Cowboys and Bling

When I think of Dallas, I think of big hair, galleria shopping malls, and McMansions. Ft. Worth never, ever crossed my consciousness. It was always just the place next door to Dallas. They were cities that had grown together - same place.  And since I grew up around places like Fargo-Moorhead and Minneapolis-St. Paul, both cities divided only by a river, I thought of DFW the same way. Just one place, no unique identity beyond the neighborhoods of either or both. I was wrong.

It may be argued that Dallas is the more sophisticated sibling; glitzy, full of itself, a bit ostentatious.  Ft. Worth is sort of a big brother, unapologetically Western. If Ft. Worth is the rodeo cowboy, Dallas is the rhinestone cowboy. There are other city founder who would agree with that assessment, as well, especially those who founded Ft. Worth.

When I got to my friends' place in Mansfield, I admit I was ready to just hang out - visit, eat, pet the dogs, get some laundry done. But as usual, there's just too much to see and do, so we found our way out and about to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. I know, I know; only in Texas.

The reason I even knew of the Hall's existence was because of a trip to Ashland, Oregon for the Ashland Shakespeare Festival in 1997, five years before the current location of the Hall opened its doors. We had just seen "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and were window shopping. I glanced in the window of a gallery, and saw this image:

It's a piece called "Legends" by Donna Howell Sickles. I didn't buy it, but I did buy a coffee table-sized book of her work. My sister, who has been involved with the art world forever, of course knew who this artist was. And then took a job with American Women Artists, of whom Donna Howell Sickles is a member. Then DHS was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. And there it is.

The museum is dedicated to real cowgirls of course, the nearly indestructible women who raised the babies and laundered the clothes and cooked the meals and helped wrangle the cattle. It is also a place that pays tribute to those women who embody the spirit of the cowgirl - independent, strong, creative. Sandra Day O'Connor is in the Hall. She grew up on a ranch in Arizona.

The Hall itself is impressive, although the cost of admission was a bit steep - $10 per adult. I tried to explain that no one that I know considers me an adult, but Maxine at the front desk wasn't buying what I was selling. I paid my money and consoled myself with the discount I would receive at other area museums when I presented the ticket.

After an unremarkable lunch at Z's, housed at the art center down the block, we walked over to the Amon Carter Museum. I knew that the Amon Carter was a treasure house of American artwork, but had no idea who the heck Amon Carter was, or if it was two people, or what. Carter's story is the quintessential American success story: He was born in a one-room cabin, worked his way up, and ended up collecting enough art to found a museum. Carter was an advocate for Ft. Worth from the beginning of the 20th century, encouraged the Ft. Worth Star to acquired the Ft. Worth Telegram and became advertising manager of that newspaper. In fact, he considered archrival Dallas as "east Texas" and claimed that Ft. Worth is where the West begins. He might be right about that, although Kansas City has been dubbed the eastern-most Western city.  Carter wanted to fund a museum because of his own poverty as a child and lack of exposure to art and culture. It's a beautiful collection, full of American western masterworks such as this classic Frederic Remington painting, "A Dash for the Timber."

 Enough for now. Next, our day in Dallas and the injustice of de-installing art.

A Digression on 18 Wheels

The road from Kansas City to Dallas/Ft. Worth was one filled with fun, adventure, romance, high winds and blinding rain. OK, just high winds and blinding rain.  In order to reach DFW, I cruised straight down I-35, despite my i-phone's best efforts to direct me an hour out of my way on I-70 through Topeka. (And i-phones are great because ...?) When I left KC, the sun was shining in a clear sky. The drive was downright bucolic until a little over one hundred miles later, in Emporia, Kansas, I ducked under the hard cloud line of a front moving up. Hurricane Hermione was moving north as I moved south. The two of us intersected somewhere around Oklahoma City. I let her win and pulled in under a filling station awning. Not even my new dual-hemi-overhead-cam-turbo-powered graphite windshield wipers could keep up with her.

Here comes the digression. I never thought in my lifetime I would speak positively about semi-trucks. Long haul truckers and their rigs were the stuff of country songs, some of them actually good ("Six Days on the Road") most of them bad ("Teddy Bear"). On my travels throughout the western side of the country, eighteen wheelers were thick and fast on the roads and not appreciated by me most of the time. I dislike the draft created when pass them. I dislike how close they follow when they're trying to pass me. The back splash they create in rainy conditions frightens me. And transporting goods by truck, although just about the only way to do it, is grossly inefficient and uses a lot of fossil fuel and we all know what that does.

But a conversation with a tow truck driver in Tucson (more about that in future a future post) got me thinking. The gentleman, I will call him Mike because he seemed like a Mike, was telling me how much he liked what he does for a living. He lived in California, around Chino, I believe, until 1996 where he was a roofer. His wife's family lives in Tucson, so they moved there, and since the thought of enduring 100+ degrees installing a tile roof did not appeal to him, he became a driver. He told me that he's been driving since he moved in 1996.

I could imagine liking getting to play with a tow truck, I guess. There are all sorts of hydraulics and moving parts and truck beds going up and down. I might even be able to understand that he likes "working with the public," as he said. It takes a special breed to be patient with someone whose car has just taken a dump. Then I brought up how dangerous driving a tow truck must be.

