Looking at June

A new month rolls around and signals me to write something in this blog. Spring finally showed for real, and now it is green and lush looking in the trees and lawns. Farmers are really scrambling to get finished with putting their crops in. Gardeners, like Mary, couldn't wait to get the flowers in, but now she doesn't want to come in the house.

Me, I'm having fun, too, volunteering at the Heritage Center one morning a week. Two of the galleries have opened, and good ones they are. It's fun to hear all of the places they come from – one couple came from South Wales, England to research family history in the archive library, and a man came from Luxembourg. I don't think they came just because it opened anew, but because they just happened in.

I had an interesting phone conversation with a descendent of the Wade family last evening who is trying to find out even more than the book I published gave. I have heard from many in that family who express gratitude that the book became available. So, even though I made no money with it, it's surely given me lots of pleasure. Another book is in the works, but things like that move slowly, maybe after about a year.

I'm still reviewing books for Western Writers of America, and now have received an additional job from them. I was contacted by the chairperson of the Spur Awards committee and asked to judge one category of writing: Best Western Traditional Novel (to 1940). I asked my editor in Santa Fe how much reading that will entail, and he assured me it will be plenty. I hope there are some good ones! I'll get more details on the project in Sacramento later this month.

We drove to Medora a week ago to take in some entertainment at the annual poetry and song gathering. We took time to go through the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame and, as always, visit the Western Edge Bookstore. The town was just starting to waken after their winter sleep, and by now, I'm sure they are going strong. We plan to return this summer and take in the evening stage show at the amphitheater.

A week ago Bismarck hosted a huge oilman's convention, around 4,000 registered from 48 states and several foreign countries. They counted over 40 private jets that brought bigshots into the airport. I'd like to have attended but the price of admission was $700, a little steep for my social security budget. They gathered around each other doing some back-slapping and trying to figure out how to squeeze more oil out of the ground. If they'd put as much effort into developing alternative energy sources to power our cars, we'd have something by now that's cleaner.

In parting, I can tell a bit about the movie we attended last night – A Million Ways to Die in the West. It was entertaining, but if a multitude of cuss words coming from men and women alike bothers you, don't go. Intended as a spoof, it takes in big territory: sheep ranchers, Indians, prostitutes, gold thieves, jealous lovers, gunslingers, barroom brawls, the fact that nobody ever smiled in old time photos, etc., etc. I was afraid my wife wouldn't like it, but she laughed harder than I did.

May Day, 2014

Noblest of all dogs is the hotdog; it feeds the hand that bites it.
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 The sun is shining today.  At first I didn't recognize what it was.  At least we aren't drowning in the heavy rainfalls in the east.  You can just imagine all the leaky roofs that are showing up.
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The first phase of re-opening the heritage center started on Monday.  I have been volunteering there in the archaelogy lab but was asked to help out a bit at the front door.  So yesterday morning that is where I found myself.  Only two of the galleries opened, but they are great.  The governor called the museum "world class," and he may just be right.
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We have purchased our tickets to Sacramento and have a room reservation in the WWA convention motel.  After spending a few days there, we proceed on to San Francisco for a couple days of visiting with my cousin and her husband. She asked what we would like to see, and we responded, "Anything but Alcatraz."  The books keep coming in to review from the Western Writers, so whenever I think there's nothing to do, there stands a stack of books. The Bismarck Tribune sends a book once in awhile, too.  Next year we go to Lubbock, TX for the convention.
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Yesterday, between museum goers, I read a bit of research for my planned "big story."  Some of the things those people experienced were far different from the way people live today.  It's too bad more of the details of those lives haven't been preserved.  I found a quotation from the well-known writer and historian Dee Brown which applies: "Sometimes there isn't enough material.  There's a story there and you can't fill it in with facts, so you let your imagination run wild."  What else can you do?
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The Enderlin Independent continues to print my essays on a weekly basis.  While attending a funeral in Sheldon on Saturday, I had several people tell me they're enjoying them.  So, I'll offer up one of them here:

 

Looking Back...

Blizzards

by Lynn Bueling

Blizzards have been a bane on existence since people first came to the northern plains. Native Americans developed the teepee design to protect them from the elements. Howling winter winds swirled around their little conical dwellings while they waited for mild weather.

Imagine, though, sitting out a three-day blizzard in a covered wagon designed to haul freight. That happened in December, 1867 when a train of forty-five freight wagons pulled by oxen stalled near Lisbon. With no windbreak on the treeless plain, fierce gales blew freely. Snow drifted over and around the wagons and buried the teams.

The train got caught in the open as they headed back to Fort Abercrombie after delivering goods to Fort Ransom. The outfit's owner was himself an experienced teamster, but he was not traveling with them that day. Instead, another man served as wagon boss. The question has been asked why he directed the train to travel around the big bend of the Sheyenne River instead of the shorter direct route. We will never know.

And why, after stopping, didn't he set the oxen free to drift with their backs to the storm? Twenty-one oxen died beneath the snow. When Stevenson found his train, he came upon a very hungry group of men. Teamsters were a rugged, self-sufficient lot, but they were unable to cook in the howling wind. How they kept from freezing to death is anybody's guess.

Move forward to the winter of 1886-87 for an event that made a significant mark in the history of the plains. First, the lead-up. This item appeared in the Sheldon Enterprise dated March 31, 1885: “Thousands of head of cattle have been bought in Northwestern Iowa in the last few weeks to be taken to the large ranches in Dakota and Montana for fattening purposes.”

In the mind's eye, you can watch many trains of loaded cattle cars heading west on the Northern Pacific railroad. Blend them with other herds driven overland from the south (think Lonesome Dove), and hundreds of thousands of them ended up grazing the rich native grasses of the open range. Short-sightedness among the ranchmen expecting easy profit proved to be their undoing. Cattle had been let to graze and fatten the year long in the previous mild winters with no supplementary feed or shelter. Hay had not been cut!

Snow began falling, often and deep,with the thermometer registering “very cold.” Severe weather never seemed to end, and starving, frozen cattle began to die, by the thousands. Someone asked Charley Russell, the famous western artist, just how bad was it. He responded, not with words, but with a painting of a hunch-backed, emaciated steer being circled by wolves. The picture became known as “Waiting for a Chinook,” or sometimes “Last of the 5000.” Ranchers living on the range called it “The Great Die-Up.” Estimates vary as to the numbers of cattle lost, but they reached into the hundreds of thousands.

Teddy Roosevelt's Badlands cattle operation disappeared with the winter's snow and cold. He went home to the east and started his political career. Most of the money invested in the cattle had come from eastern and foreign capital. Those investors took their losses, then looked elsewhere to invest. Ranchers who survived changed their methods of operation to anticipate hard times.

The blizzard in the year 1920 gained some notoriety when a young girl, Hazel Miner, and her younger brother and sister were riding home in a sleigh from school and turned over in a ravine. Her heroic efforts saved the lives of her siblings, but she died, along with 33 other North Dakotans in a variety of situations.

Hard to believe, but it's already been forty-seven years since the three day March blizzard of 1966 came roaring through our state. Probably the worst of the modern day storms, it claimed six people along with seventy-five thousand cattle, 54 thousand sheep, plus a miscellany of other animals. After the storm passed, drifts stood as tall as the peaks of barn roofs. Recently, the weathermen in a Fargo television station studied records of storms and concluded that of this century's blizzards, the one of 1966 was the worst. A phrase used by them can be applied to any of these storms: “Three days of crazy wind.”