Life With Boys

Recovered original email from Peter Zeimet. Plain-text body preserved verbatim from the mailbox.

When I say the Zeimets were clannish, that was an UNDERSTATEMENT.  It was way beyond any normal family togetherness.  There was an inner circle with multiple cirles outside.  The homesteaders hit the Black Hills and conjoined themselves with a giant wagon wheel umbilical cord. There were ten kids, Uncle Pete, Aunt Lizzie Zeimet/Retzloff and Ana Zeimet. 


 Anna died in 1918 when a terrible flu epedemic hit the nation.  She was married to a Kirk and grandma Grace semi inherited the kids as men did little to raise children then.  Then Grace's mother died and she got 4 toddler children from her second marriage.  Grace was a Stutsman and the siblings were Davidsons but all quite young.  They were raised right along with her own children as brothers/sisters.  Her husband died and she ended up with a family of about 20 people to support.  An original little homestead was not going to feed the herd of family.  She managed to open a little store selling animal supplies in a leaking tin shed.......... a few years later it moved across the street and became a general store.  That building was really not sound  to any modern standards until dozens of remodels upgraded everything.   There was no real foundation and dirt cellars to keep things cool with a semi underground milk shed at the north ranch homestead.  Floyd Zeimet owns that now.  Then the ICE boxes came in and they stored winter lake ice underground buried in straw to keep the coolers at the store useable. These suckers were BIG.......... LIKE WALK IN TYPE UNITS.   Like 50 years later it finally ended up a series of little additions that looked like camper trailers nailed together around a big rectangle main store building.  All the shingles were hand split wood and like 10 different types of siding was used.............. and some just had newspaper with tarpaper tacked on the outside until the late 60's when it all got white clabboard slapped up.  It was heated by numerous oil burners and a chip burner, too.  In the 60's a bathroom was finally put into an old cooler pantry room.  
   The first addition was about a 10x12 room with dirt floors as I recall being told. It eventually became a dining room with a funny window squeezed inbetween the haphazad editions.  Then another room just a tad larger that eventually was used for a living room.  Now, these had different pitched roofs and of course the valleys of the roofs leaked every so often.  One bedroom was added.  Then another next to it....... again with a different roof.  A third bedroom was added to that one and eventually a fourth all extending different directions and different heights.  The third bedroom had NO window after the fourth was made and after Uncle Pete passed away, it was a closet.  You had to go through that bedroom through room/closet to access Aunt Mary's tiny bedroom. The house had no hallway.  She was 4 foot 10 inches and was JUST big enough to have her stand up with a tiny tiny door to the ourside and an odd teeny window. The little bitty was shoved into it.  You had to walk to shinney down the open area of floor to get inside.   All the buildings had jumbled up rock foundations with vuirtually no mortar.......... and I think Mary just had some blocks holding up her tiny addition.  Over the years, all the floors and walls were sagging  a tad and covered with multiple layers of used linoleum.  The kitchen was an add on going the other direction.  From it, there was a fire wood porch add on and a tiny pantry that had a wringer washer and later became a bathroom.  Aunt Ida would lock herself in there and play the accordion.  We had to use the outhouse and sometimes the line got long.   If it sounds like a structure that could give any building inspector a stroke, you are right.  Most counties would demand it be torn down. In Pringle, it was just fine.  Parts of it were solid, but most were hodge podge.  I think the actual grocery store part was likely ok. Electrical connections were hit and miss.  The kitchen eventually saw a cupboard and flour bin with gross yellow paint.  It never saw a fridge, either.  Grandma one in the back of the store for her stuff.  
     Multiple wall paper layers saw a grey blue dingy paint towards 1970 or so but it sure made the place nicer.  Harvey Dunn prints were the artwork.  Lights were hung from ceilings with electrical wires fastened to keep them from falling. All the chair legs had those electric line glass covers upside down to keep the linoleum from getting damaged.  In those days, this was fairly common for all older homes.  None had running water or electricity when built.  NO ONE COULD AFFORD CEMENT BACK THEN, EITHER.  I would not call the old store much worse than other country buildings although suffered from too many ill planned additions that did not match, whatsoever.  It was pretty bad when compared to even 1950's construction standards and illegal to live in now for most regions of the country.  I know they would tear it down here.  
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    All the dishes came from DUZ detergent boxes. It was the only dish detergent grandma ever sold.  The soap was Dreft or felz 's  naptha glycerine stuff.  She got running water in the kitchen about 1958 but no toilet until the 60's.  That old gal knew how to cook, too. Ince tried to help but the maids always took over.  It was an odd mixture home European and homestead/depression food.  Mary baked the best bread but Ida made better jelly.  Mary's was too runny as she was cheap when adding pectin.  Frugal pretty much dictated their lives.  Bonnie and Keith were both PHD holders and rather snooty.  I do not know if they meant to be, but everyone thought them uppity.  I got to know them later when they visited Alaska several times.........  and as with all, they had wonderful personalities when isolated away from the mass family crowd.  The old maids were narrow and frequently viscious when allowed to be.  I got to know them individually later and quite honestly were nice like Inice always was.  I actually could make them smile sometimes.  The boys usually kept their mouths closed except Uncle Jim who was rather humorous.  These little sub groups formed over the years.  Inice and Earl did not quite fit in.  They did, but only when invited. Perhaps they were like pin balls.  I doubt the old maids realized the unrest they caused.............. except with my sister and mother who did not stand for the temper tantrums.  A few other in laws didn't either so at times it was tense 
 
