Page 5 of The Magic of Ordinary Days

Once I read about the homesteaders who first populated the plains of eastern Colorado, and I learned something not widely written about in history books.

The isolation of the homesteaders throughout the West drove many to the brink of insanity.

The government required homesteaders to live on their claims, and because of the difficulty of travel in those days, compounded by bad weather and much work to do, many settlers went for long months at a time without social contact.

This was particularly tough on the women and, for some reason, on those of Scandinavian descent, who had proportionately the highest numbers of immigrants ending up in insane asylums.

I could understand that descent. I could understand why one settler wrote in his memoirs that during his youth, he read over and over again the copy of a New York newspaper his father had put up to paper the walls.

And as to the question of the Scandinavians—they had emigrated to the U.S.

after living in small, close-knit villages where folk dances and community celebrations had been common.

Surely their lives there had been tough at times, but never lonely.

The first morning after my wedding day, I awakened to the sounds of pans and utensils clanging together in the kitchen.

I rolled over and checked my watch. Five-fifteen, and outside, still dark.

Amazingly, I had slept well and could’ve used even more sleep.

I thought of getting up and offering to make my husband something for breakfast. That was what farm wives were probably supposed to do.

But hadn’t the man been living by himself for several years now?

I flopped over, hugged the pillow to my chest, and drifted back to sleep.

When I awakened after nine, the only sign of Ray was the kitchen mess from a large breakfast he had left behind.

I bathed and dressed, ate something for myself, did the dishes, and cleaned up.

Then I went investigating. In the kitchen, the cupboards held basic cooking implements and pottery dishes, a fair amount of canned goods, and a breadbox.

A radio sat on the countertop. In the bathroom, I found only a few extra towels and washcloths, one brush, one comb.

I also found Ray’s shaving set and shaving powder, a tube of Brylcreem, but no men’s after-shave.

Outside on a narrow back porch, I saw a contraption I found out later was a cream separator.

A propane tank sat on the ground below the back porch.

In the room where I’d slept, the closets and dresser drawers were empty except for one pewter-framed photo of a plain-faced couple that could only be Ray’s parents.

No other family photos and nothing of the brother who had been killed at Pearl Harbor.

No jewelry boxes, family memorabilia, or books.

Assuming I was going to remain in the same room as last night, I opened my case and unpacked my clothes.

I set out my most treasured remembrances, starting with the last photo taken of my family together, intended for the church roster book.

On the dresser, I placed the other belongings I’d chosen to bring with me: a small jewelry chest that had been Mother‘s, the waxed rose from Bea’s wedding bouquet, one book on ancient Egypt, and antique hatpins—my last birthday gift from Abby.

Finally, I opened the gifts Abby and Bea had sent off with me.

Inside the new handkerchiefs were two pairs of heirloom earrings—a pair of pearl drops and a pair of bead clusters on ear screws.

These I set on the dresser top, too, although I wondered where now I would ever wear them.

In the bunkroom, I found Ray’s bed made and only a clock, a Bible, and a calendar sitting on the nightstand.

In the closet, his clothes sagged off wire hangers—only some clean work shirts, two white shirts, some slacks, and an overcoat.

Off to one side I found the brown suit he had worn the day before.

Shoved into the corner were the shoes. Only one tie and no jewelry.

On top of his dresser, the hat and the cufflinks he’d worn to the station sat above a stack of closed bureau drawers.

I touched the top drawer. Inside, among his personal belongings, must be clues as to who this man was.

When we were girls, Abby used to keep a diary.

She wrote in it every day, then she wrapped the book with rubber bands and hid it among her clothing in her drawers.

I remembered how Bea had complained about it.

She couldn’t understand why Abby would want to keep anything from us.

But later, Bea started hiding letters from her pen pal in Canada, just as Abby had hidden her diary.

Perhaps in these drawers, Ray kept old letters or yearbooks from high school.

Perhaps photographs from his younger days.

I wrapped my fingers around the drawer’s round knob and started to pull.

It was so silent I thought I could hear something ticking inside, something like a clock, or maybe a bomb.

I pulled my hand back. What was I doing? Now I stared at the dresser and admonished myself. Whatever these drawers held was private. Certainly I couldn’t have fallen this far.

I walked away from the bunkroom and then carried one of the kitchen chairs out to the porch, where I placed it for good viewing.

To one side of the barn was a fenced pen holding some hogs, on the other side a pasture for the dairy cows and draft horses.

Occasionally a loose chicken squawked and fluttered out the barn doors.

A tuxedo-clad magpie who landed on the back of a cow looked as out of place as I did sitting on the porch in one of my school dresses with matching belt and shoes.

Soon my eyes began to sting. When I started picking up pebbles on the planks beneath me and flinging them out onto the dirt, without first realizing I was doing it, I stopped myself.

Like the Scandinavians, surely I might go insane here, too.

Just before noon, Ray returned carrying a pail of milk and handed over some eggs out of a basket. “Morning.” He glanced over at the clean kitchen and smiled. “How’re you?”

“I should have gotten up with you.”

“No need.” He removed an old felt hat and set it on the table. “You got to have rest.”

I wasn’t sure why he had returned. “Shall I make lunch?”

He shook his head. “I don’t eat midday. Mostly, I’m far off. Unless I got work nearby, I can’t come back during the day.” He went to the coffeepot and filled his thermos.

“Are you working nearby today?”

He turned red, even to the ears. I’d never have believed a man could be so bashful. Finally he looked up and nodded.

I took off the apron I’d been wearing. “If you’re not too busy, then, would you show me around?”

“You mean the farm?”

“I guess so.” I shrugged. “Or anything else of interest.”

He moved to the icebox and poured the fresh milk into a wide-lipped glass bottle. Then he drew water from the tap. After he gulped down a full glass, he said, “Okay.”

He drove the truck down a narrow road that ran between fields. “We have us a good-size farm.” He glanced my way. “A hundred and sixty acres.”

Ray looked to me as if he wanted my approval.

It was wartime, and farming had become an important, crucial industry to feed the country, our troops, and much of the world.

Clearly, Ray was proud of what he did, and war needs had raised the status of the family farmer far beyond what it had been during peaceful times, equal at least to that of other businessmen.

I remembered one of the government’s wartime slogans: “Food will win the war and write the peace.” And a government poster I’d seen at the train station featured a uniformed soldier telling a farmer, “Those overalls are your uniform, bud.”

I watched the fields and irrigation furrows go by and I asked him, “What are your crops?”

Ray gestured out the window at the fields. “Those there are sugar beets.” When I nodded, he said, “Our best crop. We have over half of our acres planted in them.”

“I notice that some of the fields are empty.”

“You bet,” said Ray. “We’ve already taken the cash crops—green peas, green beans, sweet corn—in June, to get some money coming in. The cucumbers came out in July, the tomatoes in August. We just finished them up. Pretty soon the big work starts up—onions and dry beans. It’s almost time.”

“To harvest?”

He nodded. “And after that, we’ll take the sugar beets.”

It seemed I had come at the busiest time of the year. “May I help?”

His face drained of expression. “I doubt it.”

I almost laughed. Our situation seemed so absurd. “You’re right. I don’t know anything about farming.”

After a period of silence, he said, “But you have the house to take care of.”

Ray turned up a wider road, where he picked up speed.

The wind started blowing in through the truck window and hitting me full in the face, wind that carried the odor of manure.

I scooted over to the center of the bench seat, but as soon as I did, Ray sat taller in the seat and gripped the steering wheel with callused knuckles.

Too late I realized I had moved too close.

For the remainder of the drive, I could feel his unease.