Here's a blast from the past, 70 years ago, 5-6 Grades in 1953-54.
The aftermath of wild winds be seen when you drive through the sandhills area in the eastern side of Ransom County. On this tall grass prairie those winds in the historic drought years ripped and tore at the surface and reshaped the terrain with drifting dunes of sand. Adequate rainfall and conservation methods have tamed it now which enables stands of waving grass to take root again.
It can be said one of the area’s families grew their roots to stay in place, too. The Bohnsack Ranch sprawls for 2,000 acres in parts of Owego and Coburn Townships. The property now rests in the hands of Bonita Bohnsack Laske, her husband Lynn Laske, and their daughter Lydia who represents the fourth generation.
Charles and Hulda Bohnsack purchased the land in 1918 and held it until 1935 when they offered it to their daughter, Frieda. She accepted its challenge even though it came with a big mortgage, rundown buildings, and six Holstein calves. Father Charles loved the beauty and peacefulness of the sandhills and helped Frieda until 1957 when he died at the age of 98.
Frieda rolled up her sleeves and managed the ranch operation until being joined by her daughter Bonita whom she adopted as a newborn baby in 1941. In spite of a heavy workload, Frieda made sure to surround her daughter with love and a healthy nurturing environment. That upbringing serves her well and brings us to the present day. The North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame (NDCHF) recently inducted Bonita to their “Leaders in Ranching and Rodeo” category.
The daughter is adamant about crediting the mother for being the role model for her successes. You see, that same organization inducted Frieda into their “Pre-1940s Ranching” category in 2002. Now they are the only mother-daughter pair represented in the NDCHF.
We’ll summarize the narrative that lists some of Frieda’s qualifications for induction. Relishing the job of rebuilding and operating the ranch during the 1930s, she built her Angus herd by taking in cattle for summer grazing. The quality of her herd often brought top price at McLeod’s annual Sandhills Feeder Calf Sale. Willing to experiment in improving her herd, she brought in purebred Blue Brahman bulls to develop Brangus cattle. In addition to her hands-on work, she found time to start a saddle club, lead a 4-H club, teach school, and maintain membership and leadership in several relevant organizations. She promoted rodeos, showdeos, trail drives, and various other gatherings at the ranch during her active years.
Bonita started tracing the steps of her role model mother. Some of her accomplishments include honors of being named Miss Rodeo North Dakota, an NDRA Champion Barrel Racer, and a runner-up in the Miss Rodeo America contest to name a few. After graduation from NDSU she worked for the National Livestock and Meat Board in Chicago as a traveling home economist, married Lynn Laske and moved to Oklahoma for his work with western boot companies. Among other things, she has served as president of the Oklahoma Cowbelles, worked in hospitality events for the National Finals Rodeo, and chaperoned the Miss Rodeo contest.
North Dakota lures her family back each summer to live and work on the ranch they’ve leased to another party. It seems natural that while in residence they enjoy promoting the history of the western lifestyle in the beautiful setting of the Sandhills of eastern North Dakota. Conscious of the environment, she told of waging a fight against the spread of leafy spurge in their pastures. Sheep eat it, so they’ve welcomed a large flock of about 1,000 head to come eat their fill.
Cutting horses play an important part in their lives, both past and present. They still hold a cutting event sponsored by the North Dakota Cutting Association called the Don Taylor Memorial Cutting in memory of Lynn’s late brother-in-law. They began training them and fondly recall riding one out of the famous Doc Bar line that placed highly in the National Cutting Futurity.
Ian Tyson sings about meeting up with the Doc Bar line of horses in his song “The Steeldust Line” as he heads to Las Vegas and a cutting competition. Upon arriving he reads the entry list and sees “the whole Doc Bar dynasty a-posted on the wall.” He knew he would be facing good horses and strong competition.
When touring the ranch headquarters, a visitor can’t help but notice the interior of one building where about 400 ribbons hang and 60 trophies are displayed from winning or placing in various contests. Bonita lives a full life, as did her mother. The family does not neglect their spiritual life and attends and supports two churches here, the Helendale Lutheran Church and the Bethel Moravian Church in Leonard. A testimonial supporting her candidacy for induction into the NDCHF came from a former Miss Rodeo North Dakota who stated “She is the real deal.” A video of her induction at Medora can be viewed online.
Heavy rains in the area reminded me of time I saw a New England river full of pumpkins after a heavy rainfall run-off … “We can never tell what is in store for us/ Harry Truman … Fargo wants two different quarter cent sales taxes bringing total to 8% … Another grandkid heading off to college, De Paul Univ in Chicago … On this day in 1989 Nolan Ryan struck out his 5,000th batter … Mary solved another thousand piece puzzle. It’s a pretty picture … Football season arrived, but where did summer go?
