Dreaming Spring

Mary showed me this picture a couple of days ago and reminded me that I took it last summer.  The reason she showed it is that she can't wait to get out and start digging in the dirt, and this reminded her of all those good things.  Spring just doesn't come!  The Bismarck high schools received permission from their board to start playing spring sports on Sunday, as long as it is after 2:30 pm so as not to conflict too badly with church activities.  An agriculture news report lamented that pastures can't handle any spring grazing yet, and in some cases, hay is becoming in short supply because of it.  Spring temperatures are forecast for the coming weekend, but the water is really going to run like rivers.  

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One of the Boston bomber's name was Tamerlan.  No one in the media seems to have caught the irony in that.  A Mongolian chieftain by the name of Tamerlane probably accounted for killing more people than anyone in history.  His reputation is that of a cruel conqueror. After capturing certain cities he slaughtered thousands of the defenders (perhaps 80,000 at Delhi) and built pyramids of their skulls. Although a Muslim, he was scarcely more merciful to those of his own faith than to those he considered infidels. His positive achievements were the encouragement of art, literature, and science and the construction of vast public works. He had little hope that his vast conquests would remain intact, and before his death he arranged for them to be divided among his sons.
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Apparently the Fargo Forum recently ran a series of articles about the Ku Klux Klan in North Dakota.  I never read them, but recently someone asked me if I knew that the KKK had a presence in my hometown of Sheldon.  It even went so far as to ignite a cross to intimidate somebody, probably a local Catholic church member.  During this period the group expressed anti-catholic sentiments, and said Catholics owed their allegiance to the Pope in Rome.  A long, informative article about KKK activity in North Dakota can be found by Googling the "KKK in North Dakota."  A state historian, Dr. Jerome Tweton, wrote an eye-opener.  A Presbyterian minister in Grand Forks apparently whipped up lots of anti-sentiment against blacks, Catholics, Jews, and liberals.  As many as a thousand members attended a convention in Grand Forks.

This all rose to interest again after the three high school kids dressed up in KKK garb to cheer in a sporting event their school participated in.  Crazy!  I doubt if the kids knew what they were doing, but it sure got everyone's attention.
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Last Saturday Mary and I attended the North Dakota Archaeology Society's spring meeting.  I never went intending to do this, but I ended up selling a half dozen books.  The president of the group is a friend and he gave me a plug.  So my thanks went to him.  I did a third printing of the book by ordering one last 50 copies of the book.  When they are gone, I think I will call it quits on that one.  You see, I've started a new project and my attention goes that direction now.

We're still waiting to see if William Wade will get inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.  I've got my fingers crossed.  I've done all I can do.  The new book deals with a similar time period.  A livery stable owner in Sheldon at one time worked as a freighter for Major Reno and accompanied him on the road to the Little Big Horn battle.
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Train after train of coal cars still go through here every day, and I always thought it was quite a sight.  Now, in addition, new trains go through made up of shiny black oil cars.  They are so new that the graffiti artists haven't yet started painting pictures on them.
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Just as I was about to post this blog, I looked up at the Today Show and there sitting beside Matt Lauer was the man who KFYR in Bismarck had just fired for uttering an obscenity.  I heard the live remark, but my ears couldn't quite believe what I heard.  Then there was a fluttering of action on the station with him giving an apology for what he had said and then his boss Monica Hannan coming on all flustered and making her apologies as well as covering her rear by saying that isn't the way she trained him.  Now there he is sitting beside Matt Lauer.  He will be on Dave Letterman tonight.  What a ride!  Notoriety because the first two words he ever uttered on a live tv show were obscenties.
Thought for the day: If you think you've got it tough, read a history book.

What's this?

There are a few things in life that I just don't like, and one of them is heavy snowfall in the middle of April.  Most of it fell on Sunday, the 14th, and on Monday we spent most of the morning clearing it out.  Lots of work was put into wrestling the snowblower around, but then here comes a snowplow and completely plugs the driveway.  It took another hour working to clear it away.  That's only half of it.  Mary got stalled at her Dad's place and her car still sits there.  I need to go clear snow there now so as to get it home.  Maybe we get these things happening to us so that we appreciate more the good things.

 The storm pretty well paralyzed both Bismarck and Mandan on Sunday and Monday.  Many establishments closed for the day.  I was looking for something in Sheldon's 125th anniversary book and saw a picture of an early memory.  Vern Loomer and his Caterpiller were the only way to clear roads in the latter 1940's.  I still remember riding to school and looking out the window at the high walls of snow canyon that his rig gouged.  (Rotary snowblowers were an awfully great invention.) 

