Bess: A Pioneer Woman's Journey of Courage, Grit and Love

by Charles Cranston Jett

  The dining room, where they ate all of their meals, had a large table with a kerosene lamp in the middle, and a cabinet by the entrance to the living room where Mama kept her dishes. Bess loved sitting at the table after meals, talking with Mama and Papa.

  Upstairs on the second floor there were two small bedrooms, one of which was Bess’s. Much like the rest of the house, the furnishings in her room were plain, with a bed, dresser, a small table with a lamp, and a tiny closet, which was sufficient for Bess’s needs. The other bedroom, which was rarely used, had a single bed, a small dresser, a table, and a small closet.

  As Bess set the table, she heard Mama and Papa chatting about Alvin and Jesse Hanson, their neighbors and longtime friends whom they had known since moving to Cando. The Hansons had said they were planning on packing up their things in a year or two and leaving for western North Dakota to homestead.

  “Alvin and Jesse can do it,” Papa said. “They don’t have any children and they’re young. They’ll need all the energy they can find to make it out there.” Mama nodded in agreement.

  “What’s a homestead?” Bess asked.

  “Well, it’s when the government gives you 160 acres of land for free,” said Papa. “But you have to live on the land for five years and prove that you can make a go of it. If you do this—it’s called ‘proving up,’ you can have it for free. It’s yours forever.”

  “It’s free?” Bess asked.

  “Well,” said Papa, “nothing is ever free, but if you work hard on the land, your reward is that the land will eventually be yours. You have to be at least twenty-one years old.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work,” Bess said, wide-eyed. She wanted to be a rancher, and what better way than to get land for free! It sounded too good to be true. At seventeen, Bess had a lot of time—four years—before she could own land, but this made her dream all the more attainable.

  “I want to own land,” Bess said dreamily.

  Mama chuckled. “Well, first you need to finish school.” She carried the platter with the pot roast and vegetables to the dining room table. “Come, Giles,” she said. She looked over at Papa. “Supper’s ready.”

  As they sat down for supper, Bess began to think about school starting in a couple of weeks. She was looking forward to her final year. The high school in Cando was small--only ten students in her class and Bess knew all of them. She was looking forward to seeing the new students entering the high school with the “big kids” with their eyes wide open.

  “Irene and Ernie Grimes just opened a dry goods store in town, Bessie,” Mama said. “Maybe you can work there after you finish school.”

  “Yes, Mama,” Bess replied, but that didn’t appeal to her at all. Mama was always trying to persuade Bess to be like the other girls, but such thoughts were far from Bess’s mind. Papa looked at Bess again and smiled. Bess knew he understood what she was thinking.

  As they enjoyed Mama’s delicious supper of pot roast, Papa turned to Bess. “You like farming, don’t you, Bessie?” said Papa as he winked at her when Mama wasn’t looking. “You’ve been doing it ever since you were little, and you’re good at it!”

  Bess grinned. She couldn’t hide her pleasure at what Papa had just said. “Oh yes,” she blurted enthusiastically. “Ranching!”

  Mama looked at Bess with a hint of disappointment in her eyes and Bess felt herself shrink a little, knowing that Mama had always thought that Bess would become a housewife, tending to a home, cooking meals, and caring for children. But Bess was driven. She wanted to succeed on her own. She had that “can-do” spirit!

  When they were all finished, Mama rose from the table, gathered the empty dishes, and disappeared into the kitchen. When she returned, she set three small plates and a freshly baked apple pie in front of them. She always prepared a little warm rum sauce with raisins for the pie because it was Bess and Papa’s favorite. Mama passed around the rum-and-butter sauce. Bess took a liberal amount, spreading it over her warm pie. They ate the dessert in silence.

  When they were finished, Papa said, “Play something for us, my Bessie!”

