Feb 1, 2012

Sun, Feb 1, 1942: through the pasture

"The roads were blocked [by snow] out here until Sat. evening.  Daddy just got our lane cleared out so we could get through this morning but he went to town yesterday by going out to the road through the pasture and down to Smileyberg then to Augusta."
-- Letter from my grandmother, on the farm in Bloomington, Kans., to my father, a freshman at Southwestern College, Winfield, Kans, Sunday, February 1, 1942.  
     In 1940, the population of Bloomington township was 435. The population of Augusta (13 miles to the northwest) was 3,821.  Smileyberg didn't make it into the U.S. census figures.  Bloomington had a grade school, a Methodist church, and a store.  But my grandparents needed to go to Augusta for many purchases and to Wichita (pop. 114,996) to sell livestock at the stockyards.

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