Recurve Bows & Curry Combs

With an active mind you never know what might pop into your head. Today I was driving along in my old pickup with the radio tuned to an AM station and heard an advertisement from a farm supply store that took me back to my youth. They wanted to sell me things like curry combs, shears, halters, etc. It's been a long time since I held a curry comb in my hand. I always liked using one in the spring when animals were shedding winter coats. Gypsy, the dog, looked especially good with her thick, matted fur combed away. I was probably too energetic while pulling it through those clumps since she'd turn around to snap at me whenever I pulled too hard. She always looked so much better, though, when I'd hurry her shedding process along.

An image of our silage pile popped up, too. And it wasn't the act of feeding cattle from it that came to me. It was me hanging one of Dad's empty red tin Velvet tobacco cans on the pile and shooting arrows into it. Rollie Sandvig sold me his 45 # aluminim recurve bow for a few dollars, and then I was Robin Hood shooting apples from somebody's head or maybe it was Fred Bear shooting grizzlies in Alaska. Memories of whom I became have dimmed.

The aluminum bow wasn't very accurate since it didn't pull evenly, but with some luck and minor windage adjustment, I could hit the can enough to satisfy my marksmanship. It took awhile before I concluded that my sore forearm resulted from the bowstring twanging against my skin, but when I started wearing buttoned, long sleeve shirts I solved that mystery. Target arrows weren't particularly expensive, neither was the waxed string, both of which I could buy in Enderlin at Bjerke & Nygaard's. I spent a good deal of time shooting arrows at cans, but somewhere along the line I decided to be done with archery. I don't remember who bought the bow from me, but I hope he had enjoyment with it, too.

Just Another Day

Today I took my regular swing through town, first to Barnes and Noble to look for something I might buy with the Christmas gift card I received as a present from Brandon and to the Bismarck Public Library to return books. While in the library I checked out the Montana writer Ivan Doig's Heart Earth, A Memoir. I've read several things by him and find he speaks in a very down-to-earth style. I read an article about him in one of the recent Montana magazines. He lives on Puget Sound near Seattle, and a picture of him shows him outlined against the enviable view from his large office window. His goal is to write 400 words each day.

So often I have heard it said that if you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. Part of my goal in writing this web log each day is to get back into practice. I write to meet a self-imposed schedule. My grammar suffers from disuse, and my copies of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and the Harbrace College Handbook get a regular workout.

After leaving the library I drove up to the North Dakota Heritage Center to wander through an art show. Much of what is called art is actually a form of craftsmanship, but there were several exhibitors present who create true art. I admire that quality in artists. They conceive and render something in an original format that no one else has thought of or does. In effect they become the models for the rest of us to copy.

Gerald Ford 1913-2006

I'd fallen asleep with the earphones of a Sony Walkman radio in my ears last night and awoke at 11:00 PM with the words that President Ford had died. My thoughts before falling asleep for the night were of his association with Richard Nixon. This morning's television is full of the news of his passing, and I am able to recall my admiration for this man. He was this country's only non-elected President. After Spiro Agnew, under pressure, left the office of Vice President vacant, Nixon eventually appointed Ford to the position, and Congress approved which set the pieces in place for Ford's ascendency.

Ford pardoned Nixon from any criminal action which I remember created a bit of a furor, but everyone got over it. A cynic would probably think that an agreement to do just that had been set in place prior to Nixon's appointment of him. I think the legacy of Ford is that he was a very decent man. He'd had many years of legislative experience as a Representative and as minority leader had learned the valuable art of compromise.

Comedians had a great time with the clumsy mishaps of Ford: hitting errant golf balls into a crowd, stumbling down stairs, falling off stages, and whatever else struck them as humorous. All in all, it will be hard to find much fault with the man. May he rest in peace.

The End of the World

Another year, another Christmas, only a few days left of 2006. It seems like yesterday when everyone was uptight about the Y2K scare which if it came to fruition would bring chaos to the computerized business world we are all a part of. Now there is a concern about the Mayan calendar that ends with the year 2012. Centuries ago the Maya culture devised their own calendar system and scholars have determined it ends with 2012; therefore doomsayers think the implication is that since they saw nothing beyond that year, it constitues their prediction of the end of the world. Hang on for lots of flotsam and jetsam as we draw nearer to that day.

Some in the early Christian church thought the world would end soon after Christ's crucifixion and many lived their lives accordingly. It must have been hard for them to live very well without making preparations for their worldly future. If crops weren't raised and cattle weren't bred, they may well have gone hungry for awhile. As far as I can tell the end of the world will come with the last breath I take. Too many metaphors get taken literally.

Well, I'm off to join the crowds and exchange something I received as a gift, and it will just be the end of the world if I don't get what I want.

Events of the Day

Sometimes I'm tempted to isolate myself from the daily world so that no "news" reaches my eyes or ears. Events swirl around with or without me. I did receive some good news, however, this week when my urologist informed me that my recent PSA test came out very favorable with a reading of less than 1/10 of one percent. The surgeon told me that men have female hormones that still give off a miniscule reading under normal conditions. Therefore, I understand that I am cancer free and will probably die from something other than prostate cancer.

Most news is not good, however. This week's issue of Newsweek magazine printed a bit of a year-end synopsis and has a collection of memorable political cartoons. One of them sums things up pretty well, I think. George Bush, the Senior, stands very large and distinquished looking and holds a note that says, "Didn't occupy Iraq because I knew what would happen." George Bush, the Junior, stands no higher than his father's belt level, red-faced with jackass ears. Two bystanders, everyday citizens, watch and the woman says, "I'm watching a total eclipse of the son..."

Cartoonists have a way of simplifying things and getting to the heart of the matter. I don't know the name of this particular one, but he has been drawing Junior with those ears for some time. One other cartoon caught my eye. Rumsfeld stands jabbing his finger at a room full of be-medaled generals and lectures them, "Generals, do whatever it takes to win this war..." The second panel shows their reaction. They have picked him up and are heading to an open window to toss him out.

Seven Ages

Yesterday, at my place of employment, I drove for the last time this year. Last week I informed the lady whom I'm driving for that I would do it one more calendar year. It has proven to be good part-time employment for me, but like every other period of my life that has ended, this needs to end, too. I plan to enter a stage of life called full retirement where I carry along all the baggage, mental and physical, I've accumulated plus all the future plans and dreams I hold.

When I was earning my college degree with the English major, I had to memorize a poem in one of those classes that came to mind when I started writing this: Shakespeare's All the World's a Stage. It never meant much to me at the time, but now it's taken on a great deal of meaning.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

People of Influence

From time to time I purchase a copy of The Atlantic magazine because of some high interest article they promote on their cover. I was broke when in Barnes and Noble bookstore this morning, but Mary came along and loaned me a little cash so I could lay out the $5.95 plus tax and buy one. The article I want to read carries the title "The 100 Most Influential Americans of All Time." Now, I can't think of a topic that can be more subjective than that, but they gathered together a panel of ten important historians to make their pronouncements of their choices. One thing I like about these kinds of lists is they foster a debate and make one think of whom he thinks should or shouldn't have been on the list. In fact the magazine invites readers to add names that they think have been left off and will print a compiled top ten list in the next issue.

The top five Americans of influence listed in order of appearance are Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Alexander Hamilton. The list ends at #100 with the author Herman Melville who the magazine terms as the American Shakespeare. After I read the lengthy article I'll have more thoughts regarding the choices, but a quick glance tells me one thing: very few contemporary, still living people find themselves listed. In fact, I find only one at number 54, Bill Gates, who is called here the Rockefeller of the Information Age.

I suppose the question goes begging, but does it mean that we need to stand back with the perspective of time's passing to determine a person's influence, or does it mean that few people today match up?

My Stuff

Many pictures of artifacts and old people (mostly ancestors) hang on wall or sit on shelves in our house. I prefer objects of that nature over glitzy home decorator items. In my study hangs my favorite - "Found" - a picture of an English Shepherd dog standing by a young lamb and howling into a blizzard wind for his master to come. I grew up with that picture since my parents had purchased that scene when they first married, and I can remember as a very young boy looking up at it and into it.

On another spot on my study walls is a crucifix of San Damiano that Mary brought back per my request from Italy. The ancient artist painted so many images on its surface that I couldn't begin to list them. Just below it hangs a relief scene of Jesus kneeling and praying in the garden. It's something I'd given my mother years ago, and when they moved from their large house to the smaller apartment she let me have it again.

Several black and white photos hang, one of which shows my Grandpa Bueling as a young man standing with a team of horses in Plum City, Wisconsin. He worked with horses all his life, and it seems fitting to honor that legacy with this picture. Below it is one of my dad holding the reins of a team, too, but this one includes me, and I'm all of two years of age. Thankfully, I didn't have to sweat working behind teams of them.

Other things sit around: a shadowbox frame filled with arrowheads, a 1/12 scale model of a farm wagon I built, some 3-D carvings of mine, an unfinished desk clock on which I've carved the head of a draft horse, and lots of books and miscellaneous that makes my life complete. This room is a nightmare for someone as neat and orderly as wife Mary is, but what the heck, it's what brings me pleasure and verifies the old saying that opposites attract.

Imagine a Barnyard Scene

I've submitted another poem to the international contest from which I won a bronze medal two years ago. Maybe they'll respond favorably about this one, too. Sometimes poems come easily, and then, sometimes I struggle for a long time to write another. Since this is copyrighted by me, I think I'll print it here:

Imagine a Barnyard Scene
where a boy straddles the neck
of a calf and dunks her head
deep into a silver pail
filled with sudsy milk. The calf,
hesitant, sucks on fingers.
Expectation of soft teats
gives way to resignation.
She is an opportunist
making the best of her fate.
She will grow, give birth to calves,
and see them taken from her.
Then, one day, chewing her cud
in thoughtful contemplation,
she will see the fence and think
the other side looks greener.

