The Sky's the Limit

There is so much I don't know and never can hope to know. Back in the days of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle it was possible to know all the knowledge there was to know. They could wear the title of a sage. No one can hope to approach that distinction in the present day, but those who do possess a wide knowledge in many areas can be called polymath, an interesting word meaning one who possesses an encyclopedic mass of facts and figures and knows what they mean.

A much smaller brain is punching the keys on this computer, but it is one who finds learning different things to be interesting anyway. Governmental affairs involve lots of trickery that often takes us by surprise when we discover them. We are hearing reports of long-time residents in oil country becoming ill when they didn't used to. They blame the obvious new thing that has been introduced into their environment: chemicals used in the fracking process to get the oil out of the ground. The oil companies don't say what those chemicals consists of, and this is why.

The Bush/Cheney Energy Bill of 2005 exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing and bypasses the Environmental Protection Agency. It is called the Halliburton Loophole. Never again will I question the necessity of having the EPA to look after affairs of this type. Big money is talking here. Where is the talk of developing new sources of energy to power our cars and trucks. I haven't heard anything about that lately. Too much cash to be made first!

Energy Concerns

That North Dakota is experiencing an energy boom is almost an understatement. $$$ signs float in the air, grow on trees, and spread themselves throughout the country on the wings of birds. All one needs to do is pluck his share and stuff it into his pocket. But another story begins to emerge of negative aspects affecting people, too. Except for the landowners collecting a lease payment, not too many people are excited about the wind farms sprouting like weeds throughout the countryside. Twenty coal trains per day roaring through our cities blocking traffic at crossings and blowing their whistles don't endear themselves to the people's peace. Heavy truck traffic pounding the rural roads to dusty, sometimes muddy destruction makes the locals swear. Now the process of "fracking"is attracting attention. Just what is that stuff the oilmen pump underground to release the treasure, and what are the long-term dangers?

When I attended public school in my hometown a long-handled water pump behind a gas station across the street beckoned us to quench our thirst after a long noon hour of playing ball. It tasted oily, but we drank it anyway. The business went through many owners and it was always thought that much of the oil they changed in cars got dumped into a hole.

The moneymen complain about the Environmental Protection Agency and how it hinders their development of various enterprises around the country. If what they are doing does not harm the environment then maybe they shouldn't be criticizing the work done by that agency. The front page of the Sunday Bismarck Tribune headlined several articles: 1.Some companies disclose fracking recipe . . . 2.Helms expects EPA action to interrupt drilling momentum . . . 3.Bakken Watch flip side to fracking.

The last headline may be the one that keeps everyone honest. A lady activist in Bismarck, Kris Kitko, maintains a web site called www.bakkenwatch.org. The Tribune reported that "Kitko said the state was wrong to allocate $1 million to legally fend off a move by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to regulate fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act." She was quoted as saying, "We're appalled that the state would rather spend that money to keep the EPA out...If it's safe, what are they afraid of?"

I suspect we will be hearing much more from the watchdogs.

Poet and His Hunting

Last night we attended a poetry reading given by Timothy Murphy who lives just a bit south of Fargo and has investments in farming interests around that area. The Lewis and Clark Fort Mandan Foundation has taken a liking to his poetry, enough so to publish his work. Many of his poems center around his love of hunting pheasants with his dog. He was born in Hibbing, Mn, the son of two college professors who lived in an apartment above Zimmerman's store. His mother told Murphy that she would pay young Bobby Zimmerman a dime to push his carriage around. "Mother, don't you know who that was?" It was Bob Dylan.

The foreward to his book Mortal Stakes/Faint Thunder was written by Clay Jenkinson who told of going hunting with Murphy around the Lisbon area for the purpose of making a video of the poet as a hunter. That Murphy is a serious hunter can be shown with Jenkinson's story: "I trudged behind him through 10 inches of snow for two or three miles while he worked his mayhem. When I fell through the ice of a slough and got my leg wet up to my pelvis, a dangerous accident on a seriously cold day in December on the treeless Great Plains, he made it clear that I could walk back to the car to get warm if I wished, but that I would be making that walk alone. I lurched after him with one pant leg frozen like the tin woodman. You get so few moments like this in a lifetime: nothing would have induced me to weasel back to the car ." Murphy is in his early 60's, and I have to presume he has shot many birds in his lifetime.

