Energy

A tremendous amount of Missouri River energy flows past a given point each day here in the Bismarck-Mandan area. Only a few days ago we drove up to the powerhouse gates at Garrison Dam and marveled at the gushing, foaming water released from Lake Sacajawea. The cfs rate
has increased since then and is projected to increase even further in the coming days. (People are evacuating.) I don't know if the generating turbines output is greater under these conditions, but I would guess not since their spin rate must be tightly controlled. But, this situation makes me think about power and the problems of providing it for the world's growing demand.

One of the news sources I read regularly posted an article today that caught my attention: Germany plans to phase out all their nuclear generating plants by 2022, eleven years from now. Germany's chancellor Merkel holds a Ph. D. in physics; after watching Japan's recent disaster at Fukushima's nuclear facility, the aftermath of a strong earthquake and powerful tsunami, she decided the risks of atomic energy are too great to ride those work horses any farther into the future. Apparently, Italy abandoned their plants after the Russian Chernobyl disaster, and, too, Switzerland plans to begin shutting down their plants after reaching their average life span of 50 years; the last one to be shut down in 2034.

Even with my scientific ignorance, these developments are very eye opening. I suppose I complacently accepted the notion that atomic energy was the future. Maybe not. And my mind began to change even a bit before. I subscribe to a small circulation magazine, "The Sun," an ad free publication that features just plain good writing. The latest issue, received just a few days ago, carried an interview article featuring the actor Peter Coyote. I've never cared or thought much about him except that he has a great voice for film voice-overs. Reading those words that reflect his knowledge and outlook made me read carefully, however. Nuclear energy entered into this discussion, and he stated that it is expensive, dirty, and waste needs to be stored for a hundred thousand years. He says, "It can't be done ... You can't avoid the 'oops' factor with humans, and you can't afford an 'oops' with a deadly material that stays poisonous forever." His comments were made before Japan's recent disaster; what would he have said then.

Maybe wind towers and solar energy will take their place as the best bet for future energy. I wonder how long it will take, though. Twenty coal trains still roll through here every day, and people are going crazy with delight as they drill in North Dakota's productive oil formations.

Purple Iris and Flooding

I don't have any good pictures of the flood threatening Bismarck-Mandan (are there ever any good ones?), so I submit this picture of beauty. Pictures and stories of the flood problems can be found at Bismarcktribune.com. As time goes along I'm sure I will snap a few. We drove over to Bismarck's east side this afternoon to visit Sam's Club and experienced different traffic than usually seen on a Sunday afternoon: trucks loaded with loose sand, filled sandbags on flatbed trailers, semi trailers hauling bundles of empty sandbags coming from who knows where, pickups and trailers hauling furniture, dikes and piled sandbags rising in many places, the radio filled with warnings some areas are advised to evacuate, etc. And here we sit high and dry at our place. I've tried to find our home's elevation to complare to flood zones and have had no luck yet, but we are nestled a good 20-25 feet above that. When we bought this lot it's elevation was one of the first things I noticed in a favorable light. I've always thought too much confidence was being placed in Garrison Dam's being a cure-all for low level flooding along the river. Developers heavily promoted river-front homes and buyers came. So here we are, facing several weeks of trouble and misery.

Boiling Tail Race, Garrison Dam

As a journalist might say, we are experiencing a developing situation here in Bismarck-Mandan. All at once we have flooding to worry about. A full reservoir, Lake Sacajawea, held in place by the Garrison Dam needs to have pressure released which keeps building from huge runoff from Montana's heavy rains and mountain snow-melt. Personally we have nothing to worry about here at our home because of our elevation but many neighborhoods will be at risk on both sides of the Missouri River. The Corps of Engineers keeps increasing their estimates as to the cubic feet per second (cfs) amount of release needed in the coming weeks to deal with the threat, so the city fathers keep revising their plans to deal with water. Since cfs figures keep bumping up Mary and I decided to drive up to the dam today to take a look at the tail race. The above picture gives a poor interpretation of the boil, but my haiku poem describes it as good as anything.

I felt the ground vibrating as I stood on the bank with my camera where I wished I owned the zoom lens I'm planning to buy. Probably 35 years ago I stood on a concrete pad on the east side and cast my fishing line below the tail race. At that time the water level in the river stood much lower and a good deal of the rusted outlet gates showed. Today nothing of them showed. The power and energy were obviously immense.

