Twenty Miles from a Match

Can you imagine living a hundred years ago? Can you imagine taking your six kids to live in the desert, build your own house and live off the land?
 
That's exactly what author, Sarah Olds, experienced. Aside from being a quick read, her biography, Twenty Miles from a Match, which reads like a story, really appealed to me because of the subject. Homesteading in Nevada was something my great uncle and his wife had done at the turn of the last century.

I always wondered what life was like for them. It's a biographical book but reads like a story. It's not filled with dry facts and dates, but a wonderful memoir, well written.

Sarah, didn't mention my family members by name, but there is no doubt in my mind that they knew each other, as the author mentions businesses and locations where my family were present within that small population. My Great Uncle ran the railroad station and my great Auntie was a telegrapher. So, I was fascinated to have this back yard glimpse to that era.

It's amazing to realize how medical care was handled back then, often with home grown remedies. I couldn't have imagined advanced medical care being available including surgery for a tumor. But, there it was. Her son was sent by train to San Francisco for surgery, and sent back to the homestead in the middle of nowhere so mother could treat his infected wound.

How did she succeed without the proper treatment methods we know today, without proper equipment, disinfectant antibiotics? You'll have to read the book.

Child Writing

I've written all my life in some form or another, not realizing there was something I could "do" with my writing for quite some time. It wasn't until my daughter, in her teen years. let me know she was intimidated by my writing skills that I wondered why she had such feelings, a perfect A student, who wrote very well and was literally a genius.

From that time I began to share my writing with friends, and went back to college taking courses getting a few A's myself. The rewards encouraged me to continue writing, mostly memoir and family history with a scattering of poetry and children's stories. Some have been tossed, and some are filed away in boxes in a closet.

Only recently have I stepped out of the mold of my self imposed writing, and started to make efforts to submit my work. I'm receiving tutelage from two local Santa Cruz authors. I don't feel serious with them yet, only the sense that rubbing elbows might bring me some luck. University of Santa Cruz has an opportunity where Seniors (read: old people like me) can attend classes under their Lifelong Learners program. So, that's another big step I'm taking. Hopefully, I will get into the class of our local Poet Laureate and get more elbow rubbing.

What set me on this enjoyment of writing started many years ago when my sixth grade teacher asked me to help her with the school annual literary magazine. It was a conglomeration of poems, stories and artwork submitted by third to sixth grade students. It was a big production. We were very proud of it.

Mrs Rae taught me how to type up the stencils in preparations for the mimeograph machine which, thank heavens, she wouldn't let me use. I was a terrible typist, probably ten words a minute, and made many mistakes. She patiently showed me how to fill them in with correction fluid. I hated doing this, and eventually she let me off the hook.

Having been exposed to the other children's submissions, I decided I could write as well as anyone else and produced what I considered an epic poem. It used up a whole page, and Mrs Rae was full of praise. I wish I still had it, or at least a copy of the 70th Street School Banner with my poem in it. I wrote completely in rhyme an experience based upon "What I Did Last Summer".  I had an infestation of bees set up housekeeping in my bedroom. I don't remember anything I wrote except how I managed to fancifully describe myself as sitting like a Buddha in order to be still until the bees moved on and I could get away.