Hosts for the event were Sheila Schafer and Betty Mills. It just so happened that Betty Mills was featured today on the Daily Dakotan series that started running about North Dakota personalities. Her story can be found by opening YouTube and searching for the Daily Dakotan.

Some wonderful smells have started coming from our kitchen today. Mary scurries around getting things prepared. The boys and their families will be home and we will eat well.

The Way They Used to Do It

When I go back a hundred years I read these things in the local paper. Local farmers lose several head of stock from rabies. The aftermath of a mad dog scare three months ago results in an enormous loss to farmers. Stock owners of Helendale and Coburn townships are the heaviest losers. . . an article reprinted from Lincoln Center, Kansas reported men held a girl prostrate while hot tar was applied on her naked body. It didn't say why. . . a woman from the southwest of Leonard was taken by a deputy to Wahpeton to verify her insanity. It named her and said her husband referred her. . . a quip quoted one woman who said, "Do not marry a poet," but then asked, "but suppose he doesn't show any symptoms before marriage?" . . . stories and books were published in serial form for the entertainment of the readers. This one caught my eye because I have owned this book for a long time. A large box ad proclaimed, "A new serial story to appear in The Progress: "Burning Daylight by Jack London. It is the best work yet produced by this masterful writer who has roughed it in many fields of adventure. Burning Daylignt is a character fashioned out of the frozen North; how he comes out of the Klondike with wealth won from the obdurate earth, is vanquished and stripped of his millions in Wall Street, regains them, and returning to the west from whence he came, is conquered anew by love, then to renounce his riches, is told in the powerful style of this author who has achieved world-wide popularity. It will be started in The Progress about December 15."

Then I read in the 1885 issue of The Progress some very gory reporting about the execution of Louis Riel who was known as the leader of the half-breeds. Many of the bull whacking ox-cart drivers coming through here were half-breeds and held Riel in high esteem. This is the language used by the old-time newspaper men, "Louis Riel meets his death like a brave man and declines to make a speech upon the gallows. He was told he would have two minutes to pray, and he repeated The Lord's Prayer. He invoked the aid of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and the other saints. Two priests stood by him and to their exhortations to stand firm, Riel said he was not afraid to die. The rope was now adjusted by the hideous looking hangman who also drew the white cap over Riel's face. The suspense was terrible and could not last much longer. When the words Lead us not into temptation were reached the deputy sheriff nodded to the hangman who kept his eyes fixed on him. The drop was nine feet, and the victim fell with terrible force, so that his neck was broken instantly. . . The description went on with the doctor performing the post mortem who said, "The execution was most cleverly performed. No death could be more merciful." Believe it or not I left out many of the descriptive gory details. News was reported a bit differently then.

Squirrels, Priests, and Nazis

Out our large glass patio door we are treated to a daily show of squirrels feasting and fattening on the dried berries hanging on our tree branches. Three or four of them treat themselves by balancing on the skinny branches,and just because they bounce up and down doesn't deter them one bit.
. . . . .
This afternoon we treated ourselves to the last movie in this series of Osher Institute offerings,
The Scarlet and the Black. The previous two we had attended proved to be well worth the watching, and this one today was no different. Gregory Peck starred as a monsignor working in the Vatican and Christopher Plummer as a Nazi SS officer who is in charge of subjugating the Roman population in World War II. Gregory Peck's character leads a movement to safely hide escaped POWs and downed pilots. Plummer sets about trying to break up the underground but can't quite get it done, and goes so far as to order Peck's murder if ever they catch him off the Vatican grounds. He disguises himself in a variety of ways and eludes his hunters. In the end as the Allies approach Rome to rescue the population, Plummer's character confronts Peck's and asks him to use his network to carry his wife and children to safety. Peck will give him no satisfaction and the Nazi believes his family to be doomed. In the end the Nazi is informed his wife and children made it to the neutral Switzerland and no one knows how it happened except the Nazi knows: it was the priest. The Nazi was sentenced to life in prison; thereafter the priest visited him once a month, never missing, and ended up baptizing him into the Catholic faith.
This is a true story.