We stopped for a break at a convenience store in nearby Riverdale and told the manager our Heart River was running very high too. Yes, he knew of it and said the dam at Lake Tschida was overflowing. The only amusing thing we saw today appeared in nearby Pick City, a bar sign declaring "The best dam bar by a dam site."

The End of the World?

We're still here, even after the end of life as we know it never came to pass as predicted by the senile prophet who thought he and his followers were to be taken up to heaven last weekend and leave the rest of us evildoers behind. All of us in some way will experience death, and I'm sure not willing to give up time and treasure to that doddering old fool. End of life did come, though, to those who died in the recent tornado in Joplin, MO. Physical tragedies from storms, financial turmoil, engagement in wars, shortages, high prices, etc. all contribute to people's thinking we keep sinking deeper into a hole. As a kid I'd often see cartoons that pictured a person carrying a sign saying, "The end is near" with a tag line stating the joke. Now many years have passed since I first noticed dire prophecies told me the end is near, I'm still here, and I took away a good lesson.

The latest issue of the Smithsonian magazine came in my mailbox yesterday, and as usual I flipped through it rather hurriedly until one of the articles stopped me cold, "Don't Sniff the Antlers." I scanned it and several key words teased me to go back to read and re-read and underline and make notes until I fully grasped the author's gist. Lance Morrow wrote of the 13th century Buddhist monk named Kenko whose philosophy was to accept change and impermanence as part of living. He felt at the time Japan was degenerate and in decline. Morrow lifted this interesting view of Kinko, "It is perversely comforting to reflect that people have been anticipating the end of the world for so many centuries. Such pessimism almost gives one hope." Further, Morrow saw this in the 700 year old teachings of this Buddhist monk, "It is a form of vanity to imagine you are living in the worst of times - there have always been worse. In bad times and heavy seas, the natural fear is that things will get worse, and never better."

Occasionally some sensible thinking and writing comes along, and I always find it refreshing when it does. I'm just going to keep plodding along, and like everyone else I will experience the end of the world some day. You are all invited to attend my funeral.

You Can Tell It's Spring Now

Here is a picture of the dear wife going bonkers in the Cottontail Greenhouse just a bit south of our place on Highway 1806. Since opening a few years ago this has been a favorite destination of hers during the planting season. I inquired beforehand if I could take a few pictures and the man said I could if I gave the name of his business, so here it is again: Cottontail Greenhouse. I still don't know much about this camera of mine but I still have two classes to go at Bismarck State so maybe I will have an epiphany. Actually what I need to do is take hundreds of pictures and figure out what setting goes where. Things are working a bit better with some healing of the old gluteus maximus that I injured a while back, and I can walk around a bit better now to take pictures. I exercised in the fitness center today the first time in about three weeks and a couple of the regulars wondered where I'd been. Visiting with my 91 year old mother on the phone yesterday I told her about limping around and she imparted this wisdom, "You aren't getting any younger, are you?"

How High's the Water, Mama

Sheyenne River



Johnny Cash sang that song a long time ago, and it still applies. I don't know how high but it's risin'. Here in the Bis-Man area the Missouri River rises daily because they're opening the gates at the Garrison Dam due to the build-up of water volume on Lake Sacajawea. People with low-lying property along the river bank are getting nervous, and I heard someone on the local news last night say it's probably all right for now, but what if down river they close some gates to control flooding downstream. Then we can look for back-up just as it happened a couple years ago when the ice jams made the water rise locally. I'm still glad our house sits on high ground.

As for the Sheyenne River's future, it just might have to contend with high water on a permanent basis if the folks up in Devil's Lake get their way and start draining that water into the Sheyenne. This year almost everyone has too much water. My old stomping grounds east of Sheldon is the worst it's ever been according to my cousin who farms land there, and when I drove along Highway 46 I saw plenty of other farmland that will probably be un-farmable this year. And the landowners still have to pay taxes on it.

Thinking About Old Times

Not much remains on Main Street Sheldon nowadays to remind me of the old days. I wanted this picture while the sign still hangs on the old bank building; one never knows when a wild storm might take it down and fling it in a heap somewhere. When the town stood as a viable shopping center this old bank hosted lots of activity. Reading old newspapers at the Heritage Center here in Bismarck offers proof of that. I remember going in there while it was still being used and remember how nice the woodwork looked. The chair on which I'm sitting came from there - a straight-backed oak chair with thin padding which I had re-upholstered a long time ago when I first acquired it, and again last winter when Mary freshened it up with a classical floral pattern. The chair will outlast me, even though the bank sign and the leaky-roofed building will disappear.