    The dining room light could be lowered with a rope cord and tied off to a latch on the wall for big poker games that Aunt Leah loved.  The little ones were behind the oil stove out in the store with Old Crow for drinking.  During holidays it was hidden in the flour bin.  Pabst Blue Ribbon beer was in the store icebox.  The store had those old tin ceilings with layers of lead paint peeling off.  
   As bad as this sounds, YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE HOMESTEAD SHACK.  They were living high behind the store.  The Zeimets were avid readers and walls saw lots of make shift book shelves.  Leah sold Harlequin romance novels hung from hooks in the store.  The shelves were very high and needed a ladder to reach some of the cans.  When an item came in with a new price, you wrote the price with a grease pencil and put it to the back.  The higher price was NEVER added to the old stock.   There was one deep freeze that held meats, and a refrigerator for milk/eggs and lunch meat of which was sliced by hand and weighed with a scale.  The fruit and dry stuff like onions/apples were kept in boxes near the  front door along with coca cola bottles and potato chips.  I do not recall fresh produce other than tomatoes, but they may have stashed some in the refrigerator. Karo syrup was stacked in the window with a big tub of lard you could scoop out of and take to be weighed.  There was a glassed in counter with candy bars, finger nail polish, and other sundries.  The lean-too accessed by the old Z backed wooden door held dry stuff and animal supplies like salt licks and bridles/halters.
   It was a real country store............ the REAL country store with gunny sacks full of staples.  Aunt Leah was perched on a stool surveying all.  This OLD OLD OLD adding machine with the big pull handle added up the prices.  This huge cabinet like structure held all the charge receipt books which people were expected to make monthly payments on. It had fold out wire holders that saw layers of charge receipts.  Yes, the store took credit of which had back bills by the tens of thousand extending from WWI.  Most people would catch up every year or two but many never did.  Grandma and then Aunt Leah never refused anyone food.  I remember kids coming in with 3 cents to put towards the account. So, the Zeimets were very good people and perhaps the most honest ever born.  BUT........... THEY WERE UNGODLY ECCENTRIC. 
    Because of the living conditions and the fact children are NOT cheaper by the dozen Grace Zeimet had a rough time.  She looked 90 when only 50.  Grandma had a tough time remembering all the names of grandchildren.  Everyone was DOLLY.  She was not senile, but there were so many crawling around the old linoleum that everyone was just DOLLY.  Greens were weeds picked in the alley.  
   So, the family was very very close whether they wanted to be or not.  I think it bizarre to sit behind that store in those little rooms and stare at each other. They would yak, but much of the time it was just re-bonding.  They thought it the ONLY life that existed.  Some of the kids moved away, but found their way back home with regular frequency.  Very few weekends did not see most of the family sitting there at the store.  I stayed overnight numerous times when grandma was alive sleeping on this old colonial style couch.  Inice and Earl would sleep in the closet on Uncle Pete's old bed.  ........ or maybe they slept behind the folding screen.  ????????  I can't quite remember and possibly never knew.  The quarters were very cramped.  After grandma passed away in 66, there was an extra bed in Leah's room. I know when ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH first came out as a song, all of us sat on grandma's old bed and sang it. That was one of the last big family holidays........ possibly the very last.  Smaller versions happened in other houses and I guess Aunt Sue has a big family dinner still.  I have not been back there for a holiday since the late 70's.  My life went to Alaska and never returned.    
     Usually we kids were shoved to the store floor to play games behind the oil stove............ or under the poker table to hide from big people that might step on us.  The main siblings and grandma had the dining and living room.  Inice and Earl never quite knew where to be.  They were part of the big people group but since they lived in Idaho and the issue with Leah was there, sometimes they ventured out of the main stronghold........... In fact, I think MOST OF THE TIME hid in the store but Inice would stand near the book shelf where the phone was for some reason.  The sisters used to dote on Earl.  I have no idea if it was for torment or pleasure.  The bond is impossible to explain they all had for each other.  Some viewers would call it a gift from the skies.......... and others like my mother called it sick or even twisted.  She did pull her verbal punches.  I do not think individual personalities developed thoroughly until Leah died and the store was sold.  The buyers could not keep it profitable.  It was really difficult for the families to break free.  You see the individual nieses and nephews were never quite in the circle. They were not nice to my sister Lani, but overall I think they tried on and off with with everyone else.  How much stretch can you have when that original umbilical cord has 40 new people hanging from it?  It resembled a full size ant farm from a distance. There was sort of room for Inice and Earl, but just barely !!!!!!! The family was too large to start with and adding spouses and kids just made the family unit explode.  Keeping everyone from the original family super close caused unpleasant situations.  The old maids fought hard to retain the family and did NOT accept defeat........... in fact they really did maintain the same attitudes towards each other as when children.  Sometimes it was a bit much.  Well, they did not have families and rarely socialized with others.  Every weekend they faithfully came home and somewhere the thought of all being little kids was a bit twisted.  They knew better, but it was what they held dearly.  My dad did not marry until much older than normal.  Inice sort of went poof and  with no children jumped back into being one of the sisters when returning.  