Rain, rain, go away. Come again some time when we need it ... Great turnout at the pork and corn feed in Sheldon on Wednesday night ... Weathermen are pointing to the possibility of a very cold winter ... Enderlin Indies won another state baseball championship ... Well done is better than well said/ Benjamin Franklin ... So much to do, so little time ... Anna Mae Spiekermeier received a nice award at pork/corn feed for being a loyal supporter ... And until another time, good-bye.
John Steinbeck claimed that he camped overnight near Alice while touring the country on a trip made famous by his best-selling book Travels with Charley. He added that a Shakespearean actor had camped near him, and that the two of them spent the night visiting. Some scholars dismiss this episode as a product of Steinbeck’s imagination. Who knows, maybe someone in Alice does.
A state historian and scholar Clay Jenkinson reminds us of this trip. He is following the route Steinbeck took in 1960 and is writing of it on his internet site, “Listening to America.” I doubt he stopped at Alice either, unlike the rocker Alice Cooper who did a few years ago. While Steinbeck mounted a custom-built camper on his pickup, Jenkinson pulls a modern Airstream behind his.
In Travels with Charley Steinbeck commented about crossing the Missouri River between Bismarck and Mandan: “I came on it in amazement. Here is where the map should fold. Here is the boundary between east and west. On the Bismarck side it is eastern landscape, eastern grass, with the look and smell of eastern America. Across the Missouri on the Mandan side, it is pure west, with brown grass and water scorings and small outcrops. The two sides of the river might well be a thousand miles apart.”
At first glance he didn’t like our badlands in the western part of the state calling them the work of an evil child. But as twilight descended those buttes and ravines took on a different personality and he felt he was “trapped in color and dazzled by the clarity of the light.” After he came to terms with the badlands, he realized the colors of the area were “lovely beyond thought.”
Steinbeck might be best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning The Grapes of Wrath. It told the story of the Joad family, down and outers from Oklahoma, who were devastated in the drought, dust storms, and depression of the 1930s. Forced to leave their farm home, the book tells of their trek to California for employment. The people and hardships they faced in this novel came across as being very real. It took his skillful writing ability and imagination to make it so.
The family did not find any welcome mats. When and if any of these “Okies” found work, they experienced exploitation in the prevailing system of agricultural economics. Steinbeck received criticism, even to the point of being a communist, for having his characters promote labor unions which didn’t sit well with the real-life establishment. He was also criticized by parents and teachers for his writing foul language, sexual content, and violence.
If readers want another other side to the story they only need to find a copy of Elmer Kelton’s book The Time It Never Rained. Set in the 1950s, it centers on an old Texas rancher who refuses government aid during a drought lasting several years. He is not about to lose his dignity by accepting government help, never quits, and hangs on, even though it’s broken him and he is too old to start afresh. It is one of the great books of western literature.
Authors have to exercise their imaginations to give us writing like the examples mentioned above. It’s not just writers, though. Without thoughts of a better life, we might still be in the stone age throwing rocks at animals to get something to eat. Look at the phrase commonly used in farm country, “making hay.” Simple enough? Over the years it has gone through a lot of changes brought on by someone’s imagination looking for better ways to do it. The old Egyptians made sickles by taking a large jawbone from a cow and inserting flint-knapped stones in the tooth cavities. It moved them one step beyond pulling it up by hand.
With the new-fangled product of iron blacksmiths poured and pounded out long curved cutting knives called scythes and attached them to wooden handles. After the grass was cut and dried, the process of gathering it up and carrying armfuls of it to a stack gave way to loading it on hay racks, thereby handling larger amounts pulled by horses.
Machines kept growing better and larger. Imaginative thinkers dreamt up the idea of a reciprocating sickle for a five foot mower which utilized ground traction from a bull wheel to power its cutting action. This size soon gave way to seven foot models that took its power off a tractor engine, which simply said is a power take-off.
Swathers, field choppers, discbines, and on into the future to where else? How we handle the hay changed from towering stacks of loose hay to round bales to square bales picked from the field by bale hook swinging men walking alongside a flat bed trailer, to hydraulic picking machines. We didn’t mention the different methods of gathering the hay after it had dried, for instance dump rakes, side delivery rakes, or wheel rakes.