Prancing Like a Doe

The camera caught my wife, a doe prancing on her toes in the woods. A picture can be worth a thousand words, but sometimes just a few words says a lot, too. Descriptive writing always catches my eye and makes me want to read more.

A favorite writer of mine is Jim Harrison. He was interviewed in the October, 2011 Outside magazine. The author of the article described Harrison this way - "His head looks as though it belongs to the end of something a Viking would use to knock down a medieval Danish gate." I laughed when I read that. Harrison's face does look pretty craggy, and his glass eye aims a different direction than where he is looking.

A poet I met this summer at the Western Writers Convention, Red Shuttleworth, writes on his blog, Global warming's so evident you can rope it, and another

All night, one coyote-racket dream after another
You've been swinging off a lard-greased chandelier
in the heaven of half-remembered cow towns,
scared of falling into barb wire and rattler dens.

Sad lines, too, catch your eye. In the book Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, one woman wrote One of the emigrants in our party ... lost several members of his family by death while crossing the plains and at one of our camps ... a daughter died ... they buried her beneath a big plain tree on the banks of a small stream which they christened Grave Creek ... The oxen were corralled over her grave so that Indians would not dig her up and get her clothing. (They used the oxen to trample over and wipe out the evidence of a grave.)

Private Charles Creighton of the 7th Cavalry accompanied Custer's march and wrote in his diary on the 31st day, We spent a few days here learning how to pack a mule. Believe me, we had some fun. The mules had never been packed and we were as green as the mules. We had some that would buck the saddle off in the bush and we had to find our bacon which was just getting ripe for us. If we had waited and left it where it was dropped off overnight, it would have crawled off. (Up to this point of the journey the mules had been hitched to the freight wagons, but as they neared the Little Big Horn they wanted to travel faster and leave the wagons behind.)

Fred Kaufman on that same day of the Custer journey to oblivion described this, A blacksmith was shoeing a mule which was very unruly. One trooper was twisting hard at a twitch, the other held onto the long ears. Not only with his hands but with his teeth, and all the while the smith was cursing at the top of his lungs.

Nodding Donkeys

I learned something today - the nickname of the critter in the picture is a nodding donkey. Using a little imagination I see why. The long ears can be imagined on the upper part of the head and his long muzzle hangs below. When the pump is in operation , it goes up and down, i.e. nodding. We will see lots of them in the future. This morning I opened a website called www.northdecoder.com, a watchdog type of site where the writer loves giving hell to the Republicans in North Dakota. He found a picture of the Bakken oil field taken from space by a satellite. Obviously the oil business is a 24 hour operation as shown by all the lights showing up from various things.

I pulled into my local M & H this morning to fill gas and made small talk with the guy next to me. I said something like "I'll bet all those Southern boys up here working in the oil fields went looking for insulated coveralls when they got up here." He told me about his brother living in Dickinson who can't even find toilet paper in the Wal-Mart because it sells as fast as they stock it. He comes to Bismarck to shop. A front page article in the Bismarck Trib this morning told of how older folks are being displaced in the oil fields. They wanted to die in the home they've lived in, but rents have risen beyond their social security means.

In my way of looking at things, I see similarity in the Occupy Wall Street movement or whatever that is. Cities around the country are closing down the camps and chasing them out. Sanitary reasons seem to be the biggest argument they use to close down the camps. One of the jailed protesters complained they've never heard of such a thing in this country. History tells of one really bad incident, though, that I think is similar. In 1932 out-of- work World War I veterans marched on Washington, DC to collect a bonus for the military service that had been promised. Hoover reneged on the deal and ordered General Douglas MacArthur to clear them out and burn the encampment they had constructed. He did so with gusto.

Poppies as a Symbol

Born with a curiosity that makes me want to know more about the world around me, I constantly go on the search for answers to questions that form in my mind. With the recent Veterans Day, I began wondering why poppies have become the popular icon. This is what I found:

The red poppy worn around the world in remembrance of battlefield deaths has nothing to do with the blood shed in the brutal clashes of World War I.