the end of Pringle's main street.  I think there are maybe 4-5 buildings still standing. The town at its largest was only 125 or so people.  I would guess maybe 85 now.  

the hitchrail bar of where many patrons are named Zeimet.  My cousin Michael lives in the beige modular on the left rear.
My cousin Patrick is building a new house a few feet from the right side of the bar.  He has opened another Zeimet's store in Goodsell's old gas station about 150 feet to the right.  
WOW................... A PHOTO NEW TO THE WEB.  YOU CAN SEE THE OLD ORIGINAL ZEIMET'S STORE AT THE END OF MAIN STREET ON THE LEFT.  IT HAS A WHITE FRONT AND A WOODEN SIDEWALK COVERED BY A PORCH.  COOL............. THIS IS A FIRST AS A FEW WEEKS AGO I LOOKED TO SHOW SOMEONE THAT LIVES HERE IN RENO. 

THE WHITE CAR OR THE FURTHEST OF THREE IS IN FRONT OF THE STORE.  YOU CAN SEE THE METAL ROOF OF THE LEAN TO WHERE SOME OF THE SUPPLIES WERE KEPT.  UNDERNEATH IT WAS THE ROOT CELLAR WHERE JAM/JELLIES AND PERISHABLES WERE KEPT.  THERE WAS A LIFT UP FLOOR DOOR IN THAT LEAN TO......... AND THEN YOU WALKED DOWN SOME PLANK TYPE STAIRS INTO THE DIRT WALLED AND FLOOR COOLER ROOM. THIS IS WHERE INICE GREW UP AND CALLED HOME UNTIL SHE PASSED AWAY.  THIS IS AN OLD OLD PHOTO AS MOST OF THE BUILDINGS ARE GONE NOW.  OH - I FOUND THE DATE.  IT WAS TAKEN IN 1953.   