The neighbors were out clearing snow at the same time.  Twin sons in the 7th grade live next door.  I hadn't seen them much this winter, and it was quite a surprise to see how they've grown.  They're on a basketball team that's really winning a lot of games, some kind of a league that will play much of the summer. One plays center (he's some taller) and the other plays forward.  I think I will have to start following the team when they reach high school.  I think that group will be one we'll be hearing from.

I wonder if the old moniker of "Imperial Cass" still sticks in the minds of our legislators.  Fargo wants state money to fund their flood diversion dreams.  Yesterday the state senate took it up and it looks to me that anti-Fargo forces hid behind waiting for federal funds.  Maybe everyone in the state wants that piece of state money pie and are glad to  see Fargo not getting it. 
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Who has the answer to stop terror attacks?  Sure, culprits are caught and punished after the act, but that doesn't ever deter future attacks.  Hate and revenge keep recurring.  So much for our open society for it will become more and more closed.  People, old and young alike, out for a good time, are targets.  Will the Boston Marathon ever be the same?  Organizers are saying it will be bigger and better, but that's false bravado.

The parents of the twenty slaughtered students in Connecticut were on a roll in Washington as they'd started bending some ears to listen to their point of view.  Then something like Boston happens and completely smothers the national media's attention.  It happens time and again.  Some had started calling it the Gunfight at the DC Corral.

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When it comes to snow, we know Ole and Lena are close by:  Ole and Lena are sitting at their dining room table, listening to the radio and watching it snow out. All of a sudden there is a big message on the radio, "There is a snow emergency, please park your car on the odd side of the street." So Ole puts on his clothes and goes out to move his car. The next day the same thing, another snow emergency and the radio says, "Please park your car on the even side of the street." So Ole goes and parks his car on the even side of the street. A few days later there's a really bad snow storm and the radio says, "There's been a snow emergency please move your car to the ..." and the radio goes out. And Lena says to Ole, "Oh, forget it. Just leave your car in the garage this time.
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A car that sat up the street from us stood almost buried.  The snowfall did a big number on it, but then the snowplow pushed up a huge wall against it.  The owner will have to do a lot of shoveling.

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Some good reading!

I received another shipment of books to review from the magazine editor of the Western Writers of America. The first one I picked to read - Dragging Wyatt Earp: A Personal History of Dodge City. No, that doesn't refer to dragging the famous Wyatt Earp around on the ground. It has to do with the author and his friends driving back and forth along Wyatt Earp Boulevard in that city. A strong theme runs throughout his writing. He made reference to the Greek mythology character Sisyphus who is condemned to forever rolling a rock uphill, then when it comes tumbling back, must start all over again. That's what teens did (and do), drive endlessly back and forth on main or whatever the name of the street. He referred to his parents and their never ending home remodeling projects, the repetitious work in the junkyard his family owned, then later, the never-ending work on a ranch they built, and so on. A cousin managed a cattle feedlot out of Dodge City. The author asked if he could come experience their daily routine. Here again he saw the repetition of life, the endless looking after the cattle, doctoring their ailments, feeding, etc.

I remember entering a farm field with a tractor and some implement to start working a large field and thinking I will never get done with this job.  Another season and there I would be again.  One of the worst jobs, no, the worst job, I ever took was helping a turkey rancher working his flock doing something. Several of us teenagers went out there one day to wade through  those twenty-some thousand birds. Talk about never ending. One bird at a time. The figure of 20 hours of labor sticks in my mind. But there are many rolling-a-rock-uphill tasks: milking cows, washing clothes, feeding hungry workers, …

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Sometimes I accompany the wife to the mall for walking in the winter months. She walks over half an hour, me half that. While I'm waiting, I often have a book in my pocket to pull out and pass the time. This morning I opened a Matt Braun book, The Last Town, that told the story of Bill Tilghman, a famous lawman, . The first chapters caught my attention. Tilghman accompanied the Governor of Oklahoma plus a couple cars full of state troopers to a small town where the Ku Klux Klan had established themselves very deeply. The governor said the intimidation they created among the folks of that community was going to stop. As a result of that visit, he ordered the national guard in to restore the order of law.  A little later on Tilghman got called to come into an oil boomtown and clean up the corruption and crime there.   I couldn't help but think that a century later similar scenes occur. This business of guns in the hands of unstable people keeps coming up, and the NRA keeps up their ranting to protect their “right” to own. The issue really isn't that guns be taken away from those mentally able to enjoy their guns in a sporting sense or a self-defensive sense, but that screwballs shouldn't have access to them, background checks.  One of the parents of the twenty slaughtered first graders said the NRA always says guns don't kill people, people do. This parent's comeback on that was if that's the case, let's start looking at those people then through background checks.  A group of Republicans senators have vowed to block an up or down vote on the issue by filibustering.  When it comes time for them to meet face to face with the parents of the slaughtered kids, I wonder how they'll act.  One network called it "Gunfight at DC Corral."  I think politics will get very interesting in the next couple of years.

