On 2007-10-15 19:20:09 -0700, Dan said:

Anthony W wrote:
Jay Honeck wrote:
Just buy a golf cart...

Those are a bit cold in winter around here...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA

And damp around here in NW Oregon.

Tony

OK, you bunch of whiners, when I was a child I had to walk 15 miles
to school in my bare feet in the sleet and snow, up hill.....both ways.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

True legend:

Sometime in the 14th century the Campbells were returning from a cattle
raid that had not gone very well, so they were making a rapid tactical
retreat across the snow. Finally, exhausted, they wrapped themselves in
their kilts and threw themselves down into the snow to take a needed
rest. The clan chief's son, however, rolled up a large snowball and put
it under his head. The chief came over and kicked the snowball away,
saying, "And are ye become so effeminate, lad, that ye need a pillow?"

That story has been handed down among Campbells for centuries, but
there is no way to verify it. Still, it seems plausible. Consider the
experience of a more recent ancestor:

My grandmother's grandmother, Sarah Urrinda Rawson, at the age of six
made the trek across the plains to Utah, walking the entire distance.
She wrote that she and her little brother were in charge of the cattle,
which frightened her sometimes when the cattle stampeded or when
Indians attacked trying to steal cattle. The children had no shoes, so
she got great cracks in her feet which she would sew up with her sewing
kit when they stopped for the night.

This was not the first time the children had had to migrate to a new
home without shoes. After their home was burned by mobs the first time
in Missouri, they had to flee in the dead of winter across the Missouri
River, taking shelter on a sand bar. There her mother, Elizabeth, and
Sarah Urrinda's baby brother, had to stay with nothing more to protect
them than a sheet hung between willows. The children's feet were
severely frostbitten.

Sarrah Urrinda's older brother, Daniel was probably still a little sore
from the ball he took in his knee at the battle of Clear Creek. He was
16 at the time. Later, when he was 19, he confronted an armed mob alone
and demanded that they at least partially pay for the house in Illinois
they had burned, the flocks and pigs they had stolen, and for the fence
they destroyed. They finally caved and gave him a side of bacon, a
cheese, and some eggs. Then they shot at him as he left for home.

Later, Daniel was making shakes for a barn and he and the others
decided to sleep at another barn that night. A mob set fire to the barn
and started shooting everybody that came out. Daniel's best friend was
shot to death as he stood next to him.

They stopped in Iowa to regroup and the Army came asking for volunteers
for a battalion of men to march against Mexico. Daniel swore that he
would never serve the American government, which had done nothing to
prevent these attacks by mobs or restore order. But he volunteered
anyway when Brigham Young asked him to. So they marched to Missouri for
supplies, but the supply depot was manned by the same people who had
chased them out of Missouri. The commander of the battalion finally
gave the Missourians an ultimatum that either they would deliver the
supplies within the day or he would open fire with his cannon. They
delivered.

They marched across to San Diego, building a road all the way from
Independence. Mustered out, they went to Yerba Buena (now San
Francisco), and on to Sacramento looking for work so they could earn
money to get back to Utah. They found it at Sutter's mill. Although
they discovered gold there, Daniel was asked to take the horses back to
Salt Lake City in the spring, which he did in a running battle with
Indians the whole way. He sometimes had to swim across icy rivers
towing a raft carrying the horses.

So, when I hear people mocking the "15 miles each way in our bare feet"
I think of those guys. They really lived like that.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor