Rural America
Amos’s Diary: Saturday, October 17, 1903
Two pages in the diary so far, and each one is a whole season by itself. July sun baking the fence row, January frost…
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Rural America
Frontier Survival and Amos’s Diary.
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Rural America
The Sky Turns Green and the Hail Flattens the Prairie. Now Hide Your Family Where There Is Nothing to Hide Behind.
The Sky Turns Green Late afternoon, June 1849. Somewhere on the Platte, two days east…
Rural America
Amos’s Diary: Tuesday, January 20, 1903
The pages in the back of the leather folder don’t run in order, so I…
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Rural America
You Wake With Lice on Your Neck and Mosquitoes Over the Oxen. Now Keep the Small Enemies From Eating Your Family Alive.
You wake because something is crawling across the back of your neck, and your fingers come away with two gray…
Rural America
Your Rifle Is Damp, the Caps Are Down to Eleven, and Dinner Is Standing Three Hundred Yards Away
You wake up because the hammer won’t fall. October, 1845. You are camped beside the Platte, three days east of…
Rural America
Amos’s Diary: Wednesday, July 8, 1903
The leather folder held seventeen recipes, and after the last one Amos told the whole household to flop the book…
Rural America
You Run Out of Flour West of the Sweetwater and Learn to Eat the Country That Has Been Feeding You All Along
Late August, 1846. Somewhere west of the Sweetwater, three days of empty skillet behind you, and your stomach has stopped…
Rural America
You Stop Shooting Your Food and Learn to Snare It, Because Lead Is Money You Carry on Your Hip.
You wake because the rifle is leaning against you and the boy has put a dead squirrel on your chest.…
Rural America
The Hide Is Stiffening Into Wood by Morning, and There Is No Tannery for Six Hundred Miles
You Wake to the Smell of Fat Going Rancid, and a Hide That Will Stiffen Into Wood by Morning Late…
Rural America
You Smoke a Deer by Hand, One Damp Chip at a Time, Because Ice Is a Thousand Miles Behind You
Late October, 1844. Somewhere along the bottomlands of the Platte, two days east of Fort Laramie. The wind has teeth…
Rural America
You Melt Your Last Lead Into Balls by the Fire and Miss the Only Deer You See for a Week
You wake because the mold is lying empty between your boots, and the morning is cold enough that the last…
Rural America
You’re Four Hundred Miles From a Dentist and the Boy’s Tooth Is Black to the Root. Now Pull It With the Farrier’s Pliers.
The boy has been crying in the wagon for two days, and by the third morning you can hear the…