"Yeah," he said, "between here and Phoenix, we've lost three drivers already this year."

"Lost as in quit, or lost as in ... no longer with us?" I asked.

"Killed," he replied.

So I got to thinking and poking around. And here's what I have learned: In 1992-95, the trucking industry experienced a 12% fatality rate - higher than any other occupation. Since then, that percentage has come down to about 7% according to a DOT statistic posted in September 2009. As recently as 2005, long haul carriers estimated a shortage of 20,000 drivers which was projected to become around 100,000 by 2014. In 2005, it was also estimated that there was a 136% turnover rate among long haul drivers. Since then, there's been a recession (in case no one's noticed) and many of those vacancies have been filled by construction workers. However, if the federal government comes through with a real investment in infrastructure, there goes the surplus.

But the thing that impressed me the most was how these drivers stop for nothing. From where I was settled in my snug car under the awning, I saw trucks plowing down the Interstate. I can't imagine grossing about $1,000 a week, (which was pay that I saw posted on a chat site, which I can hardly believe) and working those kind of hours. I'm sure this is different depending upon the company and if you're an owner/operator, etc. But after driving nearly 7,000 miles in the past six weeks, I have nothing but respect for truckers.

Next, DFW and cowgirls.

I (heart) KC

The term “fly over country” has always offended me, possibly because I have lived most of my life in what others refer to as fly over country.  For my part, I’m glad that the folks who refer to it that way flew over it instead of stopping in while I was there. I suspect I wouldn’t have liked them much.

The first year that I lived in California it inevitably came up in conversation that I was a recent transplant. In polite conversation, the question about from where I moved was next. I learned to answer neutrally – “the Midwest.”

“Oooohh. Where in the Midwest?” was the next inevitable question.

“Kansas City, Missouri.” I would answer. And watch for the reaction, usually something akin to how grateful I should be to have escaped that hellish place.

“Oh, thank God you’re out of there! This is so much better.”

One evening at a dinner party, after receiving that reaction for the 1,024^th time, I asked the man who said it if he had ever visited Kansas City. His response was an adamant negative. “Oh, no. I’ve never been there.”  I looked at him for a moment and finally said, “Then I guess you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, do you?”

Until 2005, the whole of my life was spent in the Midwest – part in Minnesota, then 16 years in the environs of Kansas City. The Midwest is a green place. I grew up on farm acreage in a place of the world where dirt is really black. Kansas City has lawns that suffer only in the bleak heat of August.

When I left my job as a magazine editor and moved to the southern California desert, it was a moonscape to me. Anything green was that color because of irrigation. Everything else was buff, putty, brown or tan. Even all the houses were the same color – California beige – and large garage doors were the most prominent architectural feature.

So I love Kansas City. It’s comfortable, pretty, green, shady, cultured. There are scads of galleries and a couple fabulous museums (one encyclopedic, one contemporary) neither of which charge admission. There are bunches of theaters. A city ballet company. A symphony. A camerata. A small orchestra. A chamber ensemble or two. Choirs. Independent book stores.

There is also food. From where I lived in the Waldo neighborhood, I could walk to Planet Sub, Chipotle, 75^th Street Brewery, Waldo Pizza, Sancho’s, that little coffee place on Oak, the bar and grill down Gregory from that. Independently owned businesses were the norm there – the canine friendly independent video store that kept dog treats on the counter, the designer consignment place on the corner, the small used car lot (a reputable one, no less) the list goes on. I could run miles on the leg- and knee-friendly packed sand of the Trolley Track Trail. I could rely on my neighbors for anything from dog sitting to car repair.

There is a general impression that Kansas City is a cow town. It was. In some ways it still is. Unfortunately, a lot of people there keep trying to deny that piece of history instead of celebrating it. But honestly, how can you have that much fabulous barbecue and not be a cow town? Puh-leez.

So here’s a little tour of some of my favorite places not only in KC, but in the world.

                                      

The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art is a comprehensive art museum and has one of the largest collections of Henry Moore sculpture in the country. My favorite piece is “Sheep Piece,” which I refer to as “The Humping Sheep.” You can see what I mean from the photograph. The Nelson-Atkins has recently undergone a fabulous remodeling and expansion. Some find the new galleries ugly as warehouses, but personally, I sort of like them. They snuggle into the berms of the sculpture garden as though they themselves are sculptures. They glow at night. They show off a lot of cool art in natural, indirect lighting. And the sculpture garden itself … well. You’ll notice a photograph of what appears to be a badminton birdie. It is. Only it is in a much larger proportion. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen were commissioned to create these for the N-A and chose the design after seeing an aerial photograph of the site and thinking it looked like a giant tennis court. The ball thing was just too repetitive and boring so they chose shuttlecocks, lighter, more ethereal object which are also reminiscent of Native American headdresses in a way. (Van Bruggen recalls seeing a feathered Indian head piece in a gallery in the Nelson while brainstorming.) There are several lying around the yard on both the south and north sides of the building. Just think of the building as the net and you’ll get it.

