1913 on the Nebraska prairie

"Mama, look!" Jesse laughed as he ran into the soddy. "Silly chickens! They all goin' beddy-bye, but the sun's shinin' bright, bright, bright!"

Dora kept on kneading bread until the three-year-old's words sank in. "Beddy-bye? Going to roost?"

"Yes, Mama. Come see!"

Dora threw cheesecloth over the dough and ran outside. Sure enough, the chickens now huddled on roosts in the coop, fluffing their feathers. "No," she murmured, turning around in the yard outside the sod shanty, studying the sky -- the bright blue, gloriously sunny sky of mid-October. Clear except for one small cloud in the northwest. "No, no, no! We're not ready!"

"Ready for what?"

"Jesse, bring the little pail of cow chips in by the stove. Like this." Dora grabbed the larger bucket and hauled it indoors. She rummaged on a shelf, found the old cowbell, then darted out again and rang the bell for all she was worth.

Sadie was first to answer, with a wheat wreath in her hair and the dust of the barn between her toes – and large startled eyes. "What kinda danger, Mama?"

"Bring in the laundry, Sadie, quicker than you ever did."

"But I can't reach the clothespins!"

"Just yank everything down. Quick now! It don't matter if you drop any. Just bring it all."

The six-year-old scurried off.

Dora clambered up the sandhill behind the shanty and peered into the southwestern glare. No sign of Simon. She rang the cowbell until her arm ached.

George and Silas raced each other up the eastern path.

"George," Dora called as she slid down the sandhill. "Bring in the cow and the goats. Get 'em into the barn as fast as you can. Silas, take the mare to Raymond's shanty. I think your father's there, working on Raymond's well. Tell them a blizzard is coming, then gallop back fast as you can!"

"Blizzard?" eight-year-old George asked, staring up at the sky. "In October?"

Silas knew better than his younger brother and ran to do his mother's bidding.

Dora fetched a coil of rope and strung it from shanty to outhouse to barn, hitching tight at each point.

Father and son pounded the road home, stabled the horses, shuttered every window, hauled in what dry cow chips and bundles of willow wood the family had gathered so far. They gave the cow an early milking, forked down hay for the livestock, filled water buckets. By the time they'd finished and barricaded the barn door, snow swirled madly through the yard.

For three days the family huddled inside. They tended a tiny fire in the iron cookstove, careful not to run through the meager fuel stash too quickly. Dora sat with feet in the open stove hatch to keep them warm. With a nearly empty cupboard, she had little else to do. The early storm had caught them unprepared.

Simon topped up kerosene in the one lantern they had. The children sat around it at the table, cutting and folding slips of paper to entertain themselves through the waking hours. Wind moaned as it blew around the eaves.

Every so often Silas opened the door to see how deep the snow had gotten. On the third day he saw a "snowbird." He grabbed a shoe from the threshold and threw it hard. Eleven years of chucking rocks paid off, and he fetched the tiny dark-eyed junco indoors.

Everyone brightened. A little meat for the soup pot tonight!

.

prompts: primitive, paper

Primitive fun, right? I didn't make up the part about paper crafting at the table. That's straight from Jesse's account in "50 Years in the Sandhills and the Forest," pages 15-16. "We would sit around the table playing with whatever we could make from paper."

Simon and Dora Belle had eleven children. 

The oldest, Raymond, had his own claim a mile away. The three older daughters  - Flora, Mary, and Rachel - had married, two of them just that season (July 31 and October 11) -- which might explain why the family was a little behind in preparing for winter.

My grampa Oscar was 17 that year so he  probably had gone back to Chadron "Normal School" (secondary education, age 14 and up, since public education ended with 8th grade) a couple hundred miles away. Gone back, that is, if he'd been home at all that summer.

Elmer (15) and Lula (13) may have hired out. They weren't at home for this unlucky blizzard.