The years all run together now... from Oct 12, 2015
Thursday, October 16, 2025
He's Growing Up
My camera caught Lucas lofting a pass. Eleven years ago? He's a sophomore today at Depaul University in Chicago.
A Sense of the Past
The recent June 20 tornado in Enderlin had received a rating of EF3 on the Fujita Scale for its tragic, damaging winds. This column recently mentioned that assessment level as an event that would go down in history. Unfortunately, the day I wrote the piece and sent it off to my editor for her acceptance and further forwarding to printing, a breaking news item appeared. The intensity of its force had been upgraded to EF5. Too late, my mistaken words have now appeared in newsprint the way I wrote them. If only I’d have known…
We hold a sense of the past very high in this household. My wife has immersed herself deeply in researching and writing family histories. She just completed a large one named “Country School Education of Immigrant Children in the Wade/Leahy School District.” It will speak to a very small audience. Heavily foot-noted with over 1,000 entries in the index, it will serve as a comprehensive historical record for the future.
I’ve written several hundred articles like this one you now read. In almost every case some aspect of history served as a prompt to research and write them. It’s gratifying to find people who hold a strong sense of history. The title of David McCullough’s book issued after his death is “History Matters.” Peggy Noonan, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, recently wrote “We Need to Know History, Especially Now.” Howard Zinn said, “If you don’t know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.” Then there is the famous line spoken by George Santayana that I learned long ago and have never forgotten, “Those who have forgotten the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Maybe this is the start of a ramble, but in the aftermath of World War II my little brain was just starting to process and remember things such as the relief people felt when shortages and substitutes ended and they could start buying gas, sugar, and coffee again. Wartime coupon books could be set aside; I still have mine. Old synthetic rubber inner tubes did not make good slingshot material; it didn’t stretch well. Cockshutt tractors from Canada were easier to buy than U. S. models that hadn’t resumed production; was it Pierce Implement in Enderlin that sold them? The list can go on and on.
A couple areas of historical interest have taken much of my research and writing time: early statehood and county history. The fact that the territorial capital was located in Yankton and that Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln had a relative whose hands guided its politics for a time isn’t included in present day small talk. Neither does today’s visiting over coffee consider the shenanigans that Alexander Mackenzie orchestrated in getting the capital moved to Bismarck.
Ransom County’s story brims with interesting stories. The man named A. H. Laughlin, an early player in county development, hitched a ride to Sheldon on a sleigh in a winter storm. Because the sleigh was loaded full with freight, he had to stand on one of the runners and froze so stiff he had to be carried into the store when they arrived. He recovered and rode the stage into Lisbon the next morning.
Laughlin became the county auditor, and to his office came the report of a gold discovery. News of it spread throughout the region and a gold rush occurred in the western part of the county. The NP train rails had been laid not long before and reports of trains loaded with prospectors filled the newspapers. The promise of riches dug from the ground fizzled out when everyone realized there wasn’t enough gold to fool with.
A lady named Nancy McClure lived on the historical site of Pigeon Point in the eastern part of the county. Being of one-half Indian blood, she could also be called Winona which meant oldest daughter in the family. Her life reads like a novel. She was taken prisoner during the Indian uprising of 1862, witnessed the hanging of 38 Indians deemed criminal for their actions, married a man who scouted for the army when Fort Ransom was built, hosted many travelers who stopped at Pigeon Point, translated the speech of Indian leaders, and saw her daughter marry into the Eastman family where a brother-in-law was the medical doctor present at Wounded Knee Massacre who tended to the needs of the wounded and dying.
We take an occasional trip up Standing Rock Hill in the Little Yellowstone area where we can gaze out an expanse of countryside. Joseph Nicollet and John C. Frémont camped within sight of the site on Monday, August 12, 1839 and named it Inyan Bosndata after the standing rock sitting atop the peak. The state historical society identified four interconnected burial mounds there that date from 100 B. C. to A. D. 600. Glacial ice thousands of years ago had formed the hill by pushing dirt from a few miles northeast of there. It’s a stimulating little side trip off Highway 46 that awakens the historical curiosities.
The story of the Sheyenne National Grassland east of Sheldon and stretches down into the McLeod area holds historical value with just a little research. Commonly known as the sand hills, it furnishes grazing for cattle, but at one time people tried to farm this land. The drought occurring almost a 100 years ago showed the folly of plowing that grass under when the winds blew. During FDR’s presidency, farmers were moved off the area, and grass has taken root again.