The south lawn of the N-A as seen from the steps of the N-A. By the way, the Nelson-Atkins is named after William Rockhill Nelson who was the founder of The Kansas City Star newspaper who, when he arrived in the late 1880s, said that Kansas City was "incredibly ugly and commonplace". He set about making all sorts of civic improvement. Mary McAfee Atkins was another resident who inherited an substantial estate from her husband and started collecting art. The estates were combined in 1927 to form the Nelson-Atkins.

The Country Club Plaza is the creation of J.C. Nichols, an early KC real estate developer. After traveling through Europe, Nichols was determined to recreate something of Seville, Spain. He did it on the Plaza, which features a half-scale Giralda Tower.  Architectural style throughout the area is European and Spanish, dotted with fountains and classical statuary. The Plaza is arguably the first regional shopping center created for people arriving in automobiles. Happily, parking is available in cleverly disguised multi-story garages, not in sprawling asphalt lots. The area opened in 1923 and according to New Urbanist land developer Andres Duany, the Country Club Plaza has had the longest life of any planned shopping center in the history of the world.  The Plaza itself is beautiful, and it’s connected to other parts of KC that are gorgeous. Ward Parkway is known for its wide, manicured boulevard lined with vintage mansions of the Stover family (of Russell Stover chocolate), the Pendergasts (late 19^th and early 20^th century political bosses), etc.

Waldo Pizza  - one of the places within walking distance of my former home, the wonder that is Waldo has never found an equal in my mind. Or stomach. If you haven’t been there, I can’t explain it to you. It’s like trying to explain sex to a nun. Plus, they serve Ted Drewes frozen custard.

Smoke Stack BBQ – If Kansas City is famous for one thing, it is most likely jazz or barbecue. Actually, those two things probably run neck-and-neck.  But ever since Henry Perry started serving the stuff in the early 1900s, the art has been refined to the point of eccentricity. Several major barbecue competitions are held throughout the year, including the American Royal Barbecue Contest, held in conjunction with the American Royal which is a rodeo, cattle drive, general celebration of all the things that Kansas City continually tries to deny. More than 100 restaurants in the area specialize in the cuisine, and each one has its own unique sauce and smoking method. My favorite is Smoke Stack on the corner of 89^th Street and Wornall, right next door to Flo’s Polka Dot Lounge, Rainbow Laundromat, and Rayz-R-Edge Barbershop. And while I know that saying something is better than sex is passé and cliché, it’s hard not to think “oh my god, yes, yes, oh god, yes” while you have a mouth full of Smoke Stack’s burnt ends and ribs.

Thanks to Priceline.com, I stayed at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center on my recent visit to KC at $60/night plus parking. The Hyatt has a little sad history. Some of you may remember the disaster in July 1981 when two atrium skywalks collapsed during a tea dance, killing 114 people and injuring 200 others. A friend of mine (who became a nurse) was there that night, dining in the hotel at The Peppercorn Duck Club restaurant with her family, including her father, who is a doctor. She said that there was a crash that sounded like a server had just dropped a cart full of dishes in the kitchen. The restaurant went silent for a few seconds, then conversation resumed. A few minutes later, a page on the PA system, “Would any physicians who are dining with us this evening kindly come to the coat check area?” Then ambulance sirens. Her father responded to the page, and nearby Children’s Mercy Hospital received casualties that evening. Ironically, the entire thing was captured on video because a reporter for one of the television station was there covering the tea dance as a human interest/community story. During an interview regarding that night, he said that he hadn’t wanted to cover that story because he liked to cover hard news. He got his wish that night. It was hard news, alright. Hard to believe, hard to accept, hard to understand.

American Svenska Instituten, Marching bands, Unicorns, and Butterheads

I am the product of two mixed marriages. My grandmother was Norwegian and my grandfather was Swedish. My mother was Norwegian, my father 1/2 and 1/2. However, I do claim the Svenska side of my heritage enthusiastically, mostly because there seems to be more of them around and I think the flag is prettier. So when I was in Minneapolis, I stopped in at the American Swedish Institute, pictured above.

What is now the Institute was once a home built by Swan J. Turnblad, publisher of the Svenska Americanska Posten, a Swedish language newspaper that enjoyed a large circulation as evidenced by the opulence of the above structure. Clearly, this is from another, long ago time when publishers actually made a lot of money. The building is just as opulent inside, which makes me wonder about his heritage, simply because most of the Scandos I know are pretty self-effacing and oh, don't need anything like that, now, donchaknow. Despite my doubts about whether this guy was really a Swede or just knew the language, it's a cool place that is a cultural center and museum as well. Currently, the art exhibits are "My Paradise" and "With a View of the Water," photos of second homes along with scale models. The photo below is from the "With a View of The Water" exhibit. (Emerson residence and sauna at Cook Lake, Duluth, MN photo by Peter Bastianelli-Kerze from www.americanswedishinst.com)

I feel as though I have done a disservice to the Minnesota State Fair by depicting it as a food orgy. Although there is that, the fair has a little more to it than Pronto Pups and Tom Thumb donuts. So. Here’s a little bit of a history lesson.

