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Lecture 12 was all about how the Prairie towns and the surrounding countryside were tied together. Isern started off by relating stories of different events around the area in which towns and countrysides gathered together to help each other out in some way or another. From the Grandin Smelt fry where people came together to support the local volunteer fire department in a town where there is no business district, to the Adoration of Corpus Christi at the St. Mary's Catholic Church in Dazey where people came back to celebrate together some coming from thousands of miles where they had moved to.

After this Isern reviewed the basic history of the Prairie towns and how the communities came to be this way. When these towns were established the towns and the farms were separate. The Towns were populated mostly by Yankees who ran the businesses. The men folk's social lives were organized by memberships in lodges while the women were involved in church based organizations. The farms, on the other hand were populated mostly by immigrant families. In contrast to the townsfolk, the social scenes for both farm men and women were run by the church. Ministers discouraged, and in some instances forbade, involvement in lodges. The only interaction between the townsfolk and the farmers were through business.

In later years, however, as families began to come into town to trade goods there evolved a greater mixing. While the women traded goods in the stores, the men went off to the bars, feed stores, and barbershops, and the children went to the movie theatres. When World War II broke out it brought a change to the Plains. The young men went off to war while the young women went out west to find work. By the 1950s, the young folk moved back, married, and had lots of babies making the towns boom once again. When their kids grew up, however, they too moved away, but this time for good. Those that stayed had fewer children meaning less children to take over the family farms. By the 20th century all life on the Plains ran through the towns.

All of this was familiar to me. When I heard Isern mention the Goat Game, before he explained just what it meant, in one town it brought back memories of the donkey basketball games that were held in my town. In St. Charles, the FFA kids sponsored basketball games where kids, teachers, businesses, and FFA alumni formed teams and played basketball in the high school from the backs of miniature donkeys. Also, even though St. Charles isn't exactly on the Plains, we are also facing farm consolidation. Our own farm is facing the problem of needing to expand in order to stay afloat but with my grandfather coming close to retirement there is only one child in my generation who wants to farm, my brother. We are left wondering what will happen to the farm when Grandpa retires, or dies, and my dad and my uncle finally decide that they can no longer stand to work together.