The Elusive Wesley

 Ancestral towns  Comments Off on The Elusive Wesley
Apr 072018
 
The Elusive Wesley

I know he existed. But where did he go? One of our family mysteries is Wesley, an orphan boy that lived with my Schott grandparents sometime in the early 1900s. The family lore is that my Grandpa Peter “went to the train station” to pick him up, that he was a bit wild, and that […Read more]

Apr 012015
 
A Letter to the Governor

Some family stories can be proven. Some can’t. But sometimes those stories leave a trail of clues. My dad was the first of his siblings to go to high school, although he was the sixth born of 10 children. In a farming family during the Depression, high school was unnecessary and a poor substitute for […Read more]

Puddle-jumping to Christmas

 Ancestral towns, Dakotas  Comments Off on Puddle-jumping to Christmas
Dec 222013
 

I think it was the smallest commercial plane I’ve ever been on. Every seat was a window seat … and an aisle seat. Sitting in 1A, I could just about reach out and touch the pilot. None of that bothered me. I’ve been on small planes before. It was when I realized that the “flight […Read more]

Jan 302011
 
Snow Tourist

Traveling is all about visiting new locales and seeing interesting and unusual sights, isn’t it? When you think of exotic travel, the Taj Mahal or Great Wall or the Parthenon or Pompeii may come to mind. But for someone like me, from Seattle, where annual snowfall is only about 7 inches (according to NOAA), seeing […Read more]

No Way Out

 Ancestral towns, Dakotas  Comments Off on No Way Out
Jan 172011
 
No Way Out

If you’re stuck in a blizzard, there are worse places to be than a cozy house overlooking a snow-covered lake, with internet access, satellite TV, and a well-stocked freezer and pantry. My ancestors who settled on these prairies had a much tougher time when they encountered blizzard conditions—crammed together in a sod house, the sheet […Read more]