Putting it all together

The Badlands

The plane begins its descent. The dun-colored ground below is dotted with little, black holes. As we get closer, little animals can be seen scurrying around the holes. "Ground hogs," says the passenger behind me to his wife. For the first time since leaving Chicago the handsome man wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson who is sitting next to me speaks. "No, those are prairie dogs. " (I knew that).

After we land and collect our luggage my husband and I make our way to the rental car lot. Posted on the automatic doors is a sign warning us about rattlesnakes. I start to get excited. West, here we come. When we step outside we are bowled over by the big, blue sky above and the endless fields of golden grassland stretching out before us. The sight sparks a debate between us about which great plains state boasts it's Big Sky Country. Is it South Dakota, where we landed or Montana? We waste some time running around the parking lot looking at car license plates to find said motto (all the while being mindful of rattlesnakes) trying to settle this dispute to no avail. It's Montana, by the way.

Big Sky over Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana

I'm just a girl with long Midwestern roots, but I've always had a fascination for all things western. I've written both historical and contemporary westerns, relying on images from my computer to create my settings. I have made a number of trips to the southwest, which I love, but never to the other parts west. Writing this blog has sent me on further online excursions. I don't think I knew how much I've really learned until plopping down in South Dakota, jumping up to Montana, and finally ending up in Wyoming.

All during the trip I had the odd sensation of having islands of information in my head, but I couldn't piece them all together. It was overwhelming! As we traveled on, I likened the feeling to quilting in that I not only had pieces to stitch together but layers of time to go through as well. I pictured stitching the top of the quilt to the bottom and connecting it to the layers in between: the history, the personalities, the pivotal moments, not to mention current events such as the Dakota pipeline protests.

This may be a sneaky way of showing you my vacation pictures, but here we go!

Sometime ago I wrote a blog post about sod houses. http://cowboykisses.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-ould-sodhouse.html so when I heard the oldest, intact sod house in existence was on route, I had to see it. We were told it had already closed for the season, but when we got there it was open! The Prairie Homestead sits outside the Badlands of South Dakota. It was a beautiful, sunny day and walking around the homestead, surrounded by fields of grass with the Badlands in the distance, I got some sense of what it would have been like to be one of the early families trying to carve out an existence. When I stepped inside the low, dark house I think what surprised me was how solid it felt. The sod dried like blocks of cement so it wasn't as crumbly or dirty as I imagined, though I shudder to think about spending a cold, rainy day in there.

Inside a sod house, Prairie Homestead, South Dakota

While visiting the Badlands, we stayed in Wall, S.D., home of the famous Wall Drug, which to me previously was just a place where bumper stickers are born. You drive into town and there is billboard after billboard advertising Wall Drug promising free ice water, 5 cent coffee, and if you're on your honeymoon, free donuts. There's not much in Wall besides Wall Drug, which covers almost an entire block, and we were thinking we were not going to be lured into the tourist trap. Well, we actually made two trips there before we left, because it was fun! The stores within one big store were  a blast. We did get free ice water.

Delighted to find free ice water in South Dakota

But somehow along the way to get the free ice water, our baskets got filled with shot glasses, salt and pepper shakers, and playing cards--basically anything with a jackalope printed on it (kids, it's going to be a jackalope themed Xmas this year). My husband even left with a lariat coiled around his shoulder. Typically, we don't have to rustle cattle in the suburbs of Chicago, but the longer the time spent in Wall Drug, the more he needed a lariat. I was excited to find so many items of western wear I'd written about. There were western wear shirts with snaps and yokes and even the shield fronted shirt. And walls and walls of cowboy boots and hats. http://cowboykisses.blogspot.com/2017/09/dress-like-cowboy.html?spref=pi

shield or bib front western shirt at Wall Drug

Next we headed up to Deadwood. The image of Wild Bill Hickok is plastered everywhere.

Wall O'Bill

 You'd think he founded the town. In reality, he was shot and killed on his one and only visit to Deadwood--where he'd only been about two weeks. To add insult to injury, the man has to spend eternity in boot hill next to Calamity Jane, who had a crush on the recently married Bill and requested she be buried next to him. Some reports say he barely knew her and found the whole thing embarrassing.

