Page 87 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

L’Envoi - The Right Century
I began my story with the statement that I must have been born in the wrong century. Now I should add that, although I still love the pioneer days and pioneer ways, my homesteading alleviated the frustration I had felt. I began to lose my enthusiasm for those pioneer ways in their strictest sense, preferring the dangers and hardships in smaller doses as on my homestead in the 30s - not when they were life or death matters.
Now that I’m a writer, I’m more and more conscious of the experiences in my life which are valuable to a writer, and which would have been impossible to enjoy in those earlier days.
I should not have known the joy of growing up in a small southwestern town if our family had lived alone on the prairie. Nor would I have learned about small town kindliness and friendliness - and inquisitiveness.
I could not have attended the university, or spent my adult life in education. My love for reading could never have been satisfied in pioneer days for they would have failed me for lack of opportunity for obtaining books - no public libraries and no book stores. And in case I could have borrowed a book from a neighbor, I should have been forced to read it by candlelight or by firelight - a la Lincoln.
My other hobby is travel - anywhere, anytime. I’m afraid in pioneer days my travels would have been restricted to riding horseback to the nearest neighbor for a cup
of molasses. I’m sure it would have been curtailed somewhat by being limited to covered wagons and four-masted schooners around Cape Horn.
No, the Twentieth Century is just fine. I may sentimentalize over the pioneer days, but if I’m really honest I’ll have to admit I’d hate to give up some of the advantages I enjoy today.
Besides, although I should have experienced many exciting adventures to write about, when could I ever have found time to write about them - between building log cabins, spinning, weaving, and fighting the Indians?
Now that I’ve retired after forty years as an educator, I realize that there could have been no retirement in pioneer days - except under the ground!