Betty Olson
We had another warm week around here with a high temperature of 61 degrees on Tuesday, but no rain. The prairies are getting pretty dry and the fire danger is high. There was a fire south of Dillion Lermeny’s along Highway 20 and a combine caught fire near Bison this week, so be really careful when you’re outside.
I’m complaining – last week I had six white hens that can fly over the fence the guys built around the chicken coop and now there are only two white hens left. The colored hens don’t fly over the fence, so all eight of them are still alive. After only five white hens came to the coop last weekend, I searched all over and finally found something had eaten the missing hen up in the barn. On Thursday, we caught both of our dogs each eating a white hen and something else evidently killed another one, so the dogs were tied up and the hens are locked up until I can get something to put over the top of the pen outside so they can’t fly out.
John Miller, 77, Red Owl, passed away at his home on Tuesday, March 12. His memorial service was March 19 at Red Owl with burial at the Red Owl Cemetery. His family has our sympathy.
Amy Johnson hosted Ladies Aid at the church Tuesday afternoon and after it was over I went to Reva to get Paisley and Huxton Parmely and Copper off the school bus to take them home. I visited with Dean Meyer at the Reva store while waiting for the bus. I told him a lot of ranchers around here would sure like to have him start writing the entertaining column that he used to write in several newspapers around the area and hopefully he’ll start writing it again.
Reub and I went to Hettinger Wednesday morning because he had an ultra sound appointment that morning and an appointment with the eye surgeon that afternoon. While Reub was at the clinic, I was driving up Main Street when I saw a crowd outside of Centennial Square and Francie Berg was speaking. I stopped to see what was going on and joined the crowd at the Buffalo Grande ribbon cutting. I listened to several of the speakers before I went back to the clinic to get Reub so we could eat lunch with the group after the ceremony. Les Thomas from the Chippewa tribe in North Dakota sang and played the guitar for us after we ate. Les used to work for Elvis Presley, whose mother also was part American Indian, and he showed us a picture of him and Elvis sitting down with Elvis’ father. He also gave us a picture of Elvis to take home! We stopped to have coffee with the Prairie Pioneers in Reeder on the way home, but we had to leave a little early to get home in time to make it to church for the Lenten supper and service that evening.
Reub and I met Chuck and Michelle Spangler at Reva Thursday afternoon to take Gideon Bibles to give to the 5th grade kids at Buffalo. We waited until school was dismissed for the day so we could take Copper back to the ranch with us and we got to watch Clint Doll bring two of his son Beau’s goats to town for the first grade to play with for show and tell. That was a lot of fun!
I went to Spearfish on Friday for the Heritage Center board meeting and we met with Tomas Hardy and Brent Evans from Knecht Home Center about sharing a piece of land the Heritage Center owns with them for easy access to the new storage building for their lumber yard they are planning to build next to the Heritage Center. We approved it and visited with them about finding someone to build the kitchen addition we’re planning to add onto the Heritage Center.
Reub and I went to Bison Saturday evening and joined a huge crowd for the Raymond Akers Medical Benefit at the Bentley Building. Roger Nash wasn’t feeling good so he sent a card and a check with us for his relative Raymond because he didn’t want to share his illness. Dennis Nash was taken to the hospital in Rapid City that day with a broken leg that he had to have surgery on Sunday morning.
Sunday was St. Patrick’s Day so I made sure I wore green in honor of the day. My great grandfather, Charles Wilkinson, was a full-blood Irishman who started the Glendo Ranch store and post office in Glendo, which is now on our east place. Charles, born in 1850, owned a grain elevator in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and was the Freeborn County Sheriff. He served in the Minnesota state senate until 1911 when he and his wife, Ella (Fuller) Wilkinson, came to South Dakota to homestead and help their daughter Glencora Barck and her husband run the post office and store at Glendo until Glencora died of ‘tuberculosis of the bowels’ and they continued to run Glendo until he died in 1926. Their son and my grandfather, Harvey Wilkinson, came to South Dakota in 1908 to homestead next to his sister Glencora and Harvey and Lydia (Schmidt) Wilkinson took over the Glendo store and post office when his father died.
I’ll leave you with this Irish Blessing that Ron Traver sent me years ago:
“May you have the Hindsight to know where you’ve been, the Foresight to know where you are going, and the Insight to know when you’ve gone too far.”
