Even after we’ve aged to the place where we should know better, we like to go out and do crazy things. Take this for instance: driving 200 miles through heavy rain to get to a spot infested with mosquitoes, heat, and humidity, then climbing through barbed wire and tramping through thick growth virgin sod to a spot where there is nothing except for a few depressions in the ground, standing under a rain cloud and getting soaked, and then, when all is said and done, calling it good. And, after getting home and kicking back in my Lazy Boy and finding a tick crawling on me I tell the wife it was still good. That’s the way it was yesterday.
The primary destination was Pigeon Point in the Owego township of Ransom County and joining me for the drive and keeping good company reminiscing about the old days was Larry Strand, an old Sheldon friend. We drove to Dennis and Linda Bjugstad’s new and beautiful country home south of Kindred so that Dennis could act as our tour director. We first drove to Abercrombie to visit the new-to-me visitors center at the fort. Fort Abercrombie served as the gateway to further westward movement in the historical period that interests me. Then we headed west again, passed through Walcott, decided it was time to eat dinner and found some pretty-good home cooked food in the local bar, and continued on to Pigeon Point and the site of the Owego settlement where fascinating history has been made. The site’s name of Pigeon Point apparently came from the time when pigeons were common and how men could knock them down by the bushel in the trees there. I’ve checked the writings of a prime bird expert, John James Audubon, who verified the huge numbers of those birds that once flew in these parts. He said once,
the “light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse.” He estimated that when he saw a flock passing overhead that if it were one mile wide when it passed for three hours, traveling at the rate of a mile a minute, allowing two pigeons to the square yard, one billion, one hundred and fifteen million plus birds passed overhead.
As we tramped around the area which is now owned and protected by Nature Conservancy we tried to envision the large wagon trains that stopped here overnight on their way to supply the new Fort Ransom. Just south of the Pigeon Point the land stands very level and most likely served as their parking place. I could almost hear the sounds of the many oxen grazing the grass that was in abundance. One of the wagon trains I’ve referenced numbered forty wagons. How many oxen were hitched to each wagon I’m not sure. If four, then 160 of them plus a spare number for replacements, maybe 200 of them. The bull-whacker drovers, known for their coarseness and profanity, would have added to the scene to make it a very colorful one, indeed.
So I’ve got my work cut out for me as I research further, write countless drafts, search out editors, and do whatever it takes to properly weave all the bits together so as to preserve this history in writing. I’m sure it will take two years or more. Dennis asked if that meant there will not be another chapbook of poems before then. My reply, “Oh, there might be one anyway.”
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Musing on Some Good Writing
“What was at the heart of those days? Things like the taste of bread right out of the oven when you were good and hungry. The smell of newly plowed earth. A horse munching oats and bending its head to be rubbed. The way the late, flat sun sent long slants of light across the prairie grass.”
I save quotations by scribbling them down in notebooks and then forget about them until running across them again, sometimes years later while searching for ideas. When after reading them I find they still resonate, then I am glad that I took the time to copy them. The above lines were taken from the book Those Days: An American Album by Richard Richfield (1931-1994). Critchfield earned recognition as a war correspondent, then as the author of several books. He happens to have been a North Dakotan, born and raised in Hunter. I remember him from the days when I spent a little time looking up information in NDSU’s Institute for Regional Studies. He, too, sat at a table in the midst of several printed works which he’d placed in a haphazard semi-circle and worked diligently away. When I looked at the copyright date of this book, 1986, I believe that An American Album ended up as the product of those hours I saw him sitting there. He stood not very tall and wore the thickest glasses I’d ever seen, but physical attributes aren’t necessary; his command of the English language excelled, and he wrote his prose so well and readable that I find it a pleasure to open the book at any point and read a few paragraphs.
Critchfield bears emulating; he, along with dozens of other accomplished writers, serves as a guidepost to follow. If I were to have written the opening quotation, it may have come out like this --- Many pleasant memories survive my late childhood, things like the taste of warm lefse, straight from the griddle, on which I smear butter that melts and runs from the rolled ends, the smell of freshly mown alfalfa or fermented, sour silage that makes me think of sauerkraut, a dog stretching out to let me scratch her belly, and the sounds of gentle breezes magnified in the rustling leaves of the cottonwoods. A Pulitzer Prize will never be awarded for those words, but I enjoyed the sensory trip it took me on.