Frontierless

Being interested in history I remember well the writings of Frederick Jackson Turner and his themes of westward migration into the frontier. One of his major points centered around the idea of the West being a relief valve for undesirable characters to go to who did not fit well into law-abiding communities.

Another historian, Theodore H. White, states a similar theme, even though it's a different class of people he refers to. White's Jewish ancestors suffered in the ghettos of eastern Europe for generations and prayed to God for deliverance from their travails. As news of American opportunities reached them, they saw they might be able to save themselves by their own efforts. Therefore, many of them saw the relief valve and came here.

Today, lands are taken up and controlled by someone and a topographical frontier no longer exists. Unfit or dissatisfied people can't keep moving westward. We reached the western shoreline some time ago. Frontiers of space and the oceans exist, but they are reserved for the educated team players to explore. Misfits cannot move into these areas. They will just have to self-medicate, clog the social service systems, or inhabit the prisons.

Shibboleth or Sibboleth?

I'm sensitive to word usage, pronunciation, and semantics and have always been fascinated by a story in the Bible's Old Testament. The reference is to Judges 12:6 and a war between Gilead and Ephraim. To quote from the New International Version, "The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, 'Let me cross over,' the men of Gilead asked him 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he replied 'No,' they said, 'All right, say Shibboleth,' If he said Sibboleth, because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time."

I don't think this is too much of a stretch, but isn't something approximating that occurring in Iraq? Shias and Sunnis slaughter each other on a daily basis, enemies because they accuse each other of not knowing the proper interpretation of something Mohammed said centuries before. Apparently it is an offense worth killing for because they go at it vigorously.

The clever use of semantic "spin" in the political world can and does catch many people unawares. Thankfully, the loyal opposition and media reporters are quick to point it out, that is if they recognize it. Differing meanings have been applied to current terms such as "Cut and run," "Stay the course," and "A new beginning." They have become head-scratchers.

Hog Man

One summer, I think it was 1966, I raised a crop of pigs. In the back of my mind I still thought of myself as a farmer and got the inclination to do something like this. Allen Wall from Owego Township and I had gone to high school for a year, and I knew him fairly well. He advertised bred sows for sale so I drove down to the sandhills to look at them.

He had no barn for them, and they ran foraging for acorns or whatever else they could find in the woods around his farmyard. Some of the sows had started farrowing, and I remember him saying, "They're just full of pigs." He had a truck to haul them, so I picked out 15 of them at $100 apiece.

I had no experience with this but was full of the energy of youth. Dad let me use a 5 acre patch of fenced ground, and, after unloading them, I had become a hog farmer. I let the sows roam freely, too, in that patch, but I did buy some black plastic from Newton's Feed Store and set up a shaded shelter.

It did not take many days before they started in giving birth to their litters. I soon had pigs all over the place. Allen told it like it was, they were full of pigs. Because conditions weren't the best, some of the little pigs didn't survive, but when finished they still averaged eight per litter. They nursed well and the sows quickly brought their litters to weaning weight. I sold the sows and then had to buy commercial feed for the young ones. I needed to feed them until they could be sold as feeder pigs, about 35 pounds. The summer passed by and each night I listened through the open window to the growing sounds of pigs grunting and squealing. It took many sacks of feed before I could sell them, but when I did, I made a few hundred dollars for my effort. Thus ended my experience with hogs.

The Buffalo Sale

The North Dakota Buffalo Association held their annual fall consignment sale Saturday in Mandan. I drove past the Kist sale barn on Memorial Highway and decided to stop in for a little auction atmosphere. I've always enjoyed being around livestock sales and wanted to check one out again. A line from a western song sings "the auctioneer's gavel, how it raps and it rattles." The untrained ear might think the lingo coming out of an auctioneer's mouth is pure jibberish, but with a little concentration, it's pretty easy to understand him. I didn't stay long but watched a few yearling and two-year old bulls sell. A board above the sales ring listed their weights, and I could easily see from the fact that the selling price per head was about equal to their weight so that they sold at about one dollar a pound.

Buffalo need extra investment to maintain as a ranch animal. They require a double-high fence to contain them in a pasture, and fencing costs run expensive. Breeding animals a few years back reached very high price levels, and ranchers wanting to get into the business really extended themselves financially. Therefore, I don't think a dollar a pound stretches very far. Buffalo meat always runs higher priced per pound in a meat counter so we've never bought very much of it.

Nevertheless, there they were having their annual sale. The sale catalog promised consignments of over 700 head, and I paged through it finding animals from the four states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Minnesota. Wild and predictably unpredictable,
they carry about them an air of wanting to be free. They look clumsy but are very athletic and fast. A couple of years back I saw one try to jump out of the sales ring when he made an unbelievable vertical leap against the iron railings. When they leave the ring to return to the stockyard pens, you can hear the staccato beat and pounding of their hooves on the floor. I wouldn't want to work around those beasts, but it's enjoyable to watch them as a bystander.

Chinook Wind

We've often heard in this part of the country that if you don't like the weather, just be patient and it'll change. The past two days were cold and windy. Now we're experiencing a warm-up; temperatures are comfortable again. A NWS meteorologist was quoted today in the paper, "It's coming from a nice flow of air over the Rocky Mountains off of the Pacific Ocean. We call that a chinook. It's a classic chinook flow."

The most famous example of yearning for a chinook to bring an improvement in the weather was in the artwork of the Western artist Charlie Russell. In the winter of 1886-87 he drew a picture of an emaciated, hunch-backed, u-necked steer and titled it Waiting for a Chinook. He had been asked for his assessment of the conditions on the rangeland by somebody, and this picture was his wordless response.

A couple of years ago we were on a tour bus in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. I had noticed something that looked like a wavy jet trail hanging just above the peaks. Our step-on guide called everyone's attention to it and said it was called a chinook arch. It was a phenomenon I'd never seen before. My favorite western singer, Ian Tyson, named his backup groupd The Chinook Arch Riders. I had always thought they were named after some rock formation. My dictionary etymology of the word chinook states it is a Salish name for the Chinook tribe in the Columbia River Valley. It doesn't say how it got associated with this warming wind, but we will go on enjoying it anyway.

The Big Dig

Today I was on the road again, the first stop being McClusky. About one mile west of the town the highway crosses a government project, seemingly abandoned, called the McClusky Canal. Each time I cross over, I can't help but think of the waste of money that has been dumped into it. I've forgotten most of the specs for it such as length in miles, length of construction time, cost, etc., but the ditch is enormous, deep, wide, and long. As the Great Wall of China can be seen from outer space, I think there's a chance this canal could be seen, too.

When it was under construction news articles kept us abreast of its progress and its purpose, but now it has passed from public interest and scrutiny and is mostly forgotten about. Water never flowed down its length, and who knows how much money would be needed to make it operational today.

Much was made of the Alaskan senator who recently tried to get federal funding for a bridge that came to be known as the "Bridge to Nowhere." I wonder how many projects have sneaked by without any public outcry. The McClusky Canal never got enough. We have one other boondoggle - the Garrison Dam. Lake Sacajawea, formed by the dam, is mostly a huge fishery and recreational facility. Its turbines do generate some electricity, but on a cost basis I doubt that it is very efficient.

And Then the Train Came

During one of my spontaneous stops to shop at a thrift shop, I came across a Sears catalog-sized book by Bill Moyers. I always enjoyed his thoughtful presentations on public television, so I couldn't resist picking it up. It's titled A World of Ideas and contains 42 interviews, or conversations as he calls them, with accomplished people in a wide variety of fields.

In his introduction I liked the statement when he said ideas can liberate us from prisons we built within ourselves. Just then I felt the urge to find a bathroom while I sat waiting outside a house in Hebron where my rider called on a client. En route to the Cenex station I was delayed at the railroad tracks when the crossing arms came down for an oncoming coal train. Dispensing with the world of ideas, I sat counting the number of cars in that train - 115.

It wasn't ten minutes before, as we entered town, that we met another coal train pulled by three engines running on the track parallel to the highway. Another loaded coal train sat sidelined: three trains, 345 cars loaded with coal, nine diesel engines, all headed eastward. Something happened to the world of ideas. I sat in the real world doing simple math. Twenty trains per day, 2300 coal cars, 60 diesel engines, one big hole somewhere, .............

More Hell Without the Heat

One cannot forget Teddy Roosevelt and his Dakota ranching experience during the Winter of 1886-87. He invested heavily in his Badlands operation (over eighty thousand dollars) and though I don't know how to compare it to today's dollar, it must have been a hefty amount. Apparently he did not have much investing sense but was headstrong and went ahead with his ideas. Beef prices were low and a drought scorched the grasslands, factors precluding any chance for profit.

In an interesting business arrangement, he had a couple of partners who always were a bit skeptical of the cattle venture, but Roosevelt made it attaractive for them. He promised a share of any profits to them and would stand any losses by himself. How could they lose? Luckily for Roosevelt, they were highly principled and wouldn't be a part of spending Roosevelt's inheritance in such a hopeless cause, so they parted with him and returned to their homes in Maine. To compound TR's money problems, his estate in New York required a good deal of financial support, too.

When the heavy winter losses were occurring, Roosevelt was spending his honeymoon with his wife in Europe. When he returned and was able to get out to his ranch, he noted, "The land was a mere barren waste; not a green thing could be seen; the dead grass eaten off till the country looked as if it had been shaved with a razor." The tourism people here in North Dakota have glommed onto Roosevelt's time spent here and are fond of repeating his quote: "If it had not been for my years in North Dakota I never would have become President of the United States." Just maybe he meant, "I lost my ass in North Dakota and had to get out of there."