We’ve strayed quite a long way from the opening where we talked about Travels with Charley, but creative minds, not just authors, give us something new, such as in the agricultural world and science, music, sports, and entertainment. Imagination stokes thought and empowers us to dream beyond the limits of what is.
Another Sandvig has come and gone. They take place in the Leonard park which is a nice place to hold it. Our numbers aren't so great anymore, although more could come. But those who do come never seem to be in a hurry to leave.
I wasn’t about to turn down a shot of “redeye!” The last one I’d had was from that batch my new father-in-law mixed for our wedding reception fifty years ago. And now at the 53rd annual Germans from Russia International Convention (GRHS) I even had the chance to learn how to make it.
The organization claims over 1,500 members. A quick count of registrants attending the event in Mandan, ND, showed they came from twenty-five states, the provinces of Alberta and Saschatewan, and the country of Germany. They came to share history, stories, and memories of ancestors who immigrated here to escape broken promises and oppressive conditions in Russia.
I come to an interest in GRHS through a grandmother who came to the U. S. from the Volhynian region of Ukraine with her family in 1904. She and her Menge family left Russia from the German port of Bremen on the SS Breslau and arrived at the port of Baltimore on May 5 of that year. Our knowledge of their life in Ukraine is minimal, but much can be deduced from our historical knowledge of the wide-spread political and social unrest which grew and culminated in the Russian Revolution of 1917.
She was seldom willing to share facts of that life but remembered being told about the day she was born and her mother dug potatoes the following day to pay state taxes. She told of the times she herded cows, barefoot and cold, and waited for the cows to lift their tails so she could stand in the droppings to warm her feet. She told of when they paid a man $25 to smuggle them across the Russian border in 1904. When reported to the authorities, he jumped to his death in front of a train to avoid arrest.
Almost everyone at the convention could relate similar stories of hard times before emigrating from Ukraine. The compelling story of one family’s journey caught the attention of best selling author Mark Sullivan who spoke to a packed session about his novel The Last Green Valley. A member of that family, Walter Martel, was present and affirmed the story’s accuracy. When the family recognized they were being caught in a vise between the Russian army and the Nazi army they decided to leave. The book illustrates how the journey proved their mettle and resilience.
Catherine the Great’s belief in the Germans had proven true when she invited German farmers and tradesmen to come to Russia and promote progress by example. For the most part those farmers were successful and raised good crops and livestock. It should have served as a model for the unproductive serfs, but the government saw their accumulating grain stores and herds and began taking it away, in spite of all previous agreements. These Germans from Russia began leaving for America and Canada where they have flourished. An anecdote was told about the Martel father who in his later years enjoyed driving around in his Cadillac with his fishing rods in the back.
I liked Ron Vossler’s humor so much I attended his session twice. Many of his stories centered around life in a cafe in Wishek and the older generation coffee drinkers who sat there analyzing the world through their cultural lens. But you only need to read his book Hitler’s Basement to understand he is a serious student of the Germans from Russia experience. For instance, a powerful image still lingers in me after I read of his visit to an area in Ukraine where he spotted children playing in dirt and ashes at a known spot where people were incinerated. While probing for answers to his relatives’ experiences in Germany, he was often met with reticence, such as his mother’s, “Ach, let it go child. Can’t you just forget about it?” He didn’t and has rendered a powerful book from his findings.
Brother Placid Gross, OSB, brings humorous pieces of folklore to every convention and recently compiled much of it in a new book Prairie Wisdom. Here is one example. Wer langsam, geht kommt auch ziel, which in English is “Whoever goes slow also comes to the goal.”
German words were sprinkled throughout the sessions. One caught my attention: Umsiedlung which translated means resettlement, a particularly appropriate word for the GRHS group. For the most part sessions dealt with resettlement in varying degrees. For instance, the title of one of them was “Bessarabia Resettlement - June to October 1940.”
Speaking of words and phrases voiced in the German language, whenever a presenter spoke them and the audience started laughing, I laughed along with them to act polite. All the while, I hoped the term would be translated aloud; it usually was. My wife could laugh legitimately because she had heard those German words and phrases spoken while growing up in her childhood home. As for me I grew up influenced by the Scandinavian culture, lefse and all.
I’ve picked up a few German words, though, especially when they refer to food. Take kuchen, for instance. We all knew what it was and every afternoon we lined up at coffee break to claim a piece of it. Choose your favorite: apple, rhubarb, prune, peach, or cottage cheese. Meal time brought more German food, and I have learned what to expect with knoephla, kraut, or spaetzle.