As we gathered in the cemetery on Monday a lot of talk centered on names of those who rest in eternity beneath their monument markers. The number of people I knew well and inter-acted with who have passed away grows year by year. But knowledge of another, older generation has faded. I could only guess one of the names, Joyal, was a past barber in town, and when I was in the younger grades I loved talking my mother out of a fifty-cent piece and get excused from class to go down there and get a haircut during the school day. I usually disturbed his card game when I entered the place, and I still remember how fast he trimmed me so he could get back to it.

Mary and I talk about where our final resting place should be, and we seem to agree that maybe this will be our spot, too. A hundred years hence people can then wonder who we were.

A Day for Funeral Services

Too seldom extended families gather except for weddings and funerals. Yesterday members of the Bueling family gathered to say goodbye to two of their members. Pictured is the priest presiding over the graveside of Jane Bueling, wife of Steve. Jane chose to have her ashes buried here, and on this day it could not have been a more beautiful day with mild temperatures, a slight southerly breeze, and dozens of birds singing in the tree tops. Following this simple ceremony, we traveled to the Sheyenne River with the ashes of another of our family, Bruce, who wished to have his ashes scattered in the Sheyenne River at a spot southeast of Sheldon where river flows fast and high and wildlife abound.

Angle of Repose

Yesterday, as we drove back after picking Mary up at the airport I noticed a landslide on the west side of West Fargo on an interstate ramp. The excessive amount of moisture we've received this year worked with gravity, and a large chunk of good old Red River Valley dirt came sliding down. Just south of the interstate by Valley City there was another spot like it. I ran across the term "angle of repose" a few years back when I read one of the great American novels of the same name Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. It means the maximum angle of slope at which sand, loose rock, mud, etc. will remain in place without sliding on a hillside. Stegner, born in 1909, lived for a time in North Dakota, and I am surprised the state promoters haven't laid more claim to him than they have people like Louis L'Amour, Lawrence Welk, Peggy Lee, plus the whole lot of them that grace the hallway of the state capital building.

The book centers on the life and thoughts of a historian and the history of his family that he uncovers. As a professor Stegner ran the writing program at Stanford University for many years and a good many of my favorite writers studied under him: Larry McMurtry, N. Scott Momaday, Thomas McGuane, Ken Kesey, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, William Kittridge, to name a few. The book can probably be considered a metaphor for him and his family as after much sliding and moving downhill, they finally came to rest, just as a landslide would.

Living Alone

Bachelorhood doesn't fit very well anymore. Mary flew off to Minneapolis to help with Clint and Robyn's kids for the week. Around here doors don't slam, pots and pans aren't banging, the wash machine isn't swishing, I'm eating in cafes, nothing much is going on. So here I sit just feeling sorry for myself. I guess I'll just have to start following orders: watering the plants, vacuuming the carpet, mowing the grass, and picking up my mess! P.S. I had fun writing the limerick. Maybe I'll try a few more of them.

Bridge and Rails

During the tourist season this site comes into view by those who choose to buy the ticket to ride the rails to Fort Abraham Lincoln. A lot of trains pass through Mandan every day but they don't use this particular line. Loaded coal trains heading east and empty trains heading back west to reload comprise the bulk of the traffic. I've heard different numbers as to their frequency, but 18-20 long trains per day seems to be agreed upon. Maintenance of these heavy traffic lines seems to require much attention. Driving east along I-94 I lately seen hundreds of new railroad ties laying alongside the tracks and a string of machines that seem to have automated most of the labor. Remember the old "John Henry was a steel driving man, Lord, Lord, oh what a man was he!" I still see that little old speeder leaving Sheldon with three or four men going out to inspect and repair track. And, I'd just as soon forget a carful of young bucks tooted up on too much beer who lined their car up on the tracks and rode the rails all the way to Leonard.

Mysteries of the Camera

The picture shown here is of no use to anyone except that it shows some experimenting with my camera from the 4th floor of the NECE building on Bismarck State's campus. Last evening was the first session of the photography class I'm taking named "Beyond the Auto Button." Hopefully I'll learn some of the settings on my digital slr camera. It faces the southern view and if one squints you can make out a butte on the extreme right of the horizon called Little Heart Butte.