Hell Without the Heat

A recent interest of mine is reading about the winter of 1886-87. A succession of blizzards raged through the west and resulted in bringing about the freezing and starvation deaths of hundreds of thousands of cattle that were fending for themselves on the open range. No restrictions stopped ranchers from overloading the grasslands which soon became overgrazed. Still, investors kept sending eastern cattle onto the ranges because of the promise of quick, easy profits. The scene was set for what was called by one source as "The Great Die-Up." Another source said that in wintering cattle on the open range without supplemental feed, even in a mild winter, was "nothing less than slow starvation."

Omens were present if anyone wanted to heed them. Summer fires had burned much of the grass, the dry summer did not produce much grass growth, beavers and muskrats built their walls thicker, ducks and geese headed south earlier than usual, and white snowy owls - rarely seen in that area - swooped and flew in great numbers.

Only one hundred and twenty years have passed since this winter event. I say only because it illustrates how sparsely settled this part of the country was at that time. My trip to the Heritage Center at the state capital yielded no news sources west of Bismarck for that time. Much of the reporting had come from east or south of here. In-depth tales of the blizzards came from books written years later by participants in the drama. A poignant depiction of the whole affair said that in the end, the only men who made much money on the northern ranges that spring were scavengers gathering bones to sell to fertilizer companies.

Fresh Views

One of the best ways I know to broaden my thinking whenever I feel the need is to read a foreign author. Much good writing comes from Latin America. Eduardo Galeano resides in Uruguay. For some reason he had lived in exile and returned only after a ten year absence. His absence probably meant he stood on the politically incorrect side of the issue he writes about.

He writes passionately for the need of the masses in Latin America to become literate. But there are obstacles such as if only 5% of them can afford to buy a refrigerator, what percentage of them can buy books. He says the educated ruling elite in these countries recognize this and do little or nothing to correct it so as to maintain their power. He wonders how much potential talent has been lost.

I think one of his most profound points asks if a country's people doesn't know who it is or where it came from "how does it know what it deserves to become?" A country needs writers to exhibit and display its literature and history, and it takes literate readers to understand, appreciate and apply the knowledge to their lives.

Hunters

The recent issue of Newsweek magazine carried an article about hunting titled "The Elusive Hunter." The author wrote that the number of hunting license holders has decreased by two million hunters over the last 20 years in the face of substantial population growth. He gave several reasons for the decline in the number of hunters: less hunting land - the growth of urban America removes acreage, more restrictions - landholders are charging for access or hunters are outright buying land, and more couch potatoes - home entertainment devices such as video games create vicarious thrills for younger people. To add to the mix, groups such as PETA and the Humane Society bring extra pressure.

I am not a hunter but am always glad to see the deer population thinned by hunting. I have had the experience of colliding with a deer that put a nice dent in the hood of my car. I was lucky since more serious accidents than that occur frequently. I find little to argue about in the article. It's easy to witness urban sprawl, land being reserved by people with money, and couch potatoes gaining weight.

The last time I tried to shoot a rifle, the cataract in my eye stood between the sights of the gun and the prairie dog. They weren't in much danger and were probably amused to hear the bullets whizzing overhead. In my teens I owned a Model 97 Winchester shotgun, but Ma wouldn't fix the game it hit. When elk hunting in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, I got stuck carrying out a quarter of meat belonging to someone else.

Hunting passed from being a necessity to being a luxury: the thicker the wallet, the better the hunting, it seems. I live in the potato couch category, and as long as someone else thins the deer population, I'm okay with that.

Pet Peeve

In a short time something has become a pet peeve with me - cell phones. The damn things ring all over the place at anytime: church, library, business places, traffic, etc. I don't think anyone likes being drawn into another person's often petty business when they are trying to concentrate on their own. Yesterday I encountered two traffic situations because of them. One man was concentrating on his call, drove too slowly, and held up a whole string of cars behind him. Another darted across the street to enter the opposite lane and blocked my lane while he stopped for an opening. Here is where I laid on my horn in disgust.

I'm taken back to the time when telephones weren't such an oppressive gadget. One phone per home was the standard. We were on a party line with several others. To reminisce I still remember our number - 5542. It rang with our assigned signal of three shorts. "Rubbernecks" knew and recognized everyone's ring and could pick up the receiver to listen in on conversations. We were not slaves to the phones. Why, you could even leave home and not hear a phone ring.

Maybe there are enough emergency situations or urgent business matters that justify all of these contraptions, and I know the rush and push of society moving forward will continue to bring out inventions like these. Since I do not wish to dig a hole and escape from the world just yet, I guess I'll have to put up with it all.

Riding the Rails

Something about a family gathered around a table inspires good talk and reminiscing. So it was on Thanksgiving Day. One story told by my father-in-law needs to be passed on to his young descendants. I've forgotten why but the subject of railroads and hoboes came up. Adam related a story of the time he hoboed, too. Stories of this kind usually harken back to the Depression with its hard times and was the case in his tale. He and others jumped on a freight train headed to Fargo where the Red River Valley and its hoped for potato-picking wages drew them. My ears perked up when he talked about the bull who would come to kick them off at layovers. I remember from my reading of history that many of these railroad employees carried clubs and used strongarm tactics to clear a train of vagrants. Adam said when this bull came around they would get off, wait by the side of the tracks until the train started rolling again, and then quickly jump back on. Many of the details of the journey have been forgotten, but when they go to Fargo he remembered, "There were more of us there to pick potatoes than there were potatoes." He had counted 27 hopeful laborers on the train he rode. After hanging around 3 or 4 days, he caught another train back home.

Yesterday we continued the Thanksgiving celebration at my parents' place where Dad added his anecdote to the hobo story. He talked of the stockyards that stood in Sheldon at one time, and bums hung around there. His dad Charles would go there and hire a couple of them at harvest time, but after working only a day or two, they'd hop another freight train and be off with those few dollars in their pockets.

Railroads were important then, and a good deal of the literature about them was expressed in song. Jimmie Rodgers' song - Waiting for a Train - opens with this line: "All around the water tank waiting for a train, a thousand miles away from home sleeping in the rain." The highly optimistic song The Big Rock Candy Mountain carries the line where "the railroad bulls are blind." Johnny Cash's song Folsom Prison Blues sings of the prisoner who hears the train whistles blowing and wants to be on one. More examples would start to bore a reader since it would take thousands of words to list them all.

Giving Thanks

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving Day with Mary's sister and her family at their ranch south of Mandan. The drives in the country to their place always satisfy me when I take notice of little things. An east wind pushed tumbleweeds bouncing across the road in front of our car. (Cares of the past are behind, nowhere to go, but I'll find - just where the trail will wind, drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.") A flock of geese rested in a stubble field. With little cold weather here, they haven't felt the need to fly south yet. A herd of cattle walked across a dry pasture and each hoofstep kicked up a little cloud of dust. Seeing the little things of the fabric of life seems to fit in well with Thanksgiving.

The only thing I missed seeing yesterday was lefse. I cannot fault my sister-in-law for that since German blood runs in her veins, but the thought of my Grandma Sandvig's lefse at Thanksgiving came to mind. She had few of today's conveniences, but she knew how to make lefse on that wood cookstove in her kitchen. Into this scene comes Grandpa strolling to the stove, lifting the lid of the firebox, and spitting a big stream of Copenhagen juice into the flames. It would snap and crack when it hit the hot coals, Grandma would holler at him, and he would amble away giving no sign that he heard what she said. They kept a milkcow, and I remember spreading homemade butter on that warm lefse. Show me anything better than that!

The memories of family gatherings and Thanksgiving Day sit strong in my mind, those of the far past and those of yesterday. Good food always waited for us on the table, and a mighty satisfied feeling came over me after I ate my fill.

Where's Winter?

Warm weather stayed here. Yesterday the temperature in Bismarck reached 61 degrees. Out of curiosity I looked in this morning's paper at some representative temperatures around the country where I'd expect to see it much warmer: Miami Beach - 63, Jacksonville - 61, Santa Fe -60, Dallas - 67, New Orleans - 57, and Birmingham - 52. We have no snow, a reflection of the drought we're experiencing in this central part of the state. Rainfall and snow melt lack about 5 1/2 inches from normal.

Through the years winter normally would have settled in by now with snow, cold, wind, smoke rising out of chimneys, eyeglasses fogging, ice, etc. If global warming is a reality, maybe we're living with the new normal. The last winter of consequence was 1997, the year of the big flood. Living in Wahpeton just a stone's throw from the head of the Red River we witnessed severe conditions first hand. The Red flows north and melting snow from our area met the iced-up riverbanks downstream. Water backed up and flooded us. I watched as our house was about to be swamped with the water inching toward our basement windows when weather changed, rapidly. It turned cold and the water froze again. Luckily we suffered no flooding damage while neighbors all around us did.

Winter stories accumulate. I remember especially the three day blizzard in 1966. I was a teacher in Bowdon, ND and saw a snowdrift as tall as the peak on the gym roof. The National Guard came to help clean streets. The late 40's and 50's brought lots of snow, and the snow removal equipment we've become accustomed to did not exist. When we could get to school and town we travelled through canyons of snow that old Vern Loomer had bulldozed open with his Caterpillar tractor. I don't know when that kind of weather will return, I hope it doesn't, but I'm sure it will.

Wisdom and Youth?

A short five-lined poem titled "Alexander Throckmorton" in the Spoon River Anthology gives me pause to think and write. He says:

In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision -
Genius is wisdom and youth.

