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The original 1906 photo is very hard to distinguish. We took a
picture of it and then enhanced and tweaked the digital image. Now you
can see a woman (Stan's grandma Rebecca?) standing outside
the shack as well as men (grandpa?) on horseback. Even closer
inspection reveals aunts and uncles? Click to enlarge for
even more detail that was obscured in the original. |
When it is too cold to do much else, it doesn't hurt to try to straighten out some boxes in the basement storage. Invariably you don't get much done because you keep coming up with stuff like this that makes you stop and wonder. This picture was just one blur, but technology makes it possible to tease out details. This is the homestead Stan's grandparents claimed. It is located near Keene, North Dakota, where the oil boom is now in full tilt. The shack would be a step up from sod huts and the people in the photo were quite proud of it, we're sure. Two children, probably Uncle Halvor and Aunt Rena, are peeking around the corner of their prairie home. (Their brother Erling wasn't born until 1912.) They've carefully posed this panoramic shot. This image has been cropped from the larger original, which shows even more of the wide open landscape, the land where these hardy forefathers courageously settled.
Stan's late father mailed this note and photo to him a couple years before he died in 1994.
