The United States passed Homestead laws in the last century and invited settlers, mainly from northern Europe. They boarded sailing vessels and came to America. Then trains carried them to the end of the track. There is where many bought a wagon and oxen and trekked farther westward. Nightfall on the first day found many young wives weeping, because it looked like a green-carpeted moonscape.

After finding suitable ground upon which to stake a claim, the young couple would begin digging a hole and building a sod shanty. It looked something like an Eskimo igloo, because the surface of the earth was the only available building material. Their new home's surroundings could have been no more barren if they had been beamed up to the moon's surface. But good old planet Earth was a green surface during springtime in the Dakota Territory.

A modern farmer held land where there had been one of these sod shanties that housed a young pioneer couple. He was getting ready to fill in the deep depression on the corner of eighty acres when he decided to explore it with a metal detector. What he found told a story of love and loneliness.

The first day of aimlessly plodding back and forth across the hole brought him nothing but a few briars and stickers in our socks. The second day he did better planning. He was a well-organized and logical farmer and laid out a grid. It covered the entire sod shanty area out to twenty or thirty feet beyond the edge.

On the third day he was rewarded with a delightful whirring and clicking sound in the earphones. He discovered an elongated, blackened and tarnished object, which proved to be a fork made of silver. It undoubtedly had been brought over on the sailing vessel. The farmer could visualize its ride on the train to the end of the track, and then the bumpy wagon drawn by oxen. He could almost feel the salty tears of the lonely wife at the end of that first day.

The modern farmer was driven to find out about the lives of these people who were represented by a large hole in the ground and this tarnished fork from an excellent silverware set.

Fortunately, records were still there in the County Seat. After a little research and some interviews with descendants still living in the area, he learned about a love story between Olaf and Irena that commenced in the old country.

Olaf was thirteen and Irena was twelve years old. She was a strong girl with delicate features and flaxen hair. His hair was red like the setting sun. Both had blue eyes. They lived across a narrow street from each other in a northern country where it gets cold in the winter and the nights are long. Many days the clouds hung low and the mood was gloomy. Nonetheless, Olaf's love for Irena was bright and shiny. He forever took small gifts to her and blossoms picked during the short springtime.

Olaf kept searching for a flower he saw in his imagination every time he thought of Irena. It had five pinkish-white petals and grew on a vine that had tiny barbs, very low to the ground. Handle it clumsily and you would be pierced with a small sticker. It might feel just like the stinging rebuff from a young maiden, when you had acted less than the perfect gentleman.

When he grew older, Olaf was apprenticed to a silversmith. He was just about ready to become a master at the trade when Irena's family ordered an eight-piece set of silver. Olaf begged his mentor to let him craft the set. Upon the handle of all the knives and forks, and the spoons, Olaf fashioned perfect blossoms from the flower he saw in his dreams.

Soon Olaf and Irena were married and migrated to America. They rode the train to the end of the tracks, where Olaf purchased a wagon and team of oxen. At the end of the first day

of trekking westward across a green-carpeted moonscape, Irena sat down and wept.

After Olaf had unhitched the oxen and prepared camp for the night, he looked down and was astonished. There between his feet was the delicate flower Olaf had always seen when he dreamed of Irena. He bent over and picked a wild rose of the prairie.

"Here, my love," Olaf said, handing it to Irena. "This is the blossom I crafted on the silverware set."

She kissed him and wiped her tears. She knew at that moment that their days would never be dull on the prairie, because of the strength of their love.

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