Angie the History Dog is driving me nuts in mid-winter. Out for a hike or a snowshoe, we cut a deer track, and she thrusts her chubby nose deep into a hoofprint, ruminating indefinitely until spoken to harshly--upon which she proceeds eighteen inches ahead and repeats the same ritual with the next print. In a frozen landscape, she is struggling for olfactory stimulation.

People sometimes ask me where I get all these stories about life on the prairies. My typical reply is, Why, there’s one up every section road. That’s actually understating things a bit. There are several good stories up any section road, and they intersect and entwine one another.

It’s not like I have any experience in the matter, but there are fellows who really need a smart woman around to let them know when they are behaving badly. A few weeks ago I was talking about a remarkable ballad that originated in Minot in 1908, “A Bachelor’s Lament.”

Chapter 4 of Molly Rozum’s masterwork of Great Plains history, Grasslands Grown, opens with Kjersti Raaen on a train. Kjersti was the sister of the well-known writer Aagot Raaen. They were daughters of Norwegian immigrant settlers in the Goose River valley of Dakota Territory. Had not Kjersti died young, I think she, too, might have been celebrated.

The first time Molly Rozum started telling me about the genesis of her book, Grasslands Grown, I said, "Molly, stop! You’re making me cry." She was talking about the importance, to boys and girls growing up on the prairie, of going barefoot. And many of you hearing this know exactly why that might move me to tears.

In 1997 an English scholar published a paper on the origins and use of the word, “blizzard,” and concluded, “The etymology of the word is still speculative.” Well, no, I don’t think it is. In a previous essay, I started up the road toward the origins and dissemination of the term. And I hinted it might have something to do with baseball.

Laundresses in Bismarck in December 1874 found themselves in a cost-price squeeze, as they were being charged fifty cents per barrel to have water hauled up from the Missouri River. As reported by the Tribune, "'Tempering the wind to the shorn lamb' was the way the Bismarck washerwomen put it when Missouri River water advanced to fifty cents a barrel, and the next day’s blizzard piled a big snow drift near her back door."

“The merry-makers then joined hands in a circle and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne.’” Thus closed last week’s Plains Folk essay, which marveled at the depth of energy and the sense of community exhibited by New Year’s celebrants in Emmons County in 1885. By this time not only had the custom of singing “Auld Lang Syne” established itself on the prairies, but its manner of observance--holding hands at midnight in teary comradeship--was a commonality of such occasions.

New Year’s Eve, 1885, at the Williamsport Schoolhouse, Emmons County, the crowd was less than expected on account of rough weather, but all that was promised as far as community and conviviality. Thirty-some neighbors answered the call of Dan Williams for a night of festivity.

The Jamestown Alert of 7 December 1883 printed the bill of fare for the “dust cap social and oyster supper given by the ladies of the Methodist Church at the Dakota House dining room.” So now you’re thinking, What the heck is a dust cap social, or possibly, what the heck is a dust cap? That’s a subject for another day, because this week I’m returning to the topic of oysters as a treasured culinary custom in the folkways of the Great Plains, especially during winter holidays.