Alice sits on the hard wooden bench seat and looks out the train’s window. Edith, now four, stands in front of Alice and takes in the activity on the bustling platform, her hands against the wooden paneling, face pressed to the window. Clifford, usually a rambunctious two-year-old, stands on the bench next to Alice. His tiny hands grasp the frame of an open window as he too watches the all the action on the platform.
The train’s cabin is hot and dry. The open windows allow air to move but the breeze is just more dry heat. Alice smells the dust in the air. The last of the passengers say their goodbyes to loved ones on the platform. Two porters help an elderly woman with a large suitcase. They struggle under its weight and Alice wonders what must be inside to be so heavy, surely not just clothes.
A conductor works his way through the car, checking tickets. As he approaches, the kids and Alice turn to the man. Edith and Clifford inspect his uniform; the official-looking hat and the glasses perched at the end of his long nose. Alice gives the conductor a warm smile and nods hello. Alice’s husband Asa, sitting on a bench across from her, reaches into a pocket on the inside of his worn and dirty coat and hands the conductor the tickets. Asa turns but does not make eye contact with the conductor. The conductor inspects the tickets, glances at the four of them, punches the tickets with a small punch chained to his belt, and hands the tickets back to Asa. Asa returns the tickets to his coat and turns toward the window though he seems not to be watching anything in particular; it is more a gaze of resignation. Alice sees the defeat in Asa’s eyes.
Drawn by the promise of free land in the Great American Prairie for anyone who could make a go of it, Alice left Wisconsin and the shores of Lake Michigan that she loved so much to join Asa with so many other homesteaders in Nebraska. They had paid a filing fee and started farming in Phelps County in the southern part of the young state, with hopes that after five years the 160 acres would be theirs forever. They had done their best to find land close to a stream to provide water for drinking and for their livestock. They tried to select land near a hill that might serve as a windbreak and even tried finding property close to planned railroads so that they could get the livestock they would soon raise to market. Most of the best land had already been claimed so they found acreage they thought was suitable and did what they could.
“Sodbusters” people called them. To satisfy their claim, Asa and Alice had to build a house within six months. With few trees to be found, the only building material was sod, so that is what they used. Working what seemed endless days, Asa cut the sod--the top layer of earth with its web of grass roots and dirt--to make bricks of what some called “Nebraska marble.” First Asa cut and cleared the tall grass, then he and their trusty mare used the plow to cut the sod into strips. Asa then hacked the strips into bricks, each weighing around 50 pounds, and stacked them brick by brick to make their home. Asa quickly learned to only cut as much sod as he was going to use that day, as sod left in the open air for too long would dry, crumble, and became useless.
The soddie Asa built was small, measuring roughly 16 feet by 20 feet. There were a few windows and a chimney but as a one-room house there was little privacy. On a good day Alice considered the house cozy. It was cool in the hot summers, warm in the winter, and provided excellent shelter from the ever-present wind and occasional tornado. But their home was made from dirt and grass and was therefore impossible to keep clean. They slept on the floor and made do with what limited furniture they had. Alice had done what she could to make the house a home. She placed small bouquets in the window and even scattered flower seeds on the roof to bloom in the spring, but as their house was made of grass and dirt cleanliness had its limits. Mice were a nuisance, ever-present though manageable, but finding the bull snake coiled in the blankets, one that Asa had to dispatch with a shovel, was almost too much for Alice.
As if living in a sod house were not hard enough, there was the drought. Asa and Alice worked so hard to grow the crops, to raise the livestock, but without rain it seemed there was nothing they could do. When their own fields became so dry that they had no food for the cattle, they faced a difficult choice: sell the cattle at whatever the market would bear or buy grain from elsewhere. Either way, it seemed a futile effort.
And then came the letter from her father, Samuel Perry, in Wisconsin. It was an offer to come back to live near him. Her father’s various businesses were thriving and he needed help he could depend upon. He had been the mayor of his small but growing town and was an influential businessman, and if they came to Wisconsin, he said, he would build Alice and Asa a home near Lake Michigan where they and their growing family could live. Asa could oversee his various farming interests.
Alice read and reread the letter. It was too good to be true. She hated living in the sod house and longed for the shore of a lake where she could take the children to swim. She longed for tall trees and leaves rustling in a gentle breeze, for rain, for green. She longed to be anywhere but Nebraska. But she knew that leaving meant giving up on Asa’s dream of starting something in Nebraska. He had big plans, and they started with successful homesteading in the wide-open West.
Asa was not a man to give up. That is what Alice loved about him. He was a hard worker and decent man but she knew he was losing this fight. In the end, Asa realized that the hard life of a sodbuster was not what he wanted for his growing family. Asa, Alice and the children headed for the train.
Alice turns her gaze back to the platform. A few folks stand in groups waving to passengers. A loud, long “woo whoooooo” comes from the engine. Edith and Clifford both jump and turn to their mother, eyes wide. Alice too jumps and looks at the kids in mock astonishment as the train lurches and bumps forward. She smiles. “It’s OK my dears. It is just the train whistle. Now why don’t you sit. We have a long, long ride ahead of us.”
Asa and Alice moved to Ahnapee (later renamed Algoma), Wisconsin, where Alice’s father built a large house for them on the shore of Lake Michigan. Asa became a prominent businessman in his own right, and he and Alice lived in Algoma for the rest of their lives.
The preceding is fiction. It is based on an excerpt of a history of the Birdsall family provided by Alice Slayton Clark, whose maiden name happens to be Alice Perry Slayton. Alice and Asa Birdsall were Alice Clark’s maternal great grandparents. Special thanks to Alice who provided all pictures except those of the train and the soddie, which came from Wikipedia.
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