While the territory established the Territorial Agricultural Society in 1854, Minnesota did not gain statehood until 1858 and held its first state fair in 1859 in what is now downtown Minneapolis. After being held in multiple locations (Red Wing, Rochester, St. Paul, Winona, Owatonna), the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners donated their 210-acre poor farm, providing a permanent home to the fair. The grounds are now 320 acres and boast historically significant buildings as well as facilities constructed by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s WPA project.

Although the MSF was first founded as a way to promote agriculture in the state, exhibits and activities have expanded over the past 150 years. Yes, livestock and ag is still a huge part of the fair; combined premiums for livestock run in excess of half a million dollars. The fair also schedules twelve days of top-notch grandstand acts. This year the BoDeans and Big Head Todd and the Monsters opened the fair. Rush, Tim McGraw, Seether, Brandi Carlile, Carrie Underwood, KISS, A Prairie Home Companion and the Dukes of September Rhythm Review (including Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs) filled out the schedule.

Every day at 2 p.m. there is a parade through the grounds that includes everything from art cars to visiting pageant royalty to unicorns. The Saturday we attended, I was minding my own business at the Twin Territory booth, looking for an appropriate souvenir t-shirt, complaining bitterly to myself about the lack of selection, when I heard the Minnesota Fight Song – Minnesota, hats of to thee!  A marching band led the way for Santa Claus, Smokey the Bear and others. My favorite was the gigantic Angus steer in the last post, but there are others below, including the art car with trout (or bass?) and lobsters animated to move in sync with Handel’s "Hallelujah Chorus." Personally, I think the lobsters had it all over the trout, but maybe it’s because they got to do the hallelujahs.

Yes, Virginia, there really are unicorns.

Good ol' George Fridrich is spinning in his grave.

Oh - again, going back to the agricultural roots of the fair ... Every year, there is a competition for dairy princess sponsored by the Midwest Dairy Association. Contestants are selected at the county level, then advance to the state competition. This year, 19-year-old Katie Miron was crowned Princess Kay of the Milky Way. Her first duty as Princess is to sit for eight hours on a rotating platform in this refrigerated chamber and have her likeness carved out of a ninety pound block of butter. Then she'll go on to reign for a year, promoting the dairy industry. Each contestant is judged on her communication skills, general knowledge of the dairy industry, willingness to promote the industry, and personality. All twelve contestants were blonde and plump with sunny dispositions.

Next, on to Kansas City.

Life on a Stick

My earliest memories of Minneapolis/St. Paul have to do with a family trip taken in October of 1971 or ’72 during the Minnesota Educators Association meetings. My father, an educator, attended meetings; the rest of us hung with my mother and her sister’s family in Cottage Grove. While there, we availed ourselves of (scheduled) opportunities to see the world.  The most vivid was attending Sean O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock” at the Guthrie Theatre. The place was only a few years old, the upholstery was vivid, the place was fabulously mod, I (not even in first grade yet) wore a blue mini dress, white knee socks and black Mary Janes. Sartorial splendor even at a young age.

The original Guthrie Theater

I had just turned twelve the next time I remember being in the Cities. I had won a trip to the Minnesota State Fair based on the merit of either my sewing or a skit that our group prepared.  Besides going to my very first rock concert to see Styx (the freebie grandstand show for all of us 4-Hers) I remember food. Lots of food. Terrific junk food. Pronto pups. Caramel apples. And the Baker’s Square pie stand where I got chocolate French silk pie every day just after breakfast. And sometimes after lunch, too.

Since then, the choice of culinary delights offered at the fair has expanded. In fact, this year there were 56 items offered with a stick delivery system. I don’t have a list of them all, but I do have an abbreviated list of what was on the menu:

Turkey sandwiches, turkey legs, ice cream, ice cream nut rolls, ice cream cones, sno-cones, icees, frozen custard, gelato, floats, milk, milk shakes, malts, sundaes, popcorn, kettle corn, corndogs, corn on the cob, corn fritters, battered potatoes, French fried potatoes, buffalo, buffalo shrimp, buffalo wings, cappuccino, grilled chocolate sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies, s’mores, tacos, burritos, candy apples, cotton candy, mini donuts, funnel cakes, shredded pork, jerk pork, pork chops,beer, crab cakes, walleye cakes, Philly cheese steaks, hot dogs, peanut butter hot dogs, pizza, Luigi fries, andouille sausage, potato sausage, chicken sausage, Polish sausage, Italian sausage, bratwurst, fried peppers, fried cheesecake, fried Snickers bars, pretzels, flowering onions, onion rings, lefse, Spam-burgers, deep fried Spam, deep fried Spam curds, deep fried cheese curds, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, elk burgers, chicken fried bacon, Sunnies on a boat, pork chop on a stick, chicken on a stick, walleye on a stick, bacon on a stick, cheesecake on a stick, deep-fried cheesecake on a stick, chocolate covered banana on a stick, mocha on a stick, alligator on a stick, macaroni and cheese on a stick … ad infinitum. (For the record, I did not eat any Spam; I just rejoiced to see it still out there doin' its Spammy stuff.)