Right now a back problem prevents me from getting too verbal at my keyboard. A trip to my prostheticist didn't bring relief, so now I'm heading to my doctor for a probable x-ray. I suspect I worked too hard with my gym exercises, namely the sit-up machine. How does the old saying go, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

Kansas item of interest

Already a long time ago I would follow the harvest down to southern Kansas and then work my way north to home again. I've never forgotten the scene when somewhere north of Russell, Kansas I drove my truck and combine past miles of stone fence posts that were erected by a past generation that have weathered well to endure many years of usefulness. It was one of those strong memories formed when so much of the world was still new to my eyes.

Stone fence posts stood statue-like
by Highway 281
north of Russell, Kansas. Hewn
from common "post rock," they held
barbed wire that marked boundaries
and kept free-ranging cattle
from trampling hard-worked wheat fields.
Northern boy, I thought this strange
having sunk wooden fence posts
around and through pasture land,
digging post holes with auger
or clam-shell, setting them straight
after eye-balling them on
a landmark in the distance,
unrolling wire, tightening
it with a rope and pulley,
finally pounding staples
to fasten it to the wood.

(Curious with ways of the world
I thought it looked out-of-sync
when Dad worked on down the line
and the humid summer air
slowed the sound from reaching me
when his hammer struck staples.)



Indians called those thorny loops
of prickly vines Devil's Rope.
It spread across the landscape
choking the free range because
ranchers ran ever-larger
herds; then cold, killing blizzards
screamed that overgrazed grass lands
couldn't support their greed schemes.
It's barbed wire we're talking here,
an invasive invention
that begged to be criticized
by some, welcomed by others.
Range wars raged over its metes
and bounds when settlers defined
their farms with it; the shortage
of wood did not deter them
when stone fence posts could be crafted
to stand for a century.
.....

Recent bumper sticker - "Get hooked on barbed wire."

Sheep Shearing Time

On the wall in front of my desk this picture hangs along with others from sheep shearing. I enjoy looking at it; this is a job I remember doing. The man stomping down the fleeces is one of Mary's relatives and is the only one I've ever found of someone doing this. A couple years back I wrote this poem to remember:

Sheep Shearing Time

A man holding a clattering shears
straddles an upended ewe
and bends to strip away
the thick robe of wool
she wore through the cold.

Lambs separated from penned mothers
bleat, hungry, lonesome tunes.
Clouds of dust hang
above the milling flock
where a helper
enters to catch and drag
another animal to her shearing.

"Good sheep shearers can do
a hundred head a day,"
goes the dinner table talk,
and this flock of sixty
will be shorn by mid-afternoon.

The boy feels drawn to enter
this grown man's world
and wants to tie and throw fleeces
into the hanging wool sack
and climb in to pack the bundles
so that by the end of the day
the boots he wears,
soaked lanolin soft
from the wool's drenching oil,
bring him another step closer.

A Sign from the Times

When I saw this old delivery panel truck in a group of old wrecked vehicles I couldn't help but stop to take a picture. There was a time when we'd take its presence for granted as it drove around or sat parked in town. It faces the south so the letters have begun to fade considerably from its exposure to the sun. This is just one example of things no longer used but filled our days one time. I plan to take pictures of as many as I run across: windmills, hip-roofed barns, deserted store fronts, grain elevators, abandoned railroad tracks, horse-drawn machinery, etc. They mean little or nothing to the generation younger than I, but I still enjoy their reminders.

The Sheyenne River in Lisbon

Easter celebration for us was Saturday in Lisbon when we went to visit my mother in the Parkside Home. News reports had told us the river was high and this is the scene as we drove into town. The crest had not hit yet and was expected for yesterday, Easter Sunday. People put so much energy into protecting property these past few years putting up dikes and sandbags, then taking them down again after the threat passes. Perish this thought, but I heard someone ask, "What if Lake Agassiz is filling up again?" Devils Lake certainly has.

Easter, 2011

A few years ago Mary and her sister traveled to Rome with a pilgrimage group to tour religious sites in and around the city. I made one request: to bring me back a likeness of the Cross of San Damiano. Luckily, she located one in a gift shop in Assisi. I wanted one because the artist painted on it such a great wealth of symbolism surrounding the crucifixion of Christ, something that greatly interested me. A Google search for the cross will supply much more information than I intend to include here; it is well worth the time to search it out and study it. This icon hangs in a church in Assisi and dates back to 1100.

