first winter was a killer! Many of these new immigrants died of exposure and lack of food.

Those first years out on the barren steppes (a Russian term for the plains) were incredibly difficult. It was said that “the first generation saw death, the second, depravation but the third saw bread“. Each of these groups of immigrants either joined with an existing German village--if they were lucky enough to have relatives already there or formed a new village of their own. They joined together for mutual support and protection. Alone they died, together most survived. Each family built their own home in the village and had their own land, cattle, gardens and crops around the outside of the village. These communities became prosperous over time due in no small part to their faith in a loving God, their strong family bonds, a mutually supportive community and the incredibly hard work of these industrious people.

As time went on and these German communities prospered, new rulers in Russia forgot or ignored those old promises that had made. Local Russian serfs were also incredibly envious and jealous. One at a time, the promised freedoms were eroded away. Children were forced to attend Russian schools and learn the Russian language, the local self government and judicial system was taken away and replaced by the dictates of the Russian nobility. Russian peasants started stealing from the prosperous Germans (many suspected the nobility directing these thefts). Some people were injured, raped or killed. Any complaints taken in front of the Russian nobility were ignored or they ruled against the Germans. The last straw was when the freedom of religion was threatened and the exemption from the Czar’s armies was eliminated.

Germans from Russia started to immigrate in mass to North and South America from the mid to the late 1800s. The Czar ruled that no youth of military age, 16 thru 21, could immigrate before serving in the Czar‘s armies. Being God fearing people who thought lying was a sin; many a young man wrote the number “21” on the sole of one of their shoes. That way they could swear to the port authorities that they were ‘over 21’ and not be lying! Men that were even younger wrote ’16’ in their hats for the same purpose!

These German immigrants were forced to sell all that they owned for a mere fraction of what it was worth before they could scrape together enough money to pay for the passage to America. Many arrived on these shores absolutely destitute. But they gained far more than they lost. They gained their lives and their freedom. As history unfolded, Germans in Russia were imprisoned and tortured in World War I and most were rounded up and sent to forced labor camps in Siberia during World War II. Few survived.

My ancestors traveled steerage (the lowest class) on a tramp steamer thru the Saint Laurence Seaway to the port of Chicago where it was much easier to get thru the immigration authorities. The story goes that immigration controls were becoming much more strict thru Ellis Island in New York harbor and my ancestors were afraid that some of the older members of the family would be turned back if they had arrived at that port. From Chicago, they traveled by train to north central South Dakota where they settled near each other as an extended family. They worked wherever they could find jobs. After a decade or more of carefully saving their money and buying the livestock and tools that they needed. After careful preparation, this extended family loaded all that they had on a train for Bismarck. Then they moved by their own wagon train to the northern edge of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. This land between the Cannonball and Cedar Rivers was the last land taken away from the Indians and opened up for settlement. My family clan homesteading beside each other on both sides of a little township road--which was just a wheel track in the prairie at that time. Because of arid nature of the land and the need for much larger acreages, farms had to be much farther apart than in the ’Old Country’. Each family had to live on their own land so they were unable to reestablish the village structure that they had in South Russia.

As I said, my ancestors moved together as a family clan. This extended family was lead by my great-grandparents and their eight adult children. Most of these children were married and brought along their families. This family bond was so strong that husbands to the three sisters of this family agreed to come along as well. Many of these families had small children that shared in the hardships. They also brought along all their livestock, farm machinery and tools. They helped each other build sod houses and establish working farms. With that stoic German work ethic, they once again built up a prosperous farm community within a few decades of breaking this virgin sod. They also built a community church, cemetery and a country school. All were located next to this little country trail in the middle of ‘nowhere’.

In the early 1950s, my parents took over the family farm. My Dad’s brothers and sisters lived on farms within a few miles of each other. They helped each other with all the building projects on each other’s farms and worked together for much of the farm work. I was related to almost everyone in the community. Family gatherings were absolutely huge! Life centered around the community church, the country school and each others‘ farms! The farms were all diversified, raising range cattle, grain, hay, pigs, chickens, some milk cows, big gardens and more. My family raised and processed almost all of our own food. My Dad told me that living thru the Great Depression wasn’t too bad. Nobody had any money but they all had food! The hardest part of it was the drought that lasted for years. Even so, there was enough rain to ‘make do’.

This was the community that I was born into! Like I said at the start of this chapter, I was born on August 9th, 1956. I was born in a small community hospital in a little town called, Brisbane that doesn’t exist any more. My parents tell me that it was a hot day just perfect for threshing the ripe windrows of wheat. Rain was forecast and my Dad was really torn between his desire to help bring in the crop and his love for his wife. He did stopped helping the threshing crew long enough to drive the hour over those rutted, dusty township roads, help my Mother into the hospital, wait anxiously in the waiting room for me to be delivered, greet his wife and his new son (ME) and then rush back to the farm. The threshing crew made up of brothers and uncles continued threshing his grain without him. A week later, he came back to town to pick us up. Fortunately, my Mother’s parents and many others of my Mother’s siblings lived close to town. They came to visit regularly. There were no phones that reached as far as my parent’s farm so my Dad just showed up again one week later. My Mother and I had been released from the hospital the day before and were staying with my Grandparents.

My parents didn’t tell me hardly anything more about my first three years on the farm. They did say that I absolutely loved the farm animals!!! When I was older, they gave me a picture of me as a toddler and our pet lamb. That baby lamb was as big as I was! With the aid of that picture, I can remember those few minutes when that picture was taken----------that memory is over a hundred years old!!! Now, don’t ask me to remember what I ate for supper last night or even who stopped to visit me this morning--heheehehehee. My short-term memory ain’t worth beans!!! Oh, I should take that back--------during those dark times, good bean seed, any garden seed for that matter was worth more than gold!!!

Really!! I traded a lot of open pollinated garden seed for other peoples' pre-1965 American silver dimes, quarters, half dollars and silver dollars. I also traded for gold jewelry even a few diamond rings (they weren't worth much) during those dark years. After all, you sure can’t eat GOLD!! Whereas, the pre-1965 silver coins instantly became an excellent means of exchange when all those paper promises became worthless during the BIG CRASH!!!

Well, it’s bedtime. I’ll write more if I wake up tomorrow--God willing.

Next:

Chapter 2: Life as it is Today