Mount Moriah Cemetery, Deadwood, S.D. Buffalo Bill wasn't in Deadwood a hot minute before he was shot in the back. Now he is forever associated with the town and doomed to spend eternity next to Calamity Jane.

But one person Wild Bill did know was Buffalo Bill Cody. He even performed in the latter Bill's Wild West Show. http://cowboykisses.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-wild-west-show-shaping-legend.html?spref=pi

Next, on to a place that has acted as a siren call for me for as long as I can remember: Little Bighorn Battlefield. Let me just say it did not disappoint. We spent all day there and it warrants a post all to itself, so I won't go into it too much here. I did a piece for this blog on the evolution of the place over time from a battlefield to a monument and the changes along the way. http://cowboykisses.blogspot.com/2017/08/little-bighorn-national-monument.html?spref=pi

Where they fell 

We left Montana and headed down to Wyoming. First stop Cody! There we meandered the boardwalks of Old Trail Town where buildings of historic note have been moved like the cabin of Jeremiah Johnson and the saloon the Hole in the Wall Gang hung out complete with bullet holes in the swinging doors. When I wrote Margarita and the Hired Gun, I set part of the story in an outlaw hideout, so I was especially excited to see the actual cabin Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lived while hiding out in Hole in the Wall. A number of impenetrable hideouts were spaced along the Outlaw Trail, Hole in the Wall being one of them. http://sweetheartsofthewest.blogspot.com/2016/04/outlaw-hideouts-and-book-giveaway-by.html (note the book giveaway mentioned in the blog is no longer running).

Old Trail Town, Cody, WY

For me, on this trip the main course was Little Bighorn Battlefield. All stops leading up to that day were appetizers. Now time for dessert! We drove through Yellowstone (in a blizzard) and went to visit fellow author Andrea Downing in Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons! It was so much fun to meet Andi in person. She, in fact, mapped out the route of our journey for us. 

Two authors cutting up under the antlers

It wasn't all fun and games in Jackson Hole. Andi and I were able to finalize a joint project. We re-released our stories that were in the anthology The Good, the Bad, and the Ghostly under the title From the Files of Nat Tremayne: Two Tales of Hauntings in the Old West. The eight stories in the original anthology were all connected by a detective agency specializing in paranormal events. It was a fun project to work on, and I'm happy to see our work live again. This week the book is on sale for $0.99. Get it. It's a good one: spooky, funny, and above all--romantic.

https://www.amazon.com/Files-Nat-Tremayne-Tales-Hauntings-ebook/dp/B0767HWT6S/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

All images courtesy of  me!

The Ould Sod...House

Full disclosure. The blog post I intended to write didn't work out.

This being a month dear to the Irish, I was going to write about the deadliest gunslinger you probably never heard of. Irish-born James Leavy (sometimes spelled Levy), a man so skilled with the gun that other gunslingers of the day, such as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, tipped their Stetsons to him.

James Leavy was born in Dublin to Jewish parents. He was known as the "Jewish Cowboy." Right there he sounds like a pretty interesting character one would want to write about. It's said he fought and survived sixteen gunfights, including one where he was shot in the face. Eventually, he did meet his end by the gun in 1882 Tucson, where he was ambushed.

In my western, Margarita and the Hired Gun, the hero is an Irish immigrant who becomes a reluctant hired gun due to his mad skills with the pistol. When I heard of Leavy, I thought I'd met my hero incarnate. I put a pin in the article I first saw about him, thinking he'd make an interesting topic to come back to. And then I had a busy month.

 When I finally got around to researching him this week, I found sod all. There's not even a sodding photograph of him--being shot in the face may have left him camera-shy.

If a photograph of James Leavy existed, this is right where I'd put it

 Such scant information disappointed me. James Leavy was a boring old sod--at least on paper. He may have had a colorful life, but if he did nobody was taking notes. I don't think the reader would give a sod about the few things I found out about him. So, sod off idea to write about James Leavy.  I had to find a new topic fast. Sod's law I pick a boring gunslinger. What to write about?

sod it, sod it... SOD! Sod Houses!

So, sod houses. I've always been fascinated by houses built in strange places or out of strange material since I was a kid. When I was in grade school a bunch of us got together daily in a vacant lot, and armed with shovels, we dug a large underground clubhouse. We carved tables and benches into the walls and hung out there every day...until the fire department came and caved in the whole thing before our horrified eyes (my father and grandfather were on the fire department, by the way).