The Old "AR"

Snow keeps falling down, down. . . It's getting to be real old. I want to see some green, so I dug out this model "AR" John Deere, the first tractor I ever drove. This one's a bit more streamlined than my memory of an open grille and open fly wheel, but nevertheless it opens the window shade to let me watch that young boy in the hay field steering it to pull an old horse dump rake where Dad sat on its machinery seat and worked the foot trip lever. If I remember correctly we did it this way because the rope trip lever didn't work from the tractor seat so he rode the rake and dumped the hay with his foot. The John Deere's clutch control was hand lever, and I had all I could do to pull it and disengage it. Well, a situation developed. The rake had a long wooden pole, a throwback to its horse drawn days, and it broke. Dad hollered to stop and I pulled back hard. The fulcrum bolt at the bottom of the clutch lever assembly was rusted and worn and it snapped. Just like that, that lever had no leverage! Dad jumped off the rake and caught up to the runaway, grabbed the flopping lever, and pulled back. It disengaged and we got stopped. Little things like that firmly entrenched themselves in my mind, and I think back to it everyone once in awhile.

The date today, April 19th: A winter storm warning is in effect for the rest of the day and into the evening. Maybe I'll have to keep digging out model tractors for color; I have a "B" John Deere and an "H" Farmall.

Our Neighbor Boy

Here's our neighbor boy, Trey, (and I wish I knew how to spell his name) having fun both last night and this morning with the snow that lingers in our world. He likes forms as witnessed by the shape of the five gallon bucket he used to haul the snow. He is a twin; his brother, Cameron, has been laid up with a broken bone for a few weeks so he's not out here. His problem has become for me the chance to get back in the world of youngsters, his mother has asked me to pick the boys up after school to spare him the long walk home. It's been fun seeing the busy after-school scene with kids running all over the place. I've forgotten how gullible that age can be, sixth graders, when I told them a tall tale just after they got back from a recent trip to Florida. I asked them if they'd gotten to the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, a place where I had drank of the water. I went on to say it worked, that I'm 100 years old. "Really!" was all I got out of them so I let it ride; the next day I found out their folks told them it was a joke. But you know, being 69 might qualify in their young minds as being almost like 100.

What's This?

Here we are on the morning of April 15, 2011! I've summerized the snowblower and will be darned if I start it up again. We shovelled a couple paths so we can walk to and from the car. I've been wanting to get out and take pictures with my new D-SLR, but all I get are these snow scenes. By the way, I took the opportunity to learn how to run the camera by signing up for a class at BSC which will start in a couple of weeks. It was such a popular class that when I called to get in the first go-round, I was told the class had already filled. What? I just got the catalog yesterday. We'll take your name since we're thinking about adding another class. The next day she called and said it was a go. The only requirement seems to be to take my camera with a fully charged battery. It sounds like we're going to "shoot."

Old Ways of Doing Things

I enjoy looking at these old pictures of the hometown. I believe one of these elevators is the one that was picked up and moved by truck to the Runck farm south of Casselton. I can remember seeing it jacked up on huge timbers and rolling down the street. When I was old enough to start helping with harvest I liked the job of driving tractor and trailer to town with a load of grain and driving over the scale, watching the hydraulic hoist lift the front end of the trailer so the grain could run out the endgate and into the grate-covered pit.

And I always liked going into the railroad depot where I heard the large Regulator clock on the wall ticking away. Freight used to come to us through this facility and occasionally we'd go there to pick something up. That building stands empty now but has been moved some feet away from the RR right-of-way to satisfy their requirement.

Pictures like this represent a period never impressed into my kids memories, but I remember those scenes well.

Water Witching

Today I ran across a reference to water witching and was reminded of this picture of Dad demonstrating to me how he could do it. He'd say go cut a willow switch or any green twig and I'll show you how. When he'd grab the ends of the "y" and hold them tightly he would walk slowly around until the twigs reacted. It was something to see how they would twist in his tightly clenched fists, so much so that he could hardly hang on. Then whenever I'd try - nothing. I did not have the gift. The book I read today told me why: according to one of the cited sources the ability can only be passed down from a father to a daughter or a mother to a son. It crosses genders in its path through the generations, therefore I could never inherit Dad's gift of witching. Some people don't believe in such things, but a lot of wells have been located prior to digging through this method. In another type a ring on a string held over a half-full glass of water would start hitting the edge of the glass when over a vein of water, and the number of times it hits the glass is the number of feet to dig down. Another style consists of holding two pieces of wire bent in a "L" shape and holding them in front of you; then when the wires crossed you were over the vein. Believe it or not!

