I am sure many of you start your Sunday mornings off in the same way I do.  After we grab that first cup of coffee, we look forward to a stroll back in time to a place we have never been, but yet we have seen often.
We slow down and take that turn by the old mailbox, down the long predictable driveway, and just there is the old familiar farmhouse.  Just over there is the barn, and the fields stretch out in a vista before me.   The sky is an endless blue that meets the fields, but we know stretches forever.
We hear the sounds of pans rattling through the open kitchen window; from somewhere we hear the sound of farm machinery, maybe a tractor off in the distance.  Yes, my Sunday is off to a great start with Sharon’s guided tour as I begin to read her latest offering of Mailboxes And Old Barns.
For several years now I have enjoyed these Sunday morning posts, and I have my favorite memories of the people like Sharon’s grandfather, who was born in Fyn, Denmark in 1864 and wrote letters in Danish, and his future wife, also born in Denmark in 1878; her father, who began the beautiful love letters to his fiance, Sharon’s mother with “Dear Love” and “Dearest Rosebud,” members of the Ladies Aid.

I see in my mind places like the church on the prairie built by the immigrants, the grain elevators dotting the prairie, and the Indian rings that marked the spot in their pasture where the tents of the Assiniboine and Sioux stood, the rounded stones that held them in place still embedded in the short prairie grass.
Memories tenderly gathered from a farm on the dry Montana prairie in the 1950’s, and beautifully presented by the granddaughter of Danish immigrants as she brings to life a world with vivid word pictures.
Sunday mornings fast became a time for me to look forward to another tale about a life carved out by grit, hard work, and determination in one of America’s most challenging environments.   Reflections of a place and a time where a group of people stood strong together, worked hard, built lasting homes and farms, values and families.
A place where doing the right thing was what the community expected, and people lived up to; where doing your best never guaranteed a crop, but you did it anyhow, because it was what you did; a place that had a rhythm and continuity carried across an ocean by men and women seeking a better place, a good place, not an easy place, to build homes and lives; and, children and grandchildren and great grandchildren found those intangible things that make a family, a community so valuable that they held them close, lived them, taught them, treasured them, and passed them on to successive generations. A beautiful, resilient weave in the fabric that is America and her people.
Mailboxes and Old Barns is now available as a book, both in hardcover and paperback, and can easily be ordered through Amazon.   We have a link on the sidebar of the blog. When you order your copy, remember the readers on your Christmas list too!
We, the admins here at the Treehouse, wish to offer our heartfelt joy, pride, and congratulations to our own Sharon on the publication of Mailboxes and Old Barns.
We have treasured your stories and your wisdom, and now we rejoice with you Sharon, as your words reach a larger, but surely no more appreciative, audience.