The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, April 21, 1919, Page 13

. oon, our fourteenth anniversary, and this: . is the first time we have taken the # /”’@ ’///////, / O The Farm Famll Goes on a Vacatlon North Dakota Farmer Takes Wlfe and Children on Long-Planned Trlp——The Fun of Cooking Out of Doors——Rest Makes Home Look Good Again BY MRS. SAM DEAN 2]N ALL the years we've lived in North Dakota— my husband and I—we never took a real vacation until last summer. Often and often we’ve planned to go home and visit at “grandpa’s,” but somehow the years slipped by; the times were always hard with us; babies came; the money was needed for home use and so we stayed on and In a few days we will celebrate whole family and gone on a trip to- " gether. We left our home in Wells county on a beautiful June morning via the Ford route. Father, mother, babies and suitcases, all securely but not un- comfortably packed in. 6 Every one happy and glad to be on the way. Crops looked good with us and bet- . ter as we journeyed along. Never had ¢ we seen North Dakota looking so well. ' Rye ‘standing high in the fields and | headed out—wheat, oats and other ! small grains making a wonderful, waving green carpet as far as eye , could see. Jamestown is a beautiful little city and we would have viewed it with * moré pleasure had we not broken our ' crank shaft a few miles out and had ‘the green grass for a . us. ‘long, noxfto pick all the wild flowers ' that the children wished to—on we to be towed in by another auto. For- tunately, for us, the man who hauled ' us in was not a holdup artist and we were thankful when he only asked a i dollar for his work. : THROUGH BEAUTY SPOTS i: OF NORTH DAKOTA We had to spend Sunday and Mon- ‘/day in Jamestown to get the auto fixed. We walked around the city and spent most of Sunday in the parks. Tuesday morning we left James- ~ town and headed east for Valley City, taking the red trail, and it seemed to . us as though every one else was tak- (ing it too. |, travelers that first day. All along We met many cars of our way the crops looked fine. Just before we reached Valley City, we stopped and ate our dinner under some ' beautiful trees in a secluded little spot that was just meant for wayside pic- nics. Such appetites as we brought to the feast—and a feast it was in the great out of doors, with table, the trees around us and the blue sky above ‘We could not linger to enjoy it must go, only stopping occasionally for gasoline. The first night we spent at Barnes- { ville, Minn., after passing through our : old home town of Tower City and the { flat level country between there and i Fargo. Throughout that region we saw ! some great, big farms with several dwelling houses on each farm; great i | barns, silos and the finest horses and | icattle, | tfarms, and others we did not know the ! inames of. Such great fields of wav- | | ing grain—wheat fields stretching out ‘like a green carpet as far as eye could i lsee,” Surely North Dakota looked good {| !to us, and we said, “Now if we only We saw the big Dalrymple The vacation idea means, or should mean, as much to the farmer as to the city dweller, notwithstanding the fact that the city man rushes to the country for his. and mind need variation. The human body There is nothing they do not get tired of if we keep eternally at it—tired of quiet, tired of noise, tired of work, tired of play. The remedy is recreation in small amounts and at least once a year an escape to something and somewhere quite different. We do not escape for long, however, before, as Mrs. Dean brings out in the article on this page, the old home looks better than ever before and we return with a greatly renewed interest and energy. Vacation is a great thing for the whole farm family, as Mrs. Dean shows in her simple story. continue to have enough rain and no hail comes to harm it, we will fill the breadbasket for Uncle Sam this year.” We left Barnesville at 6 a. m. and drove for three and a half hours be- fore we stopped for breakfast. The children had fallen asleep as soon as the car started, so we just drove until they woke up and then we stopped, bought fresh milk at a farmhouse, weiners, puffed corn and bananas at a small town, and after driving on a short distance we came to a regular picnic ground by the wayside. These places are easily found in Minnesota, and here we stopped and cooked our breakfast. Never was. a meal - so thoroughly enjoyed. Breakfast is rather a humdrum affair at home, but breakfast by the roadside, with the delicious odor of hot coffee and frying weiners assailing your nostrils, green branches overhead, wild roses blooming beside you—I really can’t tell you how good it was. You, too, must go a-gypsy- ing some fine morning and try it for yourself. Through Minnesota the farms got smaller as we progressed and we saw lots of one- horse farming in the little patches of cleared ground in the timber, but we saw the most beautiful homes right in