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Finding background for stories takes lots of time. I'm still very interested in the livery stable business in my hometown and one of the men who ran one in the early 1900's. One of the few sources of information I've found said that livery stables have been generally ignored by historians. So it was with satisfaction that one source named an article in a 1986 edition of Montana: The Magazine of Western History - “The Livery Stable in the American West.” I spoke on the phone with a staff member of that journal today in Helena and ordered a back copy. She patiently explained what the article contained until I was satisfied that it would be worth spending $12.95 to receive it.

An online article in the Corpus Christi, TX newspaper said “The old livery stable was a male stronghold... was a place where men could congregate in the shade, sit on their heels, talk horses, and maybe share a sip of whisky.” Another source out of Buffalo, NY stated things a bit more harshly, “Often the scene of gambling, cockfighting, and stag shows, they were condemned as sources of vice.” Well, I'm just gonna have to look into it in more depth.

Stories about dogs and horses

 

Everybody has stories about animals.  I've even got a few that I'm working into a magazine article.  The first has to do with a spitz dog that saved me from a lonely death in a slough.  It seems that  the dog and I took off one day.  I was in the toddler stage, just getting around well.  So down the road we went.  We made it about 2 1/2 miles to the edge of a slough where I was hidden from sight in a forest of cattails.  Faithful dog he was, he stayed with me.  My mother tells me they looked everywhere they could think ... but there?  From what I can learn, spitz dogs are a type, not a breed.  One characteristic is the bushy tail.  There it was waving upright in that slough that an uncle driving past noticed.  He checked it out, and there I was.  I only wish I had a better memory of that dog.
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That memory of the spitz was awakened when I was doing some research for another topic.  I ran across this story told by the noted Indian historian Charles Eastman of the famous Indian chief named Gall.  He, too, was a toddler; his mother had placed him in a basket on a travois hitched to a camp dog as the tribe worked its way across country searching for buffalo.  One day this scene developed: a jackrabbit jumped from cover, and every dog in camp took off after it.  This included those bearing packs and those pulling travois.  There Gall was, racing across country behind a dog in hot pursuit, with a frantic, screaming mother racing behind.  He clung to the dog's tail and it so happened his dog was the one whose jaws snapped shut on the leaping rabbit.
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Dad told this story about his brother Alfred.  At a young age, here came Alfred driving a team hitched to a plow.  Coming down a hill the plow ran into the back of the horses which then bolted and started running.  Grandpa stood nearby putting in new fenceposts.  He hollered at Alfred to drop the plow into the ground so it would brake the horses.  He never heard.  It so happened that those horses straddled the line of posts, one on either side.  They broke off every post that Grandpa had set in the ground.  It was only when they came to a sturdy corner post that they came to a halt.
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There's something about a story that has a strong animal character in it.  Western writers discovered that a long time ago, and the stories keep on a-comin'.  Happy trails.
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The phone rang this morning.  A gentleman called wanting some William Wade books.  He ended up buying seven of them.  I do believe I'd better order some more.  Of 250 books, I have only half a dozen or so left.  The book publishing experience has been very gratifying for me.  Not that there is any money in it because there isn't.  It's just that I found a topic that resonates with lots of local history lovers.
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Two Horses
A blonde bought two horses but could never remember which horse was which.  A neighbor suggested that she cut the tail off one horse and that worked great until the other horse got his tail caught in a bush.  It tore just right and looked exactly like the other horse's tail, and our friend was stuck again.  The neighbor suggested she notch the ear on one horse.  That worked fine until the other horse caught his on a barbed wire fence.  Once again our friend couldn't tell them apart.  The neighbor suggested she measure the horses for height.  When she did she was very pleased to find that the white horse was 2 inches taller than the black horse.
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Do not regret growing older.  It is a privilege denied to many.