Our history is rich with stories. There was the Ransom County Immigration Association, railroad development, harvest hoboes, horses sold to the army in World War I, the Sibley Expedition across the county in 1862, wagon train stranded in a blizzard, Rex the Red, blacksmiths, baseball stories, General Ransom, and more. I am tempted to gather all these relevant stories to publish into one volume in time for Christmas giving. Not this Christmas, though, the one in 2026.
Violence of Tornadoes
The memory of the tornado that struck here on June 20 still resonates in the minds of residents and neighbors. The loss of life that occurred remains in the forefront of those memories. An outpouring of volunteer help aided in the cleanup and much of that destruction wouldn’t be detected anymore by a stranger visiting the area. Driving along Highway 46, I noticed one ruined residence has been leveled over and landscaped. However, looking across the highway to the south a large field of broken tree trunks remains to remind us of the power and mindlessness of the twisting storm. The storm claimed three lives, making it the deadliest tornado to hit North Dakota since 1978.
A weather expert, namely Dr. Ted Fujita of the University of Chicago, applied his expertise to come up with a rating system named the Fujita Scale for the power of tornadoes. Using the Fujita Scale, meteorologists rated the primary Enderlin tornado as an F3 with winds up to 160 mph. The second, separate funnel probably peaked at about 135 mph which places it in the F2 category.
Fajita’s prime source of study was the Fargo tornado occurring in 1957 on the same date, June 20, which he rated as an F5 with winds ranging from 261 mph to 318 mph. He coined some of the terminology we’ve become familiar with such as “wall cloud.” I was fifteen years old at that time and was in the barnyard feeding our pigs. A pervasive feeling settled on me as I looked to the sky and watched that wall cloud moving across the heavens. I’ll never forget the strange green color of the clouds and how deathly still the air became.
News reporting did not occur “on an active scene” like reporters practice today. Instead, it took a couple of days before in-depth stories appeared to tell us a story of what had happened in Fargo. A family of tornadoes (another Fajita coined term) travelled about 50 miles in North Dakota and Minnesota that reached about 500 yards across. Twelve people died with 103 being injured. Only one other F5 has been confirmed in the state, that which struck Fort Rice in 1953.
Recently we attended a program presented as part of the 75th Anniversary celebration for the Institute for Regional Studies at NDSU where two people spoke of their connection to the 1957 tornado. Catherine McMullen spoke first and told of her father, Cal Olson, the well-known news photographer, taking pictures with his Rolleiflex camera. One of his pictures of a man carrying a dead child from the wreckage earned a Pulitzer Prize. That child was one of a family of six children killed in one family.
Jamie Parsley spoke next. He is an episcopal priest in Fargo and also serves as an associate poet laureate of North Dakota. He, by the way, has connections to Sheldon, wrote a book titled Fargo 1957: An Elegy. Not yet born when the tornado struck, he nevertheless took inspiration to write it by recalling the death of his mother’s cousin and her husband who perished as a result. His writing reminds us of the power of an F5 when he wrote the cousin’s husband “was killed outright, his body found blocks away. Betty was knocked into a coma, from which she never regained consciousness; she died two and a half years later in January of 1960.”
At the gravesite of the six children, one of his poems states “We are temporary,/ the same way clouds are /when they enter the sky, grow full / as our guts, unleash what they have / and then dissipate.”
Between poems he includes numerous pictures of the damage and destruction left in the aftermath of the tornado’s wake. Included is that picture of the young man carrying the dead child. Pictures of crushed cars are accompanied by one of a finned 1957 Dodge that helps my mind date the tragedy 68 years ago. Parsley’s poem “From There,” written through the eyes of his mother validates my seeing green in the clouds: “There I saw the air turn green / and thought / green? have I ever / before / seen the air / turn pea green?”
North Dakota’s tornado count of 80 in 2025 sets it in first place for the most in a year on record for our state. As for pictures, a couple videos of the Enderlin storm will be studied and looked at for a long time. The one video reported to be taken from a doorbell makes a person shudder as it captures what looks to be a thick-stemmed mushroom continuously lit up by lightning. A storm-chaser put himself and his vehicle in danger while following the storm. He’d made himself so vulnerable that the rear window of his SUV was knocked out.
I saw the damage brought by the tornado that struck near Walcott in 1955 that has been rated as an F4. Seeing is believing, and the sight bordered on the unbelievable. A piece carried by Prairie Public in succeeding years quoted one man’s memory. “The roar grew louder. The windmill blew apart. The barn and granary roofs lifted off; the granary tumbled across the yard like a cardboard box, and the barn collapsed in a spray of debris.”