Paging through Critchfield I randomly stopped at page 225 and read this: Whenever freight trains came through town, migrant workers would be riding on the boxcar roofs. The country’s farm economy had never recovered from the collapse of 1920 . . . a migrant army was on the move. . . Some of these men had been on the road for years - jumping freights, hitchhiking, panhandling, shunting back and forth across the country in hopes of a job. They slept in haylofts or bunkhouses . . . nomads nobody wanted to see except in the August-to-October threshing season. Dad has talked long and often about these men that his father would hire at harvest time, but the Sheldon poet Tom McGrath in his book length poem Letter to an Imaginary Friend described their lot most graphically when he wrote of the hired man named Cal whom McGrath’s uncle, the boss of the harvest crew, beat mercilessly when the threat of their unionizing through the Wobblies movement became known to him. McGrath, the young boy, witnessed this spectacle:
We were threshing flax I remember, toward the end of the run-
After quarter-time I think - the slant light falling
Into the blackened stubble that shut like a fan toward the headland -
The strike started then. Why then I don’t know.
Cal spoke for the men and my uncle cursed him.
I remember that ugly sound, like some animal cry touching me
Deep and cold, and I ran toward them
And the fighting started.
My uncle punched him. I heard the breaking crunch
Of his teeth going and the blood leaped out of his mouth
Over his neck and shirt-…
I find great pleasure in reading the literature written by great authors and enjoy making connections of these works like I have just made between Critchfield and McGrath. My deepest regret is and always will be that I have not read enough since I wasted my time doing other things for too many years.
I save quotations by scribbling them down in notebooks and then forget about them until running across them again, sometimes years later while searching for ideas. When after reading them I find they still resonate, then I am glad that I took the time to copy them. The above lines were taken from the book Those Days: An American Album by Richard Richfield (1931-1994). Critchfield earned recognition as a war correspondent, then as the author of several books. He happens to have been a North Dakotan, born and raised in Hunter. I remember him from the days when I spent a little time looking up information in NDSU’s Institute for Regional Studies. He, too, sat at a table in the midst of several printed works which he’d placed in a haphazard semi-circle and worked diligently away. When I looked at the copyright date of this book, 1986, I believe that An American Album ended up as the product of those hours I saw him sitting there. He stood not very tall and wore the thickest glasses I’d ever seen, but physical attributes aren’t necessary; his command of the English language excelled, and he wrote his prose so well and readable that I find it a pleasure to open the book at any point and read a few paragraphs.
Critchfield bears emulating; he, along with dozens of other accomplished writers, serves as a guidepost to follow. If I were to have written the opening quotation, it may have come out like this --- Many pleasant memories survive my late childhood, things like the taste of warm lefse, straight from the griddle, on which I smear butter that melts and runs from the rolled ends, the smell of freshly mown alfalfa or fermented, sour silage that makes me think of sauerkraut, a dog stretching out to let me scratch her belly, and the sounds of gentle breezes magnified in the rustling leaves of the cottonwoods. A Pulitzer Prize will never be awarded for those words, but I enjoyed the sensory trip it took me on.
Paging through Critchfield I randomly stopped at page 225 and read this: Whenever freight trains came through town, migrant workers would be riding on the boxcar roofs. The country’s farm economy had never recovered from the collapse of 1920 . . . a migrant army was on the move. . . Some of these men had been on the road for years - jumping freights, hitchhiking, panhandling, shunting back and forth across the country in hopes of a job. They slept in haylofts or bunkhouses . . . nomads nobody wanted to see except in the August-to-October threshing season. Dad has talked long and often about these men that his father would hire at harvest time, but the Sheldon poet Tom McGrath in his book length poem Letter to an Imaginary Friend described their lot most graphically when he wrote of the hired man named Cal whom McGrath’s uncle, the boss of the harvest crew, beat mercilessly when the threat of their unionizing through the Wobblies movement became known to him. McGrath, the young boy, witnessed this spectacle:
We were threshing flax I remember, toward the end of the run-
After quarter-time I think - the slant light falling
Into the blackened stubble that shut like a fan toward the headland -
The strike started then. Why then I don’t know.