  Shortly after they had moved to Cando when Bess was seven years old, Papa arranged for her to take piano lessons from Mr. Sherman, who lived in the town. He was an older man, trained on the violin, and didn’t play the piano particularly well, but he was the only one Papa knew who might be able to teach Bess how to play. This was a luxury for the family and she appreciated that at an early age.

  Mr. Sherman didn’t “teach piano”--rather, as he put it, he “taught music on the piano.” His methods were quite unorthodox, from what Papa knew. Instead of playing simple tunes in the key of C, Mr. Sherman taught Bess the principles of chords and spent the first few years having Bess practice finger exercises from Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist and exercises from Carl Czerny’s The Art of Finger Dexterity. “You must learn the fundamentals, Bess,” said Mr. Sherman. “The music that will come later will be much better if you master the fundamentals.”

  Master the fundamentals! Master the fundamentals! Bess heard that time and time again as she rolled up and down the scales, crossing her fingers, practicing the exercises exclusively with her left hand, then with her right. Bess wondered if the long hours practicing Hanon would drive Mama crazy because the focus seemed to be on a strictly mechanical and unmusical attitude toward the piano. She had faith in Mr. Sherman, though, and for variety she would often switch to the exercises written by Carl Czerny, which seemed to offer slightly more musicality.

  Here the focus was on practicing scales, arpeggios, and other common patterns aimed at increasing the speed and independence of the fingers. “Czerny was taught by Beethoven,” said Mr. Sherman, as though that might add some authority to the pain of some of the exercises. “And Czerny taught Franz Liszt!”

  Bess was impressed because she had heard of those musicians, but her fingers still ached after practicing. Using a pitchfork and pitching hay is much easier—and, in a sense, more rewarding, she thought. But she loved getting the immediate feedback of music as she practiced—even the scales, but particularly music which she knew that Papa would love. Finally being able to play a difficult piece would be a reward for her—the reward of hard work and persistence. Papa always said that hard work and persistence were the keys to any success in life, and music was a good example of how that advice really worked.

  Bess persisted in her piano lessons, and over the years she practiced the Hanon and Czerny exercises religiously until eventually Mr. Sherman introduced her to some compositions by Frédéric Chopin. “Chopin had small hands,” said Mr. Sherman. “It’s easier to play up on the black keys.”

  Music written “on the black keys” generally had many sharps or flats—depending on the key in which the music was written. This usually intimidated many young piano players, since they most always learned to play in the key of C. Not me, thought Bess. She was comfortable in all keys and could eventually play different songs in different keys. “That’s a skill,” said Mr. Sherman. “That’s hard to learn.”

  Bess’s hands were not small and her fingers were quite long and dexterous. She was able to play several of the Chopin nocturnes, some preludes, and enjoyed very much when Papa would bring home sheet music such as “Parade of the Tin Soldiers,” “Goodbye, Sweetheart, Goodbye,” “Daddy’s Little Girl,” and, in particular, “A Woman Is Only a Woman but a Good Cigar Is a Smoke.”

  The Parkers had a hymnal and Bess could easily play any of the hymns, but generally she enjoyed playing more popular music as well as her Chopin nocturnes. Over time she developed the ability to play songs “by ear”—mainly because Mr. Sherman had taught her how the different musical keys related to one another and because she was comfortable playing in any key from the skills she learned from the Hanon and Czerny exercises. “You could be a concert pianist,” Papa often said.

  Playing the piano was one of Bess’s life joys. She felt such pleasure developing her skills on the keyboard, the hours of practice in the wa
rm comfort of the living room, and maybe most important to her, the enjoyment it gave to both Mama and Papa. And playing the piano gave her immediate feedback for her efforts. You can actually hear your progress as you learn, she thought. While Bess never played in a piano recital, she would occasionally play the piano for Mr. Sherman when he and his musical ensemble played at dances. Bess would go to the dances with her parents and during the first hour or so, play some of the pieces with the ensemble.

