When the Sun Doesn't Shine

When the sun doesn’t shine and the sky is gray and snow blows across the road, I lose my ambition to do things like write and submit a newspaper article.  I have had two readers tell me they look for it each week, so I’ll plod on to satisfy their curiosity.  It so happens as I write this, it is the occasion of my 77th birthday.  Since I love a good metaphor, I’ll offer this one: “If you lit 77 candles on my birthday cake, it would look like a prairie fire.”  As the years accumulate, my standard remark is I’m still vertical.  To be realistic, I am thankful to still be standing and celebrating birthdays.

Hunter S. Thompson earned quite a reputation as a journalist living on the edge of sanity and reality, but he wrote some memorable pieces, one of them included this quote,  “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”  That philosophy carried through to his last rites when his cremated ashes were loaded into a cannon and shot into the mountain air of Colorado.

The escapades in my life never equalled Hunter Thompson’s, but sometimes I’d wake in the morning and wonder why I did that and made myself look foolish or why did I say that and ruin a friendship or why didn’t I help someone who desperately could’ve used it.  As far as arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, it’s not going to happen.  I carry many scars, the most recent being a large cancer lump cut out of my ear.  Please don’t fun of me when you see me wearing a cowboy hat from now on.  The dermatologist told me that baseball caps are good for his business.

Since there is no longer room on a cake for 77 candles, we’re foregoing that tradition this year, but don’t feel sorry for me. I’m getting a blueberry pie!

Anniversaries

We’ve encountered a rough patch this winter here in the north country, but true North Dakotans are hardy.  John Steinbeck hit the nail on the head when he said, “What good is the warmth of summer without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”

Old friends of our family recently celebrated sixty years of marriage.  A pleasant break in the weather gave us a good reason to venture away from the home fire and drive out to their party and extend our personal warm wishes.  Another sixty-year anniversary also occurred: the plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Richie Valens.  With a twist of fate Robert Velline’s talent then came to light when he and his group appeared as a replacement.  It resulted in the birth of Bobby Vee and The Shadows. 

We’ll spare all the details since it’s well-known that the Holly’s plane crashed on its way to a concert in Moorhead.  Lesser known are some facts of who died in the crash.  They’d been traveling on cold winter roads in a leaky, uncomfortable bus, and when Holly chartered a small plane to get there faster, some juggling of seats occurred among the larger group.  The Big Bopper complained of suffering from flu and talked Waylon Jennings into giving up his seat on the plane for him.  As men like to do, Buddy Holly threw some locker-room talk at Waylon Jennings before they took off saying, “I hope your ol’ bus freezes up.”  Waylon responded, “I hope your ol’ plane crashes.”  When his unfortunate comment came true, it left him riddled with guilt for the rest of his life.

Bobby Vee became successful as a teen-idol, made many hit records, and sang his songs around the world.  Early on he even came to my hometown of Sheldon once and performed in the old city hall.  It’s hard to imagine his band performing there, but maybe the fact that our high school’s nickname of the Shadows caught their attention.  I felt a bit of embarrassment when not many attended.  A few years ago when the city fathers demolished the old hall, I imagined the ghosts from so many basketball games, class plays, and dances like this hovering overhead after escaping through the open roof.

Sixty years ago, meaning the late 50s and early 60s, represented an important time in the lives of me and my friends.  We recently ordered breakfast in a Denny’s cafe, and on the wall a large picture of a ’57 Ford caught my attention.  Those were the days when car designs caught everyone’s attention.  A quick check online for restored ’57 Chevrolets shows just how popular they remain because it takes a fat wallet to buy a nice one.

Other music besides Bobby Vee’s sounded good to us.  Remember “Sleepwalk” by Santo and Johnny, “The Twist” by Chubby Checker, and while I didn’t know my wife at the time, I now sing her song in the shower, “Hello Mary Lou” by Ricky Nelson.  Sock hops provided an attractive form entertainment, although I don’t remember anyone shedding their shoes to dance.  I remember one dancer, however, who liked to kick his shoe off so that it sailed straight up to the ceiling.  Movies… who doesn’t remember “The Magnificent Seven” where Mexican peasants hire seven gunfighters to help defend their homes.  “Ben-Hur”  and “A Hundred and One Dalmations” filled the theaters.

