Not for me: Living in a sod house

All right, so I'm not not only fascinated by Native American culture, I am fascinated with the life of the American Pioneer. That's probably pretty evident as I've dragged just about every person in my family to Murphy's Landing! Remember my recent excursion with Katie, Mary and Anthony?

So I'm reading the book, The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin. It's about a huge blizzard in 1888 that hit the prairie so suddenly and so fiercely that it killed thousands of children as they walked home from school (and other people too).

I've only just started the book, but it honestly describes the hard live pioneers lived. Most of them were poor, they worked long hours farming land in a climate they didn't understand, they lived miles a part from one another, and often had to deal with disease and hunger. It wasn't the quaint picture I had in mind after years of watching TV shows like Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and Little House on the Prairie that romanticized the Pioneer Life.

And then I read the paragraph about the sod houses pioneers lived in. Not only was it basically a hole dug into the ground, but gopher and snakes would sometimes pop through the walls when they were burrowing.

Yuck!

Sometimes you just have to be thankful for the modern conveniences like houses built with concrete, wood, and vinyl siding that keeps those creatures out of homes where they DO NOT BELONG!