RFD

Our mailbox, standing at the head of the driveway, beckoned us six days a week to empty the newspapers, magazines, cards, letters, bills, packages, and catalogs delivered by our rural route mailman. He would arrive each day about the same time in a cloud of gravel road dust, lean across his car seat to insert our mail of the day, and roar off again to the next box a half mile down the road. This one looks very much like the one I remember,only ours had several bullet holes from someone's target practice. Cream cans made common anchors for the boxes.

45 Years Ago

When I ran across this picture and did some quick math I discovered it was taken 45 years ago. There's a song by my favorite western music singer Ian Tyson that has a cowboy singing this line "Was it yesterday or was it fifty years ago." It was about some lost love, but the line applies to many situations, my hog picture included. That time sure has flown by! A couple years ago I wrote this poem and included it in my second chapbook:

Slat shadows from a snow fence
lay on the backs of my pigs -
120 of them. Their heads are down,
eating, always eating, so much I
had to keep hauling feed pellets
from Newton's Feed Store at X
number of dollars and watch that bill
tally up, but then I had to feed them
to grow so they could be sold as feeder
pigs since they were still weaners.
The brood sows, fifteen of them, came
from a hogman in Owego Township, sand
hill country, some call it Hillbilly Heaven.
He told me They're just full of pigs!,
and I could tell he told me no lie
just by looking at their bulging
middles. I never fed 'em, they run
in the woods and eat acorns,
ground's just covered with 'em.
How much? I ask. A hundred
dollars apiece, and I'll haul 'em
for ya. So the deed got done,
my lot soon filled with litters
of little pigs and grunting moms,
all hungry all the time. I gave
those sows, raised in the wild
as they were, no different
treatment than the hogman gave
them, and they proved their self-
reliance by farrowing an average
eight shoats per. Well, things
worked out well for me, I sold
them when they reached 35-40
pounds each and made a few bucks.
As for the hogman, he hung himself
from one of the acorn trees.

Road Patrol

This glorious morning, 4-4-11! The ever present herd of deer browsed below us again this morning, a flock of geese flew low over the top of them, a coyote skulked in the far corner of the field, and eagles are nesting nearby. The Heart River runs high and fast and a tinge of green starts to color the ground. Spring comes!

The roads and streets are rough and breaking up. It made me think of an activity we would often do on the farm: grade our gravel road with the township's road patrol. I snapped the above picture in Georgia. Dad always called it the road patrol, so when I saw this one I scanned the frame of the machine, and sure enough, the name "Road Patrol" was prominently etched into it.

Some time ago I wrote this poem and published it in one of my chapbooks.

The Road Patrol

The Greene Township road grader,
scaled small enough for horses
to pull, sat rusting in trees
until someone searched it out
and hooked a tractor to it.

Here's where I enter the scene:
driver, pulling straight-away
while Dad stood on rear platform
working blade angle and depth
to smooth the washboard bumps

that banged and chattered a car's
chassis so hard your teeth shook
and made you wish for a rain
to fall and soften the road bed
so that the little grader

blade could grab some bite and cut
the rough grade to a smooth shave.
The times cried, "Do-it-yourself
if you want to change your world.
No one will do it for you!"

Home Again

After spending the past week in Minneapolis, we returned yesterday evening and slept the night away in deep sleep. This morning when I looked out our patio door I spotted this sunrise worthy of a photo. The hill on which our house is situated makes for great viewing of the sunrise and I often admire the beautiful ones. Yesterday we left I-94 near Wendell, MN and cut across to Fairmont, ND. Along that route we noticed lots of old time barns and tall corn silos on the farmsteads. One glaring thing was missing though: fences. There were none. The barns and silos stand as monuments to an older time, something I miss when driving through the countryside. The whole of the Red River Valley is mostly devoid of fences, and it's not until we get back here that fences become commonplace again. More will probably be said about the old days at another time. The sunrise was beautiful !

