A Tall Tale

Once on my way to town with wagon and team, I met a neighbor - and as was the custom, stopped to visit and "yaw yaw". We happened to stop near one of those cow trails. The wind -was high and the pebbles active; they kept striking me in the face and head, arms and hands, and they stung. I began "cussing" them. My neighbor who had been fighting them as vigorously as I - laughed and he said to me, "Hell, Harve you are just a "Boomer" (newcomer) - those rocks are now worn down, so they are only pebbles. When I came to this country, these pebbles were as big as hen's eggs and would knock a man down."

That was characteristic of Homesteaders' contacts with his neighbors. When John Davison (Gerald Davison's father) said when he came to the country there was no Beaver Creek; that he himself had dug the ditch in which the Beaver Creek was then running; others just laughed. Arthur Littell, the banker, put in and said, "That is true, I know because I was here and saw John dig the ditch. Then I, with an ox team hauled the water from the Cimarron River to start it running."

Forty years ago tales like the ones above were very common when a bunch of old homesteaders got together. During the homestead era, people just lived and got along some way, with whatever little resources they had. That was true of the women also in their housekeeping duties. For a broken dinner plate they would substitute the tin top of a Karo syrup bucket, and similar substitutions or make do with something else if they could, and if they could not, they just went on their usual chores with what they had left.