So it was that we were to sink our roots deep in eastern South Dakota. Blessed we were but the work was near impossible. We had clean water, black dirt, good grass and a mixture of willing people. What started out as a little give and take surrounding the many good times in that safe place has now taken us all far and wide in God’s world. Our ancestors planted plentiful fields in a healthy environment. They were surrounded with herds of cattle and waving fields of grain. We began our lives conformed by the severity of the land which everyone on the great plains must adapt to. It can be a place of both natural beauty and it can also be a dangerous, wild place.



It is these plains, these prairies of my youth and my middle years which I now recall. And it is there that this story begins. It is here in my memoirs that I record of my impressions and ideas. I recount the gains and losses, the good times and maybe even a few bad ones. I commence with the idea of resurrecting another time in my life; a time when I didn’t know about white sandy beaches, interstate freeways and snow covered mountains. It was a time when our friends were our neighbors, cousins, uncles, fellow church people and classmates; a time when our social life was slow but honest and real.