IN OUR boyhood we had cold winters, but they were not quite so long as now, we had very deep snows and sometimes there would come a sleet on top of the snow; and then if we could find a deer on the prairie, and sometimes they would stay in the valleys; and if we would get the dogs after them when they would break through the ice and the dogs could run on top, they would soon catch it.
At one time the Baptist people held their association near my Father’s, and Jack Neal, Cornelius May and Andrew Hanson started on horseback from their homes North of Tower Hill, and in riding through the prairie where Tower Hill now stands they scared up a yearling deer, and run it on their horses and caught it and brought it to my father’s and dressed it, and it was fat and we had fresh venison through the meeting.
[How the Pioneers Made Meal.]
THEY would cut down a pretty large oak tree and saw off a block about three feet long, square at both ends, set it upon end, build a hot little fire in the middle of the upper end and watch it to keep it from burning too far out, and by burning two or three days they would get a hole burned out in the shape of a basin, then hang a heavy maul to a spring-pole, so that the spring-pole would partly raise the maul; then shell some corn and put it in, and put in a little water to toughen the husk; then stand there and jerk the maul down on the corn and beat it into meal. And it took a good deal of jerking to make a little meal.