Cal spoke for the men and my uncle cursed him.
I remember that ugly sound, like some animal cry touching me
Deep and cold, and I ran toward them
And the fighting started.
My uncle punched him. I heard the breaking crunch
Of his teeth going and the blood leaped out of his mouth
Over his neck and shirt-…
I find great pleasure in reading the literature written by great authors and enjoy making connections of these works like I have just made between Critchfield and McGrath. My deepest regret is and always will be that I have not read enough since I wasted my time doing other things for too many years.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Memories Revived
This Monday evening I attended the regular monthly meeting of the Westerners Corral and listened to the guest speaker Mr. Curt Eriksmoen. He writes a weekly column that discusses some historical character in North Dakota and appears in the Bismarck Tribune, The Fargo Forum, and a Bottineau paper. A retired man, this has become his pastime, and someone asked if he ever runs out of topics to write about. He answered that his pool of possible material is now larger than when he started writing.
One of the sources Eriksmoen mentioned was that of Clement Lounsberry and his three volume history of early North Dakota and some of its characters, copyrighted in 1917. I randomly opened volume 1 to page 255 of my own set and came on this entry: The mosquitoes were almost unbearable in the timber and the valleys. Maj. Samuel Woods speaks of them, and of the terrific thunder storms and the condition of the prairies, in his report of his expedition to the Red River Valley (1849). He writes “They were driven from the timber by the mosquitoes, and being on the high, open prairie, ‘the thunder broke over us appallingly.’” Now, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to write an essay based on that information and anyone with some writing experience could have a lot of fun expanding on that passage.
I can’t say that my own pool of ideas is larger now than when I started writing, but I think I’m more aware of things that can be written about. For this week’s Musing I let my mind’s eye wander and caught this memory when it came floating by. When I was growing up small farms were a fact of life and very few farmers had trucks or trailers to haul their cattle, hogs, or sheep to and from market. Our community depended on a man, Clark Douglas, who owned a small fleet of trucks for the express purpose of hauling livestock. Vivid memories rise to the top, I see one of these trucks with the large wooden rack appear a mile down the gravel road being chased by a large cloud of dust, and as it draws closer the stock rack and the chute gates strapped to the rack’s sides rattle and vibrate on the wash board bumps. It turns into the driveway which sets the dog to barking and pulls to a stop waiting for Dad to tell him where to load. When the driver gets his instructions he backs up to the loading point and Gene Jaster jumps out of the cab, pulls and slides out the ramp, sets the chute gates in place, and the livestock is hollered and prodded into the box. The whole process usually takes just minutes and the driver straps the ramp and gates back up and drives off to West Fargo. This little tale took a lot longer to punch the computer keys than it did to think it up. When the memory opens up stories come easily.
A picture hanging on my wall conjures up another scene. My Uncle Russell sits on his horse on a cold, snowy day by our bullet-holed mailbox with a 1948 Fraser Manhattan parked behind him. This snapshot recalls the day he rode to my Grandpa’s funeral because the roads were blocked tight with snow. Others in the family, if they could not drive in, flew in by private plane, and the snowplow came out to open up for Dad. I was only five at the time and had to stay with a neighbor. Whenever I see old pictures I wonder who they were of and what was the occasion. Often no one survives to remember. Some day that will happen to knowledge of this picture, and, for that matter, to the memory of the large, rattly stock trucks coming for a load of cattle.
One of the sources Eriksmoen mentioned was that of Clement Lounsberry and his three volume history of early North Dakota and some of its characters, copyrighted in 1917. I randomly opened volume 1 to page 255 of my own set and came on this entry: The mosquitoes were almost unbearable in the timber and the valleys. Maj. Samuel Woods speaks of them, and of the terrific thunder storms and the condition of the prairies, in his report of his expedition to the Red River Valley (1849). He writes “They were driven from the timber by the mosquitoes, and being on the high, open prairie, ‘the thunder broke over us appallingly.’” Now, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to write an essay based on that information and anyone with some writing experience could have a lot of fun expanding on that passage.
