INTRODUCTION

Dakota Territory--1959-2059
“Memories of the past hundred years”
June 17, 2059

My name is Samuel Robert Abrahamson but most people call me 'Grampa' and some just call me ‘Old Man‘ --I happen to really like that name! Kind of proud to have lived so long. I’m one hundred and three years old. I’m twenty to forty years older than most of the ‘senior citizens’ left in this here Dakota Territory. Maybe I’m the oldest man in the world. With global communication so limited, who knows?!?!? Wouldn’t that be a hoot! Life has been soooooo hard that few people live beyond sixty years of age any more. I only remember vague glimpses of the first three years of my life. So that is why I sub-titled these ramblings ‘memories of the past hundred years’.

Don’t ask me how I’ve lived so long especially thru that terrible winter of Twenty-eleven and twelve when so many others did not. The DARK YEARS that followed were even tougher. Not too many old people survived those times of struggle and chaos. I was in my sixties during those dark years and I am still amazed that I made it thru!!! But then again, it helped to be a lifetime gardener. Food and warmth were critical to making it during those dark times and I had an abundance of both--enough to share! Even then it was hard. What do you do when you have enough food to feed ten people for the winter but a hundred hungry, starving people show up at your door? I certainly couldn’t threaten to shoot them and keep all this to myself. All I could do was take in those I could and for the others, share enough food for a few days and send them down the road. Most were extremely grateful with that and left with smiles and words of thanksgiving. Others were much more demanding and much more threatening, but that’s a story for another chapter. All that sharing left some very lean times for us as well. But like the widow’s oil and flour in the story of Elijah, no matter how much we shared, we never ran out!

I also have a strong faith in a loving God so I never gave up to despair and that killer called ‘depression’. During those hard times, surrendering to depression and just giving up, killed more people than lack of food or warmth. Those dark times were just so foreign to the masses so used to their artificial comforts and the provisions of those artificial ‘big box’ stores that when all of that just stopped after the GREAT CRASH, they gave up on living rather than suffer thru depravation and the struggle for survival!!

Now you might think that it’s strange that I refer to God so much in these meandering memories of mine. But when you reach my age and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your life will end in a matter of days, maybe weeks and certainly not more than a year or two, you won’t be thinking of much of anything else either!!

I figure that God has some sort of purpose for allowing me to live so long. I haven’t figured out what that purpose is yet cuz I sure don’t think I’ve done anything special so far in my life. I’ve never held public office. I’ve never been a leader of anything! I also figure that I don’t have a whole lot of time left to figure out what that purpose is. So I was thinking that maybe I should write down my memories of these past hundred years. Maybe that is my purpose, just to remember and share those memories. Maybe if I can share all the mistakes I’ve made in my life and all the horrible mistakes we collectively made that lead to the “GREAT CRASH” and all those horrible dark years, maybe you, my dear reader, can learn from our mistakes. I also figure I can tell you about all the wonderful lessons we’ve learned thru those terrible struggles and afterward during our time of RENEWAL--how we as a people put away our self-centered ways and joined together as God fearing families and communities to make life work once again.

Bedtime! If I wake up again tomorrow morning--God willing!--I'll write some more.

Next:

Chapter 1 "From a Long Line of Survivors"