The author Edgar Lee Masters wrote about 244 fictional characters buried in the Spoon River cemetery, and this is one of my favorites, not because it is short (they all are), but because it portrays the reality for most of us.

I think back to a dreamy youth filled with unreachable goals. If it looked good at the time, I thought I could achieve it. Now, with all of the life experiences that have accumulated, I am more realistic; I know what's out there, but I do not have the energy to move on them.

My Cars

A current TV commercial sponsored by Cadillac catches my eye. In rapid progression they show many of the models they have produced through the years. It sounds like Ringo Starr singing the background vocal, the sound of which drew my attention to the ad in the first place. I've never owned a Cadillac and don't plan to, but the ad makes me reminisce to the cars I've owned. I wonder if I can even remember all of them. My first car was a 1948 Chrysler four-door sedan. That was in the days when the teens were customizing their Fords and Chevies. Mine stood out in that crowd, but it was a solid, comfortable automobile with a fluid drive that let me drive with the recent disability I had acquired. It sat and rusted in the last owner's pasture, and when I inquired about it to go take a last look, he told me it had just been crushed and hauled away.

Next I drove a '53 Chevy with a mismatched dark green hood, a replacement for the one the previous owner had damaged somehow. It got me where I wanted to go until I graduated from college in 1964 when I felt flush enough to buy a '62 Ford Galaxy. Next was a '66 Impala that took me up the Alaska Highway and back down to Colorado long enough to get me through graduate school in Greeley. Money jingled in my pocket from my high school principals's salary in Wyoming, and I traded my '66 for a new 1970 Buick Skylark. This sporty two-door coupe was one of my favorites, and I put lots of miles on it.

From this point the models are mostly unremarkable: a '73 Volkswagon Super Beetle; an American Motors Hornet, the year of which I don't remember but was undoubtedly the worst car I've owned; a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass; a big, used Pontiac; an '82 Buick; a Chevy Lumina; and most recently a string of three Ford Tauruses. We'd settled on the Taurus model as a good one, and now the company has announced it will no longer be in production. There are a couple of cars I wouldn't mind having again, such as the 1965 Ford Mustang that Mary brought to our marriage, but they all need upkeep and proper storage space. I've still got my memories.

Idiots and Dummies

One of the books I recently checked out of the library is titled Improving Your Memory for Dummies with the subtitle Sharpen Your Memory Skills the Fun and Easy Way. Over the past several years a large number of this type of book reached the shelves of bookstores and libraries. I confess to owning a few: Guitar for Dummies, French for Dummies, Philosophy for Dummies, Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy, Complete Idiot's Guide to Theories of the Universe and Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Catholicism.

The upshot to owning and/or reading this collection is that I'm still an idiot and a dummy in all of these fields. I find it enjoyable, though, to skim over these subjects in a light reading format, and, at the least, gain appreciation for the people who do excel. Let's see now, what did I start with? Oh, yes, improving your memory.

The disease of Alzheimer's frightens me. I don't think I'm exhibiting any of the symptoms and hope I never do, but if there are things a person can do to forestall its onset, it would be prudent to do so. Chapters of the book are grouped into units: Understanding Memory, Establishing Memory Power, Preserving Your Memory, and Exercising Your Memory Every Day.

A chapter named Ten Best Ways to Improve Your Memory says to consume a balanced diet, relax your brain, exercise your memory, take supplements, stimulate your mind, focus on memory, stay organized, associate-pair-connect, use memory aids, and keep the right attitude.

Now if I can figure out a way to remember them, I'll be in good shape.

I Don't Need a Thesaurus

The small paperback thesaurus I carry on my driving job furnished some words to describe today's scarlet sunrise. I formed a list of words like grand, splendid, noble, radiant, superb and magnificent. After thinking it over, I decided my using these words would not be in character. I generally speak in the vernacular, so it suffices to say that it was one damn, beautiful sunrise.

My present occupation lets me drive through a countryside where I've had chances to view many remarkable sights. Two winters back near Wing I drove past the largest convention of whitetail deer I've ever seen, numbering at least a hundred. Maybe they had gathered to relax and see who had survived the hunting season. That same day driving while driving between Turtle Lake and Underwood, the mother of all pheasant flocks, probably two hundred, materialized alongside the road near a shelterbelt. I have seen coyotes loping along the horizon, two bald eagles arguing over a carrion rabbit in a stubble field, mule deer, antelope, ducks, geese, summer weasels and winter ermine.

And there's always the river - the Missouri - with its wandering sand bars, today's thin-skinned ice that comes and goes with the temperature, and the hills and buttes where the river finds its course. I guess one doesn't really need a thesaurus to describe it when you can be there to feel it.

Corporate Power

In a second hand thrift store I recently bought an old 2002 issue of "Sierra" magazine for a quarter because it featured an essay written by Wendell Berry. He wears many hats - college professor, farmer, conservationist, author, poet, maybe more. I find him to be thought-provoking whenever I read from one of his writings. I have met him and sat in an audience where he gave a reading.

He makes a statement that validates a belief I've begun to hold, so this makes at least two of us who think this: "The massive ascendency of corporate power over democratic process is probably the most ominous development since the start of the Civil War, and for the most part the 'free world' seems to be regarding it as merely normal." Hah, a zoo animal born in a cage probably thinks that's normal, too.

There's an ant army of lobbyists crawling through all levels of government influencing lawmakers to do their bidding, many of them representing corporate power. Where is the democratic process when a President commits military forces to fight a war? Eisenhower warned to beware of the Military-Industrial Complex that likes to sell war machines and yearns to see a good war so they can sell even more. I've begun to wonder what powers lawmakers have over the industries of petroleum, drugs, health care, etc. Maybe we are like those zoo animals and our cage just keeps getting smaller.

Liver and Onions

Last week we read a sign on the side of a restaurant, "Today's Special -- Liver and Onions." I've never been real fond of liver and usually prefer it as liverwurst sausage as a sandwich filler. When we saw that sign we right away thought of the last time that Mary had prepared liver and onions at home. I used to keep a journal in those days, and I quote from that time.

"June 2, 1980 - We had a bad scare with Brandon. He bloated up really bad and we took him to the emergency room at the hospital. He had some sort of intestinal blockage and he was in misery. The doctors were concerned and a surgeon was called in. If he didn't improve by himself, he would have operated to relieve the problem. Luckily, he did get better and passed gas and had a bowel movement so that surgery wasn't needed then. His mother was hovering over him and said something about it being all right to cry when it hurt. He responded, 'Like the Blessed Mother when Jesus was on the cross?' I noticed everyone in the room was affected deeply by that statement. Clinton stayed with us for awhile while it was all happening. But I finally found a babysitter for him as we didn't know how long we would be tied up. He was affected by the whole episode and was quite emotional when I left him."

The stove had been turned off before we left for the hospital, the liver and onions were thrown away, and Mary's never fixed them since.

Veteran's Day, Belatedly

We watched a powerful movie Saturday - Flags of Our Fathers. It was a riveting story of World War II's battle for Iwo Jima, and the battle scenes were horrific. I thought they were as powerful as those in the movie Saving Private Ryan. Since I am not a veteran I can only live war stories vicariously. I can attest to a degree of the pain experienced by a war-wounded veteran because of my own injury, but that would pale in comparison to the hell some of the vets must have gone through. As a young man I remember going into the local tavern and seeing old soldiers lined up at the bar. One did not need classes in psychology to recognize that they were still fighting battles in their troubled minds. I've thought about them a lot through the years.

It was not enough that we had that generation of conflicted lives, we developed even more. Remember Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq plus a number of almost forgotten smaller ones. Certainly, some military engagements seem necessary to preserve our culture and its ideals. Unfortunately, whether or not military action is necessary becomes a debatable issue and often it is a highly subjective decision rendered by an oligarchy, as is the case in the recent war.

I have seen a picture of the cover of this week's Newsweek magazine. It is a strong depiction showing the first President Bush as a large figure in the foreground with the current Bush a small receding figure in the background. It is a striking metaphor of the elder Bush's philosophy of pragmatism superceding the younger's ideology.

People We Meet

Any trip of a few day's duration introduces the traveler to interesting personalities, and our recent Branson journey did just that. In Kansas City we toured and ate lunch at the Bingham-Waggoner Estate built in 1855. Lunch was served in the carriage house which adjoined the mansion. Several ladies graciously waited on us. My table was served by a lady who loved following the careers of rodeo bulls, and she began to tell us North Dakotans all she knew about Little Yellow Jacket, which was quite a lot. She laughed that her husband thought her hobby a bit odd, but it was what it was. Then she went on to talk about Bodacious, another past champion bucking bull. To validate to us her love of bulls she went and dug her car keys out of her coat pocket to show us the little bull dangling from the key ring.

Next, our bus stopped at the 30 room Vaile Mansion, built in 1881 by a mail contractor. Architecture buffs would have been drawn to its Second-Empire Victorian design. To me it looked as if Count Dracula might come out to meet us, but unfortunately no one did. The fact of our scheduled visit had not been passed on to its volunteer staff who were inside busily decorating for the Christmas season. Luckily we were treated to the hospitality of a welcoming lady who said to come in anyway, even though we'd have to step around the boxes of decorations. She proceeded to give a great tour of the rooms with their ceiling murals and lavish furnishings. She did not act put out by our seemingly unscheduled stop and made it every bit as rich as we could have expected.

The Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City, made possible by the tenacity of its founders, told an interesting story. The Arabia ran the Missouri River from St. Louis to Kansas City until it sunk in 1856 after striking a submerged log. None of its passengers drowned, but a valuable cargo of supplies for the burgeoning westward movement sank. As the days passed the vessel sunk lower and lower into the yielding sand of the riverbed making salvage impossible. Through the decades the channel of the river changed and the steamboat's resting place was found under a cornfield. We met one of the partners who doggedly stayed with the discovery and salvage effort. Their initial plan was to sell the recovered cargo as antique items for profit. When they realized how good its quality and condition was, they felt it all needed to be kept together as a museum collection. They went deeply into debt to make the museum possible. Their persistence was admirable.

