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Life in the slow lane

   With all the extreme heat we had this week I was reminded of the long scorching summer of 1961. Simply put, it just did not rain. The crops dried up and so did the pastures. The cows did not milk very well either. The dugout was low and the creek that ran through our farm also dried up.

   We could not even swim in the old swimming hole. I did one day and got cooled off and also got the itch. Calamine lotion was my constant companion for the rest of the summer. To say I was itchy was an understatement!

   That summer the flies were worse than normal. We only had a half section of land as you know by now, but that year, according to my dads permit book, he only had 948 bushels of wheat to take to the elevator in Harding. Not much grain!

   We baled every field that was in crop as well any slough hay we could get. That along with oats and barley would feed the livestock as well. This was also the year we built the new barn. Water was going to be a problem. By the New Year, the dugout was out of water, dried up and froze up. Fortunately, Wally Gray had a spring in his pasture and offered dad to use the spring to water the cattle! Wally and Dora Gray were just the greatest neighbours one could have.

   It was so hot some days that mom would not let me go outside to play. There was a lot of time spent in the cool basement of our house. Obviously, we did not have air conditioning so trying to sleep was not a whole lot of fun!

   That summer we hauled 50-gallon drums of water from the dugout to water the garden. Without the garden we would have been in bad shape. Somehow, we pulled through and the next year things were back to normal as we had a lot of snow the next winter, so the runoff filled the dugout and the creek.

   I did not see another drought until the late 1980s and really do not want to see another drought, never. Speaking of drought, right now we need to have some rain, like 3 days of it!