A lesson from the past — make ice cream
“And the rains came, and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and the floods began, and the world was submerged in water and great eruptions occurred and the giant T-Rex’s perished, and the earth was a massive lake of water. God created male and female and slowly the world population expanded and prospered with great civilizations once again on planet earth.”
Something like this occurred over the past million or so years. It is exciting to go rock hunting in the Colorado mountains and find rocks with ancient fish bones embedded in the stones. Most of Colorado was once a vast lake.
The rains came this past week. What a blessing for our lands.
This spring, moisture ensured grass for livestock grazing and a multi-million-dollar wheat and corn crop for Eastern Plains farmers … if they escaped the hail stones that damaged many homes and cars.
I remember several years ago, an elderly couple attended a Lions Club social event, and the gray-haired 80s wife related to me about growing up in the grasslands of Nebraska as a child, where her family had a sod cabin with a dirt floor and a small field of ripening corn. They had a milk cow, a few chickens and several children.
The rains came, and the hail fell upon the homestead crop smashing the corn to the ground and wiping out the family’s income.
She related walking out to the damaged cornfield with her father and looking at the disaster. But here’s the lesson she told about the character and strength of her immigrant father, who said, “Iffy, run to the cabin and get a bucket, we’ll collect the hail stones and make ice cream.”
That was the pioneering spirit of rural America that has given rise to the greatest nation on Earth.