Recovered family-history scan sent by Peter Zeimet on March 10, 2007. The transcription below preserves the wording and spelling visible in the surviving scan. One store name appears to read “Loflon” and is left as scanned rather than silently corrected.
The Michael Zeimet Family
Mike and Grace Zeimet lived in a little house on his homestead, adding rooms as the family grew. They both loved to dance, and Mike enjoyed calling for square dances all of his life. Their children grew up and still have happy memories of going to school on a horse-drawn sled; of pretty clothes their dad and Uncle Pete brought back from Omaha when they went on a cattle train to sell cattle; of pet rabbits, dogs, horses and lambs; of the annual trips to the county fair and to Robinson’s fruit farm. Mike and Pete built a big granary; a machine shed for the threshing machine; and a blacksmith shop with forge and anvil. They remember harvesting–picking up potatoes; burying melons in the grain bins; the threshing crews; smoking hams in the smoke house; storing ice in the ice-house; and the crocks of pickles and jars of jelly in the cellar.
Their first school was only a little over a mile away (the Zeimet school); the next, the Page school, a little over three miles away. Then came high school in Pringle. Mike built up and built on his mother’s old cabin, and they moved so that the children could walk to school. Later he and Uncle Pete bought the Loflon store; and later yet they moved into the old Co-op store building. They were in the Loflon building during the years when Pringle was the “biggest little town” celebrating the Fourth of July with ice cream brought by train from Alliance, Nebraska, a baseball game with bleachers for the fans, footraces, and a big dance in the evening.
Mike and Grace had ten children of their own, and made a home for Grace’s half brothers and sister: Merle, Clifford, Harry and Ruby Davidson. Their own children were: Mary of Rapid City and Pringle; Ida, Rapid City and Pringle; Charles, died 1936; Inice (Giles), died 1972; Peter, Edgemont, married to Ara Belle Fuller; Leah, died 1973; Michael David, Pringle, married to Sylvia Owens; Bonnie (Jewitt), Spearfish; James, Pringle, married to Sue Vandal; Dona (Sprung), Rapid City.
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