This past week I was in De Smet for a morning Board Meeting, and had some open time before a later-afternoon meeting.
For lunch I went to the restaurant that for a long time was known as Ward’s. It recently transitioned to a new owner and is known as Covered Wagon Cafe and Bakery. Food is still good, btw.
I picked a booth and got situated.
After deciding what to have for lunch, I set the menu down on the table and looked up and out the front windows.
I had quite a view to sit and contemplate!
The Covered Wagon Cafe and Bakery is on the corner where Charles Ingalls built his first structure, which then became Couse Hardware.
Couse Hardware was diagonally across the main street from where Charles Ingalls built his second structure: the store building where the Ingalls family spent the harrowing months of the Hard Winter of 1880-81.
The placement of my booth meant that the angle of view through the front windows framed the spot where the back portion of Pa’s Store would have been.
In other words, where the Ingalls family huddled around a stove, in the room they chose to keep warm while much of the rest of the building went unheated in order to conserve fuel (twisted hay).
Pa’s building is long gone, of course.
It was in the spring of 1886 when it was moved to the back of its original lot and rotated to face north instead of west. In its place, the current brick structure was erected and served as the Bank of De Smet.
I was looking at the current structure of course, but there is something about De Smet that makes it easy, within the imagination, to “see” Pa’s small false-fronted frame store in its place.
As I waited for my food to arrive, my gaze remained on the spot where one family fought their way through that difficult winter, and thought of all I’ve learned about that time for the wider region.
There was also an interesting juxtaposition. It was 58 degrees outside on this mid-February day – possibly warmer than the air felt within the walls of the Ingalls store that long-ago winter.
The sky while I was in De Smet was bright blue and blindingly sunny, and not because it was reflecting off piles of sparkling snow. There was no snow. The area lakes were covered in a very soggy-looking ice, and with the forecast for similar temps over many more days, I’d not be surprised of some of those lakes opened up in at least spots.
While in southern Minnesota the chickadees have begun to whistle their spring call, the birds in De Smet were much more exuberant. The air was full of birdsong. My car was actually wonderfully warm when I got back inside after lunch. I love that feeling 🙂
So, this gloriously warm mid-February day in 2026 was in stark contrast to my musings on the Ingalls family huddled around their stove, feeding sticks of twisted hay to get a weak heat. Meanwhile I stood for awhile on the sidewalk, face rotated to the sun like a sunflower.
My mind thought of Pa’s sunflower song:
Oh, I am as happy as a big sunflower
That nods and bends in the breezes!
And my heart is as light as the wind that blows
The leaves from off the treeses!
He tended to sing it in times of trouble, which those cold mornings of the Hard Winter most certainly were. I, on the other hand, tend to sing it in my head when I feel one of those wonderfully warm sunbeams that hint at the approaching spring.