Master Sophist

One of the great sophists in history resigned his position yesterday - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He fits well the definition of a person practicing clever, specious reasoning. Specious because his arguments seemed to be good, sound, correct, logical, etc. without really being so. I've lost track of how many competent generals retired or were forced to bite their tongue so as not to publicly take issue with him. I still think of Colin Powell's resignation as Secretary of State, an action that smacked of his disgust with the thinly disguised in-fighting with Rumsfeld.

Many's the time Rumsfeld stood at a podium and laid out his arguments for Iraqi strategy and tactics. Cowed reporters phrased their questions so as not to ruffle his temper. Everyone seemed to be highly intimidated by the man. We knew a monumental problem existed when retired generals who no longer had need to fear began calling for his resignation. Recently a major armed services publication called for him to resign. And with the election ... the citizenry demanded change.

He'll retire like any deposed person, probably continue to practice his sophistry in a book of memoir, and make a pile of money from it. Meanwhile, three thousand military personnel have died over there, and the consensus taking form seems to say it was all a mistake.

Talkin' Sheep

It's not often I get into a discussion about sheep, much less with a rancher's widowed wife, but there we were in the Petro Truck Stop in Fargo waiting to board the bus for the last leg home from our trip to Branson. I was using my ears as antennae to ferret out interesting conversation, and I picked up that signal and tuned in. We talked breeds. She liked the Rambouillets because you could grab them by their horns and wrestle them to where you wanted them to go. Her son and his wife operated the place now, but she still helped out. They leaned to the Suffolk breed of sheep, a disappointing fact to her: they were too stubborn and were poor mothers besides. I asked if there was any money to be made now in sheep, and she shook her head no. They had to haul their last wool crop to Billings to sell at an almost give-away price.

I thought back to my life with sheep as a boy. Dad liked to buy inexpensive broken-mouthed Columbia bred ewes from Montana. Broken-mouth meant they were old and had lost many of their teeth. They usually proved to be a sound purchase, however, since we'd get one crop of lambs and one clipping of wool from them, then sell them again, the whole affair usually earning some profit.

One time Dad thought he'd like to buy a Southdown buck for breeding and found one that had won a blue ribbon at the Red River Valley Fair. It was a nice looking animal, and he got turned in with the ewes to earn his keep. Alas, something went wrong. He got sick and died. There was no way of telling how many ewes he'd bred, so another buck of lesser quality took his place. In the spring the results of the high-powered breeding plan proved meager. Only one lamb of recognizable Southdown characteristics roamed about the barnyard. Luckily, it was a young buck, and he grew to be his father's replacement.

Truman Presidential Museum

We stopped in Independence, MO as our recent bus tour headed north to home and visited the Truman Presidential Museum. Each time I visit my watch seems to run too fast, and it's time to go again having left unseen or unstudied many artifacts and documents. My knowledge of this man's Presidency tells me that history turned on his term in office, good or bad, and I'm always left wanting to know more. Harry S (without a period) Truman was the first President I remember. He impressed upon this young mind his ability and need to stand stalwart in difficult situations.

On entering the building you see the large mural painted by Thomas Hart Benton, "Independence and the Opening of the West." A portal opens in the middle of the painting through which the museum lies beyond. His famous desk plaque stating The Buck Stops Here greets you as the first exhibit. Our guide told us the term originated with the card game of poker when a marker, a knife with a buckhorn handle was used to indicate whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal he could pass the job on by passing the "buck." Truman said as President he couldn't pass the buck to anybody.

One exhibit hanging from the ceiling stopped me, enough so that I nudged Mary to look up. Hundreds of tiny model planes hung suspended in a flight pattern. The guide saw my interest and said they represent the nearly 600 planes that flew each day for fourteen months to supply the Berlin Air Lift. The eagle on the Presidential seal met with Truman's displeasure, so much so that he had the eagle's head turned to face the olive branches in its claws instead of the bundle of arrows. And, of course, the museum gave attention to the screw-up of the Chicago Daily Tribune's erroneous headline blaring "Dewey Defeats Truman."

Truman was the last President to retire without the perks of a pension or a security detail and lived modestly in his Independence home until his death in 1969. Time and space don't allow me to write of his decisions regarding the atom bomb, the Marshall Plan, Korea, labor, race, etc. For good or bad, his was an important Presidency.

Points South

We returned from Branson, Missouri finding the weather milder here than there. When asked by a native Missourian where we hailed from, our answer usually got a response something like "Y'all came down here to get away from the cold?" I thought it was chilly down there. This trip was our fourth one to Branson, and we have seen a total of about 20 different shows. This time we saw five: Moe Bandy, Daniel O'Donnell, Doug Gabriel, Presley Family, and the Dixie Stampede. Side trips included a ride on the Branson Scenic Railway, two Civil War era mansions, a steamboat museum, and the Truman Presidential Museum.

The top three attractions in my estimation were Moe Bandy, Daniel O'Donnell, and the Truman Museum. O'Donnell, because of his many appearances on public television, should be pretty well recognized by everybody for his talent and showmanship. He gave us almost three hours of entertainment. Our trip to the Truman Museum was my third time there, and I will comment on it tomorrow. Moe Bandy deserves a little of my attention here. One probably needs be a country music fan to recognize him and his body of songs, one of which is a favorite of mine - Too Old to Die Young.

The strong lyrics of this song have always appealed to my sense of good song writing. It starts "If life is like a candle bright, death must be the wind," and the chorus says to "Let me watch my children grow to see what they become. Oh, Lord, don't let that cold wind blow 'til I'm too old to die young." Lucky for me I have found that song translated into a simple three chord melody that my limited guitar playing ability can handle. I've been reading lately that country music has reached a high state of popularity again because it's lyrics connect with more people. Moe's is not a new song but represents just that idea.

Writin' Cowboy Poetry

The genre of cowboy poetry has been around for quite awhile and can also be heard in the ballads the drovers sang to calm the nerves of their cowherds. There has been a lot of "bad" poetry written, but some is very good. I try my hand at it occasionally, but I don't know if it's good or bad. Whatever, it sure is fun to write. Here's one of my creations in my usual seven-syllable line:

A man had to make his choice:
roll-your-own or tailor-made.
There was certain craftsmanship
in a man's ability
to take cigarette paper,
furrow it just right, shake flakes
of Bull Durham from the bag
(which featured the well-known tag),
curl one edge of the paper
under and roll the other
over; then with a quick lick
seal that tube for good measure.

To take the craft another
step, he'd reach into his pants
to extract a kitchen match
and with a flint-thick thumb nail
scratch it to a plume of fire.
Then in his double-cupped hands
he'd ignite his creation
- even in a gusty wind -
for a few puffs of pleasure.
Copyright/Lynn Bueling

P.S. No posts will be made next week on this blogsite. I'm going to Branson, MO for some entertainment.

The News

Leave it to news items to keep a man interested and entertained. It's almost amusing how spin-meisters are making a Catholic priest responsible for a congressman's "loving up" the young male congressional aides. I guess he doesn't have a brain, or maybe it's just located in a different part of his anatomy.

Barack Obama voted against going into Iraq. Other potential candidates say they were misled or duped when they voted to go in. Barack might be young, but he's principled.

Rush Limbaugh shamefully made fun of Michael J. Fox for exhibiting his uncontrollable body movements caused by Parkinson's Disease because he purposefully went off his meds. To many of us, Fox's action demonstrated just how debilitating a disease it is.

What's the 700 mile fence on the Mexican border going to do about the millions of illegals already here, insure that they stay here for a cheap labor supply? If others want in they'll go 701 miles.

We should be able to twist China's arm to discipline North Korea. How much business do we do with their budding capitalist notions through Wal-Mart, et al.

Brazil will soon be 100% energy independent with their emphasis on renewable resources. We've had an energy crunch before. How come we never followed Brazil's lead. Do the boys at Exxon and other oil bigs know anything about it?

Well, it is all entertaining, and we could all have a good laugh over it --- if it weren't so darn serious.

How Things Add Up

The notes in my journal from a while back say I thought I needed to go out and live my life before I could sit down to write about it. That's the angle I'm coming from with all these web logs. I'm the first to admit I haven't reached or deserved any level of fame, but whenever I begin writing I recognize my past in the ways I see and interpret my world.

I found validation for this in a recent magazine article featuring the noted songwriter Kris Kristofferson. He said, "Do it before you write about it." He has been a Rhodes Scholar, boxer, helicopter pilot, janitor, etc. and feels his experiences are of high importance to his writing career.

I can count many life experiences, some life changing, some enhancing, some damaging, but whatever experiences I have accumulated in 6 1/2 decades, they have accompanied me to this threshold I stand on, beyond which lies the rest of my life. They color and shape my way of thinking and make me the man that I am.

Grandpa's Bible

Grandpa Sandvig fought on the battlefields of France during World War I and received the Purple Heart medal for the wound in his leg. I know little of those experiences since he maintained the typical veteran's stoicism in relating the horrors of warfare. He did something, though, that speaks to me through almost a century of time and lets me share some of his thoughts; he carried a New Testament and wrote brief journal entries in the blank end pages.

His first entry: "Sept 20, 1918 - Today we are just a few miles from the Hun lines." He arrived in France on July 6 as a private in the 91st Division. History books told me they stood in reserve in the major offensive battle of St. Mihiel on September 11-13.

