Man of Many Hats

Everyone living in today’s world seems to be carrying a cell phone or other high technology tool as their daily lives unfold. Only the senior citizen groups are still trying to understand all the nuances and are often seen in quiet conversation. The world was not always like this. The story that follows tells what life was like in the late 1800s for the author’s grandparents; born in Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great, immigrating to America, and starting a new life as poor dirt farmers in Oklahoma. This early destination was also where his parents, the newly married offspring of those immigrants, started their family, birthing and raising eight children.
The lives of these struggling pioneers were sustained by living off the land; growing food in their gardens, raising cattle, hogs, chickens and growing crops of cotton and wheat for compensation. After a 16 year struggle, Oklahoma became a dust bowl and the family (eight kids jammed inside a 1926 Dodge sedan, replete with luggage tied on the back) headed to far off Montana to begin a new life. There were no super highways, no phones, and no motels for overnight relaxation on this two week trip; it was standard fare in the early 1900’s.
The trip ended at a small frontier town called Brady, a location nestled in prairie country with the Rocky Mountains as background inhabited by 500 hardy souls. The year was 1926 and this enterprising family joined other German emigrants and settled down on a rented farm. Three years later this writer was born in the farmhouse, the ninth and last member of the family, with only his mother in attendance, and he begins his journey through life. The living was harsh by today’s standards; no indoor plumbing nor treated water, no electricity, no telephones, no insulated homes, no medical facilities nearby, no grocery stores stocked with fresh produce. Fortunately, as residents of that era, they virtually didn’t know any better and the living conditions were accepted and endured, although with a strong desire to succeed.
The journey of the author -- a life filled with happiness, many hardships and several brushes with death -- is followed from birth in 1929 to octogenarian age in this engaging story; a story left for his grandchildren to let them know how the world evolved from little to no technology and minimal comforts of life to today’s ever-expanding world of devices and gadgets designed to entertain, feed, educate and clothe them. The world is there for them to challenge without being challenged by the world, a world left for them by those enterprising pioneers and those who preceded them.