Instead it symbolizes the wild flowers that were the first plants to grow in the churned-up soil of soldiers' graves in Belgium and northern France. Little else could grown in blasted soil that became rich in lime from the rubble.

Their paper-thin red petals were the first signs of life and renewal, and in 1915 inspired Canadian doctor John McCrae to pen perhaps the most famous wartime poem:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row ...

It was this poem which inspired an American war secretary to sell the first poppies to raise money for ex-soldiers.

(Information from the BBC News magazine)

Veteran's Day, 2011

At the gym this morning a Vietnam veteran and I made some small talk. I mentioned that today was Veteran's Day, 11-11-11. He was wounded as shown by the logo on his pickup's license plate, and any attempt I've made in the past to try to get him to give some details of his war experience never got far. Today he said it was his wife's birthday. That was what was on his mind. On the "Morning Joe Show" this morning two Medal of Honor veterans talked about others. The panel all said they can never get any Medal of Honor winner to talk about his actions that earned the medal. They all say they were just doing their job.

A few years ago I wrote this and was reminded of it this morning.

-We Were Drinking Beer in Herb's-

We were drinking beer in Herb's
when Walter said, "Your dad should
have kicked your ass more often
just as far as I'm concerned."

Walt was a World War II vet,
a gunner in a bomber
who told of watching bullets
bounce off the armored belly
of German jets he shot at.
He flew thirty-some missions.
How could I argue with him?
Just maybe he knew something.

Then I looked beside Walter
to the next man. He'd once said
a man could have walked ashore
on floating soldier's bodies
killed while attempting to land
on gory foreign beaches.
He rarely spoke, yet his eyes
looked at me saying, "He's right."

The next in line at the bar,
a D-Day paratrooper,
spoke cheerfully, masking facts
of his war - hearing the screams
of Germans after he threw
explosives in their concrete
bunker. His box of medals
sat unsung, collecting dust.
In spite of his easy laugh
his eyes pierced this guy's know-it-
all attitude to say, "You
have a lot to learn yet, boy."

Though my spirit had weakened
from this beating I'd taken,
I could still stand at the bar.
My eyes settled on the vet
who hosted a metal plate
in his head for which he'd paid
a piece of his skull and brain.
The crew of his tank had stopped
to cook coffee. A sniper
traded his bullet for the flesh
of this man, neutralizing
forever his reasoning.
Those unfocusing eyes watched
me through a clouded beer glass -
was I friend or enemy,
the one who had wounded him?

I had entered this man's world
thinking I was an equal,
but this cadre proved harsh worlds
apart from mine existed.
That ragged line extended
further down the long counter,
and men's faces became blurred.
Each had his private story
and bore sore wounds in body
or mind. Retreat from their hell
was the better course for me.
Years have passed and none remain
to share these stories and shame
me into humility.
It is this I remember.

copyright, LBueling

A Fool and His Money Are Soon Elected

I turn to Will Rogers for home-spun wisdom again. A fool and his money are soon elected. Who will it be this time around? The debates to date haven't brought the best in anybody yet. I'm at the point of feeling sorry for Governor Perry who wants to cut government spending by eliminating three departments but could only remember two of them. Cain keeps swatting at the flies in his past, but they keep flying around his head.

Alexander Hamilton started the U. S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even. I don't know how accurate that is, but I think it is mostly so.

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do. Lies, broken campaign promises, corruption with lobbyist payola. Happens all the time. Jack Abramoff who just served four years in the federal pen was on last Sunday's 60 Minutes show. He explained how easy it was to buy votes in Washington

Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans. Not much can be added here, although the united front as created by Grover Nordquist and his no tax increase pledge seems to have sprung a small leak in the dike.

I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him "father." If he had a sense of humor he might have laughed, but they had their share of arguments and fights, too. In fact political parties started because Hamilton and Jefferson couldn't agree on anything.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. The comedians have such rich ground to harvest their routines from. I can't wait to see what SNL will do with Gov. Perry.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It's this - no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one. It's hard to predict when the generals and industry will tell us when it is time for another war, but it's fun to think in idealistic terms.