My three friends and I were not the only ones indulging in unchecked gluttony. There were 234,380 other people doing it, too.  That number is an attendance record, by the way –  the highest attendance on one day in the history of the fair. In fact, Minnesota boasts the second most highly attended state fair in the U.S. Out of 46 states with state fairs, Minnesota’s 2010 attendance during twelve days was slightly more than 1.7 million. (Texas beats them out by another 1.3 million – three million people attend the Texas State Fair in Dallas.) 

Food is not the only thing that I love about the fair. Every year I attend, I end up down in the horse barns walking the aisles, peering in the stalls at the Thoroughbreds, American Quarter Horses, Arabians, and my favorites, the draft horses. At 6:30 that evening, we attended the horse show and saw some random classes and acts. The first was the trailer race, where team of two people saddle and bridle a horse and make two laps around the arena. The next was an English hunt seat class, which was interesting, but I never have understood why they post. Probably I don’t understand gaits. Finally, Charro Jerry Diaz and his lovely wife Mrs. Jerry put on an exhibition of trick riding and roping. This is the guy that I always saw on posters at one of the restaurants on SW Boulevard in Kansas City – the orange and green place. I think he had been at the American Royal and autographed a poster for these folks. And there he was, at the Minnesota State Fair, standing up on his saddle and jumping over his own rope, making his horse jump over the rope, roping roping roping.

After the horses, one of us had one more hamburger, another of us had one more Polish sausage (so juicy it was like a cherry tomato exploding in my mouth) and the third of us had another turkey sandwich. Then we took our bucket of Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar chocolate chip cookies and went home.

There is so much more to show and tell, but I'll have to share in future postings. How can I not tell more about the Amerikan Svenska Insituten, The Atomic Bombshells (roller derby is back!), unicorns, marching bands, and, and, and.

Get the Boat, Sven...

The last part of the statement is usually "...we're pillaging England this afternoon." That statement is my flippant remark about the age of the Vikings, which was a European tour that lasted for a couple hundred years and included raping, pillaging, pirating and trading.. I've heard different things about who these men really were. One version is that they were often younger sons who realized that there was little for them once the oldest inherited the land. Personally, I suspect that they were just restless peasants. The Vikings also ended up in Russia (the word is a derivation of "russ" or "red" which was a description of the big guys from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, with ruddy skin and big red beards) opening a trade route when they went up the Volga in their long boats.

In 1971, a guidance counselor at Moorhead Jr. High School in Moorhead, MN started dreaming of building a Viking ship. He wanted to sail it to Norway. Robert Asp ended up designing a bona fide longboat in a Hawley, MN potato warehouse. (Part of the building had to be demolished in order for them to get it out.) In 1980, he sailed the thing on Lake Superior, but succumbed to leukemia in December that year. In 1982, his family and friends sailed the ship, the Hjemkomst (which means "homecoming" in Norwegian) six thousand odd miles to Bergen, Norway. The voyage took 72 days.

I understand completely. I really get the desire to do something big, something eccentric, the sort of thing that might make others think you've slipped out of your orbit. Three cheers for Robert Asp who remained fascinated with his heritage to the point of replicating it. After all, there is evidence of the Viking presence in Minnesota and other points in the Midwest in the form of rune stones. Archeologists and scientists have debated for years about the authenticity of the markers. Personally, I believe that Vikings, wondering what lay beyond their settlement in  Newfoundland, wended their way in from the Atlantic, across the great lakes and cruised Minnesota for awhile. Since the mosquitoes had taken the territory first, they retreated. But they left a slab of stone in the area of Alexandria engraved with runic characters. Of course they were there. Why wouldn't they have been? 

On my way south again toward Minneapolis/St. Paul for the Minnesota State Fair, I stopped by to visit the ship of my ancestors at the Hjemkomst Interpretive Center, part of the Historical & Cultural Society of Clay Clay County. It's the real deal.

The Hjemkomst is not the only large wooden structure at the center, however. Guy Paulson, inspired by the larger-than-life project of Robert Asp's, thought he'd like to try to replicate the Hopperstad Stave Church in Hopperstad, Norway. Paulson started thinking of building the church in the 1980s but didn't start seriously preparing for the project until the 1990s when he had encouragement from an area architect. The Hopperstad Stave Church replica was completed in 2001 and gifted to the city of Moorhead. When I walked in to the Hjemkomst center, I was just in time to join a docent-led tour of the church and have the photographs to prove it. 

Stave church construction is based on large, upright posts called staves that make up the load-bearing frame of the building. Some believe that they were built this way to emulate the great cathedrals being built in Bergen and elsewhere. According to materials that I purchased at the Hjemkomst center, historians estimate that about 2,000 staves churches were built across Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, most of them have rotted away because the staves were footed deep into the ground to support the structure. Then the Norsks figured out that building the church on a base of stone would extend its life.    

It is said that the Scandinavians encountered Christianity on their raids to other countries and sometimes took slaves who were Christian. Eventually someone got the bright idea to save the pagans from themselves and came a-vangelizin'. Personally, I'm disappointed that they didn't hold out and hang onto their own gods: Thor, Odin, Freya, Loki and the rest of the gang. Valkyries and Walhalla are especially appealing to me for some reason. Who wouldn't want to go hang with the gods drinking and feasting for eternity? Better than 75 virgins. 