I can’t say that my own pool of ideas is larger now than when I started writing, but I think I’m more aware of things that can be written about. For this week’s Musing I let my mind’s eye wander and caught this memory when it came floating by. When I was growing up small farms were a fact of life and very few farmers had trucks or trailers to haul their cattle, hogs, or sheep to and from market. Our community depended on a man, Clark Douglas, who owned a small fleet of trucks for the express purpose of hauling livestock. Vivid memories rise to the top, I see one of these trucks with the large wooden rack appear a mile down the gravel road being chased by a large cloud of dust, and as it draws closer the stock rack and the chute gates strapped to the rack’s sides rattle and vibrate on the wash board bumps. It turns into the driveway which sets the dog to barking and pulls to a stop waiting for Dad to tell him where to load. When the driver gets his instructions he backs up to the loading point and Gene Jaster jumps out of the cab, pulls and slides out the ramp, sets the chute gates in place, and the livestock is hollered and prodded into the box. The whole process usually takes just minutes and the driver straps the ramp and gates back up and drives off to West Fargo. This little tale took a lot longer to punch the computer keys than it did to think it up. When the memory opens up stories come easily.
A picture hanging on my wall conjures up another scene. My Uncle Russell sits on his horse on a cold, snowy day by our bullet-holed mailbox with a 1948 Fraser Manhattan parked behind him. This snapshot recalls the day he rode to my Grandpa’s funeral because the roads were blocked tight with snow. Others in the family, if they could not drive in, flew in by private plane, and the snowplow came out to open up for Dad. I was only five at the time and had to stay with a neighbor. Whenever I see old pictures I wonder who they were of and what was the occasion. Often no one survives to remember. Some day that will happen to knowledge of this picture, and, for that matter, to the memory of the large, rattly stock trucks coming for a load of cattle.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Just Thinking
I’m where I’ve always wanted to be because I’m able to read, write, think about writing, research topics that take my fancy, etc. I know it assails some people’s sensibility whenever they ask “whatcha doin’” and I answer “thinking.” What kind of activity is that they wonder with their German-Russian blood? Personally I think it’s wonderful. I know that even my wife has had to go through years of orientation on this subject since most of her waking hours are spent getting her hands dirty in her large and numerous flower gardens. It is a source of pride and curiosity in this neighborhood since people, strangers to us, will stop and ask if they can walk through the backyard, something which happened again last week.
We were told a great story in the first person a few years back. An acquaintance who had been widowed married for the second time a Norwegian bachelor farmer. She, with the strong German heritage, moved to his farm and proved right away she was willing to help with the work. He owned both cattle and sheep, so they split winter feeding chores. She told us that this one morning they left the house, each going to their respective duties, hers the cows, his the sheep. She finished hers and returned to the house, but he did not return at the usual time and made her wonder what had happened. Eventually he came and she asked him why so late. He said he just thought it such a nice day that he laid back on a haystack and watched the clouds float by. Her words, and I quote, “You gotta be shittin’ me!” Of course, with my own Norwegian heritage, I could identify with that.
Now, I’ve got to get my train of thought back on track, and relate as to how I spend my time. I recently returned to the research library at the heritage library and found some interesting notes in my hometown newspaper dated July, 125 years back. First off, this bit caught my eye. The publisher editorialized “Some of our young gents, not having the fear of their Creator before their eyes, indulged in a match game of baseball last Sunday. Don’t do so anymore, boys.” I imagine that a strong conservative religious element existed in town at the time, a general feeling that probably gave rise to the “blue laws” that forbade certain retail businesses from opening. Anything goes now, though.
In another piece the publisher wrote “There is a loud call all over the country for the clearing out of the great cattle companies which have virtually taken possession of the Indian country for pasturage…” Being a student of western history for many years I knew they only needed to wait a couple of years and the wish would be granted. The winter of 1887-88 was so severe that hundreds of thousands of cattle perished on the overgrazed grasslands. Teddy Roosevelt lost a fortune since he’d invested heavily in a cattle spread in the Badlands.