THIS IS THE NEW ZEIMET'S STORE LOCATED AT THE END OF MAIN STREET WHERE CAR #1 WAS PARKED IN THE ABOVE PHOTO.  My cousin Patrick added onto the old gas station and opened it a few years ago.  I guess he is holding together as they opened a facebook page for it a few months ago. 

the Mickelson trail from Edgemont to Lead/Deadwood.  It used to be a railroad track bed, but was named after Gov. Mickelson  who was killed in a plane crash.  He had flown shortly before to Edgemont dedicating the Peter W. Zeimet airport (after my dad as he was mayor at the time) and he did not make it home one day flying to Iowa.  The large building is a sand plant that only was open a couple years in the 60's.  It was next to the railroad track to dump the silica sand in.  The green building looks new.  Maybe it is open again.  

above you can see MOST of what current Pringle is.  Below is the old Kirk barn.  The Zeimets and Kirks were honestly the same family as Ana married the Kirk homesteader.  Our homestead was about 20 feet from the barn on the other side.  The photo is taken from the little dirt road going into our old homestead Floyd Zeimet now lives on.  They moved part of the original cabin to the hillside on the left you can see in the photo.  The old rock and half underground milkhouse storage area was on this hillside.  They carried the milk several miles into town for years until money was available for a horse and wagon.  
  

Uncle Tom's old pickup near the barn.

below is an air view of Pringle.  The original homestead is on the far left side about 2/3ds of the way up.  You can see the old cabin that Mary and Ida enlarged like 5 times over the years.  Floyd lives there now.  He is one year younger than me. 

OUR ranch was located just left of center botoom where the tree area ends in a valley.  It was 7 miles by road.  Earl and Inice lived with my dad there for a year or so at one point.  I think it may have been inbetween New Mexico and Idaho.  The ranch house would be about a half inch below the last R on environmapper.  The graveyard is a mile and a half directly east of center Pringle on the old graveled CUTOFF road, which was the way to Edgemont.  It was 38 miles then and about 32 or so now on a paved road built in the late 60's.
HERE IS A NEWER COLOR IMAGE.  THERE IS A BIG WHITE SPOT WHERE A FELDSPAR MINE OPERATES.  TO THE LEFT OF CENTER.  A SMALL GRAVELED ROAD (Prairie Schooner Road) just to the right of it leads down a valley.  When you see some red dirt, that is our old ranch where Sue now lives.  The original homestead is  left off the highway to the north where two little peninsulas of trees are divided by a tiny balley.  I cannot see the buildings in this photo.  


another new web photo.  Floyd's place  (where the red is) and a building his brother baby Charlie is building can be seen to the left of the barn in the background.  The pinnacle roofed house is a Kirk home never lived in.  One of the boys found a bride and she said I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE OUT HERE and promptly left.  It has sat there since I was like 4 years old empty.  DAMN - what is left from our very first dirt roofed homestead is just a few yards out of the photo edge. Inice would have been born in that cabin.

COMING INTO PRINGLE FROM THE SOUTH EDGEMONT ROAD.  THIS ROAD WOULD HEAD TO THE TURNOFF TO OUR RANCH.

THE PRINGLE POACHER LOCAL YOCAL CAR HITCHED UP TO THE BAR.  I hope it was not the bright red blob where Floyd lives................ I think he drives a Jimmy pickup.  

THE OLD CHARLIE PRINGLE HOUSE.  THE TOWN WAS CALLED POINT OF ROCKS BUT CHARLIE PRINGLE HAD THE WATER RIGHTS.  IT WAS CHANGED TO PRINGLE. 
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About 11 miles south of Custer on Highway 385, the town of Pringle claims to be the "Elk Capitol of South Dakota." You can find a great set of old buildings and vehicles to work the angles with just north of town.

BINGO - I THINK THIS IS A WINDOW OF THE ZEIMET HOMESTEAD.  I FOUND IT AMONG THE KIRK HOMESTEAD BUILDINGS. ??????? (MAYBE)   IT COULD BE A CORNER OF THEIR PLACE, BUT I THINK IT WAS OURS,  THEY ARE SO CLOSE A PHOTOGRAPER WOULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN IT WAS NOT THE SAME RANCH.  I have not seen this building for maybe 30 years or so now. It may have fallen in and this is a Kirk building......... although only a few feet away so it makes little difference.  
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 Heading into the extreme southwest corner of the state and eight miles south of Edgemont you will find the tiny ghost town of Provo. It is now the graveyard for hundreds of automobiles, which can make many fun photos.

I remember these cars when I was growing up and the people who owned them.  The green lincoln belonged to my cousin Billy and his wife Sharon.  The edsel was a grade school reacher.  The blue newer (with the opera window) Lincoln belonged to a teacher named Covel.  Her son has produced some big movies in Hollywood.  I remember the for wagon and jeep driving around, too.  

