WiDō Publishing

A Farm Girl for All Seasons

By K.C. PAKARINEN

It's that time of year again - the time when family is foremost on the minds of most people, when the family gathers to feast and give thanks, followed closely by the time when each family member starts trying to figure out the best gift to give every other family member.

Lucille Jones knows a lot about family. She grew up an only child but she was nurtured by her parents on a farm in Nebraska where she was also surrounded by her extended family. She raised four daughters and now she is the grandmother of 18 and the great-grandmother of 11.

Lucille knows a little something about gifts too. She got one of her favorites when she turned 90 this January. The gift was Farm Girl, written by her daughter, Karen Jones Gowen. It was a gift from the heart in which family is prominently featured.

After Lucille's husband (who was a Methodist minister and a lover of rural Minnesota) retired, the couple moved to Cedar Lake property that had been in his family. Rural Minnesota is an acquired taste for Lucille, but she says she grew to love it and, after her husband's death, she stayed on in an apartment at Blackrock.

The book that will be released at Gramma's Pantry in Aitkin on Fri. and Sat., Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, involved three generations of the Jones/Marker/Walstad families. It is the story of Lucille's Nebraska childhood, written by her daughter and published by two of her grandsons. Lucille lived it, Karen retold it as folklore, and William and Don Gowen developed the means the family is using to share it with anyone who's interested.

"It's a great way to do family history," Lucille said, adding, "My childhood was so different from anything children have now; it will give them an idea of what life was like in the 20s and 30s in this country."

She gave a copy to Aitkin High School and another to the Aitkin Public Library. She and one of her other daughters, Becki Jones, will have signed copies for sale at Gramma's Pantry and the book is also available from Amazon.com and Target.com. It is the first book that the Gowen brothers' new independent company has published but they hope to do more. Wido Publishing of Salt Lake City, will specialize in genealogy, family history and personal stories.

In the book's introduction, Karen explains the way the book grew out of her desire about her mother's story.

"While taking a folklore class at Brigham Young University, I learned how to interview and collect information for a folklore study. For one assignment, I interviewed Mother to get her memories of the Dust Bowl days in Nebraska. A folklore study differs from most writing, in that the tale is told in the voice of the individual telling the story, not by the collector," Karen wrote.

Lucille says now that she wasn't sure she was ready for her life to be, "an open book, literally." But the hours of retelling tales she hadn't thought about in decades brought back memories of not just the hard times, but also the good times and the great people she grew up with. It was all done long distance with Lucille talking into the phone while Karen typed. She said she continues to be amazed at the way her daughter captured the feel of everything from the dugout her grandfather homesteaded to the Dust Bowl days the family endured. As told by Lucille and written by Karen:

We went to the basement because Mother thought it would be a tornado and, of course, we always went to the cellar for a tornado. My dad hadn't come in yet from the barn and Mother was pretty worried because storms frightened her. The memory of her family's sod house being destroyed by a tornado was still clear in her mind.

Dad didn't come in for the longest time. Finally he made his way in and said he'd gotten lost from the barn. It was dark and blowing dust so hard that he couldn't see at all. He couldn't see the light on the windmill or the lights in the house and he couldn't tell what direction to go to find the house from the barn. For 20 years, he had taken that path from the barn to house and probably could have found his way blind-folded. Yet caught in the blackness of swirling dust, he became disoriented and lost in his own yard. Eventually the wind let up a little, enough so he could see the lights on the windmill and he was able to find the house. He was completely covered in dirt, just black from head to toe.

In the house, the dust was so thick we had to hold wet handkerchiefs over our faces so we could breathe. We went to bed that night with the sound of the wind howling and dust hitting the windows.

It went on for years. Eventually, Lucille's mother just rolled up the rugs and took down the curtains and the family learned to live with it. Unlike many of their neighbors, they were able to stay on the land because of the foresight and frugality of Lucille's father.

"The black blizzard" is the way Karen described it.

"The joke was that one day our farm would get blown to the neighbor's and the next day their farm would get blown back to us," Lucille said.

There is actually a fourth generation involved in what was already a three-generation undertaking. The book is illustraded with photographs taken by Lucille's mother and a few of her 2,000 oil paintings she did.

"She was a very creative woman," Lucille said about her mother. And the book is proof that she was just one in a long line.

As an English teacher, Lucille had a love for the written word that she, no doubt, passed on to her children and her grandchildren. Now, they are returning the favor. How many 90-year-olds do you know who have just purchased a new computer with which they plan to continue their life-long journal-writing habit?

Does she want to see more of her life in print? Not necessarily although her family may have other ideas. Lucille turned into an elegant educated lady but she's still a Nebraska farm girl with gift for gab at heart.

Or as the Farm Girl who's the heart of the story says at the end of her short introduction: "To me, my life has been very ordinary and typical of others in our community of that era. It is rather humbling to think that anyone other than family members would find much interest in my experience. Nevertheless, I am thankful to Karen for believing that these memories are worth saving."



Ed. note: See the print edition for other pictures taken in Lucille's youth.

Woman’s Recollections Transport Readers to 1930s Farmland
02 Apr 2008   Omaha Herald
by Steve Eskew

Having spent the night at her parent’s farmhouse, Lucille Marker and her college girlfriend awoke to a startling sight: Their faces had turned gray. It was 1934 and Nebraskans had just been hit by one of the worst dust storms in American history. Cars stalled because dust clogged their engines, forcing people to crawl to safe haven.

That’s about as dramatic as Farm Girl by Karen Jones Gowen gets, except perhaps for the story of a man who carries a burning kerosene tank out of the house with his bare hands. Omitting sensationalized incidents and graphic sexual exploits, the book perfectly captures a young woman’s coming of age in the early decades of the 20th century. It concerns real life, relatively ordinary activities, drawn with the precision of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Journeying to the Nebraska farmland of a gentler time underscores how technology has thoroughly changed our lives. Gowen carries her readers into an era in which television and computers didn’t exist, where a mouse was only a pesky rodent and cookies were but great-smelling desserts that baked in upright ovens. Her show-and-tell history contains a generous collection of fascinating photos, including reprints of beautifully colored oil paintings by the author’s grandmother, Julia Walstad Marker.

Gowen’s ambitious project owes its genesis to a folklore course she took at Brigham Young University where she polished her skill as a collector of information, employing practical interviewing techniques. She discovered that storytelling is more effective when told in the interviewee’s voice. Subsequently, she had a series of conversations with her mother, Lucille Marker Jones, coaxing her to discuss the Dust Bowl days in Nebraska.

Had her highly educated mother written the story, Gowen knew that the voice that emerged would have been that of "Mrs. Jones, English teacher." Instead, Gowen’s narrator borrows her mother’s Nebraska farm girl persona.

"It was essential that "[Mother narrate] the story, rather than write it," Gowen said.

Her approach works wonderfully well. Gowen admittedly employs considerable poetic license, but her tale comes across as an authentic account of an intriguing time. Her use of sensory imagery enhances many settings and transports her reader to the scene, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting and methodically facing the experiences described.

Farm Girl by Karen Jones Gowen (WiDo Publishing, December 2007) 184 pages.