The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker: Ventures and adventures; sixty-three years of pioneer life in the old Oregon country; an account of the author's trip across the plains with an ox team; return trip, 1906-7; his cruise on Puget Sound, 1853; trip through the Natchess pass, 1854; over the Chilcoot pass; flat-boating on the Yukon, 1898. The Oregon trail.Meeker, Ezra
History
The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker: Ventures and adventures; sixty-three years of pioneer life in the old Oregon country; an account of the author's trip across the plains with an ox team; return trip, 1906-7; his cruise on Puget Sound, 1853; trip through the Natchess pass, 1854; over the Chilcoot pass; flat-boating on the Yukon, 1898. The Oregon trail.
Meeker, Ezra
Alaska -- Description and travel; Frontier and pioneer life -- Northwest, Pacific; Overland journeys to the Pacific; Washington (State) -- Description and travel
One habit we boys acquired on that trip stuck to us for life; until the
brother was lost in the disaster of the steamer Northerner, January 5,
1861, 23 years after the barefoot trip. We followed behind the wagon
part of the time and each took the name of the horse on his side of
the road. I was "Tip" and on the off side, while the brother was "Top"
and on the near side. "Tip" and "Top", a great big fat span of grey
horses that as Uncle Usual said "would run away at the drop of a hat"
was something to be proud of and each would champion his favorite ahead
of him. We built castles in the air at times as we trudged along, of
raising chickens, of getting honey bees, such as we saw at times on the
road; at other times it would be horses and then lambs, if we happened
to see a flock of sheep as we passed by—anything and everything that
our imagination would conjure and which by the way made us happy and
contented with our surroundings and the world at large. This habit of
my brother's walking on the near side and I on the off side continued,
as I have said, to the end of his life, and we were much together in
after life in Indiana, on the plains, and finally here in Washington.
We soon, as boys, entered into partnership, raising a garden, chickens,
ducks, anything to be busy, all of which our parents enjoyed, and
continued our partnership till manhood and until his death parted us.
It is wonderful how those early recollections of trivial matters will
still be remembered until old age overtakes us, while questions of
greater importance encountered later on in life escape our memory and
are lost.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY DAYS IN INDIANA.
In the early '50's, out four and a half and seven miles, respectively,
from Indianapolis, Indiana, there lived two young people with their
parents, who were old-time farmers of the old style, keeping no "hired
man" nor buying many "store goods." The girl could spin and weave, make
delicious butter, knit soft, good shapen socks, and cook as good a meal
as any other country girl around about, and was, withal, as buxom a
lass as had ever been "born and raised there (Indiana) all her life."
These were times when sugar sold for eighteen cents per pound, calico
fifteen cents per yard, salt three dollars a barrel, and all other
goods at correspondingly high prices; while butter would bring but
ten cents a pound, eggs five cents a dozen, and wheat but two bits
(twenty-five cents) a bushel. And so, when these farmers went to the
market town (Indianapolis) care was taken to carry along something to
sell, either eggs, or butter, or perhaps a half dozen pairs of socks,
or maybe a few yards of home-made cloth, as well as some grain, or hay,
or a bit of pork, or possibly a load of wood, to make ends meet at the
store.
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