My Grandmother would be proud

    I have always felt I was born at least 100 years too late. So when I was asked if I would participate in this years Festival of Adventures/Rendevous in Aitkin, I said sure. I love history, dressing in costume and being connected to my past. My grandmother, Julia Walstad Marker, grew up on the prairie in Nebraska in a dugout and then a sod house. To think I am only one generation removed from a sod house just blows my mind. My 93 years young mother was excited about the Rendevous as well and immediately volunteered to come and be a part. She planned on promoting the book "Farm Girl" that my sister, Karen Jones Gowen, wrote from stories Mother told her of growing up on the Nebraska praire. Mom even had a costume so she would look the part of a 1800's pioneer woman.
    The list of items needed to set up my General Store quickly grew to a memo pad that I kept with me at all times so I could write down each thought as it came to me. One night I decided I needed a counter which I could stand behind and sell penny candies, gingerale and Gunpowder Green tea.  Besides, I have been standing behing a counter for 25 years, it's just natural. I would build it myself...but as time grew near, I still didn't have a clear idea in my head as to how to do it. I am pretty handy with a hammer and saw, but it just wasn't coming to me. I had located scrap material and purchased a couple of new boards, so I had the makings of a counter, but still no picture in my head. I planned to take the materials to David's to have him help me build it, then bring it back to Aitkin in his pickup (the topic of a girl needing a truck is my next blog). Finally at around 12:30 AM on Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, it came to me. I knew how to do it. The next morning I got busy and by the end of the day I had a sturdy, rustic bar made from scrap 2x4's and cedar closet paneling. It just needed a top. As I was working that day, I thought first of my daugher Brekke and how dissappointed in me she would have been had I needed a man to help me build my counter. Even though as a young girl when she wanted to raise sheep in an old dog pen, she said, "Couldn't we just hire a man to do it?" But when it came to building things, she knew I could do whatever was necessary.  Then I remembered the story about my grandmother in "Farm Girl". She had wanted the front porch of the farmhouse screened in and asked my grandfather to do that. He said he didn't have time and it would take too long....when he left to do other chores, my grandmother figured out what she needed and then went to town for materials. She came home, got to work, and by the time my grandfather came home, she had it all done and suggested he have his lemonade out on the porch.  There are others like that one that have given me strength and courage to do the task in front of me on my own.
     As I said, it still needed a top. I had planned to us the top from a piece of furniture I rescued from the trash on the day of my father's funeral years before. But after finishing the counter, the old top was just too warped to be usable. I went to the lumber yard just up the street to purchase a new board for the top. I paid the man and took the slip out into the yard to get my board. The yard man started going through the stack to find me a good piece. I told him it was for a rustic counter I was building and this would be fine. "Are you sure?" I took the board held it out in front of me and looked down the edge to see if it was straight, then turned it and looked down the flat side. "Yes, this will be fine." He looked at me in amazement and told me that in his 26 years of working in a lumber yard, I was the first woman to ever look down a board to see if it was straight. I laughed, told him I knew my way around a lumber yard and thanked him for telling me so. I then lifted the 8' board onto my shoulder and walked back down the street to my garage. Beaming the whole way, knowing my grandmother was looking down and smiling as well.
   I spent the two days of the Festival, behind that counter, stirring the pot of soup cooking on my grandmother's laundry stove, proud of what I had done, but more proud of my heritage of a strong, capable woman whose stories continue to give strength and meaning to my life.