"Sept 21st..." He had started to write but no more words came that day. Was he thinking about the the wife and son left behind in North Dakota?

"Sept 26, 1918 - 6 in the morning. We started the Drive. About 20 km west of Verdun and we were in 17 days and lost have to..." He never finished his thought, but it was a drive, indeed. The famous soldier George C. Marshall wrote that on the morning of September 26, the attack was launched after a furious bombardment of more than three hours. Fighting continued without interruption through September 27 and 28. General of the Army Pershing wrote that the 91st Division overcame strong initial resistance and advanced rapidly and said the Meuse-Argonne battle was "the greatest, most prolonged in American history." Grandpa found himself in the middle of this.

"Oct 17, 1918 - I went to the hospital. was there but to Wed. and one week in the concourt...from there I went to Very to the Casul (most likely casualty) Camp. was there for 7 weeks. From there I went to my Co. Got back on 4 day, January, 1919."

The words in that Bible are fading fast; they seem harder to read each time I open it, but we have salvaged something of his wartime experiences. History books tell me the rest.

My Little Valley

Three paint horses graze in a small pasture below the hill where I live. Their presence is eye candy to contrast with the traffic speeding beside them. In this little valley where the Heart River flows into the Missouri, more natural beauty exists.

Many a summer night while sleeping under the open window, I have been awakened by the yipping and gamboling of a coyote litter braving open space in the moonlight. Deer tracks appear in Mary's gardens, and on occasion a big antlered visitor stood watching before melting into the wooded draw. Pheasants scratch the ground, then fly into the trees to crow in the foggy morning air. Rabbits eat tender leaves in the flower beds, an act of sacrilege which causes quite an uproar when spotted from behind the kitchen window. And then, there are the wild turkeys...

Co-existing with the paint horses, a flock of maybe two dozen turkeys roosts in the cottonwoods above them, scratches bales open in the hay meadow beside them, and, at will, slowly marches across the road causing cars to stop for them. The story of a clumsy flight resulting in one's crashing into and shattering a windshield has been told. Wild turkeys can be compared to weeds growing in a wheat field, but they beg attention when strutting fully fan-tailed to entertain the females in the group.

Little does it matter how hard developers try to squeeze one more house into the landscape. The birds and animals find a way to live on the land in spite of them.

We Need All This Stuff?

On occasion I'll take a look around and wonder why we acquired all these "things." The closets bulge, the garage swells, bookshelves sag, and the shop groans. Having yard sales occasionally or donating to church rummage sales does little good. In a month or two all the storage space is full again. In fact, we often attend those sales and buy other people's cast-offs. There I was yesterday buying books at the library sale, and apparently not having enough, I went back there this morning and bought three more. I mean a good deal is a good deal.

Antique value drives a lot of the collecting. At various sales I've often heard a naive, prospective buyer ask, "What do you think this is worth?" Experience tells me it's only worth what you can sucker someone else into giving for it. In our community a multi-level antique store operates in a co-op format where many people can display their treasures and offer them for sale. None of it seems to be worth much since the display changes little.

And that's just so-called collectible stuff. When I drive through my neighborhood or any other there sit by many houses motorcycles, campers, boats, snowmobiles, and cars in front, beside, behind, and inside. Does the one with the most stuff when he dies win? I've heard two different clergymen relate the story that never when they have buried someone have they ever seen a hearse pull up to a gravesite with a U-haul hooked befind.

The Book Sale

A lot of people wait for this day. Count me in that group. The semi-annual used book sale at the public library draws us like rusty nails to a magnet. They advertise 40,000 volumes for sale, but I doubt that anyone's counted. Their estimate does it justice, though. A volunteer group called "Friends of the Library" works hard at collecting donated books and sorting them into categories for us to peruse.

The price is right - $1.oo per pound for paperbacks and .50 for hard covers. Most shoppers carry out bags full. I did. It totalled just $12. I gravitate to certain sections such as poetry, biography, history, and music. I don't have much time for the huge fiction section since I want real meat. (My wife would stand and argue with me on that one.)

I did it. I just had to go back this afternoon. Yes, I bought another $6.75 worth. There's a good chance I'll return one more time tomorrow. As I finish writing I plan to start studying my music books first to see if there are some easy tunes for me and my guitar. Adios.

Global Warming

A catchy phrase circulated a few years ago, the gist of it being when you want different results you can't keep doing the same things over and over. From there it's an easy leap to the topic of global warming. North Dakota's coal reserves are enormous; it's estimated to be hundreds of years' worth, and they're not even using much of it because it's relatively low grade. Twenty trains bearing Wyoming and Montana coal each day pass through Bismarck-Mandan headed to points east. North Dakota's mines fuel generating plants built in-state.

A recent AP article stated that 154 new coal-fired plants are being planned in 42 states. Coal generated electricity amounts to feeding over half of the U. S. demand. It follows to the skeptic that we don't show much concern for the environment. Oh, yes, we're told new technology exists for "scrubbing" a plant's exhaust to eliminate pollutants.

My life's experience tells me this - big business tells lies as badly as does big government and is just as guilty of the sins of commission and omission. Even if I'm in error and new plants can clean their exhaust, how can countries with emerging economies such as China and India quickly install and operate that technology?

Al Gore's recent movie regarding global warming received media attention for only a short while. Then the reporters' energy focused on other topics after they tired of this environmental issue. Meanwhile the ice continues to melt.

World Class Athletes

A world class athlete lives in our midst in the Mandan area who has brought a lot of attention to the community while building quite a reputation for himself. As a professional he earned lots of money before he retired from the applause of the crowds and was put out to pasture, literally put out to pasture because he's the famous rodeo bull Little Yellow Jacket. A baseball player does well to bat over .300 in his career; this bull averaged well over .800 and in sum total worked just over eight minutes at his craft. He is said to be well cared for in retirement and is brought out as the celebrity he is at various community events.

Another animal athlete worthy of note was the gelding Tipperary, a bucking horse foaled in South Dakota in 1905. He interested me enough that I researched his life, wrote a long biographical poem in unrhymed blank verse, and performed it at the annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora in 1905. About 90 documented riders tried their luck at riding him, and, of them, there is only one undisputed ride. There were a couple of others, but they were of questionable success. His complete story is too long to tell here, but it was the end of his life that touched me. Here is the last section of that poem:

I heard my namesake song Tipperary
one last time when they took me to Belle Fourche
to parade me in front of the grandstand
where I'd sold thousands of tickets in past
contests. I walked slowly, sagging, shaggy,
spiritless, mindless of the spectators
disappointed with my sad appearance.
But that tune! Something about that music
once again sent sparks shooting through my veins.
I threw up my head and stepped to the time
its measures played and heard the crowd's applause
like old times past. I felt the strength of youth
again, ready to take on all comers,
remembering my twisting, sunfishing,
pounding moves that unsaddled so many.
Yes, the relentless erosion of age
had taken its toll, but old admirers
cheered me loudly that one last time.
The memory lingered for a long while
even after the music stopped, my head
dropped, and I walked away to face the storm.
...
Tipperary died in a Montana blizzard.

Farmers Sold Their Teams

I wrote a poem with my favorite seven syllable line a couple of years ago that I think hits the mark. A more modern thinker would probably say, "baloney!"

Farmers sold their old work teams
and bought tractors. Horse power
ate up too many bushels
of feed, the reasoning went.
So the sorrels, chestnuts, bays
and greys pulled their last wagons
loaded with forksful of hay,
piled high and wide. Their leather
harnesses dry stiff like boards
and the one-row machines turn
rust in the trees. - Salesmanship
supercedes old craftsmanship,
so we buy what we don't need,
then pay more than it's worth. Yes,
horsepower still pulls the plow
and drinks deeply from their tanks,
but how many bushels it
takes to feed these brutes? Answer:
I don't know. Maybe bankers
punch keys on money machines
to figure the high cost we've
paid. What worth are deserted
towns? Or a school bused away
to consolidate? A bell
on a church that no longer
chimes? - While the calculator
adds up (but mostly subtracts)
another farm expanded.
I quote: "I have to farm more
so I can pay for that big
John Deere tractor I just bought."

Cattle and Farm Talk

Today I went to a couple places on what's termed an All Breeds Cattle Tour. There were eight different breeds represented on fourteen ranches over the two day event. I'm not a cattleman but still enjoy being around them, and besides I was invited to come take pictures with my camera at the Schaff's and Ellingson's (relatives of mine through marriage).

The northwest wind still blew cold this morning and my winter jacket felt good. While out mingling with the crowd around the cattle pens holding those slick Angus, a man walked by whom I recognized immediately, Ray Bartholomay from Sheldon. He was a long way from home, but he's mostly retired from his own cattle and farming operation and has time on his hands. He said Janice, his deceased wife, had been gone three years and said it's harder every day being alone. I was glad for our visit and believe he was too.

Later, I introduced Ray to my father-in-law and listened in on their great conversation. Adam is just days away from his 90th birthday and is quite a bit old fashioned. Ray said he thought there would be some 200 bushel per acre corn crop around Sheldon. Adam asked if they still used Minnesota #13 corn seed. Ray cocked his head kind of funny and said, "No, Minnesota #13 and Square Deal, those days are over. You used to be able to go shell it out and plant it all over again." He was speaking in reference to the modern hybrid seeds with which you can't do that. I was reminded of Grandpa Bueling's garage that had dozens of headless nails sticking into the open rafters and had corn cobs stuck on them waiting for shelling and seeding. That seems a long time ago.

Squalls

Mr. Unwanted Winter stuck his cold nose in here where it's unwelcomed and has been blowing it hard for a couple of days, hard enough for tumbleweeds to start bouncing across fields, over roads, and hanging up on fence lines.

