Odds and Ends

 Odds and Ends to Clear My Desk - I was surprised yesterday to see a collection of pictures appear from the Medora Gathering this spring and there I was doing my thing … We went to Nome and Fingal on Saturday, Nome because I thought that’s where the craft show was, but no, I walked in that schoolhouse and there were gathered many young ladies all looking at me. Found out later it was a wedding shower. I’m standing on those same stairs in that Nome school where Dad and many of his siblings climbed every schoolday … Back to Fingal where the crowd was very light, but I snapped a few pictures of the town … I liked the cupola on one of the buildings. I’ve written a story where a cupola is featured with my grand-grandpa, a story which will appear in the future. … I didn’t catch many cars at the Great Race in Fargo but here are a couple of them. And that’s all for now.

The Great American Road Race

 We saw the first of what is expected to be many old time cars today as Fargo is the end point of the Great American Road Race. In the Panera lot sat this one, about a ’49 Chevy. Inside two men sat and I asked if they were with the race. They were. They’d started out in Rhode Island and made it here. The thing of it was they are from Texas, so now have to drive that stretch back home. I asked the one if they are still talking to each other and he said they were. We never used to think much about gas mileage in that era and I wondered what kind of mileage they were getting, “About 12 mpg.” The drivers of every car will have a good story.

Making Hay

 At one time we had 3 or 4 pencil drawings by Don Greytak, a Montana artist. In downsizing for our move to Fargo, we let many things go. This picture we kept because both Mary and I see ourselves in it. She remembers, not fondly, how she would be drafted to drive a tractor pulling the trailer. She says it was a hateful job that she didn’t seem to think she had the aptitude for. I’m one of those guys lifting, throwing, and stacking the bales. Back in the day this was a time of year farmers needed extra hands to move the hay crop off the field, and neighbors always came looking for help. The going rate was $7 a day with dinner at noon. I guess when you’ve got nothing in your pocket, $7 seemed okay.

     One year perfect weather conditions produced a crop of sandburs in the hayfield like any I’ve seen since. No way could they be avoided when manhandling the bales. I remember stickers still festering out of my thighs that winter.

 

    When we lived in Mandan I helped my brother-in-law make hay. Now that was an entirely different experience. I drove a large tractor with a front mounted haybine that cut and laid out a nice windrow behind. After the hay dried, he would bale it to pick up with a hydraulic loader. Little muscle was required. 

No Soo Line for Sheldon

 Fred Underwood was an early mover and shaker in the Sheldon and Enderlin communities. I’ve collected copies of many of his papers on file at the North Dakota Historical Society archives. Here is one of interest.

     “On a Sunday afternoon in August in 1891 Mr. Underwood was sitting on the front steps of a hotel in Sheldon (hotel owned by H. F. Labbit), alone because most of his friends had left town on hunting expeditions. A man on horseback rode up and handed him a note, written by a friend, the late John Kratt of Sheldon and the note read as follows, to whit, ‘There’s a gang of surveyors coming up through the sandhills surveying for a new railroad and it will run a little west of Sheldon. If you fellows in Sheldon want the road to run through Sheldon you had  better get busy.’ That was the first he had heard of the Soo Line Railroad. The business men of Sheldon immediately organized and sent to Minneapolis a committee to negotiate with the officials of the Soo Line. They offered them all sorts of considerations including a free right of way through Ransom County, provided they would run the new line through the village of Sheldon. The committee was unable to accomplish anything and the road was built as now located. A few months thereafter Mr. Underwood sat in a buggy with his future wife and saw the construction crew lay the rails for the Soo Line around the bend and down the hill westward toward Enderlin.”

Baxter Black

  BAXTER BLACK - A great entertainer (he happened to be a cowboy poet) recently passed away. I saw Baxter Black perform one time and can’t remember laughing so hard. He had a way of stringing words together in comic fashion to tell his poem-stories that I’ve not heard anyone else do. Much of his verse was committed to memory and he could stand on stage and recite for a long time.

     Being able to commit long passages of material to memory seems to me an asset. I’ve not been able to do it. My wife, the special ed teacher, hints at a possible learning disability where I probably should have been her student. My history books tell of how Winston Churchill could recite long passages of rather obscure works to fit some situation he found himself in. 

     I have a set of books by Daniel J. Boorstin, one of which is The Discoverers, in which he wrote a chapter called “The Lost Arts of Memory.” He writes of the days before books appeared when Memory ruled daily life. It was Memory that carried knowledge forward through time and space. For instance, great works of literature such as The Iliad and The Odyssey survived as Memory works. Then the printed book became the warehouse of Memory, and the attitude developed that knowledge doesn’t need to be memorized since it can now be looked up. That’s where I fit in with my lazy brain.

     Our Native American friends still preserve and maintain some of their memory power with  ideas of oral tradition. It’s only been a couple hundred years that their history and culture has been preserved through the written word. But it I believe knowledge of their life was known far in advance of the written word.

     Back to Baxter Black. It readers of this are unfamiliar with his work, type his name in the YouTube search blank and dozens of examples will come up.

80 Is the Number

 Since I've reached an age where there is more to look back on than there is to anticipate, I found these words by Andrew Arntson in a letter dated Feb. 19, 1954 speaking to me.

"In Ransom County we have settlements more than 80 years old. After another 80 years will there be much known of the early struggles of our forefathers?"

This is what keeps historians digging around dusty shelves and dark corners.

Eiseley Quote

 I saw mention of Loren Eiseley for some reason or other on Facebook and was immediately reminded of a quote he made that I have saved. An anthropologist, he collected fossil bones and in this scene his dog claimed one of those bones: 

"A low and steady rumbling began to rise in his chest, something out of a long-gone midnight. There was nothing in that bone to taste, but ancient shapes were moving in his mind and determining his utterance. Only fools gave up bones. He was warning me.

As I advanced, his teeth showed and his mouth wrinkled to strike. The rumbling rose to a direct snarl. His flat head swayed low and wickedly as a reptile's above the floor. I was the most loved object in his universe, but the past was fully alive in him now. Its shadows were whispering in his mind. I knew he was not bluffing. If I made another step he would strike."

... Instinct.

New Building in Sheldon

 A new firehall and community center is being built in Sheldon. Many items of historical significance are in the old building, and it will be good to see them moved to this modern, fireproof place. The section for the community center looks larger than what is currently available in the old building and will be more efficient for get-togethers. Note the colors: almost like Shadows black and red

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June 8, 1974

 It happened this day 48 years ago!