The G-R organization recognizes that in its aging profile the need arises for younger people to take interest and join. My wife and I have decided to give our two sons gift memberships. Maybe it will instill and deepen a desire to participate by shaking their family tree to pick some fruit.
I. Unite the Prairie in Sheldon
In the early part of the last century the call went out for settlers to come to the country and establish farmsteads where they could live happily ever after. Sheldon was home to an active effort to encourage and aid newcomers. The Ransom County Immigration Association came into being to deal with land sales. Much land was available and they came with the assuring, but imaginative, words that “rain follows the plow.” They set to work turning the soil with their one bottom plows and through the years more and bigger equipment blackened increasing acres of ground. One Indian observer shook his head and stated, “Wrong side up.”
It didn’t take long before they realized the plowed dirt rain promise was junk science, but with the right conditions the land yielded a rich bounty. Pioneer accounts of their efforts tell us that the grass plowed under was so tall cattle could get lost in it. Wildlife thrived and all manner of four-legged animals and winged insects and birds found their homes in it. Then with wildlife habitat disappearing, various species disappeared or became endangered. It is beyond reason to think that we could or should ever return to that time, but could anything be done to help restore habitat for the affected plants and animals?
One man has set his sight on doing what he can. Jon DeVries began wondering what he could do to help and twenty years ago founded “United Prairie Foundation.” The organization’s goal is to restore prairie habitats that wildlife need for survival. Also, through a patch-burn-graze program they aim to utilize diverse local ecotype seed and prescribed fire to benefit livestock grazing conditions. He works with other groups and has received co-operation and know-how from them. For instance, the Meadowlark Initiative has been initiated by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department and is closely aligned with United Prairie. Who doesn’t like to hear the meadowlark’s song in the countryside?
Seeds. To reach their intended goals, they need seeds. To obtain them, the organization operates the only dedicated native plant nursery in North Dakota. Located in Enderlin, it is a collection and propagation site for seed harvested from remaining spots of native wild prairies. Those seeds have proved their hardiness in the harsh conditions of our area and are distributed to cooperating sites throughout the area.
Leafy spurge, a particularly noxious weed, can be fought with the spurge beetle, its natural predator. Problems arise because it’s hard for the beetles to survive harsh winters. The Foundation has been collecting and releasing leafy spurge beetles to control leafy spurge since 2010. They’ve found help with this project from the local Sheyenne Braves 4-H Club.
In order to recognize its twenty year anniversary they sponsored a full day of activities in the community center of its home base in Sheldon. By the way, the building also houses trucks for the Enderlin-Sheldon Fire Department through which the foundation works closely with their controlled burn activity.
Tractors lined main street including a full collection of “20” model John Deere tractors collected by the Bartholomay family. At noon a cavalcade of three dozen classic tractors arrived from their starting point of McLeod just in time to sit at a luncheon provided for them by the Sheldon Lions Club. Range management seminars featured presentations by two NDSU professors, Dr. Torre Hovick and Dr. Kevin Sedivec. A beef feed at suppertime and a street dance with live music by the Tainted Vibes concluded the day’s activities.
II. Sodbusters in Fort Ransom
We wanted to visit the Fort Ransom Sodbusters again and midday left the activities in Sheldon to drive there. A 90 degree temperature with the hot sun magnified through high humidity didn’t make for comfort, but we’re North Dakotans and can take it. It’s hard to find a more beautiful setting anywhere than what is found in the Fort Ransom area, especially the Sunne Farm.
The Sodbusters stated purpose for existing is to preserve the heritage of the area by demonstrating the farming methods and lifestyles of the 1900s. They do just that with their horse drawn machines scattered throughout the farmyard. As an old farmboy I almost started itching while watching the crew working around the threshing machine with some on the rack pitching bundles of shocked oats.
Matched teams of horses powered the demonstrations. From the parking area we rode to the farm site on a wagon pulled by a pair. Even though I’m far removed from those days, I couldn’t help think how nice it was to travel quietly along and hear birds singing. A hay loading machine worked in the distance and another crew was trying to lift hay into the hayloft of the big red barn. Try as they might, they just couldn’t keep hay bunched in the rope slings to lift into the big door. It kept collapsing back into the rack. All the while the team of horses standing at the end of the long tow rope stood patiently waiting for the next try.
In the log cabin ladies sat displaying their skills of tatting and spinning. But the best part was to sample the homemade ice cream. Now that was a treat! The heat got to us, though. Another horsedrawn ride took us to our air conditioned car. If you’d want to visit the farm you can go again this fall. They’ll be celebrating their 40th year of existence with another session of demonstrations, plus a wagon train rolling through the countryside.