Driving across the Missouri River yesterday in the late afternoon, I watched a line of squalls drift over the valley. They travelled quickly and swallowed me, each one shrinking my world to a small, white dome.

Squalls always remind me of the March lambing season on the farm. It seemed that squalls and new-born lambs appeared together, and it was important that the lamb be gotten up fast to suck the mother ewe's teat and gain strength.

As I drove along I wondered about the derivation of that word squall. At home my dictionary told me it came from the Swedish sqval. That reminded me of another word from the Old Norse - window, meaning wind eye. So there was I, this old Scandinavian, watching the squalls through my window.

Left Handed Guitars

Today I visited the music store where I do my guitar dreaming. There must be a couple hundred of those stringed beauties hanging on the wall. Walking in there is somewhat akin to entering a candy store and drooling over the chocolate. About a year and a half ago I finally began doing something I'd wanted to do for a long time - learn to play the guitar. Now I suffer from GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome).

Left handedness always stood as a curse - so I thought - and prevented my learning to play. One year at Christmas the young boy I was opened a gift containing a small guitar. It came with a simple instruction booklet, and I began strumming away. It sounded terrible! I held that instrument as a left hander would and gave no thought at all to the fact that chord fingering needed to be opposite, a mirror image of those chords I saw in the booklet. That little guitar got set aside and ended up I don't know where.

Now, fifty-five years or so later, a book I spotted in the public library, Left Handed Guitar, begged me to take it off the shelf and take home to study its secrets. The chart of basic chords it diagrammed was translated to a left hander's perspective. The door opened to a huge room filled with the music of guitars. No longer do I play "air guitar" as I sway my hips to the music in the radio. I do it for real.

Labor's Dilemma

Bismarck hosts a Bobcat manufacturing facility. The Bobcat line of machinery can be found internationally in thousands of construction or work sites. It is a shining North Dakota success story. They also make similar models at their original Gwinner site. The company's unionized Bismarck workers have gone on strike for higher wages and better health care benefits than has been offered them by management, and I'm sure of one thing: the union workers will garner negative comments from some quarters for their action.

I am sure of one other thing: because of labor unions, the middle class of this country is much larger than it would have been without them. Even good capitalists should agree with that. With decent pay the huge mass of workers bought goods and services that created even more manufacturing capacity. But the upshot of higher wages is that factories have closed and capital moved to third world countries in search of the low wage worker. Yes, that has lowered prices, and domestic-made products, if you can find them, are relatively higher in price. This eerie specter looms in our future. If we devolve into a service related economy, we'll run around trying to sell insurance policies to each other.

None of us are innocent of turning our backs on domestic products. I have a few power tools in my little wood shop bearing the mark "Made in China." Before they were available, I used hand tools or did without. Take a look in your closets. Where were your clothes made? When you're in the middle of a flood, you're bound to take on some water. I wish I had answers for the dilemma so I could protect our productivity sector. I just know from reading the early history of unionism that many labor leaders suffered mightily to establish U. S. worker's rights. Is there a danger of Bobcat moving overseas, too?

Homogenized

My dictionary defines homogenize as to make more uniform throughout in texture, mixture, quality, etc. We're not just talking milk here. Apply that to most any town of moderate to large size you travel through; they all look about the same with McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, Lowe's, Penney's, Taco John's and almost ad infinitum.

It's a good thing local histories, landmarks, or industries differ, otherwise local boosters would possess little to give them distinction. In those rare communities where some independent entrepreneur makes a success of a business idea, it often follows for him to establish a franchise and begin spreading the good name across the land.

I remember in young manhood when I fancied myself as an adventurer and sportsman, I thought the Eddie Bauer brand of gear suited me most appropriately. I'm sure I got that idea from dreaming through the advertisements in a magazine I read faithfully: Alaska. The rugged outdoorsman I fancied to be needed their clothing and equipment. Returning from a journey to Alaska, an endeavor doomed to folly, I set my sights on visiting the Eddie Bauer store in Seattle. It loomed as a destination site for my pilgrimage retreat from the frontier. Yes, I located it, walked in, was met by a huge stuffed polar bear at the entrance, and beyong that, realized it was not much more than a glorified clothing store. And that became a lesson learned: I could have bought similar quality merchandise for less money at home. Advertising had painted this romantic notion that didn't stand up under scrutiny. Now, with that franchise spread to this community, I can walk into their store, compare, and go to Penney's to buy at their end-of-season sale.

Posts

Many English words hold more than one meaning. Post is one of them that sets my mind to wandering. Whenever I place a new entry on this website, it is called a post. It's my experience with posts on the farm that I'm drawn to, though, for this post.

On any livestock farm, miles of fence surround pastureland and further sub-divide larger acreage with line fences. We always had piles of wooden posts, steel posts, and electric posts on hand to patch fence or replace those broken. Our ground was level which made wire easy to stretch and hang on posts. When traveling around this country, I'm quick to notice those fences running through wet bogs, deep gullies, and thick forests where I recognize the extra work it takes to build and maintain them.

I remember building fence around grassland on muggy, mosquito-thick days. If I'd be at work fastening wire to posts, Dad would work ahead setting steel posts with a weighted driver. The sound of that tool striking the post in that thick air always arrived after I saw it strike. It is an image from long ago I've not forgotten.

Those summers I worked on a harvesting crew took me through country that used a different kind of post. Fences around Russell, Kansas were set in place with stone posts. Sandstone formations in that area yielded the material which I believe they cut with saws. I was told they had been standing there a long time, a fact I thought was a testament to early settlers' ingenuity.

A final story about posts features my Grandpa Charles Bueling as told to me by my Dad. Grandpa was a good horseman who knew how to break a team for work. It seemed one day he took a young team to the field to do some job. They spooked. One of them got across a fence line, and with one on either side, they ran along breaking posts off before he got them stopped. Dad said it was a new fence, too, and that Grandpa sure was mad.

Who Created God?

The 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to two Americans. According to the brief article in my newspaper, their work "affirmed the big-bang theory to even the most stubborn skeptics." I never took any courses in physics, but I've always been interested in what it has to say.

The idea of a Big-Bang has been around for awhile, but as an interesting aside, a scientist was not the first to conceive it. Edgar Allan Poe, the imaginative author wrote in one of his essays that God caused an explosion that created the universe. Whoever's idea it was, it has been the subject of intense study by scientists.

I do not have any trouble accepting the theory, nor do I have problems with reconciling things like evolution to religion. The problem I always think of is who created God so he could light the fuse. I've always experienced the dead end of what I heard a Jewish rabbi once term infinite regression. You can only go so far back. There's an obvious limit to knowledge. Here's where agnosticism gets a foothold. I want to believe in this "mystery" so that's where the faith the church teaches comes in.

Down here on earth religious zealots fight over what God says, does, or favors. Each religion believes it holds the key to heaven and all the others have it wrong. Maybe science will come along someday and provide the answers.

The Line Continues

We visited our son Clinton's family in Grand Forks Sunday through yesterday. Their little son Lucas is eleven months old, and with about one month intervals visiting with them, we can easily see how fast he grows and learns. Grandchildren reach two generations into the future and guarantee our genetic line will continue.

Since that crocodile crawled out of the swamp and bit me with cancer, I've thought a lot about mortality. It's given me reason to begin this web log. I want to leave some kind of record of a life lived besides some brief obituary in a newspaper. Future medical tests will answer whether the surgery eliminated the problem, but in any event, the time to start recording is now.

Researching the future is impossible. Time travel hasn't been invented yet. We only dream of the future and live in the present. Unfortunately, research into my ancestors' lives has not penetrated the thick wall that stands between us those five or six generations back. They've left no record, the tablet is blank. Reasons can be guessed: illiteracy, indifference, lack of time. At 64, more of my years have passed than remain, so I will do my best to keep from breaking the link between those ancestors we have knowledge of and my descendents.

Living the Myth

A couple of years ago during the annual cowboy poets show in Medora we were browsing the Western Edge bookstore. I looked out the window and saw a comical scene unfold. A new pickup truck parked at the curb and out stepped a full-fashioned cowboy wearing shiny black boots, an unblemished black hat, and a ground length black duster coat. I believe he would have worn a pearl handled six shooter if the law would have allowed. He was the perfect caricature of what has become known as the cowboy. After he spent a few minutes in the store he got back into his truck and drove off, leaving me with that humorous image. I shared the moment with the store owner and he told me one better. A man entered his store another time wearing spurs. Somehow he got one of them snagged on a bookcase and needed his wife's help to come disentangled.

Larry McMurtry, a Texas native cowboy son, writes much of the cowboy culture. His autobiographical book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen takes a realistic look when he said "...almost at the outset cowboys began to try to cultivate an image that the media told them was theirs - they began to play to the camera as soon as the camera was there." Later he writes "Cowboys, early and late, have been influenced by their own imitations, in pulp fiction, in movies, in rodeo."

Now I don't care if wannabees walk around with their fancy western clothes, in fact I confess to owning a big shiny buckle or two myself. My only point is this, I know a lot of real cowboys who don't don western duds in the morning to do their work. They can be recognized by their work-thick fingers, heavy-calloused hands, lace-up work boots, and baseball caps. Articles of western clothing may hang in their closets for dress-up occasions, but you never think of them fitting a caricature. Some of these other guys are laughable. They do try to pose in a picture drawn by someone else. Several magazines in my local Barnes and Noble bookstore even glorify the western lifestyle by showcasing clothing, furniture, and housing which presents a model for those who think the world should look that way.

My Hangouts

I've just returned from a few of my hangouts where I visit often: the public libraries and Barnes and Noble. I crave a steady diet of brain food and find it in those places. I don't know much about anything, but I sure enjoy learning a little about a lot of things. It works for me.

