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Pat Schildhauer and her husband, Marvin, battled blizzards last winter to protect their 500 head of Black Angus cattle from the elements. On horseback, they towed calves on sleds through the wind-driven snow to the protection of windbreaks.

“Their mamas followed along,” Pat said during a conversation at the Arthur Bowring Sandhills Ranch State Historical Park in northwest Nebraska.

In addition to ranching, Pat, a great grandmother, works as a docent at the ranch, located at the end of a long gravel trail that winds through the sandhills. That’s where Gretchen and I met her on our recent trip west.

We had left Highway 20 at Merriman, Neb., after seeing a sign that a historic ranch was only a mile off the highway. We needed a break after being in the car for hours.

Twice we nearly turned back thinking that the lush green grass and songs of meadowlarks were all that the historic park had to offer.

Then we topped one of the rolling hills and below us was a cluster of white buildings where we met Pat in the interpretive center and museum. She’s about 5 feet tall, slender, wearing jeans, boots and a blue polo shirt with the name of the ranch and her name on the front. Her reddish blond hair is curly and she speaks in a confident clear voice.

She told us that after ranch owner Arthur Bowring, who started ranching with 160 acres and eventually owned some 13,000 acres, died in 1944, his wife, Eve, continued to run the ranch for 41 years. When she died in 1985, a day short of her 93rd birthday, her will stipulated that the 7,202-acre Bar 99 ranch should be a Nebraska living history museum and that part of the ranch’s Hereford bloodline should be maintained.

Pat took us to the ranch house where we saw the memorabilia of Eve’s long life as rancher and Republican public servant. Eve Bowring served briefly as a U.S. senator from Nebraska after being appointed to serve an unexpired term of a senator who died in office. A collection of framed black and white photos of politicians included signed pictures of President Eisenhower and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower.

Eve had pictures of herself with President Nixon that she turned to face the wall after the Watergate scandal, Pat said. “She never forgave him.”

Our leg-stretching visit at the ranch was a valuable lesson in the history of sandhills ranching and a fascinating look at one of the state’s historic figures, but I value it even more highly for a glimpse into the life of one of the hard-working Americans that we hear so much about from the presidential candidates.

You see, Pat and Marvin are among the growing number of older Americans who can’t afford to retire.

She said her husband has paid into Social Security all his life as a cow hand and rancher, but he only receives $800 a month. “That’s not enough to live on.”

So they keep working together as they have for 45 years of marriage.

Marvin has made it easier for Pat to handle her chores by stacking concrete blocks at fence gates so Pat can get back on her horse after closing a gate. She grinned and said that with heavy coveralls on it was hard to remount her horse.

As we drove from the ranch to the highway I tried to imagine this petite woman on horseback, in a blizzard, dragging a calf on a sled through the storm to safety, up and down across the rolling landscape with her horse rough shod (the horse shoe version of tire studs) for footing on the ice and snow. Then a meadowlark sang and broke the spell. We reached the highway and headed for home again.