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Each ear of corn was to be carefully wrapped in paper to protect if from salty air while in shipment. We used many Montgomery Ward catalogues and newspapers. It was then packed in burlap bags, each bag was sewed shut and marked ARA FOR JDC ODESSA. I was given the task of lettering each bag, I stretched the bags out on the floor, and placed a stencil over each bag, and carefully filled in each letter with black paint. There were 100 bags, each holding two bushels of ear corn.
We prepared the corn for shipment in December. It was very cold so we did the work in the house. Mumsie cleared the kitchen table and we set up sawhorses with planks as work benches. This became a family project for my parents, my younger brother and myself. I was 10 year old, I felt VERY IMPORTANT and I made sure the bags were lettered properly.(ARA FOR JDC, ODESSA),
The project was the talk of the neighborhood. Our teacher, William Forbes, lost no time in getting a world map on the wall of our one room school house. He showed us where Russia was located on the globe, he read from the encyclopedia and told us about the people, the country and the Czar.
The Russian Revolution of the 1990's is different but there are many similarities. Will there be food shortages? Will people starve as they did in 1917? Will there be a civil war? What will the new government be?
As events unfold in the 1990s we will see them happen, they will come to us in the living rooms. We will have many opinions from people who know a great deal about the country and its people.
In 1917 we had no radio, no television, our information came to us from the local paper that we received weekly. We always had the Nebraska Farmer, an agricultural paper that was concerned with local agricultural matters in the state and nation but little was ever said about the world.
The little one room school house, in 1917 boasted of fourteen students, grades one thru eight. The 21 year old year old teacher with his maps, the globe and the monthly Current Events paper was our source of information. HE was our expert.
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Metzger Memories