My initial goal when I set out this morning was to return borrowed books to the Bismarck library, but I came out with books I never could have dreamt would catch my eye. On the New Book shelves Gail Godwin: The Making of a Writer / Journals 1961-1963 begged me to open its cover and read. Yes, it appeared interesting so I carried it off and descended the long stairway to the fiction section. I found a number of novels she has authored and selected her novella Evenings at Five. Gail Godwin?

I walked past the magazine section and noticed Jack Nicholson leering out at me from the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. No, I don't think so, not today, I've got to get to Barnes and Noble for a Starbuck's. In there, the New Biography shelves offer something of interest, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere by Debra Marquardt. She writes about North Dakota and how as a young girl she couldn't wait to get out of here and find some appropriate action. It is one I will pick up again. It seems like these emigrants always yearn to come back home.

The need arises to hurry and jump into my old beater S-10 pickup and head to the Mandan library. This library is a visual treat to visit because the large reading room is furnished with beautifully conditioned Arts and Crafts furniture. Their collection holds a Larry McMurtry book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen in which there is a quotation I remember from reading a few years back that I want to lift and use in the future. We're going to Texas in January, and I find a travel guide that I think will give useful information. Walking to the circulation desk I passed the music and movie DVD collection and picked up Three Dog Night Live with the Tennessee Symphony Orchestra.

I had found enough items to satisfy my eclectic reading tastes for a day or so. I asked the librarian if the Chinese restaurant located above the library serves good food. She assured me it did, but with singleness of purpose I needed to get home to begin reading today's harvest.

Saving Images

I have a large collection of images that I've boxed and stored on a shelf in my memory. Every once in awhile I like to look at them again. Some are small and light, others weigh heavy. They have accumulated over the years. I'm lucky, the box continues to fill. Let me reach in and bring up a hand full.

I'm standing in a hayfield reaching under a windrow to hook my finger in the handle of a crock jug. Hot and thirsty, I hoist the jug high in the crook of my arm and drink long, cool swallows from it.

I'm a small boy and my Grandpa Sandvig has taken me fishing. He baits my hook and throws in the line telling me, "Don't take your eyes off that bobber!" I obey, for several long hours. Small perch pull it under. It bobs. He takes me home at twilight as a full moon rises. I look at it and see that float bobbing, bobbing, bobbing in the moon, in my supper plate, in my dreams.

Goose bumps chill me when I lie in bed with a raging winter storm howling in the eaves. I'd wonder why, it seems, a woman screams inside a blizzard wind.

I'm in the barnyard. A bull eyes me from the pasture. His hooves kick up a dust cloud filled with innate hate for the man-child he spots. He charges. My fingers dig and claw into the wall of the barn, and I gain the rooftop just as he arrives.

I'm in the hayfield again. I always want to be where the men work. I'm given the job of cleaning fallen hay from underneath the stationary stacker. As it raises up to dump its load atop the growing stack the wooden main beam breaks and hundreds of pounds crash to the ground just as I've stepped away.

My empty hand shakes. The images have grown hard. It's time to return the box to its shelf. I shall return to it.

In Search of Heroes

Occasionally someone comes along who stands tall in thought or behavior and gives us reason to examine our own. The word hero fits my thesis. As a boy I found Roy Rogers under a white cowboy hat and Superman flying overhead. As an older boy, Medal of Honor winners and ace fighter pilots marched through my imagination; then Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris batted their way to high places. Early astronauts circled my dreams in orbit.

As I matured I grew closer to the realm of ideas, and therein dwelt different heroes. I lived vicariously in the lifetimes of historical figures that stretched back into the centuries. I stood shoulder to shoulder with them to defeat evil empires, establish democracies, conquer disease, write literature, create art, defend a way of life, etc.

Has an old-age cynicism crept into my psyche? I see too many of today's near-heroes searching out book deals which diminishes their glory in my eyes. The only memoirs I place much importance in come at the end of a person's distinguished career, and therefore can do nothing to advance their careers --- only to record it for the future. On the flip side I see accomplished people being vilified by "spin" machinery run by self-serving, opposing forces. Then there are the record-breaking sports figures for whom the cloud of alleged drug-enhancement obscures their achievements. How about TV preachers selling salvation?

I'm hard pressed to name contemporary figures who fit my idea of heroes. Help me! I'm searching for a new hero!

Lonely in the Countryside

I have found real meaning to words like abandoned or deserted since working in my present employment as a transportation aide. We travel through a ten county area and visit many small towns in this south central part of the state. Lonely winds blow through more than one ghost town and swirl around uncounted and abandoned farmsteads. Some have become only place names, the town of Arena being a good example. Arena lies just south of Highway 36, about halfwqy between Wing and Tuttle, and a lot of blank space surrounds it on the map.

A pair of small grain elevators crumbles on one side of the road, and train rails that once guided grain cars into place beside them have turned rusty red in the prairie air. To the west of the road the ground rises gradually to a knoll that is capped by a steepled church with boarded up windows. A small school building rests below the rise and sports similar window treatment. No houses remain, but a couple dozen tombstones stand as conclusive proof that life once existed here.

My favorite bathroom reading material recently is Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology, a collection of short poems written in the voices of the town's dead as they rest in their graves. Every time I read those poems I am reminded of those small graveyards like Arena's that I often drive past. Most of the those lying silently in their tombs will be forgotten before a couple of generations have come and gone. The only way they will be remembered will be in the imaginations of those who view their grave stones. I find it sad.

"If I Had a Hammer" Subversive?

I recently read the Pete Seeger biography How Can I Keep From Singing and learned this banjo playing folk singer has experienced a very controversial career. What I'd always thought was the innocuous song "If I Had a Hammer" was part of the package that got him hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the purge of the arts community in the McCarthy period. When those lyrics are examined in light of the period in which they were written they spoke in honor of the downtrodden who wanted to climb out of their depths. Artists like Seeger found themselves "blacklisted" and found difficulty working at their craft.

An artist closer to home was Rhodes Scholar Tom McGrath, the poet of note from Sheldon. He lost work in the Los Angeles area in the 1950's because of the HUAC persecution of leftists. In studying their so-called subversive behavior it seems to me they were only guilty of bucking the entrenched power elite who saw them as a threat. I doubt there was anything unconstitutional in their thoughts or actions. In most cases I believe they were guilty only of trying to organize workers into unions so as to establish better working conditions and wages through negotiated contracts.

McGrath will be featured at the Dickinson State University Humanities Festival this weekend. Unfortunately, because of personal scheduling I will be unable to attend.

The U. S. Poet Laureate

The present poet laureate of the United States is Donald Hall. I've read some of his work, my favorite being "Names of Horses." He celebrates the work animal with reminiscence of their labor and toil. He turns very melancholy by the end of the poem and relates the killing of a draft horse by putting a slug in its brain to put it out of its old age misery. He ends with sad recall of some names: "O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost." I've placed this poem in an eclectic collection I've put together with other favorites, my only criterion being I like them and they speak to me in some way.

I will have a lot more to say about poets and poetry in the future, but it's a book of Hall's prose, String too Short to Be Saved, that I turn to now. Its sub-title pretty much sums up the gist of the book, Recollections of Summers on a New England Farm, and the prologue of the book tells you the type of people he grew up with: "A man was cleaning the attic of an old house in New England and he found a box which was full of tiny pieces of string. On the lid of the box there was an inscription in an old hand: 'String too short to be saved.'"

I find that humorous on the surface, but I have known many people who maintained that philosophy of saving any and all. We throw things away. Goods and products we presently use generate plenty of garbage, and land fills choke with detritus. Old timers, however you wish to define them, would probably have gone into modern dumpgrounds to retrieve items they perceived to be useful. There's no reason to pursue this idea any further except to say that times sure have changed.

Old Time Independence

I have deep respect and undying admiration for the generation our parents represent. Our small farm begged constant repairs and maintenance, but only on rare occasions was an outsider called in for his expertise. In my growing years, the 1940's and 50's, I witnessed this first hand. Many people my age, I like to joke, were born with a wrench in one hand and a hammer in the other.

On more than one occasion when a tractor burned too much oil, we lifted its cylinder head and dropped the oil pan to overhaul the engine. Valves needed grinding, too, so someone took a quick three mile drive into Sheldon to deposit the engine head at the local mechanic shop where we usually got overnight service. After reassembling the engine again, we had endured only a few hours of tractor downtime.

In 1952 the REA line came through and an arc welder was purchased so that any metal breakage could be fixed right in our yard. A broken hammer handle got replaced with a homemade one hewn from a piece of oak with a drawknife. In the shop rivets, bolts, and nails stood ready for use in rusty tins and wooden bins. Scarcely a day passed when a hand didn't reach in to grab some of these fasteners to repair something.

Rolls of old telephone wire and baling wire served to make temporary fixes. A leak in a water pipe could be stopped with strips of old innertube we wound around the leak and then tightly bound with baler twine.

Large gardens, flocks of chickens, and milk cows supplied our table. Ma sewed patches on pants and darned socks. Cloth from flour sacks was put to good use when cut and sewn into garments.

Livestock needed lots of personal attention such as birthing, feeding, docking, castrating, dehorning, vaccinating, shearing, etc. Fences and pens needed building and repairing. Buildings required shingling and painting.

It was a different world. The home we built here in Mandan six years ago needed at least 14 different sub-contractors to complete it. Each group specialized. You used to hire a carpenter and he built it. I could go on and on regarding the present state of specialization. For instance who could repair a newer model car in his garage? Is a five year old wash machine worth fixing? Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I still preferred some of the old ways.