Memory-trips can be fun, although much about the sixties wasn’t.  The Vietnam War, civil rights protests, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Cuban missile crisis, and other events dominated the news and occupied our thoughts.  Some of us escaped by reading best-sellers like Hawaii, Goldfinger, or Catch 22.

Thanks to the happy couple for being married sixty years because their celebration opened the door to a large room full of memories.  There are words to a song that go like this: “Yesterday is history.  Tomorrow is a mystery.  And I know that only this moment is mine.”  But darn it, I like history.  The past causes the present and so on into the future.

Nancy McClure: We Say Goodbye (for now)

Readers who have followed some of these stories featuring Nancy McClure might wonder “what’s up with that.”  The main reason is that I’ve found her to be an interesting real-life character who lived in the Sandhills near my hometown of Sheldon.  Furthermore I once drove a truck on the ground where she lived when I helped friends chop corn for silage and got to know something about that little spot called Pigeon Point.

One time I laid a ruler down on a map to join these two places and discovered the line coincided with the old rutted wagon road that angled through our meadow.  As our proverbial crow always flies, the distance would have been only seven or eight miles.  Old timers told Dad this was the road settlers used.  Nancy never traveled on that road because Sheldon did not yet exist when she lived in the area, but the point is my curiosity about the early settlers had been awakened and began growing.  Dusty papers, archived newspapers, interviews of early settlers, publications of the first historians all started yielding an almost forgotten story in which I found and imagined Nancy’s presence.

My membership in the group known as the Western Writers of America gave me impetus to move along with research.  But it’s also to get in the face somewhat of fellow members who disregard the history of our area and emphasize such characters as Buffalo Bill, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and many more.  Our resident characters just never rose to their idealized heights full of stretched truth and inaccuracy.  

There is no reason not to call Pigeon Point a gateway to the West, another reason for concentrated study.  And it was a gateway until Fargo took its place with the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad.  Already by 1854 steamboat traffic had reached St. Paul on the Mississippi River.  To the west stood St. Cloud, then Fort Abercrombie, and onward to Fort Ransom and the wide open spaces of the West.  

The gold and silver strike in Montana in 1864 began drawing people.  A. H. Laughlin, one of the early pioneers who spoke of the area’s history, presented a themed paper to the Sheldon Old Settlers Picnic in 1907 that he titled “Footprints of Ransom County Pioneers.”  He stretched things a bit when he said General Sibley marched through here with 10,000 troops in 1863.  Instead we know it was closer to 2,000 troops.  And he probably overstated when said overland routes in Ransom County carried “hundreds of thousands of northwestern pioneer empire builders.”  Large numbers of hopeful miners and settlers did pass through, however.

Nancy was in residence at the beginning of the westward march.  Things didn’t always go so good for her.  We can gossip a little about her about her domestic life, she had a problem husband who liked the bottle and probably had a wandering eye.  One time she remarked that he was a handsome man, but if he had been neglecting Nancy, he shouldn’t have because another man stepped in.  Charles Huggan came  hunting and trapping along the Sheyenne River, soon became sweet on Nancy, and a love affair blossomed.  When her husband Dave Faribault became aware of the romance, he threatened Huggan with his long hunting knife, a threat that only caused the couple to be more discreet.

How to solve the problem?  Well, Huggan procured whisky from somewhere, and when some bullwhackers stayed overnight, he made it available.  Available, that is, if they’d promise to make sure Faribault drank plenty.  When he woke from a drunken stupor, he couldn’t find Nancy.  The lovebirds had run away and never came back.  They settled in Flandreau, South Dakota where they lived the rest of their lives.  No further information could be found regarding Faribault.

The area where Nancy lived is now called the Pigeon Point Preserve which consists of 571 acres, purchased and controlled by the Nature Conservancy.  In addition to any historical significance it possesses, at least fifteen rare plants grow there.  A visitor to the site can find depressions in the ground where buildings once stood.  Pictures do not exist, but sources indicate the presence of several buildings standing there one time.  In fact, three of us visited the site a couple of years ago to walk the ground where we noted the remaining cellar depressions.

Nancy will take a break now while we give voice to other early residents who have made their presence known.  She will return.