hay storm: Homer, Iowa, 1860
storm A number of fortune seekers, shoots frosted in shrouds of rime, are going to storm the “Peak” this spring. From our prairie shores a line of hay-capped wagons extend past the dead burr oak. Hair swirls around necks like anklets of chaff. Prairie fires all around. There is a brilliant one in the East now. Black-legs, Thieves, and Land Pirates fan the flame. A few with capital energy and Iron constitution may make it but they will lose money, health and character. The sudden wealth of one in a hundred or a thousand, masses of folks to beg bread. The oxen meander. The hopeful seek not to follow in the footsteps of the people of old. They seek what they sought. trivialities I turned the spyglass on our farm. To see it from Pemberton’s is like looking back on a life we once knew. When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down. The b...