We got seed grain, boys

When Morey Skaret turned eight, the age at which a lad made the leap from haphazard chores to full-time farmhand, his father made him the hog boss. Morey took his new position seriously, executing his duties with the same care, precision and panache that would one day make him a leader of men, and propel him to the top of many professions. Not only did life on the prairie make men out of boys before their time; it meted out many other tough lessons as well. "My mother had six children, all told," Morey says, combing through an old photo album. His older brother, Johannes, died in 1909. "He was just a child," Morey recalls. "They buried him behind the house. All the homesteaders had private plots." They didn't have a cemetery. There was just a house here; then two miles, another house. And they just buried their dead at the home place. Another of the prairie's more sobering lessons was on the danger of shortcuts. Literally. "A kid came from Crow Hill School," Morey recalls, "and his last name was Zeemer. We followed the fence when the snow was blowing hard, almost a blizzard. But we followed that fence. And then the snow got higher and higher. Pretty soon you can't see the fence ahead of ya. You gotta feel for it. "And this one fellow, Zeemer-I forget his name-he said he's gonna short-cut. He said, 'I don't wanna follow this fence line all the way along here to your house, and then follow your fence line down to my house,' which was another two miles. "So he says, 'I'm gonna short-cut from here, right across the prairie, and catch this fence over here. And then I can catch the other fence that goes to our farm, over here.' "Well, the sad part of it was: he started to short-cut. But boy, in a blizzard, you don't have any sense of direction, and that prairie's flat. There's no trees or anything. And what you usually do is you walk in a circle, when you get to the point where you can't see any marks to go by. "And you walk to the left if you're right-footed. Your right foot is stronger, and it'll gain maybe half a foot on every step you take; you just go in a circle."...more