We made our first visit this recent Saturday to the Nome Schoolhouse to check out their Makers Mart featuring vendors of handmade items. I’ve been wanting to enter and see the school where my dad and many of his siblings attended for a few years. Upon entering I made the wooden stairs squeak and groan like any of the buildings of this type but must say the owners have done a great job in making the over-one hundred year place presentable and usable. While much space was given to exhibitor stands in the building, one room housed a collection of interesting artifacts related to the city and the school.
I wanted to verify the age of the building to settle my mind that this building was indeed the school building which Dad’s family members attended. A couple of men were standing in there who might know. I asked, “Either of you guys know when this building was built?” The one spoke right up “1916,” and when he found out my name said, “You’re Lynn Bueling, I read your article in the paper all the time.” We were off to a good start.
He had been looking at an old 1928 Barnes county atlas opened to Raritan Township. “Right there is where the Buelings used to live on Carl Lindemann’s place.” Turned out he knew quite a few stories about my family, and I will contact both gentlemen in the future for more.
Upon opening a 1984 Barnes County history book I stumbled upon something I’d not seen before. Dad had submitted a family history for the book. Among other things he wrote,
“Charles Bueling first came to North Dakota in 1900 to work on a threshing crew in the Alice, N.D. area. After coming back several seasons, he liked the area so well that he stayed on. His younger brother, who had traveled with him, returned to Wisconsin to take over the blacksmith business they had established earlier. Charles married Ottilia (Tillie) Menge in 1907, and they started farming in the Alice area. Then they moved one half mile north of Nome where they lived from 1922 to 1927…” So that information established the dates of my family connection to Nome.
There was more to see and do so we started roaming around the building and found it filled with vendors and then lingered by a pen of two alpacas in the gym area. About that time a family with three small kids came along and were lined up against the pen for a group picture. Those kids were all three smiling ear to ear and I wish now I’d have taken their picture standing there in front of the alpacas, too. But it was time to eat a lunch which we found in a nice sunlit room. We’ll probably return next year.
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Perhaps a mention of the death of Bob Dole is in order. When I heard of his passing, I took a bit of time to find something memorable about his time as a U.S. Senator. I learned of the stalemate in Congress that blocked passage of any bill regarding Social Security during the remaining months of 1982. It was at this point that Senators Bob Dole (R-KS) and Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) stepped up and led a bipartisan compromise that ultimately allowed passage of support.
Dole said, ”…and I have learned in my own life, from my own experience, that not every man, woman or child can make it on their own. And that in time of need, the bridge between failure and success can be the government itself. And given all that I have experienced, I shall always remember those in need. That is why I helped to save Social Security in 1983 and that is why I will be the president who preserves and strengthens and protects Medicare for America's senior citizens.” That quote stands on its own.
His death brought back a memory. I had just finished my first year of teaching and was approached by a farmer at Bowdon who invited me to travel south with his crew to Kansas for the wheat harvest. I agreed and drove one of the trucks with a combine loaded on my back. As we traveled down U.S. 281, we came into Kansas where stone fenceposts started appearing north of Bob Dole’s hometown of Russell, Kansas. I remember the location because a large billboard proudly proclaimed him as a hometown boy.
I had never seen or heard of such a thing as stone fenceposts in my young years and marveled at the sight. Here is what the Kansas Historical Society says about them. “In 1862 the Homestead Act opened the way for the settlement of the plains. People with varied backgrounds were drawn to the dream of relatively free land. The fact that much of central Kansas was treeless created numerous problems for early settlers. A significant problem was finding a means by which to enclose portions of the free range.”
Fields of sandstone lay close to the surface and resourceful people realized it could be cut quite easily and planted in the ground to hold wire like wooden posts. I saw them 56 years ago, and while I’ve not seen them still in use, someone told me they are.
Speaking of combine crews, that wasn’t the only time I went with one into Kansas and Nebraska. The next two summers found me on another one, this time with the Larson Brothers from Enderlin. This is worthy of mention because a hale and hearty and ready-to-go combining again Chet Larson just celebrated his 90th birthday at a party we were able to attend. Happy birthday, Chet!
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