A full page was devoted to the death of Ulysses Grant on July 23rd. Reading that I was reminded of something I learned in Hannibal, Missouri this past spring. Grant, admirably, worked hard before his death to finish an autobiography so that the financial proceeds would benefit his wife and family. He had no wealth besides this personal story and found a publisher who offered a sum of money to be agreed on in a contract. Mark Twain, a friend of Grant’s, happened to be present just prior to signing. Twain, the experienced author, protested vigorously saying that a much better contract could be procured. Grant argued he wanted his wife to have something, but he did hold off on signing. Twain soon delivered what he promised, and instead of Grant making only $20,000 offered on the original deal he made closer to $500,000. By the way, Grant’s autobiography is considered to be an excellent work.
Well, that’s about all the thinking and writing I’m going to do today. My wife is calling to do some darn job upstairs. It’s all come like a bolt out of the blue which was the topic of another short article I read: “The lightning struck and instantly killed a 1-year old thorough-bred Durham bull valued at $125 at the Helendale Stock Farm. Mr. Power states that the bolt came out of a clear blue sky."
So much of our time can be spent in the past; it is the only thing we know. The present time instantly becomes the past, and the future is unknown. Mandan recently hosted another of their annual classic car shows downtown and main street filled with hundreds of old cars and people. I wrote this short poem in response to the event:
classic cars
lined up on main street
draw hundreds
always looking back
to the life we left
We were told a great story in the first person a few years back. An acquaintance who had been widowed married for the second time a Norwegian bachelor farmer. She, with the strong German heritage, moved to his farm and proved right away she was willing to help with the work. He owned both cattle and sheep, so they split winter feeding chores. She told us that this one morning they left the house, each going to their respective duties, hers the cows, his the sheep. She finished hers and returned to the house, but he did not return at the usual time and made her wonder what had happened. Eventually he came and she asked him why so late. He said he just thought it such a nice day that he laid back on a haystack and watched the clouds float by. Her words, and I quote, “You gotta be shittin’ me!” Of course, with my own Norwegian heritage, I could identify with that.
Now, I’ve got to get my train of thought back on track, and relate as to how I spend my time. I recently returned to the research library at the heritage library and found some interesting notes in my hometown newspaper dated July, 125 years back. First off, this bit caught my eye. The publisher editorialized “Some of our young gents, not having the fear of their Creator before their eyes, indulged in a match game of baseball last Sunday. Don’t do so anymore, boys.” I imagine that a strong conservative religious element existed in town at the time, a general feeling that probably gave rise to the “blue laws” that forbade certain retail businesses from opening. Anything goes now, though.
In another piece the publisher wrote “There is a loud call all over the country for the clearing out of the great cattle companies which have virtually taken possession of the Indian country for pasturage…” Being a student of western history for many years I knew they only needed to wait a couple of years and the wish would be granted. The winter of 1887-88 was so severe that hundreds of thousands of cattle perished on the overgrazed grasslands. Teddy Roosevelt lost a fortune since he’d invested heavily in a cattle spread in the Badlands.
A full page was devoted to the death of Ulysses Grant on July 23rd. Reading that I was reminded of something I learned in Hannibal, Missouri this past spring. Grant, admirably, worked hard before his death to finish an autobiography so that the financial proceeds would benefit his wife and family. He had no wealth besides this personal story and found a publisher who offered a sum of money to be agreed on in a contract. Mark Twain, a friend of Grant’s, happened to be present just prior to signing. Twain, the experienced author, protested vigorously saying that a much better contract could be procured. Grant argued he wanted his wife to have something, but he did hold off on signing. Twain soon delivered what he promised, and instead of Grant making only $20,000 offered on the original deal he made closer to $500,000. By the way, Grant’s autobiography is considered to be an excellent work.
Well, that’s about all the thinking and writing I’m going to do today. My wife is calling to do some darn job upstairs. It’s all come like a bolt out of the blue which was the topic of another short article I read: “The lightning struck and instantly killed a 1-year old thorough-bred Durham bull valued at $125 at the Helendale Stock Farm. Mr. Power states that the bolt came out of a clear blue sky."
So much of our time can be spent in the past; it is the only thing we know. The present time instantly becomes the past, and the future is unknown. Mandan recently hosted another of their annual classic car shows downtown and main street filled with hundreds of old cars and people. I wrote this short poem in response to the event:
classic cars
lined up on main street
draw hundreds
always looking back
to the life we left
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