Going to Town on Saturday
(Rural Midwest, 1925-1945)

Going to town on Saturday was an anticipated event. Men and boys wore their best overalls and women and girls wore their newest dresses-dresses that they had often made themselves out of printed feed sacks. Sometimes a woman would get what she called "gussied up" and wear earrings.

People got to see their neighbors. Maybe learn that it rained two inches a couple of miles east of town and they only got a sprinkle-or the reverse.

Kids got a bottle of pop or a candy bar or both-on a really good day an ice cream cone. And of course kids got to see other kids.

Cream and eggs were sold and they would buy that which they could not raise-flour, sugar, salt, cloth, thread, etc. Harnesses, machinery, car tires, a Maytag-all were big items that required selling perhaps a good crop or the spring calves.

Of course many people are still alive who lived during those years. We still have many of their values such as "hard work never hurt anyone." However, all that is left of most of the 80 to 200 acre farms of that time is often a clump of trees, a caved-in storm cellar, and/or a falling down barn. The time is as past as Indians hunting buffalo or cowboys driving cattle up from Texas.

The father in this sculpture is telling his kids, "Sit down when we get on the main road." An order that was necessary because when he got off the dirt road onto a better road he might get up to 30 miles per hour.