Finally,

I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do now.
One day this past summer I walked into a restaurant and there stood a young girl with a low cut top that drooped below her tan line. I went home and wrote a poem about ice cream sundaes.

Little Bit of Will Rogers

Today in North Dakota the Democrat Heidi Heidkamp announced she is going to run for the U. S. Senate. Already last week the Republicans expressed their fear of that and ran full page ads telling us why she was so terrible. So it goes. The talking heads on national news keep conjecturing who might be the Republican presidential candidate. One week it's this one, the next that one. The elections are still over a year away and here we are, being fed a heavy diet of propaganda from all sides. When I was old enough to start being interested in things of this nature I remember reading Will Rogers and his take on political affairs. He died in that plane crash in 1935, but his words make sense today.

* If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out.

* The taypayers are sending Congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.

* You can't say civilization isn't advancing; in every war they kill you in a new way.

* We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

* Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate.

* This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

* Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

Watch the late night comedians on tv and try to disagree with the last one. Leno, Letterman, Stewart, and all the others of their ilk make quite a bit of sense at times. The one I've liked the best of all was Tina Fay's Sarah Palin. That reminds me, where has Sarah been lately?

Writing

Sunday morning. Sitting at this old oak library table and having just finished my regular scan of internet offerings, I think of how many people write. The internet is filled with fresh offerings by countless numbers of folks, some intellectually inspiring, some pure drivel which if we didn’t have that something called “freedom of speech” would be banned for its smuttiness.

Because I’m trying to write some myself, I found many sites on the internet that publish short stories where I can read and study hundreds, maybe thousands of them, with a couple computer clicks. The same goes for novels, poetry, religious tracts, science, porn, etc. Having just made my first humble attempt at writing a short story I can count myself in that total.

I sent the story around to five different people for them to read and criticize and received comments back from four of them, helpful comments which will be incorporated into the final draft. That story is quite unique to our region and I want to get it told well. Further stories will probably not appear here but instead will be collected into a volume and distributed. I finished a story regarding the prairie fire that killed so many people just outside of Fort Ransom and have sent it out to my readers. In the meantime the story of the freighter who traveled with Custer’s command who in his final years lived and died in Sheldon has been started. Who needs crossword puzzles or mental games to keep the brain stimulated from receding into dementia? Dreaming up a story line to support the historical facts is enough for me.
- - - - - -
The other day I picked up Bob Greene’s book Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War in the library and enjoy reading in it for some diversion. The man who won the war in this story is Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima. Greene writes respectfully of his father and Tibbets who both served in WW II. He reports of how blunt and clear-spoken Tibbets was in relating his experience. The bomb weighed 9,700 pounds and when it was released over its target the B-29 bucked and “The seat slapped me on the ass.” He then put the plane into a severe diving right turn to get as far away as possible by the time the bomb exploded. Tibbets’ said he sleeps well at night and never felt badly about the lives lost in that explosion, he always thought about the lives that were not lost because the war then ended abruptly. The author spoke several times of how he would interview Tibbets in cafes or bars and nobody knew who the man was.

The Blizzard - Part III, the final of a serial story

The sky finally lightened to let me gain some reference to this sorry state where we found ourselves. I needed to move about, stomp my feet, make the blood flow in my frozen veins, and talk to someone even if the wind ripped the words from our mouths. I climbed from the wagon, stumbled hands first into a drift, and began my hip-deep flounder. My god, how that snow had banked since last I tried walking to the next wagon!

I peered inside the canvas and saw a dark lump; I jabbed and hollered at it. It took a couple of seconds til it moved. From within I heard over the roar some muffled lines of coarse teamster talk that told me he was all right. One eye appeared and I heard him say, “We ever gonna get rollin' again?” I knew no more than he did but had not yet abandoned hope and wanted no part of pitiable talk so I quickly moved on to the next wagon.