J.R.R. Tolkien - or rather Peter Jackson - must have had a great appreciation for the Nordic cultures. I defy anyone to look at the country of Rohan in the Lord of the Rings movies and not draw parallels between the cultures. An appealing combination of the Mongols with their horses (the Rohirrim) and the Vikings, Rohan even had shield maidens who kicked ass. Remember who killed the Witch King of Angmar? Eowyn. A woman.  

I am somewhat comforted by the fact it took one thousand years for the Scandos to become Christian, and that Norway's kings Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf Haraldsson required conversion by sword-point. Nordic craftsman incorporated their own sensibility to stave church design, as well. The shingles look like scales. Dragon heads adorn the exterior much like gargoyles on European cathedrals. Elaborate carvings of scary snakes and dragons encompass the front door. Just like the long boats.

Home Again

In August, my home town smells like straw, like earth, like smoke - burning wheat stubble? Fireplaces already in use? Someone's 5-year-old discovering the joys of fire? It is clear yet smoky, cool. Windy. Always windy. The earth here is black, really black, coffee ground black. Not like the dusty dirt in the desert, this is heavy black dirt, gumbo, clay that sticks to the soles of boots and turns them into platforms. This is clay, double lattice Fargo clay to be exact. This is home.

Funny, the idea of home. When I told one of my sisters that I had begun work on a project about home, there was a pause. "Home? Like where you are now?"  "No," I said. "Home." Another pause. "You mean Minnesota?" "Yes. Home." Finally she said, "I guess I think of home as where I am now." And why wouldn't she? She has lived there for about twenty years. She completed her education there. Got married. Bought a home. She makes her living there. It is home for her.

Yet if longevity is criteria for what is home, Kansas City should be home for me. I lived there for 16 years. I developed friendships. I took employment with a cool company working with smart people doing a job that I loved. I bought a home, had a dog and even built a picket fence. Really. Kansas City is not home, though, even as much as I love the city.

Home is a house on acres that were purchased from the railroad in 1883 at 6% interest. Home is where I was scared to go down the basement steps, where I learned to ride horses and sew, where I scraped the paint off of and brushed paint onto old wooden buildings. The house is fading now, decaying on fast forward now that there is no one resisting its decline. Three sump pumps have been burned out trying to keep water out of the basement. A limb on Mom's flowering crab has fallen and practically split the thing in half. A gutter is lying on the kitchen floor; it fell off of a rotting eave.


Books stand on the shelves in the living and dining room as though waiting for someone to pick them up. Clothes hang in some of the closets, odds and ends, things people didn't want but didn't give away or get rid of. Some dishes are still in the kitchen cupboards. Upstairs, there are items we used to play with in the bedrooms, shelves and shelves of more books, some first editions dating back to the '30s. In my sister's room, the ceiling has started to come down. Throughout the house there are black droppings on the carpet - squirrels. Smaller droppings on the mattresses - mice.

The grass is now cut by large machinery, great swipes taken across what was once trimmed and mowed by us kids. Shop and barn still contain miscellany: scrap metal, an old welding helmet, oil cans, nuts, bolts, washers, nuts, an engine block lift, on and on and on. What does a person do with a hundred years of accumulated equipment, clothing - stuff?

Most of the small towns throughout eastern Montana, North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota are little morethan railroad sidings next to grain elevators. They straddle state highways, some with not even a stop sign, others with a couple flashing reds suspended over the street. The road runs away from them in front of worn out brick buildings, rehabilitated brick buildings, brick buildings adorned with murals, restaurants in steel sheds with signs out front - Fish Fry 2-Nite! and PABST 2-4-1. They are ditches that don't drain, immaculate yards planted with petunias, CENEX stations where you don't pre-pay your gasoline. They dot the landscape across the plans, slowly shrinking. Around them are the houses of farmers that have retired, died or moved away. Their decay is gradual but inexorable.

People say that you can't go home again. Bullshit. Of course you can. You just can't time travel.

Stories

I believe that small towns are built and revolve around a couple core places. My childhood and adolescence occurred on location at the church, the school, the ice arena. As I got older, the bar figured heavily in that rotation, as well.

The scene of the incident?

This was the case for a couple of my relatives, too.  Actually, most people recall them hanging around the liquor store more than the bar, but I'm quite sure both locations were personal favorites. From all accounts, they were big guys: muscular, broad, solid. Women say that they were good looking men. Everyone agrees that they were drinkers and carousers, partiers and card players. All the individuals I spoke with about them also said that they expressed themselves physically, as well, and not through modern dance. Fists. They'd all beat the crap out of each other and then go back in the bar and buy each other whiskey.

It's no wonder that teetotaling Grandma didn't want a thing to do with these characters, nor did she want any of us kids to know about them, either. They were at the far eastern side of the county. We were far west, nearly North Dakota. My brother heard about these guys when he was in seventh grade from an old hired man in the eastern part of the county who had known them. He had a story to tell about the rowdies that started with a poker game and ended with a guy missing. The two brothers showed up wearing new clothes and being flush for awhile. An inquiry and investigation turned up nothing, least of all a body. Since the man was a sort of itinerant worker without family, and all the guys at the card game stuck to their story, the matter was dropped. It helped that the sheriff at the time was also a drinker, and could have been at the card game that night.

