Book Cover
      After selecting a title for my book, Sand Beneath My Shoes, it occurred to me that a photo of our granddaughters, Sidney, 8 and Morgan, 6 could bring back the days of my sister and me as we herded cows on the quarter. I pictured them walking in the sand carrying their shoes on the cover of my new book. It would be on the site in Wheeler County, of my first published story, The Graceful Spiderwort. It would also be the first trip for the girls to the Sandhills of Nebraska.
     On a late afternoon in June 2004, Ed and I met our daughter-in-law, Debra Jipp with the budding actors at McDonalds in Council Bluffs, Iowa. After we visited and shared a meal, Debra returned home to Maryville, Missouri and the children came home with us for the photo trip the next day.
    Early morning found us headed for Wheeler County. Several miles beyond Spalding, Nebraska we took a road I had not been on for many years. It was the old road from Ericson to Spalding our family traveled in the Model T during the depression of the thirties. We stopped at a bridge over the Cedar River and Ed took several pictures of the girls. In a side trip to acquaint the girls with the places where I grew up, we drove on to Pibel Lake. This site on Clear Creek was where my Baker great-grandparents had homesteaded and my maternal grandfather Peterson had moved his family after they left Boone County.
     After a few more photos, we drove on to that piece of land my dad called the quarter. It was here on this section of Sandhill grassland that my sister Corinne and I herded our milk cows during the dry years of the thirties. And this was the home of the graceful spiderwort told in the story. On that day with the girls, other wildflowers including penstemon and pink prairie roses bloomed profusely just as they had years ago.
     During those cow-herding days, my sister and I often wore dresses made from patterned chicken feed sacks. Reminiscent of those depression dresses, Sidney and Morgan wore simple dresses of pink and lavender. While their grandfather immersed himself in the picture taking, the girls reenacted the daily chore Corinne and I had performed so long ago. We took a different route home through Columbus, Nebraska, and stopping for a brief supper, we all agreed it had been fun to spend an eventful day in Wheeler County, Nebraska.

Chapter One		Tragedy in the Sand
Chapter Two		Grandpa's Best Horse
Chapter Three		Other Horse Stories
Chapter Four		Miscellaneous Incidents
Chapter Five		Coping with the Depression Years
Chapter Six		Farm Kitchen
Chapter Seven		Threshing Days
Chapter Eight		Water on the Farm
Chapter Nine		Our Barn
Chapter Ten		Christmas Memories
Chapter Eleven		Sandhill Cowboy
Chapter Twelve		The Graceful Spiderwort
Chapter Thirteen		The Ubiquitous Bull Snake
Chapter Fourteen		Wary Coyote of the Sandhills
Chapter Fifteen		Popcorn Days at North Loup
Chapter Sixteen		Sandhill Pets
Chapter Seventeen		Winter in Wheeler County
Chapter Eighteen		Summer Events and Entertainment
Chapter Nineteen		Memories of World War II
Chapter Twenty		Clear Creek School Days
Chapter Twenty-one		Blizzard Stories
Chapter Twenty-two		Sandhill Country Church
Chapter Twenty-three		Sewage is Our Bread and Butter
Chapter Twenty-four		Cuddles Our Capricious Canine
Chapter Twenty-five		Family Camping Means Untold Adventures
Chapter Twenty-six		The Raccoon Summer
Chapter Twenty-seven		Coontail
Chapter Twenty-eight		An Autumn Day at Pibel Lake
Chapter Twenty-nine		Tales of the Prairie Rattler
Chapter Thirty		I Live With Arthritis
Chapter Thirty-one		A Memorable Christmas Gift
Chapter Thirty-two		A Love of Cars
Chapter Thirty-three		High School Dropout
		Update
		Beyond the Fifties