Episode 84 (Homesteading)

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

History, Publicradio, Natedimeo, Radiotopia

4.8 • 7.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2016

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Notes * I first came the story of Ross, North Dakota, while reading Muslims in America: A Short History, by Edward E. Curtis. * The full WPA interview with Mary Juma (and another member of the Ross community) can be found in Curtis’ The Columbia Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States. * A contemporary account of the Ross community can be found here.

Music *The first bit is a loop from the opening of a song called I. Permafrost by a long-defunct band called Jerseyturnpike made up of a husband/wife duo from San Francisco. Years ago, I went to their wedding in New Jersey. There was a bounce house. It was beautiful. * The piece finishes up with the on-the-nose, This is Home, from Joel P. West’s soundtrack to the terrific film, Short Term 12.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the memory palace. I'm Nate DeMoeu.
0:05.0	By the time the man walked up the long driveway to the farmhouse, Mary was in her mid-70s.
0:11.0	She thought. The government had her down for 69 years old, but she figured that was pretty generous on their part.
0:18.0	But she knew how long she'd lived in that house on the North Dakota plains, where she sat across her kitchen table from the polite young man from the works progress administration,
0:27.0	and answered his odd questions, as the dust sparkled in the slant light that came in through the thin curtains.
0:34.0	By the time the shadows had grown long, she told him about her life, as best as she could remember.
0:42.0	By the time she was 11 or 12, she had been married. She hadn't known her husband before their wedding day, but he turned out to be kind.
0:51.0	Not well to do, but who was then?
0:54.0	He had a small farm, a few hard acres, not enough, but what could she expect?
1:01.0	A poor girl and a poor corner of Syria on the eve of the 20th century.
1:06.0	They had a party, though a whole village came to see them married, to recite from the Quran, to watch their hands get bound together, and with it their lives.
1:16.0	A few years later there was another party, a farewell, with dancing and songs, and games and feats of strength, and tearful goodbyes.
1:26.0	The farm was too small, and they were barely getting by.
1:30.0	And she and her husband sold their possessions, and borrowed $200.
1:35.0	He used their farm as collateral, and they left for America.
1:38.0	They went to Beirut, then to France. They found passage across the Atlantic to Montreal.
1:49.0	Use all of the money they had left by a cart and a horse, and things to sell.
1:54.0	And live like people from pioneer days, though it was 1901 when they made their way down in West.
2:01.0	Across this strange place with its strange names, the cat skills, Nebraska.
2:08.0	They managed, slept in the cart, felt cold that they had never known, and Indian summers,
2:17.0	so fireflies, missed on the Koehoga.
2:22.0	They heard of a place called North Dakota, where if you worked the land, if you improved the land, the land would be yours, 160 acres.
	...

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