In 1862 the Homestead Act was passed and so began the great Westward Expansion. For the cost of a filing fee, anyone could stake out 160 acres. All the new landowner had to do was farm and live on the land for five years and it was his or hers (twelve percent of homesteaders in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North, and South Dakota were single women). People came from all over the world to grab their piece of America. What a deal!

Except conditions on the prairies were extreme. Summers where the temperatures could reach 120 degrees. Winters so cold your livestock might die because their breath froze in their noses. Then there were the tornadoes, droughts, rain storms, and swarms of grasshoppers. Grass so tall mothers feared losing their children in the Sea of Grass.

And the treeless plains were not that giving. There was hardly a stick or stone to build a house, and did I mention the other requirement was that the homesteader had six months to build a house? What to do?

The Chrisman sisters in front of their sod house. How did they and their voluminous dresses fit into that little house? And how did they manage to look so clean?

Early homesteaders followed the example of the Native Americans, who built their lodge houses out of sod. Special blades were fitted to plows to rip off the top layer of ground. The roots of the grasses were so deep, they made a loud ripping noise when pulled from the earth.

The blocks of sod, called "Nebraska marble," were then cut into bricks to build walls. If the sod dried, it would crumble and be impossible to work with, so the homesteader could only dig up as much sod as he (or she) could work with. The moist bricks were stacked on one another so the roots continued to grow into the layer beneath it giving added strength to the structure. The typical dwelling constructed would be a simple one-room house.  A roof was made by layering branches, straw, and twigs across the top on which more sod was placed.

The sod proved a good insulator, keeping the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And a sod house was cheap, costing less than $5 to build. The area of bare earth left around the house once the sod was cleared acted as a protective shield, keeping varmints away from the dwelling.

The downside: the bare-earth practice kept some varmints outside the house, while bringing others in. There are stories of rattlesnakes coming out of their dens in the walls and heading up to the roof to sun themselves during the day. Mice, fleas, snakes, and insects, oh my! One woman "sodbuster" complained that there were so many rats around the house looking for corn, that she had to kick them out of the way each time she left the house.

And if insects and snakes falling on you weren't enough to put you off--and I'm put off at this point already--the sodbuster waged a constant war against dirt, because if you live in a house made of dirt....One settler complained she needed an umbrella in the house to keep dirt from falling on her while she prepared dinner. Canvas could be fixed across the ceiling to combat falling dirt, leaks, and insects. The floor was usually dirt as well, though the walls were often plastered or whitewashed. Sod houses required maintenance, and the threat of a roof collapsing was a reality.

Windows could be installed for an expense, but the sod house was generally a dark, cramped space. Any activity such as sewing, socializing, or other tasks that could be taken outside, were. There wasn't much room for furniture, and so much like my childhood underground fort, tables and beds were carved into the walls.

Note: activity taking place outside the house, rather than inside

Typically, a house made out of sod was seen as a temporary residence. Maybe a family would live in the one room "soddy" for seven years or so until they were able to gather together enough funds to build a wood frame house. But, it could be made more habitable by adding wood slats for flooring and papering the walls.

Interior of a "soddy" whose owner knew how to make  a house a home. If PBS had a series called This Sod House, this house would be a winner.

As cozy as the above picture is, I don't think it represents the norm. Scratching together a day to day existence as a homesteader must have been hard beyond anything most of us today can imagine: the isolation, the grueling work, battling the elements to only face the random follies of nature such as losing your crops to a swarm of grasshoppers as you sit in the comfort of your leaky, varmint-infested sod house.

Less than half the homesteaders withstood the test. I don't know if I would've made it, but it's hard to pit the modern me against a me that had been raised without the comforts I enjoy today such as going out for Sunday brunch, central heating, and Trader Joe's. Still, I like to think I would have been one of the success stories. There are some cheerful accounts from optimistic sodbusters, and I think part of surviving the blows life rains down on you is the attitude you bring into to ring. Anyone who is here on earth today is a survivor in the story of mankind when you think about it. There's been a whole lot of stuff that could have killed off your family line in the preceding centuries, so if you're reading this now, you've passed the test. We all have it in us to endure.

So, what do you think? How would you and your family have fared living in a sod house?