The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

By Ellaraine Lockie

Author's Note: This poem is republished here in honor of Robert Lucke, who loved poetry and kept it alive in the Mountaineer for so many years. He inspired this poem when he described his grandmother's prairie garden to me with such admiration and nostalgia. Both of my grandmothers were Big Sandy homesteaders who also had gardens.

My Clawiter grandparents were early Big Sandy homesteaders around 1900. My mother was Ella Clawiter and that homestead, located at the bottom of the Bear Paws, was handed down to and farmed by Max Clawiter. It now belongs to Jim and Marla Ray...