Regarding the recent storm in Enderlin, one can’t wring any positive results from it except maybe to recognize the tremendous spirit of community that rose to aid victims. Perhaps, one day, someone will write a book called Enderlin 2025: An Elegy.
Saturday, October 11, 2025
Weiners and Sauerkraut
We didn't go to Wishek for weiners and sauerkraut but not to be left out, we fixed our own.
Lunch at the Sons of Norway
We take an occasional trip downtown to eat noon lunch at the Sons of Norway lodge, and today we ran into quite a large crowd. I hadn’t been paying attention and missed this: it’s the 200th anniversary of the first boatload of Norwegians arriving to our region. Anyway, the menu was a bit different today but good. I ordered a smorbrod sandwich, a bowl of rommegrot, and a Scandinavian almond bar. Tasty! Mary took piece of apple/rhubarb pie, too.
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Sevareid Made Our State Proud
These two lines open the book Not So Wild a Dream: “The small brown river curved around the edge of our town. The farmers plowed close to its muddy banks and left their water jugs in the shade of the willows.” They were penned by the once prominent writer and broadcaster, Eric Sevareid, one of North Dakota’s own. The town where the river curves around is Velva, North Dakota, the town of his boyhood.
If people in their 80s are permitted to have heroes, I will confess to Sevareid as one of mine. To read his beautiful writing or listen to his sonorous speaking voice confirms being in the presence of someone a cut above the ordinary in communication and thinking skills. Some years back I lucked out when finding Not So Wild a Dream at a garage sale and now regard it as being one of the best books in my collection.
To see the regard Sevareid holds in his home state, one only needs to walk through the state capitol building and find his portrait in The Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award Hall of Fame. In honor of his memory and accomplishments, he was the fifth inductee out of the present number of fifty honorees. The four chosen first were Lawrence Welk, Dorothy Stickney, Ivan Dmitri, and Roger Maris. It would have been hard to outdo with Welk or Maris in the line-up, but the other two came down to a matter of choice in my estimation.
While watching a video of him accepting one of many awards, he spoke to a matter that I wholeheartedly endorse. Basically, he said that if one cannot study to gain knowledge in a higher institution of learning, people can educate themselves by reading history. He said, “It’s all there, the repeated lessons of what helps and what harms.” When asked to talk to aspiring journalists, he tells them to read and read and read about the past if they’re going to write about the present with any serious meaning. So much of the present day’s entries to social media would never have been posted or would have been more sensible if only their authors had a stronger knowledge and/or understanding of history.
A Sevareid scholar, Raymond A. Schroth, wrote an informative biography of him titled The American Journey of Eric Sevareid and appeared at a program in the Heritage Center in Bismarck. We attended and bought his book, a book which has been very satisfying to read, second only to Not So Wild a Dream. For him Sevareid remained one on a short list of journalists whose thoughts and words really mattered. Those journalists either spoke his thoughts better than he himself could or made him rethink his own position.
Sevareid reminisced about times when asked where he was from and he would answer “North Dakota.” The questioners usually just nodded politely and changed the subject since they had no point of reference. They didn’t know anyone else from here so it prompted him to write that North Dakota stood as “a large rectangular blank spot in the nation’s mind.”
When he started out on his own, he rode freight trains and communed with hoboes he met along the way. He added a great deal to his experiences and knowledge when working as a reporter in Minneapolis covering the infamous truck drivers’ strike. Things went well for the strikers until the police set a trap one day which the truck drivers walked into. Fifty or more of them were shot with buckshot. His paper had reported the police were literally fighting for their lives, but when the tally appeared one policeman had been hurt, while nurses at the hospital said strikers had wounds in their backsides while they tried to run away. The scene deeply affected Sevareid and his future by saying, “Suddenly I knew, I understood deep in my bones and blood what Fascism was.”
He became a war reporter in World War II under the leadership of another great journalist, Edward R. Murrow. I remember him from his days as a commentator on CBS working with Walter Cronkite, where he became known and respected for his eloquent writing and verbal delivery. Then Sevareid’s advice to budding journalists to read and read and read history became a mantra frequently repeated by David McCullough whose estate just published his book: History Matters.
This book was edited by McCullough’s daughter and one of his close friends and brings together a collection of his work that they thought should be mentioned again. The first chapter asks Why History? He answers, “History shows us how to behave. History teaches, reinforces what we believe in, what we stand for. History is the bedrock of patriotism!
I had pestered the Barnes and Noble bookstore wondering when this book would come out, and just a few days ago it did. I wasn’t the only one waiting because when I asked a clerk about it, a man overheard the name McCullough and hurried over. He wanted one, too.
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