In that cold, blowing whiteout, it was impossible to walk the length of forty-five wagons, so what we knew of our fellow drovers' well-being were rumors that made their way back and forth along the line, wagon to wagon, some so hard to believe like the one that had a man going berserk from snow madness who hitched up his team and drove off into the storm. Another had a man breaking out a bottle of liquor, the only thing left unfrozen, and guzzling it into his empty stomach. He passed out and the one who saw him in his wretched condition of frozen vomit-soaked clothes wondered if he were still alive.

If only a man could see into the distance. This white faceless world wore hard on me. I could as easily been back at Gettysburg with the smoke from the guns and cannons so thick you could not see a comrade beside you, let alone a Reb running with a bayonet pointed at your guts. At the Battle of Wilderness we could not see, either. We had the Rebs outnumbered and Grant wanted to meet them in the open, but Lee out-generalled us and lured us into the woods and evened out the odds. And, God, how we cringed when a brush fire broke out between the lines in no-man's land and the wounded men lying there suffered and screamed as the flames ate them alive. At least we did not have to watch them die as they lay veiled in the smoke.

Here our battle, though, was against the cold, the snow, the wind, the solitude, and if this storm persisted, men would die here, too. Another story started making its way along the line: the old teamsters were saying the oxen should have been set free at the outset so they could drift with the wind and fend for themselves. We could have rounded them up later, but here, they said, they will start dying soon if we do not get them up and moving. The wagon boss never gave any further orders contrary to his earlier one, so there the oxen lay with deep snow mounding over and around them.

We came to believe the story about the man going crazy and taking off with his team, at least it seemed verified in its retelling. I could only wonder about his fate, maybe he had found shelter and sat there thinking we should have followed him, but as sure as there is a heaven there is a hell. More than likely he died, frozen stiff on the prairie, experiencing the notion of being warm and, then slipping off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The weaker, older oxen started dying but little could be done about it now. Maybe the same fate will come to us, hunched up as we were, shivering, fever setting in, craving water. Eating snow to slake our thirst brought scant relief, and I kept dreaming of a flame-scorched pot of boiling coffee hanging over a fire. If this hell did not soon end our carcasses would freeze stiff in what ever contortion the final heartbeat found us.

Pitch black darkness settled over us again, the end result being no different than if someone had tossed a buffalo robe over my head. What was this, the third night? I was as lost in time as in place. Horrid nightmares visited me, always on a battlefield. Men I had killed rose up through the musket smoke with their gaping wounds and began to come for me. I shot to stop them, but still they came. I tried running but my legs felt paralyzed, and I awoke in fright just as the bayonet plunged downward. Then the noise of the battle began to slack off, the cannons stopped, the shouting, the screams of the wounded horses and men, all vanished. Slowly I came to my senses, but something was different, what was it? I sat upright and shook my head. I welcomed the quiet after the din of the nightmares. Quiet! That was it, I did not hear wind roaring and whistling against and around the wagons. Lifting the wagon cover I saw a bit of light in the eastern sky, the top edge of the sun peeking over the horizon. The storm had ended, the sky was clear! We would roll again.

Part II - The Blizzard - a story in serial form

This place was on the edge of everything we called civilization. West of here Indians hostile to our presence still roamed about, though we kept a sharp eye out for them on our trail,too. The fort seemed to be on constant alert and sentries watched around the clock for signs of an Indian attack. This was not a training exercise for the soldiers. Just the year before a company of men stationed at Fort Phil Kearney died in a battle when they rode to provide escort for a wood-chopping crew. Earlier their commander William Fetterman had said he could defeat the whole Indian nation with eighty men. Well, that is how many he led and that is how many died on the day known as the Fetterman Massacre. Then in August, just five months before we got here in Fort Ransom, Red Cloud's warriors again attacked a wood crew out of Fort Kearney. This time they and their escort of soldiers fared better when they arranged their wagon boxes to fight behind. New and fast-firing breech loading rifles evened out the odds, too, and they drove the Indians away. Now they are calling it the Wagon Box Fight.

