There are fantasies that adults carry on to their children. They include Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. Another is Westerns: You won’t get your education on life on the frontier watching “Gunsmoke” or “Bonanza.”

These were spacious houses made of wood in the movies. Westerns had things in common: cowboy boots, horses, spacious houses and guns and holsters.

The truth was that in the 1800’s in North and South Dakota, trees were very rarely seen. The common home was a sod home, made of block strips of earth put together. Drought, grasshoppers and isolation were common destroyers of these homesteaders.

Hoss, Little Joe, Nick Barkley and Mr. Cartwright were nice men. Linda Evans and Barbara Stanwick were lovely maidens.

The truth is that these homesteaders looked like death warmed over. These people did not look like happy campers. Only 40 percent of those who homesteaded survived.

Besides that, wealthy ranchers in those days sometimes hung a lowly frontier man for his land. That just makes me want to have a chocolate egg for breakfast.

Carolee Engel

Des Moines