O.M.G. - A ROMANCE NOVEL TAGGED AS BEING (ficticious) FROM PRINGLE.  
I don't know anything about the book.  It just popped up. 


this was Aunt Lizzie's place adjacent to ours where Sue lives now.  My cousins Mike, Patrick, Les, Eileen and Katie sold it in October.  They just knocked the old homestead house down last week.  Aunt Sue told me about it when I talked to her.  Shown is the old milk cow pasture. 
OK - AS GOOD AS I CAN DO.  THIS IS THE KIRK PLACE.  RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE  TO THE RIGHT OF THE PEAKY PINNCACLE ROOFED HOUSE ARE SOME OLD CRAB APPLE TREES AND HIGH PLUMB BUSHES.  THAT IS WHERE THE ZEIMET HOMESTEAD WAS ORIGINALLY BUILT.  MAYBE IT IS NOT STANDING, BUT IT WAS NOT VERY TALL AND SINKING FAST.  THAT PHOTO OF A WINDOW ABOVE MAY HAVE BEEN THE ORIGINAL KIRK HOMESTEAD NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT THE BOARD SIDING.  OURS WAS A BIT MORE LOGGISH OR SHOULD I SAY BRANCH-ISH  It could be the little building, but I think it was behind he bushes.  The Kirks built lots of little buildings.  The Zeimets only had the one old cabin and a later addition was moved a few hundred feet for a new remodeled cabin that Mary and Ida lived in for a summer home after retirement.  The original little place was just sitting there sinking into the ground ........... ANYWAY YOU CAN SEE A BLACK BLOB BEHIND THE TREES/BUSHES.  THAT IS WHERE WE HAILED FROM ORIGINALLY.  THE ORIGINAL KIRK BUILDING WAS THE LITTLE ONE TO THE LEFT BOTTOM.  - THAT'S ALL FOLKS


  
Property Listing
      Zeimet Ranch 

Recovered inline-image source set

The normal Gmail view made this 2011 message look text-only, but the raw MIME preserves a large multipart/related image set. The following source images have now been recovered and visually reviewed:

• Old Pringle main-street view: a low-resolution historic town view used in the section where Peter says he has finally found a web photo showing the original Zeimet store at the end of Main Street. Peter identifies the old store in his own text as the white-front building with the covered wooden sidewalk/porch and dates the underlying photo to 1953.
• Modern Pringle store: a color photograph of a small country grocery/general store with a “NOW OPEN” sign — the image Peter uses while discussing the newer Zeimet store opened in Goodsell’s old gas-station location.
• Hitchrail Bar and Restaurant: a color exterior photograph of the log-front Pringle bar that Peter references as a local landmark.
• Pringle welcome sign: “WELCOME TO PRINGLE — ELK CAPITAL OF SOUTH DAKOTA,” at Highways 385/89.
• Ranch / property landscapes: two LandBrokerMLS photographs showing open meadow, ranch buildings, and surrounding Black Hills terrain.
• Pringle-area road and barn views: color photographs of the highway approach and older farm/barn structures that Peter uses while orienting the homestead/Kirk locations.
• Possible homestead-window references: two close photographs of weathered wooden windows. Peter’s text is explicitly uncertain whether one is from the Zeimet homestead or an adjacent Kirk building, so the identification remains unresolved.
• Provo vehicle graveyard: a color photograph of abandoned vintage cars among old buildings, matching Peter’s discussion of the old-car area south of Edgemont.
• Mickelson Trail / industrial view: cyclists and bicycles beside an industrial structure along the trail corridor discussed by Peter.
• Aerial / satellite views: NASA/EPA-style overhead images used by Peter to point out Pringle, the ranch area, mines, roads, and family properties.
• DUZ detergent premium example: an image of a vintage DUZ detergent box advertising a decorated glass premium, supporting Peter’s memory that household dishes came from DUZ boxes.
• Family grave markers: Find A Grave images for Verna Grace Zeimet (1889–1966) and Peter W. Zeimet (1917–1993).
• Pringle Cemetery sign: an image reading “IN MEMORY OF ELIZABETH ZEIMET RETZLOFF — PRINGLE CEMETERY.”

Status: the 2011 email’s embedded image set is recoverable from Gmail raw MIME and has been source-reviewed. Peter’s own labels and uncertainties control the family-location identifications; ambiguous web photographs have not been upgraded into verified genealogy facts.