The witnesses?

I took a drive up to the eastern-most townships of the county that butt up against Manitoba. Space between farms is long and wide, and cows are plentiful. The land where the party took place is still owned by the same family, but it's difficult to know where exactly all of this occurred. There were cattle involved, as well - cattle that were never in the holding corral, but were in there the next morning. Or was it that the manure pile had been moved? At any rate, I'm not sure I found anything close to where they were.

With the help of the nice folks at the County Historical Museum, I spoke with a few of the people who knew the brothers. One gentleman said that the man who disappeared had walked into a lake and that the men thought hunters would find him. Another woman actually partied with them. When I asked her about card games, she said quickly, "Oh, I don't know anything about any card games. They just came over here to visit. We didn't play any cards. They were too busy boozing." Hmm. The hired man who originally told the story to my brother didn't know nearly as much as he did back then, either. Funny enough, when the story was thrown out to a museum visitor that day, he said, "Ya. That's just about it, there. Them guys were something."

There you have it. More on home to come.

Fracking and the Night of the Centipedes

Oil well, Stanley ND from bittenandbound.com

God bless North Dakota. The state is most likely the only one in the U.S. operating with a surplus in the state budget - even though there have been tax cuts and increased spending. According to an August 25 NPR story, a $700 million surplus is projected for next year. Currently, North Dakota .enjoyed only 3.6 per cent unemployment in July. And on top of all that, Whiting Petroleum alone intends to drill 400 more wells. All this activity has made North Dakota, the place where the buffalo used to roam, the fourth largest oil producing state in the nation. Well, bully! as Theodore Roosevelt would have said.

All this economic development, however, interfered with my lodging while driving across eastern Montana and North Dakota. There are no rooms to be had in Williston, ND or Minot ND. In fact, I drove from Havre, MT to Rugby, ND to find a room at the Northern Lights Inn. Considering the vintage of the place, the room rate was pretty affordable: $89 plus tax for the night.

Northern Lights Inn, photo: www.tripadvisor.com

Another reason I chose the Northern Lights Inn was because the next closest (decent?) lodging was in Devil's Lake, ND, and that would have meant tacking another hour onto an already a nine hour drive which had been further extended due to some vehicular head light malfunctions. The other choice was driving straight through to Grand Forks, ND which would have made my day's drive twelve and a half hours of driving time alone


Despite the need for a replacement headlamp (which was taken care of in Minot by MBM Auto), I still got to Rugby before nightfall and checked in with Lou at the front desk. Lou couldn't have been more helpful, even loaned me an iron and little ironing board, showed me where to park, pointed out the complimentary breakfast area. I had read reviews of this little inn online at www.tripadvisor.com and most gave a moderate rating. The place was worn yet clean, smelled of some sort of carpet freshener (which I think is manufactured by some hotel supply house, and I'm also quite sure its use is compulsory no matter if it's the Ritz or the Settle Inn).  The bathroom fixtures were vintage 70s olive green with coordinating linoleum and counter top. The carpet showed cigarette burns and swaths in the nap from the last vacuuming. The window that actually opened. I unpacked, repacked, and went out for an ice cream cone at the DQ I spotted right across Hwy 2.

Rugby is a pleasant little town, the geographic center of North America. That's something on which the town capitalizes, the giant marker at the corner of Highways 2 and 3, right across from The Hub, a cafe and souvenir shop. Downtown is still quaint. The grocery store closes at 8 or 9 o'clock, the teenage girls at Dairy Queen weren't quite sure, but I could make it if I went right then. The grocery store even had Greek yogurt. Mature trees line the streets. There is a paved walking trail along the highway out to the golf course.

I returned to the NLI, updated this blog, organized by things for the next day, and turned out the light. Just as I was snuggling down, I decided that I would like an extra blanket, and turned on the light. Looked down to put on my flops. And saw what looked like a reddish-brown earth worm. With lots of legs. Legs that were very busy. Then I saw another one squeezing out from under the baseboard of the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom area. With a sigh, I went to get a tissue to scoop them up and give them a burial at toilet, flipped on the light in the bathroom and saw three more. When I turned around and looked at the the room, I saw several more scattered across the carpet. I phoned the front desk.

"Uh, hi, Lou this is Room 113," I said.
"Yes?"
"Yeah, there are about a dozen centipedes in here."
"Oh, dear ..."
"Could you move me to another room?" Pause. "Or maybe move them to another room?"
"I would, but I just don't have anything else. The oil boom, you know."
I watched a centipede make its way up the wall by the bed.
She continued. "I could come down there with some Raid..."
"Hm. Well. You can move me to another room, or I can check out right now and you can refund my money."

Bless her, by the time I pulled on my clothes and stuffed the rest in my duffle and trailed out to my car, she had sent the credit card cancellation through and had  a receipt for me. Now my decision was between driving on to Devil's Lake, where there was still no guarantee of a room, or onto Grand Forks, where there probably was a room but it would be three and a half hours and it was after midnight. I snuggled into my car and slept until 4:30 a.m. when I woke up, went to the local gas station/convenience store, filled the car's tank with gas and my tank with coffee and set out toward Dunseith, where I would turn east and cross the rest of the state.