  She sat down at the piano now and played some of Papa’s favorite songs, while he sat in his easy chair smoking his pipe and listening intently with his eyes closed. After playing the piano for close to an hour, she looked over at Papa and he had fallen asleep in his chair with a wonderful look of happiness on his face. Bess got up from the piano and carefully put away the sheet music—being quiet so as to not wake Papa.

  Mama had finished doing the dishes and walked over to Bess, put her arms around her, looked directly into her eyes and said with a loving smile, “Just beautiful, Bessie. Papa loves your music.”

  Bess went outside, called Buck, and together they went down to the pasture to bring the sheep to the corral for the night. Buck barked and wagged his tail with doggy delight. It was getting dark outside and she could still see the distant flashes of lightning in the West. Plenty of time to get the sheep, she thought.

  After Bess finished tending to the sheep, she went over to the large straw pile by the barn, where she had dug a little cave hideout. She crawled inside to think and be alone. Homesteading. That sounded like a real adventure. It was consistent with her love of farming and ranching, and she wanted to learn more about homesteading, but didn’t know where to start. She knew the Hansons well—Maybe I should spend some time with them before they leave for the West, she thought.

  The West! She wanted to know more about what it might be like out there. She fantasized what it might be like to be on her own—homesteading. There were a lot of details she needed to learn, and she needed to make some sort of plan. A plan! A plan for homesteading—what I need to have and what I need to do to succeed! That was exciting. Bess lost track of time until she heard the distant thunder from the west. Storm coming, she thought, as she crawled out of her hideout, proceeded to the house, went inside, kissed Mama and Papa good night, and headed upstairs to her room.

  Bess opened her window to let in the fresh air. She could hear the distant thunder getting louder and knew that a storm was imminent, but she wanted to enjoy the cool breeze while she could. She then plopped on her bed and lay staring at the ceiling. The sound of the crickets was pleasing to her ears, and whenever she looked out the window, she could see the flashes of distant lightning and rumbling of the thunder a few seconds later. Bess wondered what it was like out West and couldn’t get homesteading out of her mind. She thought about her future. Her hopes. Her dreams. Her faith.

  Faith? Faith in what? Bess had faith in herself, and even though she was about to enter her last year of schooling, she had many thoughts about religion and its place in her life. The Parkers were not particularly religious people and went to the Episcopal church perhaps twice a year, if that. Papa had said something about being a Unitarian when Bess was in her first year of high school, and that prompted her to go to the library to look up the meaning of the word. There wasn’t a Unitarian church in Cando.

  Bess had learned that Unitarians were more concerned with morals, ethics, and social justice than with personal salvation or the forgiveness of sin. Their beliefs were more focused on how to behave in real life, and not centered on miracles. She had become interested in a common sense approach to religion when she’d read about Thomas Jefferson. What he thought about religion made sense to her.

  When Jefferson was president, he’d taken a pair of scissors and cut out the things he didn’t believe from the New Testament and turned the story of the divine Jesus into the story of a highly ethical and moral teacher rather than a mystical figure. Papa had a copy of what he had created—the “Jefferson Bible.” In that book, which Bess had read many times, Jefferson expressed his belief that Jesus, if he really existed at all, was a man who lived, suffered, taught, and died. Jefferson even referred to what he had done with his pair of scissors as “separating the diamonds from the dung heap”—removing all the magic from what otherwise was a marvelous and inspiring story. He had subtitled the book The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

  Whether God existed or not was simply irrelevant to Bess. Living a moral and ethical life was what mattered. That made sense to her, and in her own mind, was far more religious than any belief in talking snakes. These beliefs were not consistent with those of her friends, so Bess never got into a discussion with them about religion. Bess knew from her civics class and from what she had read at the library that freedom of religion was a constitutional right of every citizen. She thought it best to keep her views about religion to herself and try to get some sleep.

  When she began to hear the pitter-patter of the rain on the windowsill and the sound of the thunder getting louder and louder with an occasional loud “bang,” she blinked her eyes and returned from her reverie about religion, got up and carefully shut the window. Sleep, she thought. Such a waste of time. I can’t wait for the morning. I’ve got to develop a plan!

