My paternal grandfather was a farmer in North Dakota, farming entirely with horses. I've seen pictures of the draft horse herd- more than 40 of them.

Grandfather had taken his family to Wisconsin, where my mother and father met and married. Along about 1925, Grandpa and Dad along with two other sons plus one son in law moved back to North Dakota where they bought a number of sections of land and began farming in a big way.

Then came the drought and the Great Depression, and one by one they lost the farms. Everyone, in theory, was equal but in practice they discovered that Grandpa was more equal than the others.

My maternal grandfather was a carpenter by trade and a preacher and bishop by vocation. He was skilled in counselling and mediation so he was sent to Amish "colony" after colony to settle disputes among the parishioners which meant that my mother lived in many different states and communities. One of her favorite memories of when she was a little girl was the whole year they spent in Salinas, California. She loved the school and the teacher and she had a special friend. It always made me feel sad that she had so little continuity in her early life.