DATE=5-10-2002

TYPE=Special English Feature

NUMBER=7-22862

TITLE=SPECIAL ENGLISH AMERICAN MOSAIC #869-Frontier House

BYLINE=Nancy Steinbach

TELEPHONE=619-2585

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=marilyn christiano

CONTENT=

HOST:

A recent American television program recorded the experiences of three families who traveled back in time to live in the year eighteen-eighty-three. Sound impossible? Jim Tedder explains.

ANNCR:

The American public broadcasting system created the five month long experiment. It wanted to find out if twenty-first century American families could survive on the western frontier as it existed in the eighteen-hundreds. Five-thousand families wanted to take part in such an experiment. Three were chosen.

The largest family group -- two adults and four children--was from California. The second family of two adults and two children lived in Tennessee. The third family was a newly married couple from Massachusetts. They all spent five months living in Montana, far from the modern world.

The television program that came out of this experience was called "Frontier House." For six hours, people watching television saw the families living the same way as people did who first settled in Montana more than one-hundred years ago.

The families were given some supplies at the start. And they were taught about how people lived in the American west in eighteen-eighty-three. Then they had to build their own shelter, take care of animals, grow their food and prepare it just as if they were living more than one-hundred years ago.

The families talked to a camera during the filming. Each spoke about the problems and joys of living on a farm without modern equipment. They found the life extremely difficult. They said all they did every day was work from the time they got up in the morning until they went to bed.

The experience had a huge effect on everyone. The husband and wife in one family separated at the end of the experiment. Another family was able to survive the five months only by cheating. They bought extra food and used a few modern devices during the experiment. The youngest husband and wife in the group were the most successful. They worked well together as a team.

It was the children who seemed to learn the most from the experience. After returning to their twenty-first century lives, each said, in a different way, that living on the frontier taught them a lot about themselves. They said the experience helped them deal better with modern life.