  Chapter Three

  Shortly after dawn the next morning, Bess looked out of her window and was greeted with a bright and cloudless blue sky. Several times during the night, Bess had been awakened by the crashes of thunder and flashes of lightning of the passing storm. For what seemed to be several hours she could hear the drumbeats of the rain pounding against her window. When she looked out of the bedroom window, she marveled at how clean the countryside looked toward Cando.

  The first thing Bess would do every morning was to milk Brocky the cow, and feed the horses. Milking Brocky was easy. First, she would empty a pail of ground oats on the concrete in front of Brocky’s stall so the happy cow would be busy enjoying her breakfast while Bess pulled up the little stool and begin to milk her. It never took much time—maybe fifteen minutes at most—to fill the milk pail about three-quarters full. Then Bess would take the pail of warm, fresh milk into the house and pour it into a metal milk can that Mama always kept in the corner near the flour sacks. Mama was an early riser, too, and whenever Bess finished with feeding the horses and milking the cow, breakfast was always ready.

  After breakfast when Papa was getting ready to go into town to the grain elevator, he looked at Bess and said, “Need a couple of pheasants for Nellie. Should be good hunting today.”

  Bess flashed a big smile at Papa because she knew he trusted her to hunt pheasants on her own. He had taught her how to shoot and she was good at it. “I’ll do it, Papa,” she said.

  After Papa left, Bess helped Mama clear the breakfast table. “Pheasants tonight?” she said to Mama.

  “Just a couple,” said Mama.

  Bess smiled. She remembered how Papa taught her how to hunt and shoot just a few years ago. One late afternoon when Bess was fourteen, Papa came home early from work. “Let’s go shoot some pheasants,” he said as he came through the front door. Bess had shot guns before, but this time Papa wanted her to be the one to bring in the pheasants.

  Bess wasn’t afraid of guns and Papa had taken her down to the lower end of the pasture many times to practice shooting tin cans that he would set up on a post. Papa had two shotguns: a high-powered Winchester 30-30 repeating rifle, and a Colt revolver.

  Papa was an excellent instructor when it came to shooting. “The trick, my Bessie, is to always focus on the gun sights. Line ’em up so your eyes are focused sharply on the sights, not on the target. Sights must be crystal- clear in your eyes, and the target should be somewhat of a blur, because it’s far away. If you focus on the sights and they’re lined up perfectly with the blurred target in front, you can’t miss.”

  When Bess followed her father’s advice, even with the revolver, she could generally hit exactly where she had aimed. If the ta
rget was far away, he told her to aim slightly higher than the target because the bullet would tend to fall somewhat during the course of its trajectory. “The farther away the target is,” he said, “the higher you aim. You have to get a feel for your gun. That’s why we practice.”

  Papa fetched the double-barreled shotgun and shells and put on his jacket and hat. Bess donned her jacket and followed him out the front door. Together they walked slowly down to the lower pasture near the creek where the grass and buck brush provided excellent hiding places for the birds. When they were near the creek, they knelt down and crept slowly toward the tall grass. Papa handed the loaded shotgun to Bess. “Get ready, my Bessie,” he said. “They get up quick.”

  Bess held the shotgun the way Papa had taught her—her left hand on the barrel and her right hand on the wooden stock with her right index finger near—but not touching—the trigger.

  “When you shoot a shotgun, the pellets will spread out and cover a larger area and the bird, if you aim ahead of it slightly, the bird will literally fly right into them,” Papa said softly. “The only way to practice is to actually hunt ’em.

  “Hold the rifle steady and be prepared to lift it, aim, and shoot when the birds begin to fly,” he said. “You only have one shot, my Bessie, so take your time and get a good aim before you pull the trigger. Don’t wait too long, because pheasants fly pretty fast and if you don’t get a shot off quickly, it’ll be too late.”