Solomon Butcher in five movements

"If, in looking over the pages of this book, you find a fuller description of some other portion of the county than your own, pause before criticising the historian and ask if it is not your own fault that you are not more fully represented. If you have done any great deeds in Custer County which are worthy to go down in history, was it not your duty to have them recorded?"

--S. D. Butcher, Pioneer History of Custer County and Short Sketches of Early Days in Nebraska (1904)

Photo is a public image from the works of Solomon Butcher,

in collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society,

[Digital ID 10200].  



Introit

They seem relaxed and composed, this family,

as they have their picture made

in front of their sod house

by the nomadic photographer.

The husband, with his hat on one knee

and his oldest on the other.

His dog in front and horses behind

with that blasted, blessed windmill

that took two months to build and another

two for the well.

The wife, with her hair pulled back

and her youngest in a tall chair.

Her broom by the open front door

so that you can see her prized glass window

that they packed in two quilts for the

wagon ride from Kearney.

Adagio

I have to wonder how they met:

the photographer and the family.

Did he ride over the hill

and catch them tinkering on the windmill

and mending pants?

Or, did he give them the hard-sell

at the hardware store in town

or at church?

Was this a photo they wanted to take

or are they seething inside at their inability

to say 'no' to a salesman?

How long did they wait before they saw

their photo? Were they all alive the next time

he came calling to sell them this mirror of their life?

Presto

I say this only by pretending I was the oldest boy

in the photo, and by thinking about my family:

but, I bet the previous day was nothing

like the quiet scene of the photo.

Especially if the man came home and told

his wife that he had hired the photographer to stop by

the next day.

Dusting and swearing and sweeping and shouting

and washing and crying.

But, it is clear that peace came back to the valley,

at least until the photographer left.

My money says the wife's smile

is hiding something.

Trionfante

Those gleaming antlers seem purposefully

piled to talk to a father-in-law who

opened a parcel on a rainy afternoon in St. Joseph
to reveal a copy of this photo.

The attached letter probably said

"We are doing well" and described the new well
in detail, and also the garden and the field
plowed to hold the claim.
Unwritten: your daughter has

meat to eat.

Finale malinconico
We have friends who send us their family photos
for Christmas.
Some wear shirts all of the same color, and I imagine that half
have never worn that color before.
Some stand in front of a mountain or a beach to
show how far they can go from their home.
Some relax in casual clothes, under an unfamiliar tree in
a park that the photographer suggested.
I think about this Butcher photo of the family from
Custer County as I leaf through our Christmas cards
and how far we have come from those days
of living in a sod house on 160 acres.
How far we have come from a time when a
pile of elk antlers, two horses, a smiling wife,
two babies, a broom, a wagon, and a windmill
could tell the world
that your dream was still alive.

L. Powell, 15 January 2011
Kearney, NE