that country. Mod- ern houses, big dairy farms, and the fattest sleekest cows we ever laid eyes on. No wonder .they were fat, they stood in clover to:their knees. The horses, too, were just as fine. I . had never seen so many Holstein and Jersey cattle as we saw crossmg Min- nesota. Most of the way we found splendid roads until we got to the big timber. There, for one forenoon, we traveled slowly over narrow trails that wound around lakes and over little hills and every curve marked “Danger—Go Slow.” A beautiful country to look at, but not very nice to travel through. We were glad when we left that and came out on smooth, wide roads again. Fergus Falls was the prettiest town we saw anywhere along the way. The trees, flowers and lawns were so well kept and the homes so beautiful. We silos, . saw many a pretty place, but all agreed that none was quite so lovely as this little city. When we got to St. Cloud, we left the red trail and took to the cross- roads, going southeast to Taylors Falls. 5 This delayed us quite a little, as so much of the way was soft, dirt roads, which are about as easy to travel in’ as mud and not having any friendly guideposts now we must stop and in- quire our way. ‘When we reached Taylors Falls, we were all tired, sunburned and dirty. The Indians we met had nothing on us for looks. Here at Taylors Falls we found dur first real hills, and we liter- ally slid down to the bridge over the St. Croix river and crawled up on the Wisconsin side. I wondered as I look- ed back if we would ever be able to climb up those hills and get out again, but I see other autos going up and down them every day. - We crossed over into St. Croix and found the most hearty grandpar- ents, aunties and uncles that one could wish for. After that we went sightseeing, fishing and picnicking. . .. . BACK HOME AGAIN IS BEST OF ALL" '_The . boys all had some great fish stories to relate when they got home. Barring a few accidents, such as will happen to any much “used” Ford, we all had a lovely trip.. We all had a wonderful - vacation and there is only one thing we did not like about the timber. We felt shut in. Those people at St. Croix must think about heaven a great deal. It’s the only di- reetfon they can see out in. They've got a beautiful place to live, but when we got back to North Dakota -we' ~went out on the big hill north of our. grove and just looked and looked, feel about North Dakota as Foley, our state poet, does when he says in his “A Letter Home”: PAGE FOURTEEN welcome from " have presidential four-fifths of the electoral votes for “I’d like to come to see you, daddy, And perhaps I will some day, - * Like to come East to visit, But I wouldn’t care to stay— Glad you’re doing well and happy, Glad you like that country best, But for me I always hunger For the freedom of the West. It’s so big and broad and boundless And it’s heaven is so blue.” Yes, that’s just it, it’s lovely in the woods, but all of us feel that we like ‘the big, wide spaces best and though we shall always be glad we went home to visit and while we enjoyed every bit of it, we were glad to see the old prairie again and look out over the hills for miles away—“For there’s something ’bout Dakota makes you live and breathe and feel; and there’s somethmg bout the grandeur of its seasons’ sweep and swing that casts off the fretting fetters of the East and marks you blest with the vigor of the prairies, with the freedom of the West.” MRS.-SAM DEAN. A REASON FOR SOME DIF- ‘FERENCE Editor -Nonpartisan Leader: Mrs. Sam Dean’s article, Farmers’ Wives Dxfierent‘l Why?” can be easily answered, I think, by most farm women. I myself can see plainly “those you . can tell are farm women” some- times would like to be otherwise. For example, I \ know one woman ° : who works hard, stays at home nearly all the year round, rears a child évery two years, is nice looking, and, if fur- nished the clothes, could not be told from her city sisters. But as it is her husband thinks he has earned a vaca- tion every winter and takes it either on long or short trips. She stays at home caring for the g@ children and helping RS R with the winter chores. My own husband tells me when I want to go to town once or twice a week: “Other women around here don’t.” ‘lAre If so, give them a chance to go. If you live in town, you can get up and go when you please. You don’t depend on the men folks to take you. Not all farmers are so selfish, but. a great many of them are. A FARMER’S WIFE. (North Dakota.) WOMEN GAINING The National Woman’s party an-. nounces that the 26 states which now - suffrage control president, over half the senate, 45 per cent of the house, and almost half of _the .votes in the party conventions. Since 1914 full suffrage has been granted the women in Denmark, Rus- sia, Canada, Austria, England, Ger~ many, Hungary, Ireland Holland and Sweden. And these other women . -don’t just because they don’t have the ~ clothes and because their men don’t 7 ‘%«w .{:3531‘