Making a Cake

 

Lucas

Lucas participates in many athletic events and has medals and ribbons to show for it. He is five years old.

Lily

Here's Lily putting on her apron to help out in the kitchen. She is two years old.

Dumpfnudeln

Mother Mary and son Clint search the cupboard for all the "necessaries" to make and serve up a batch of Dumpfnudeln (steamed noodles) that he requested of his mother when we came to Minneapolis. They turned out tasty; grandson Lucas even got into the act when he got to "punch down" the dough earlier in the day. Now if only someone would get interested in learning how to make lefse.

Mpls, MN

We are spending the week in Minneapolis, Richfield to be exact, helping out with the grandkids
because their daycare closed for a week of spring break. It is not a problem keeping them occupied. They're both smart, and at only 2 and 5 years of age can be shown many things that they understand and work with. Luckily for this old driver who doesn't like to drive in traffic there are places to go and things to do that can be reached on city streets. In the picture they are decorating bird houses that Grandma made Grandpa build while still in Mandan.

Spring Weather

Weather is often on our minds, especially so when storms surprise us. We didn't need this heavy, wet snowfall in March, but nothing can be done about it except clean up. An article I recently clipped from the March 18 issue of our local paper bore a Riverton, Wyo byline: "Search and rescue crews have successfully retrieved an elderly fisherman trapped on a floating block of ice on a lake in Fremont County. The incident occurred on Ocean Lake... The sheriff's office says a 71-year-old man was ice fishing when the piece of ice he was standing on broke away from the bank. It was carried a quarter of a mile from shore with the wind... The fisherman was stranded there for a couple of hours before he was picked up by airboat."

First of all, I was a bit perturbed when the 71 year old was called elderly since I just turned 69. But the incident brought to mind an incident I had on that very same lake in the spring of 1970 while I was the high school principal of the Wind River District. I'd gone to visit a staff member who happened to have had a small resort on the lake. He had just purchased three or four new outboard motors to rent out and wanted to try one of them out on a pontoon. For some reason my school's secretary and her daughter were present, too, so this fellow asked if we all wanted to ride along. Sure, so we walked on, he untied the tether, and we slowly drifted away from the dock. He proceeded to pull and pull on the starter rope, but it wouldn't even fire. By now we had drifted some distance from shore and a treacherous wind took control of the situation. The ladies panicked, the engine wouldn't start, and I knew it was time to do something about it. I found a small tool on board and tapped on the carburetor thinking the valve was stuck which proved to be the case. The engine promptly started and we were slowly able to make our way back to shore in the face of that wind. Afterward I learned Ocean Lake was treacherous that way because wind can come up unexpectedly!

Veins and Arteries

March 23, 2011

The face of the rivers around here changes rapidly. This morning I drove across the Missouri and it looked clear of ice, but the Heart River rose during the night and on it float thousands of chunks of ice. Winter hangs on, though; ice storms and blizzards have been predicted for tonight and on into the next couple of days.

Outdoor Restaurant

Just jokin' around. It'll still be a few days.

First Signs

Mary said with a bit of excitement in her voice that the daffodils on the south side of the house are up. That was good enough news that I took the camera out after supper to snap this. Snow has been disappearing the last few days, and I occasionally hear geese overhead. The Missouri still wears its coat of ice, but warm water from the gas refinery plant seems to spread more over a larger area on the surface.

Model A Ford

I love these old Model A’s! When growing up I recall seeing a few of them still in use. An old-timer in Sheldon, Pete Schroeder, drove this pick-up version around town, smoothly purring back and forth on the streets. A classmate puttered for years on one that he had acquired someplace, but I don’t remember if he ever got it going. My favorite memories of Model A’s though were associated with a local character, Bill Dunell, who always found one to drive; when one quit running he rounded up another. Bill seemed to support himself with a variety of odd-jobs: water-witching, animal vet jobs, trapping fish in the Sheyenne River, and shining deer in the sand hills. This story quickly leaves the Model A scene when it recalls his bringing a poached deer into bed with him one night because the local game warden breathed hot on his tracks and was shining a flashlight in
Bill’s window.

How can one forget how the famous poet from Sheldon, Tom McGrath, immortalized Bill in verse:

Bill Dee: last of the old bronc-stompers
From the gone days of Montana mustangs we used on the farms
For light work and for riding and the pure hell of having
Outlaws around…

The same Bill Dee of the famous removable
Eye: which he’d slip in your shot glass sometimes - O blinding and sobering
Sight!”

