3 THE PIONEER WAY OF LIFE

Youngsters of school age sometimes ask their older relations and friends here for information on the people and life of bygone days, often for a school project or a term paper. On hearing that there was no electricity, no telephone, and, in particular, no radio, no television, no stereo equipment, no video games, they ask, pop-eyed, “But what did they do?”; illustrating the relatively big part leisure plays in our lives today, and the fact that youth nowadays has little idea of the struggle that their ancestors had, just to get enough to eat and survive: they had plenty to do, to keep body and soul together, with very little “time of ” for other activities. We hope our book may shed some light on these children’s forebears’ lives.

Ox-plo ugh sketch by Lawrence Quick

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