Where Did the Time Go?

An often heard phrase goes something like “where did the time go?” Another one says “The older you get the faster the time flies.” We marvel at this seeming fact in our lives and voice it in many variations. I’ve been on this earth for eighty-two years and can verify that it happens.

Eighty-two years ago, 1942, and the United States had been in a state of war for about three

months. I can’t remember any of the details of the war but did sense the feeling of euphoria that

pervaded the country for a couple of years after the veterans returned home. It ended with the

spectacular event of atomic bombs exploding over two different Japanese cities. It finally

convinced them to surrender, and people started getting their lives back in order to live normal

lives.

Peace didn’t last long. Another war started, the Korean War. Fought on a smaller scale than the

previous one, it nevertheless sucked a lot of energy out of the nation. Nothing was solved since

Korea divided into two entities and is left in the still-existing state of war. At its beginning few

people even knew where Korea was on a map, but many gave their lives. Not many of us knew

where Vietnam was either, and there we were fighting an escalating war from which we finally

withdrew.

For me, fifteen U. S. presidents beginning with Franklin Roosevelt flew by so fast I never got a

chance to know them very well. Twelve North Dakota governors beginning with John Moses

came and went, regardless of any jokes about Moses. Other developments in my life have

occurred, such as marriage, family, work, computers, land travel, space travel, and so much more

that it’s pointless to try to name them all.

Since my life has passed by so quickly, I can easily imagine time-traveling to the previous

eighty-two years which lands me at 1860. Unfortunately southern states had begun seceding

from the Union, Abraham Lincoln won election to the presidency, and numerous clashes between

northern and southern armies occurred. But time goes on. Dakota Territory formed, the first

transcontinental railroad completed, westward movement began, statehood was approved, Henry

Ford built cars, and Teddy Roosevelt became the hero of the charge up San Juan Hill.

We roll over into the 20th century by watching the Wright Brothers making the first flight, our

entering the first world war, opening the Panama Canal, and suffering through a worldwide

influenza epidemic. Lindbergh made the first solo transatlantic flight, a severe drought coupled

with an economic depression struck, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote, and

the first minimum wage appeared at twenty-five cents an hour. In 1941, one big occurrence

overshadowed most of the news that year, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Just like that two lifetimes whistled by. To extend again, why not play with the idea of

considering one more lifetime, a third life, to show just how fast it went by. It began in 1778, anddarn it, there’s another war, the Revolutionary War. But maybe it’s for the best since patriots

from thirteen states rose up against British rule and resulted in independence which our

forefathers melded into a republic. Did you know Yankee Doodle became the new republic

unofficial national anthem. Our Constitution was written and we chose George Washington for

our first president. We ratified the Bill of Rights. John Adams appeared as the second president

and we experienced a peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the other.

The first forty years of the 1800s saw Thomas Jefferson doubling the republic’s size with the

Louisiana Purchase. Then to figure out what he’d just done, sent Lewis and Clark on a mission to

find out. We fought the War of 1812 and Napoleon discovered just how big Russia was in the

wintertime. The Industrial Revolution started. The Erie Canal connected the Great Lakes to the

Atlantic Ocean.

The Oregon Trail became an outlet for western travelers, the 49ers arrived in California looking

for gold, Walt Whitman wrote “Leaves of Grass,” John Brown raided Harper’s Ferry, and

Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species.”

I’ve packed a lot into these past 246 years, three of my lifetimes. This has been a silly exercise to

play with, but time really does fly by. It’s possible to play the scenario all the way back to the

dinosaur age or maybe Adam and Eve. But it’s the business of theologians and scientists to tell us

about that.

The better way to reckon time might be to look forward into the future of our descendants lives.

A Greek proverb packs a powerful meaning: A society grows great when old men plant trees

whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

Random Thoughts - Fri Feb 21, 2025

 RANDOM THOUGHTS - Friday, February 21, 2025

Preserve the wilderness … Read a history book … If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you … Did you hear about the Norwegian who loved his wife so much he almost told her … Is it baseball season yet? … Still making plans for the future … The sooner we shed oil dependance the quicker we’ll develop alternate forms of energy … In the book Atlas Shrugged the world stopped when productive members of society went on strike … The best TV is watching reruns of “Mash’ … Today in 1878 the first telephone book was printed in Connecticut … Did I say read a history book … Pies yesterday at Sons of Norway: strawberry rhubarb and blueberry, yum …

Too Much or Too Little, Part II

 Don’t we all possess little quirks or idiosyncrasies? One of mine is the dread of seeing beautiful, productive farm land taken out of production for reasons of the “greater good.” Something that benefits the majority of people always requires some sacrifice or expense incurred by the minority. Here in Fargo we are witnessing the construction of a mammoth project that I hope doesn’t turn into a boondoggle for which people have already sacrificed.

