Mona Monson was born Aug 8, 1996. Her mother died when she was 16 years old. She said no man could throw a hard ball she wasn’t able to catch bare handed.  She went out and danced with all the guys the night before she got married, and thought by walking on the railroad holding hands she might get pregnant. 

   She fought like a cat she said the night they got married, she didn’t know about bees and birds.  She closed her eyes in 1977 and told me in tears she could still see her Grandma Teeter on the porch there in SE Kansas.  I sensed she loved her.

      The stories she could tell, the life in Campo, Colorado during the Dust Bowl is heart rendering.

This homestead, 160 acres started out in a dugout, 2 families dug a hole in the ground, covered with 1X12 planks. My dad burst his ear drum climbing up the stairs of a dugout, falling.  This picture is grandpa James Baxter, now a widower who came to visit.  My, my only wonder in 2010 what he must have thought to see the hardship and want.  In the arms of the mother is John Monson, barely a few months old.  They were 3 miles south of Campo, Colorado, raising broom corn to etch out a living.  They like so many others abandoned the area in 1935 bankupt.  They buried two sons here.

The picture below is of Ellis, Kansas.

John J Rovenstine, may have been born in Cherokee, County, Ks. in 1876.  It was told to me by an Aunt of his, in 1962, Henry W. Rovenstine’s daughter in law said that the 3 boys were on the back of a wagon, their father Jacob S was taking them to give away.  They jumped off the buckboard and lived among the Cherokees.   Later the oldest Otis would be a grocery store manager in Fredonia.  John went West to Colorado and Bert went to California.  Once my John M told me his father gave him instructions to take the ‘whip’ and go get the cows.  John M was given to fixing tools before he used them, and started mending the whip.  When his dad came and found he had not gone to get the cows for milking, he gave him a good whipping with the whip that John M had fixed.