Sunrise somewhere around Dunseith, ND

In my addled state, I took a wrong turn, thinking that I would be on my generous cousin's doorstep way too early if I continued driving east. Cando, ND is picturesque in the morning. Devil's Lake is not. The North Dakota Highway Patrol officer that flashed his lights at me and handed me a speeding ticket was not particularly attractive, either, but at $45, I got off easy. Grand Forks looked great at 9-ish a.m. and the Settle Inn had cheap rates so I attempted to sleep through the housekeeping staff's vacuuming until it was time to get up, shower and complete my drive.

Moonset, somewhere around Dunseith, ND

An additional note about all this "fracking", as it is called. A recent New York Times article (online 9/3/10) referred to how fracking makes drinking water "nice and flammable." Suits against various oil companies have been filed by individuals in the northeast alleging that the chemicals used to help extract natural gas from shale as well as natural gas itself, are contaminating wells, lakes and groundwater.  The times article goes on to say that Exxon Mobil recently paid $40 billion (that's with a 'b') to a company that specializes in extracting natural gas from shale. The Department of Energy estimates that more that 20 percent of the U.S. oil supply will be from fracking by 2020. No, we are certainly not weaning ourselves off of oil.

If Exxon Mobil spent a fraction of that $40 billion on research and development for other fuel sources and alternative energies, there might be some movement. But as long as big oil refuses to let go of their greed and not see the bigger picture, we can all count on signs warning us to keep our water pitchers clear of open flame.


Next, hometown.

Whitefish & Glacier

My apologies for being gone so long. I have not come to a bad end (or a good end, for that matter), have not been abducted by Grenjees from the planet Xylonic and did not meet a cowboy in western Montana who showed me around his spread. I have been bonding with relatives and revisiting my home town, etc., which will all be shared in good time.

Driving from Missoula to Whitefish was not a stretch - the day was sunny, the road was clear and the putt-car hummed. However, I did notice that Montana seat belt laws are fairly lax, as can be witnessed by the photograph on the right. I see no passive restraints for the blue bear in the back of the truck. In fact, I didn't see any restraints on the animals in the back, which is why so many animal rights activists, trainers and vets encourage truck owners to crate pets who ride in the box. I did not report the people in the truck in front of me, but I did send a silent prayer to those poor plush teddies so carelessly treated. And I have photographic evidence.

Although disturbed by this flagrant disregard for stuffed toys, I didn't let it ruin my appreciation for the landscape.Flathead Lake on northbound highway 93, just before the village of Polson, provided me with my first glimpse of Glacier National Park's beauty. That's the thing about the West. Just when you think you've reached scenic overload, there is yet another glory.

The road wound around the lake, which is twenty-eight miles long and fifteen miles wide. Needless to say, real estate along this coast comes at a dear price depending on shoreline quality and accessibility. The ads quote anywhere from $500,000 to $10,000,000.

Whitefish is a charming little town with a dynamite Safeway store (There is a fireplace IN the store. Really.), and a picturesque downtown of a few square blocks filled with boutique-y shops and the like. I petted a pair of turquoise boots with orange stitching, ate a delicious salmon taco at The Buffalo Cafe (slogan: It's Fun to Eat in the Buff!) and found Sweet Peaks Ice Cream where I indulged in peanut butter with Heath bar. Oh, yeah. If you're in Whitefish and need accommodations, check out the Big Mountain Inn. It's set back in what appears to be an inauspicious location behind the Pizza Hut and the Army Surplus, but it is scrupulously clean and well-maintained. They have a nice complimentary breakfast, and I had the best night's sleep since I left Grand Junction. Just an FYI. Oh - and Whitefish is yet another town that has a paved trail by the river for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Part of the reason for my sojourn up to Glacier was to visit with one of my high school teachers. I found her at a campground just outside the park entrance. She is as ever - smart, funny, witty, astute, wise, kind, generous. Seeking her out gave me a chance to nose around about my mother. Since I never got to be good friends with my mother, I glean others for any bits of her. I collect those bits.

For the past 52 years this woman who was an art teacher/librarian and more has spent nearly every summer at the park. In fact, she and her husband were fire look-outs back when the park had few or no roads. She said there were summers where she didn't come down off the mountain all season. Although it rained for the entire day I was there, we still lunched at Eddie's, shopped (Montana House has a chunk of my checking account balance now) and drove to her favorite points. One of those was the Trail of the Cedars where, if there are little fairy and leprechaun people, they live along this trail under lichen-covered stumps and a forest floor covered with velvety moss. Sorry to say that I got no pics because of the rain. Google it. Really. Finally we sipped tea and indulged in huckleberry pie.

I did take photographs as I drove Going-to-the-Sun Road at 15 mph, white-knuckled hands on the wheel all the way up over Logan Pass (where tiny, hard snow pellets stung me) and the Continental Divide. Neither my photographs nor my words articulate as eloquently as I would like about the place, the views, the mountains. Instead, I have to borrow from John Muir speaking of what is now Glacier National Park, in 1901.  I had no words. I wept.

"Give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. Nevermore will time see short or long, and cares will never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly from heaven."