Cole’s ‘Land Minds’ caught my attention

To the Editor,

In the past, my husband enjoyed The Land. I’d skim it, read here and there. Your June 23 edition really caught my attention. Three stories hit me!

“Reflecting on special hymns for special people” by Renae B. Vander Schaaf struck a chord. As a parttime past church organist, there are so many hymns that mean a lot for me. Choosing hymns for Sunday worship that complemented the scripture text was a prayerful challenge. I have my favorites, but the words to others have touched moments of my life.

“Old farm houses and making a home vs. homemaking” by Karen Schwaller rang with so much truth for living in the country. I think the art of homemaking is being lost. My daughter’s high school art teacher once told me about a dream he had of doing a series of panting on exterior doors beginning with scenes looking into the kitchen at family activities. The end door was a scene looking out at a farm auction sale. I don’t know if he ever did those painting, but they would be interesting.

The story that had the most impact though was Laura Cole’s “A hand-written treasure.” My Dad wrote some of his story. He let me type (and edit) it for him. We passed it back and forth several times. I was actually able to help him with several pieces. What a treasure now!

A number of years ago I took a class in Legacy

Writing when we snowbirded to Arizona. I’m lead- ing that class now. I could get on a soapbox and rant about writing your story. We all have so many stories we should be sharing. Laura discovered the treasure her father left. I was lucky enough, I have my Grandmother’s life story too that she wrote. This last year I shared Dad’s “Skinning Skunks” story with the class. That is only one generation back for us. Life has changed so much I think we need to be sharing our stories for future generations.

Sonja Farmer Marietta, Minn.

Skinning Skunks

Winfred Schmidt

1919-2015

I was born on the Minnesota side of the state line with South Dakota just across the ‘highway’ that was two tracks in the sod, that came to a creek, went in one side, out the other and went on from there. The ‘highway’ was controlled — the jackrabbits set speed limits. Off to the west was a buffalo wallow where the cliff swallows had set claim on the east and south walls years before. The wallow contained clean bones and three feet of water upon which the bull frogs had set their claims and could be seen swimming in the bottom. This swimming pool had no fees or tax on the birthday suits of the swimmer, and the cliff swallows seemed to ignore their presence.

At eight years of age, our family moved a mile east into the settled farm area where there were even ditches along the heavy populated industrial roads. I set out on an early exploration of the new creek. On this timely exploration, two huge Holt traps were discovered. So, I set up a new business that covered the area. Soon a two-strip skunk stumbled into my manufacturing business. With the assistance of a ten-year-old neighbor, the hide was taken off the skunk, dried and packaged, ready to mail to Sears and Roebuck.

Our mailman, Dave Gouhl, wore several hats. When I brought my first skunk to him on the country route to send to Sears and Roebuck, he said the smell was too much and told me to sprinkle it with Lysol and over-wrap it so it would pass postal inspections. As soon as my shipment was re-fumigated and rewrapped, the hide was on its way. A three dollar check for the hide soon arrived in the mail. Dave had a little attachment on the dash of his Model T Ford to figure out the cost of postage. My three dollar check for the skunk was taken to Dave Gouhl with an order for traps. He took them to town and brought back the change the next day. Several times he made change on the spot. I know other people did ordering the same as I did. The orders always came. It was truly ‘mail order.’ When the market fell out the bottom of 1929, the fur market stayed reasonably good. Even in the Dirty Thirties, the fur market remained stable. In comparison, a properly processed skunk hide at times brought more than two days of a man’s work. I know, because as a kid, I did a man’s job of hauling water to make concrete for a set of buildings for a neighbor. I was paid a dollar a day. So, 15 or 20 minutes of skunk smell didn’t bother me. A mink pretty well equaled a week of work. A fox or badger pretty much matched the price of a mink. Even a weasel hide was worth as much as a used .22 rifle. Only I got pages of rules and regulations from my parents to obey to stay in my trapping business. My first trapping business expansion (profit from that first skunk) was to buy a dozen #0 traps. Soon it was time for my second expansion and I bought a whole dozen #1 traps. Before long I had a five-mile trap line that I ran every morning before going to school. A special set of clothes was kept in the machine shed for the trap run to keep the odor out of the house. One morning, instead of making the