More than a few of the teamsters were always on the lookout for a little fun, and when they mixed with the soldiers and blended in a little whiskey they grew raucous. A game of chance “Who is the best shot?” started up and almost ended with a dead man to bury. Tiring of shooting at targets set off a ways on the prairie and loosening up with more spirits someone suggested a more daring variation on the game, drawing straws to see who got to set a tin cup filled with whiskey on his head with the winner trying to shoot it off. The first few rounds turned out all right because no one could hit the cup, but the last time with a teamster doing the shooting he shot a little low and grazed the trooper's scalp causing blood to pour down his face. Neither group of men was without discipline; when the fort commander caught wind of the escapade he ordered the military men into the confines of the fort, and the wagon boss said if it did not stop he would withhold wages. So things settled down for the night.

At daybreak on the morning we started back such a commotion you never did hear as when those old bullwhackers' started cracking their whips and cussing at the beasts to get rolling. A grizzled old drover in St. Cloud taught me how to pop a whip that sounded like a gunshot over the oxen's ears, and with my skill and stock of swear words growing every day I added to the clamor. I thought of my mother back in Illinois who would have washed my mouth out with laundry soap if she could have caught me.

Men were bitching about their rheumatiz acting up and kept eyeing the sky and those thick, gray clouds that unrolled over us like a heavy rug. Even with the pulling of empty wagons ox teams travel slowly, so we had made only about twelve miles by mid-afternoon when the first snowflakes flurried down which made me wonder about the augury of aching joints. It did not take long for a snow storm to develop, it grew rapidly, and even with some remaining daylight on this short day of December, the fury of the wind and the growing drifts made us stop … here!

With little else to do, I arranged a nest for myself inside the windbreak of a wagon box. Lying there my thoughts wandered with no focus except that I kept thinking about finishing this journey and finding warm shelter and food. The oxen should be all right and would not suffer any more than the teamsters. So I lay all the night, shivering, stomach growling, and wishing to hell I was somewhere else besides in this predicament where the wind grew stronger each hour and howled like a banshee clawing fingernails into our wagon canvas.

Finally the blackness of the long night ended when the sky blanched to pale white, but the morning brought no rays of sunlight stabbing through the clouds or the blowing snow. Peering out from the wagon box was to be stung in the face with a hundred snowflakes, and the wind seemed to blow harder with each hour. Long drifts of snow formed in the lee of the wagons, and I began to worry about the oxen. Attempts to wander among the wagons and mingle with the other men in their shelters brought no relief from my distress; we all suffered from the bone-chilling wind and stayed alone in our blanket­wrapped misery. My mind began to wander, lost on a battlefield amid the wreckage of armies littering the ground and hearing the heartrending screams of the wounded. I wanted to find solace in some quiet place where food and drink filled my belly.

By what measure could I judge the passing of time? The sun never revealed itself, I possessed no watch, my stomach persisted with its demands to be fed. Was time standing still? Only with intense darkness setting in would I know that this day had passed, and another long night loomed ahead. Mind games occupied me some; I tried recalling some of recent newspaper stories. Something called the Homestead Act, just think, free land! . . . If I ever get a couple of dollars ahead, I am going to buy one of those new Stetson hats . . . Jefferson Davis got himself caught, he and his crowd started the war that caused men like me to shoot other men . . . They say Negroes can now become citizens. Some of those poor devils I saw down south surely needed help. One from Georgia is with us on this train, a good man, I wonder how he, the southerner, is doing all wrapped up in his bedroll? Drowsiness finally overcame me. I slept some . . . but something made me jump with a start, I heard a baby crying in the distance, a mournful cry that sent chills down my spine. I tensed and wondered where it was, why is its mother not seeing to its need? Then, benumbed, I again grew aware of the howling wind.

The Blizzard - a serial in three parts

Many stories float about in my head that want telling, and since the years keep piling up I had better get started. The area of North Dakota where I was born and raised is rich with tales that have never been told except scantily in dusty historical references. So to prove to myself that I am serious with my undertaking I will print one I call "The Blizzard," in serial form running three days. When I was a kid going to the movies on Saturday night there was often a special feature of a story told in serial form which made you want to buy a ticket the next Saturday night to see how things worked out. As my stories accumulate I intend to publish them in a collection. The events in the stories are factually based. The one following occurred in 1867 near Lisbon, ND.

