Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

This week’s article was submitted for printing by Ms. Frary Hager Breckenridge, daughter of Alfred Levi Hager and Martha (Hartz) Hager of Bloomington.

Reflections On Farming In The 1930’s

Time was marked off by the seasons on Alfred Levi’s 120 acres at the old Bloomington homestead. His face and forearms were like strips of parched leather. In the field, he wore a favorite brown-yellow corduroy cap, which was always with him when he was with his horse and plow. When Alfred took off his cap during work, a smooth white strip of skin squared his brow. He would wipe the sweat onto his sleeve and spit the grit from his mouth.

The land’s dimension and perspective were wearisomely uniform to his eyes. The farmer looked to the sky for motion. He worked with his grain eighteen hours a day, guarding the swollen golden heads until harvest. An hour was never lost. There was no letting up in this business, because destruction is abrupt on the prairie.

He knew that was so, because flashes of heat lightning had struck his pasturing colt. Alfred’s dark, sensitive face showed no expression as he buried the carcass. A tenacious strength, controlled by a matter-of-fact awareness, rolled the carcass into its hole. It was his only colt that year.

Isolated from his neighbors, he sat alone in the winter. He labored indoors and repaired ash like canvas and smooth leather straps. Occasionally, he gazed through the watery windowpanes at the stretches of frozen prairie, or listened to the crystals of sleet pelt against the frame house. Martha, his wife, sustained him on a monotonous diet of preserved food. There was no canned fruit, as the orchard was lost during the incessant drought.

In the evening, he learned about new farming techniques, or reflected on the failure of the old.

In the coming months, with the sign of the silver thaw, winter passed. Once again he would be out on his land, surveying the damages of the season. Mud was everywhere and ankle-deep to plod though, sucking at his heels, though he remembered it kept the dust down. In a few weeks he knew it would start over again: stir the dust up, plant and wait for the bright blistering days to run their course. He hoped the wheat’s market price would rise with demand. A bushel had brought $1.56, now it was down to $. 69. And more than ever, he dreaded the possibility of an invasion of grasshoppers.

For my father and other farmers of that time, the following had a terrible impact on Nebraska’s agricultural economy: the stock market crash of 1929; low demand for the farmer’s crops; the drought of the 1930’s caused topsoil to blow away in high winds; and ironically, the 1935 Republican River Flood killed almost 200 people.

The terrible effect of those momentous years of the Great Depression caused more than 60,000 people to leave the state. Alfred Levi Hager and his family were among them.

Winter lies too long in country towns, hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.

My Antonia, Willa Cather

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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