Cold realities

Well, frostbite hasn't claimed my fingers, but all things considered I'd rather be in California right now. This is ridiculously cold, nothing works properly (the car's transmission would barely go into gear and everything's dehydrated) and it makes me feel like a damned whining crybaby complaining about it, but to do last minute Christmas shopping in weather like this is just no fun. Procrastination does not pay, and I know it. One of these days I'll have to get around to planning ahead.

Slight dusting of snow on the ground, but not enough to look Christmasy or anything. Just mean and icy-looking. Where's the damned global warming the Democrats said I'd get if I voted for Bush? I could use some right now.

Makes you appreciate some of the things we take for granted. My grandfather pioneered in the Dakotas, and my father was born in South Dakota in 1909. When he was three they moved to an Indian reservation in North Dakota and built a sod house in which my father lived for several years. The whole Plains area was just god-awful cold in the winter. Like Siberia. The blizzards were blindingly deadly, and you could lose your way and die just going to the outhouse at night to take a leak, so they ran a wire between the house and the outhouse to guide you out and back. Yeah, you could use a chamberpot, but you have to empty them at some point. Modern plumbing is something we take for granted like we do heat. My grandparents didn't have plumbing until the mid 1930s when my dad paid a contractor to install an indoor toilet and a sink. Not that long ago, if you think about it; things like a daily bath and an indoor flush toilet are modern, yet are now seen as necessities. If my grandfather were alive today, they'd arrest him for building the sod house my dad lived in as a boy.

His house fell down, but I've scanned a picture of an identical one built by some friends who followed my grandfather and homesteaded on a nearby parcel (both were on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, which I see is still there). This picture was taken sometime in the 1940s before it, too, fell down:

SodHouseDak.jpg

This old house is too late for Bob Vila, I think.....

Where was the government when my ancestors needed building codes to "protect" them?

posted by Eric on 12.20.04 at 10:53 PM





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Comments

That looks brutal. And that's coming from someone who grew up in Ottawa.

NIcholas Packwood   ·  December 21, 2004 11:40 AM

Both my parents grew up in NorthWest Minnesota and I spent quite a bit of time up there. We had plumbing of sorts and 'fresh' well water. Yum, those minerals are GOOD for you! I remember following the clothes line from the house to the barn in the winter so you would not go wandering off into the blizzard never to be seen again. Now remember, building codes out there in the farm-lands are pretty much nonexistant. If you are a building code inspector and you slap someone with a fine or some other nonsense, the rest of the townfolk would run you out of the county.

mdmhvonpa   ·  December 21, 2004 09:04 PM

P.S. You southerners down here are a bunch of wussies. Did you know your eyeballs freeze within minutes if you stay out in -60F weather? And dont EVEN think about peeing outside, it would freeze before hitting the side of the barn.

mdmhvonpa   ·  December 21, 2004 09:05 PM


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