If you missed Ray Pierskalla's contribution to Prime Time (in the West Central Tribune on Oct. 24) you have missed a writing of pure emotion without one whine or boo-hoo and perhaps it should be reprinted.
He grew up in the Depression, as many of us did, and learned what it meant to work hard and have little. Working beside his father, at the most menial of jobs, this boy, who was about 8 years old, was making a contribution to his family's survival.
Pierskalla's father could not read or write and they had lost their farm during the '30s just as many, many other farmers did. You could drive through the countryside at that time, and see one empty farm site after the other. I remember seeing this paint-flecked farmhouse with an overgrown yard of weeds. Every window was broken and out of one of those broken windows was a ragged curtain floating in the breeze. It was the most tragic scene of desolation and said everything about that time in our history and one I have never forgotten.
This was a time of tragedy upon tragedy. There was an escalation of crime in the big cities, suicides, murders, abandonment of families, absence of health care and a general substandard of living by millions. But the majority of Americans were exactly like Pierskalla's father, they never gave up.
He and his father ate lard sandwiches on their lunch break but this boy was also being fed something that would sustain him the rest of his life. Almost daily, his father told him that he must get an education because it was the thing that would save him. Those encouraging words paid off because this man's son got his education and became the pharmacist that started the Prescription Center in Willmar. This father, this hero, was a man that persevered against horrible odds, stood by his family and had the wisdom to know the value of an education. We need more men like Ray Pierskalla's father.
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Patricia Carter Harding
Willmar
