Douglas Hoff - Honoring Anna: Book Ii: the Winds of Time

HONORING
Anna

BOOK II: THE WINDS OF TIME

DOUGLAS HOFF

Illustrations by Molly Hoff

HONORING ANNA

BOOK II: THE WINDS OF TIME

Copyright 2019 Douglas Hoff.

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Scripture quotations from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version).
First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-9664-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9666-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9665-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018903222

iUniverse rev. date: 06/16/2022

Contents

Honoring Anna started as a history project for my wife Marlene (Molly) some forty years after her Grandmother Annas death. I had met Anna before she passed and liked her a lot, but at the time I had absolutely no idea of the complexity and depth of her life. As I uncovered the layers of Annas life through interviews with her daughter Marjorie, who was my principle source of information, and her sons Obert and Arthur, along with other relatives and friends from South Dakota to Norway, the family history that I had thought would be brief became so captivating that I decided that it needed to be memorialized in book form. Annas story is fascinating, but the level of faith, honor, and love that she and her fellow immigrants exhibited drew me so deeply and unexpectedly into their lives that it made me want to hold them up as examples for all people to emulate.

As I was writing Honoring Anna , I found that there was too much material for one book, thus this second book, Honoring Anna: The Winds of Time, which will help bring Annas story to a conclusion. We found some of Arthurs old journals and some letters in an attic in Annas house, along with Annas trunk stamped Ellis Island, contributing further to the story. My prayer and goal in writing both books were that I would do justice to Anna and her fellow immigrants. Annas story desperately needed to be told and remembered. It just couldnt die with our generation.

As the first book ended, Annas amazing life was, in many ways, just beginning. In it she had immigrated to America, traveled through it, and was married to Iver with their first child, Obert. The second book is centered around her life with Iver on their South Dakota homestead and is packed with adventure along with many trials that tested their faith and endurance to the limit. Nice, orderly, and scheduled days are rarely found on a ranch where nature and live animals often dictate what you do on any given day, which can often be spent putting out unforeseen fires rather than what had been intended to be accomplished for the day. Having been a rancher for virtually all of my life, I know firsthand how chaotic and episodic that lifestyle can be. This book may be unique in that aspect as it endeavors to capture Annas daily life on the prairie and the true heart and soul of her homesteading and ranching lifestyle.

Molly remembers that her grandmother Anna liked to sit in her rocking chair, pull the shades down, and turn off the radio, thinking back on her life without any interruptions. I have introduced this book in that fashion as a way of capturing Anna in one of those very rare moments in ranching when she actually had some free time to relax, and as a way of briefly reviewing the events that led to this book.

Anna and Iver experienced the Great Depression, the Dirty Thirties, World War I and World War II firsthand, along with Mother Nature at her very finest and very worst. This book will give you a glimpse of what homesteading in western South Dakota and living from day to day at the whims of the weather and the dictates of the land was like. We owe so much to these pioneers that paved the path on which we now walk. They were true American heroes, and I will forever be in awe of what they accomplished under those unforgiving conditions.

PART I
Against the Wind

1
A Time to Remember

Anna couldnt keep from smiling. She was experiencing a rare sense of freedom and independence, something not often found on her prairie homestead. Life there had its brief encounters with beauty, but Annas thoughts were usually concentrated on just surviving or trying to finish whatever task was at hand. Her husband and son, along with their livestock and small ranch acreage, were always her first concern. They weighed heavily into her every decision, and seldom did she consider doing something just for herself. Today, however, was one of those extremely rare days when Anna had some time that she could call her own. She briefly thought about using the precious time to tend to her huge garden behind the house in which unwanted weeds were regularly and tenaciously springing up in the rich and fertile prairie soil.

The weeds will wait , she thought, as she headed to her bright and cheery enclosed porch, her favorite spot in the house. The creaky oak rocking chair was lazily waiting for her there as the sun shone on it like a beacon, inviting her to her sanctuary, that little piece of heaven on earth from which she could see much of their ranch. Anna was extremely proud of their ranch and everything that lived on it, but along with her feeling of pride came the burden of having living creatures and the land depend on her for survival. Even in a moment of happiness like this Anna was aware that smiles could quickly turn to tears if time or nature turned the tables on her.

On her way to the porch Anna looked around at her home, which was almost a year old. Its creation and existence still seemed like a fairy tale to her, something from her imagination, and she feared that she would wake up and find it all just a beautiful dream. The hardwood floors, the oak hutch integrated into the wall between the dining room and kitchen, the elegant crown molding, and the well-planned kitchen with built-in flour and sugar bins and hand-crafted cabinetry all seemed surreal. Two years before, she and her family had been living like badgers in an earthen dugout with rock walls, dirt floors, and two tiny rooms. She had truly loved those meager accommodations because she had shared them with her husband Iver and her son Obert. But now she was living in what she considered a castle, a miracle, a gift from Godand from Rasmus, her long-ago love who had fulfilled his promise to build her a house even after they had parted.

Reaching the porch, Anna slowly took in the panorama, which seemed magical to her since everything on the prairie is so much prettier after a rain. The air was still fresh from the waters purifying affect, and because autumn had already arrived, the prairie was in the process of changing from green to gold. The grasses had turned into various shades of tan, brown, and red, but the trees were still trying to decide if it was time to change wardrobes. Anna smiled with satisfaction as she looked southward toward their horse pasture on Gap Creek, then her gaze turned to the west in the direction of a long column of pine-covered buttes that abruptly rose up out of the flat prairie surrounding them. The buttes were interspersed with huge and magnificent battleship-shaped formations, which to Anna seemed like silent sentinels placed there to protect the prairie from unknown invaders through the centuries. The region was called the Slim Buttes because it was fairly narrow but several miles long.