Stalled in a Storm

Most days I shuffle over to this clouded window and spend a lot of time sitting and remembering. In years past I sat with friends and spent hours talking about the old days while we played a few hands of cards. I am the last one, though and know I will soon join them in silence, but I want my family to know my story. I have experienced many things, some still play in my head, but mostly I dwell on the war and my freighting days. Considering my age I am lucky to be alive since either one could have been the end of me, and it is only my fellow companions on those journeys who knew and understood what we went through. So much has been written about the war but nothing about that time we got stranded in a three day blizzard with our wagons and oxen. At the time the location had no name on a map; it was just the place south of the big bend of the Sheyenne River in what is now North Dakota. I want to start there.

…

We had to stop; the wind drove the snow with brisk gales and wrapped us in a small, white world from which we could not see beyond to the next wagon. Our usual task of parking the wagons proved impossible since we could not see or hear the wagon boss, and by the time he rode back within earshot hollering and screaming, the train sat in muddled disarray. The oxen needed attention, we unhitched them but kept them yoked together. Feed and water had to wait. We tethered them to the wagons so they would not drift across the prairie with the wind at their tails.

Hunkering down for the night we tried to light cook fires, but every time someone's shaking hands struck a match, the stiff wind snuffed it out. More than anything I wanted to wrap my cold fingers around a cup of hot coffee, but tonight there would be none. I chewed on hardtack and tried to think of other places and better times. By morning we would roll again so all any of us could do was try to get some sleep, a wish not realized since our bed rolls did little to chase the chill. We huddled there all night listening to the wind drum the wagon canvas against the bows.

Caught on a high plain was not the place we wanted to be when a December blizzard roared in and piled snow so deep that our train mired in the drifts. The storm caught us with 45 wagons and as many yokes of oxen on open ground. The wagon master, taken sick with high fever in Fort Ransom, stayed back, but curiously he put a man with little experience in charge of the train to lead us the sixty miles back to Fort Abercrombie. Most of us would have felt a lot more comfortable taking orders from one other man, but he and the boss never saw eye to eye. For reasons known only to him, the new man directed us to take the longer route around the bend of the river where we now sat stalled instead of the shorter low water trail where the river needed crossing only twice, at the Brunton ford and the Shin ford. With jobs hard to get, the men kept quiet and did as they were told, although quiet is maybe not the best word, this was a profane bunch who cursed and grumbled first thing in the morning when they opened their mouths and the last thing before rolling up in their blankets.

Donald Stevenson, a Scotchman, from Osakis, Minnesota owned the ox and wagon outfit and held the freighting contract to supply Fort Ransom, an outpost established just six months previously in June of 1867. He was not traveling with us on this trip. An ambitious sort, he worked on other pursuits, too, but planned to meet us somewhere along the trail as we returned to Fort Abercrombie.

Before coming out here I wore the uniform of the Union Army; now along with many another veteran of the war, I found myself drifting westward on the cusp of new country. I hired on as a teamster in St. Cloud and was sent to the depot to pitch in and help load the freight wagons. A day later we started out on a westerly bearing to Fort Abercrombie, then on to Fort Ransom where that isolated garrison heartily welcomed our arrival. After unloading we turned the oxen out to rest and graze on the prairie for a couple of days while we busied ourselves greasing wagon wheels and fixing worn or broken gear.

This place was on the edge of everything we called civilization. West of here Indians hostile to our presence still roamed about, though we kept a sharp eye out for them on our trail,too. The fort seemed to be on constant alert and sentries watched around the clock for signs of an Indian attack. This was not a training exercise for the soldiers. Just the year before a company of men stationed at Fort Phil Kearney died in a battle when they rode to provide escort for a wood-chopping crew. Earlier their commander William Fetterman had said he could defeat the whole Indian nation with eighty men. Well, that is how many he led and that is how many died on the day known as the Fetterman Massacre. Then in August, just five months before we got here in Fort Ransom, Red Cloud's warriors again attacked a wood crew out of Fort Kearney. This time they and their escort of soldiers fared better when they arranged their wagon boxes to fight behind. New and fast-firing breech loading rifles evened out the odds, too, and they drove the Indians away.