What is called the Fargo-Moorhead Area Diversion Project creeps snakelike around the city for thirty miles. The dirt work plus the accompanying right-of-way take 4,500 acres. Another 30,000 acres are being provided for in what the engineers call a staging area, i.e. reservoir. 

It isn’t just a trench or canal since a lot of infrastructure accompanies it. Drive south of Horace and find a large concrete gated dam structure, but that’s not the only one. Two more are being constructed. In order for people to pass back and forth across the canal it will take nineteen bridges to facilitate traffic.

It’s the three billion dollar (that’s with a “b”) projected cost caught my skeptic’s eye. Then, how well will it work in a high water year. We don’t know. My mind always goes back to the McClusky Canal where construction took place from 1969 to 1976. It’s purpose was to transport water from the Missouri River to Fargo and beyond. I still remember the time I drove past one spot near the city of McClusky where the canal cut was deep in order to facilitate gravity flow of water. At its bottom ducks swam amongst the reeds and slough grass. Am I the only one who thinks it’s a boondoggle?

Closer to home the Maple River Dam rose out of bottomland starting in the fall of 2004 with completion in the summer of 2007. Its planners claim it reduced the depth and duration of flooding in 2009 and that without it, downstream flooding would have been significantly worse. One farmer tried to monkeywrench the project by selling a 1.4 acre parcel to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa for some woolen blankets and beads. But that became brushed aside in the court.Whether or not much good comes from the project is something I don’t know, but it cost $30 million to build and claims 2,800 acres of farmland.

The big daddy of North Dakota projects has to be Garrison Dam. Funny thing, its construction cost was a puny $300 million compared to the FM Diversion Project’s cost of $3 billion. Much of the dissimilar numbers though needs to be chalked up to inflation. In an online inflation calculator, that $300 million figure becomes approximately $3.5 billion today. Remember the old maxim: liars figure, figures lie. Mathematicians can refigure the numbers. At any rate, that number does seem to be more in line when compared to the FM diversion.

Resources don’t quite agree as to the size of the dam’s reservoir. One source states it covers 383,000 acres and is the 3rd largest manmade lake in the U.S. That many acres is equal to 597 sections of ground which makes for 16.5 townships. It all needs to be applied to human terms, though. The dam project displaced more than one-third of the Three Affiliated Tribes and took up about 95% of their land. When the tribes signed it over, a famous picture of the tribal chairman is shown crying as he says, “We will sign this contract with a heavy heart … With a few scratches of the pen, we will sell the best part of our reservation. Right now the future doesn’t look too good to us.” 

It wasn’t just Indians who were affected. At the time of procuring the land, white ranchers lived and worked in harmony among them. They suffered displacement, too, and were forced to seek new opportunities and homes, too. My wife knew one family well since they became next door neighbors. At one son’s kitchen table the three of us sat down and learned about their move.

Everything the family owned needed to be moved. They decided to drive their cattle herd to their newly acquired ranch  with a crew of four cowboys, plus the family’s head who drove a truck with its box converted to sleeping quarters. On the first morning, friends from the community helped drive the herd through the narrow Four Bears Bridge. Care had to be taken to funnel the cows into the bridge to prevent their falling down the steep riverbank and into the river.

An incident occurred when the herd had successfully walked onto the bridge. A car entered from the opposite end. Some of the cows spooked and turned back causing them to do some hard horseback riding to get the cattle turned. Then when the cows were heading in the right direction they “came off the other end like they were shot out of a cannon.” Now they had another roundup ahead of them. He said, “If they had gotten into those badlands, we would never have found them.” They averaged about seventeen miles a day over a 10 1/2 day period.

Dollar cost can be found easily enough as can the acres of ground involved. It’s hard to calculate costs in human terms, though. For instance, eleven rural cemeteries face some degree of flooding risk in the FM project. On the Fort Berthold Reservation the churches and families developed many cemeteries until 1952, when the Garrison Dam forced the relocation of hundreds of families within the flood plain. The dam led to the loss of farmland, homes, and community infrastructure. While it is easy to criticize all these projects, they are deemed necessary for the greater good. Teddy Roosevelt was the first great environmentalist, but his quote just doesn’t apply here: “Leave it as it is.”

The Cuban Missile Crisis

  In Clay Jenkinson’s newsletter today he writes, “Few people alive today can imagine the terror of October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis provoked hundreds of thousands of Americans to build bomb shelters in their backyards.” 

I am one who remembers it and the fright I experienced while watching the live report on our television.