Farm Girl Read Free Page A

mother didn’t like that, so he wouldn’t tell her about the dances.
    One time, when he was a young man working as a hired hand, he took ill and lost all the hearing in one ear and most of it in the other, but he could still play his accordion.
    Uncle Anton loved to read, especially the newspaper. He took several Norwegian papers and also the Chicago Tribune, and could talk about current events. He’d save the funny papers for me and bring a whole roll of funny papers over to our house. I looked forward to that so much, and I’d lay on the floor reading them for hours.
    He never married, because he had a large growth on his forehead that, along with his deafness, made him selfconscious.
    My mother would drive our horse and buggy five miles west to see her mother and brother and take them food and things. I remember going along one time and seeing Grandmother Sofie in bed in a little room off the kitchen. She couldn’t walk very well when she was older. She was very hunched over because of being gored by a bull years ago and thrown over. It had broken her back, and she just laid on the couch for a long time until she could manage to get around.
    Her house smelled stale, like dank coffee, because a pot of coffee sat all day on the stove. Outside was the shed and the old machinery and wagons. Uncle Anton didn’t farm but would work for neighboring farmers. The Walstad land was rented out to other people who farmed it. Mother would talk about how she’d like to restore the old farm with a sod barn and a dugout house like her father had lived in. She wanted to recreate a historic place for people to come see.
    For awhile, when Uncle Anton was no longer able to care for her, Grandmother lived with us. She couldn’t speak English. She’d take my hand and say, “Oh my lieten yenta.” She’d show me her finger with a big scar where she’d run a needle through it as a seamstress in Chicago. I was nine when she died. Her casket stayed in our living room, where someone would come and sit all night with it. Neighbors and friends would “sit up with the casket” as a customary service to the family.
    She was the only grandmother I knew, because my dad’s parents, John and Annie Marker, died before I was born.

Sophie Walstad in front of their frame house

Side porch of the Walstad home

John Wilson Sr., of Winchester, Virginia

Chapter Two:
The Markers

    The Markers and Wilsons came to Nebraska from Winchester, Virginia along with several other families. George Cather was the first, so the area was called Catherton Township and referred to as the New Virginia Community because of the many homesteaders from that state. However, my grandfather Hans Walstad always maintained that he was there before George Cather.
    The youngest boy, Albert, got the Wilson migration started. In Virginia he was working for George Cather and one day just disappeared. He was gone several years, no one knew where.
    Then one day he reappeared and told his family about homesteading in Nebraska. He had come out with the George Cathers. Now he had his own place and was proving up his claim, and he talked his brothers into coming out there to homestead. So the Wilson brothers and their brother-in-law John Marker decided to go to Nebraska, to that area called New Virginia.
    John and Annie Wilson Marker brought three little children with them and then had seven more in Nebraska. Elizabeth was the oldest, then Tisha who died as a young woman of tuberculosis, and a son Joseph, who died at age two. Then came my dad, also named John. After him, there was Dora, Carrie, Bernice, Albert, Leone and Ford.
    Uncle Albert was the rebellious one of the Marker children. When he was sixteen, they were living in their sod house and somehow scraping by. Setting on the porch were a couple barrels of molasses to get them through the year for their sugar. One day my grandmother found a dead cat in the molasses, so they had to pour it all out. Years later Uncle Albert