Well, anyway, that’s what comes to mind when I start reminiscing about Model A Ford’s.

Atomic Energy

So much going on in the world of atomic energy. Japan might not exist after their problems are all said and done; it’s the second time they’ve been introduced to problems with that form of energy. Even with their skill and caution in building physical nuclear plants they could not could have predicted or prepared for the awful energy that visited and damaged them in the tsunami. Yesterday I attended another session of “Conversations at BSC” where the topic was “North Dakota - the world’s third largest nuclear power.” President of the college Dr. Skogen, a participant yesterday, spent his military career with intercontinental ballistic missiles. The picture he drew of nuclear weapons makes one shudder. North Dakota has deactivated half of their missiles, those in the Grand Forks Air Force base region, but hose in the Minot region still can be fired off, all 150 of them. They’ve been deactivated in the Grand Forks region except for one, that is. One site has been preserved at Cooperstown as a museum of the cold war and is maintained by North Dakota Heritage Society. I believe a short day trip in this period of high gas prices will be appropriate this summer, so we’ll drive over there one day. It is said to be very well maintained and informative.

Last week’s session of “World War II Memories” at the Learning Institute featured a guest speaker who handles North Dakota’s Homeland Security office. He outlined how easy and prevalent the threat of terrorism is up to and including atomic weapons.

We finished the final class of the Institute’s poetry offering. I hate to see it finished, but now I’m fired up about writing again. The local management of the Institute is very open to suggestions for new offerings, so with my mind hungry for new material I suggested introduction to photography and introduction to good books. She seemed interested in those topics so maybe next session …

Dogtooth Hills

I have always been fascinated how place names come about. Mary's home town of Raleigh, ND rests below a line of hills called the Dogtooth Hills. Here is a picture taken in 1936. When driving by on the highway it is easy to see how someone with just a little imagination could have imagined a jawbone with canine teeth jutting out of it. I can think of several other names that have caught my attention over the years: Killdeer, Cutbank, Cache le Poudre, Wind River, etc. I should have opened an atlas and scanned it because there are many of this type.

Teddy's Statue

This statue is on Mandan's main street. I took the picture this afternoon since I was reminded of TR recently. Dickinson State University somehow got the rights to be the portal sight for Roosevelt's digitized papers. Now anyone with an interest in his historical perspective will need to go through the Dickinson website to get at them. That institution is proud of that distinction. Harvard University and the Library of Congress hold hundreds of thousands of his documents, but they wouldn't be readily available to the casual looker. Now, instead, you can learn anything about him you want to know on your computer.

Gas Prices

It is no secret that gas prices started rising again. Will the $4.00 mark be reached? It did not so long ago. For a session at the Institute yesterday I dusted off a poem I'd written at that time to share with my group.

It was time to mow the grass.
Gallon and a half of gas
cost me over six green bills,
think I'll put goats on these hills,
milk the nannies, make cheese
and smell that odor on the breeze.
Spurge spreads in pastures and everything,
so when the goats beget offspring,
I'll rent 'em to the highest bid
so they can eat and get rid
of that grass chokin' weed.
Hope I don't create a stampede
of goat-hungry folks to my door
asking, "When will you get more?"
I'll set up and register a brand.
operate with supply and demand,
sit back and salivate with greed
since I've created such a need
that the money will start rollin' in.
Now here's where the dream will end.
Wife'll say, "We've got cash, mow again!"

Used Book Sale Tomorrow

An event scheduled tomorrow at the Bismarck Public Library always gets my attention; however, by looking at the picture I need more books ...? Yes, I'm always on the prowl for a cheap used book. Many of the books in this bookcase have been purchased at used book sales. The Bismarck library runs this huge sale, selling by the pound, twice a year, and the Mandan library runs a big one annually. And I'm always checking out thrift stores, the best one for books being the Seeds of Hope store in downtown Bismarck.

A casual look at the picture might bring the response that that's not so many books. True, but it is only one of my bookcases. A similar one sets beside my easy chair in the living room, another is hidden in a closet in my study, and another in the spare bedroom next door. Mary might want to add hers, too, a big one in her office area. Oh yes, then there's the family history library in a closet upstairs.

Maybe my penchant for buying books can be related to this story of gluttony: "I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I lost two weeks."