Katy

Peel back the layers of the onion, Carl Sandburg told us, and sometimes you weep. - A two-minute memoir

“KATY” - Artur Aldyrkhan at Unsplash.com

**A short story brought back from the Katy archive, first published in 2/22.

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He was an immigrant, an uneducated German-Russian farmer. He knew how to manage his large family. He knew what his duty was as a father, a husband, and a man. He knew he had the God-given right and responsibility to keep his wife and his children in line, even if it meant beating them with his belt. He had the right to bully his five young sons, keep them out of school and work them like beasts in the fields, the right to humiliate and abuse his wife and only daughter, Katy. He was, after all, the master of his house.

And without any sense of hypocrisy, he piously went to mass every Sunday at St. Boniface, to kneel and pray, to genuflect and intone, a man absolutely oblivious of any personal commissions of sin. 

Vlad Stawizki at Unsplash

Over the years, Katy shared hard stories of her youth with me, the same tales year after year, like a litany, like the beads of a rosary. Sometimes there would be a new story, one I had never heard before. Peel back the layers of the onion, Carl Sandburg told us, and sometimes you weep. And weep we did.

But somehow Katy rose above her history. She decided that her past did not have to determine her future. She was determined to find the good in everything, and grew to be a strong, brave, spirited woman — a model for her children. My mother inspired us by remaining ever-optimistic and full of joy.

There are nineteen short tales on 🍁 in the Katy Memoir , related to her childhood life in North Dakota in the 1920s and 1930s, her schooling, her work, her guitar, her romances. One of my favorite tales is about how Katy ran away from the misery of her home at age 16 and ended up making her own way in the rough and tumble copper mining town of Butte, Montana. Click HERE . It is good story! You will like Katy.

Stephen Radford at Unsplash.com

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