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RUGBY: THE FIRST VISIT
January 15 &16, 2003
Of course the poet believes the world is as he says it is. The poet names,
and in naming he creates the world as it will be. He also observes and
thinks what he sees is what the world is. I have set forth now as the
Vagabond - naming and seeing, hoping to paint the world as it will be
for me, as it is, the middle western part of it.
I am struck again: how this journey is process, not product; more expedition
and exploration than destination and explanation. A way of knowing rather
than the knowledge gained.
*
A lot of what I'll have to say will be about light, I suppose;
about how light owns us, guides us, marks us; about how light lays on
things, on the roughness of that field, on the smoothness of this court
house; about how light comes and goes morning and night, marking our days
and our years, and the generations.
*
Along Highway 2 east of Lakota, North Dakota, a heap of
trees on open ground. Is this a windbreak torn out, trees piled up roughly
for burning? There is so much wind in North Dakota, so few trees, why
would anyone tear out any trees at all, ever? The wind has won this small
battle.
The landscape in eastern North Dakota is as flat as any army cot made
up by the star recruit. The fields are covered with a thin layer of snow
like a dirty sheet.
It was nine degrees below zero when I came through Fargo a couple hours
ago. Now the radio plays "Country Boy Can Survive." Is that
a promise or a prayer? We are in the middle of the country here, if we
are anywhere.
Within ten miles of Rugby I'm noticing the landscape now has its ups and
downs, turn and roll, rise and fall. This country is a little more ragged
than the area of northwest Iowa where I grew up, yet by comparison to
the land farther west it is flat indeed. I recognize it as farm country.
It's a grey winter sky. Yet the sun is bully enough to push through the
haze, to turn the snow cover to brilliance.
*
I stop for supplies at the grocery store in downtown Rugby,
then I cross the street to DK's shop: "Barber and Styling" it
says in the window. DK is 44, a woman with dark hair put up ("it
would be turning grey if I let it"); she is finishing a trim for
an older gentleman whose hair might have had a red tinge once, now it's
more the color of an old man gone grey. "She'll just have to comb
it out if she doesn't like it," DK says of a cowlick on the back
of the fellow's head, a turn of hair that doesn't want to lay down properly
and she can't make it. Haircut done, she and the old fellow are looking
at a collection of black and white photos. From where I sit, the people
in the photos look like they're dressed for the 1950s, and it's real,
not retro. DK and the old fellow talk familiarly of the people in the
pictures. DK has a charm and a tenderness that's not necessarily apparent
on the surface.
Soon enough she turns and says to me, "Well, come on..." and
she ushers me into her barber's chair. "How do you want it cut?"
she asks. I think she recognizes that my style is no style. "Do you
want it trimmed up over your ears?"
"I tell the woman back home to make me look like a well-groomed mountain
man - not that she listens," I say.
DK gives me a look and starts to work. "I have to like the haircuts
I give before I'm done with them," she says by way of re-assurance.
DK was a farm girl who had an itch to see what was out there in the big
wide world. She couldn't be satisfied doing what everybody else did. As
soon as she finished high school in Rugby, she spent some time in the
National Guard in Georgia and the Carolinas. She headed out to California
for ten years, to Florida, to the state of Washington. "I don't know
why all the men I ever ran into were losers," she says without bitterness.
You get the sense that if she'd found a good man out there, she'd never
have returned to Rugby.
"Why did you come back?" I wonder.
"Family," she says. She is one of eight kids. "I'm sort
of the black sheep, you know. I had to get out of here and see the world.
My brothers and sisters were happy staying here." What's the difference
between her and her siblings that she had to get out of North Dakota?
"I don't know," she says, "I couldn't tell you."
Later DK says her youngest brother is 23, he's an electrician, and he
built his own house. "You've got to start young and get yourself
settled," she says, with - I think - admiration.
I point out that she wouldn't have been to California, Florida, and Washington
state if she'd have followed her own advice about staying put and starting
young. "You're right," she says. "I had to get out of here
for awhile."
Yeah, DK's siblings stayed in Rugby. One of her brothers farms with her
father. A couple others farm, too. A sister married a farmer, a brother
loads trucks for a trucking company in town, another works at the hospital
in Rugby, DK cuts hair, her youngest brother is the electrician.
"What's the average price for a house in Rugby?" I ask. The
fellow who runs the Rugby stockyards has come in now and is waiting patiently
while DK clips and re-clips my beard trying to get it to look decent.
DK looks over at the fellow from the stockyards, asks him "What is
the average price for a house?"
"$50,000" is what they agree on. "Not that all the houses
in Rugby cost that much," DK says. "I bought one for $15,000."
DK might be done with my trim. "What do you think?" she asks
me.
"If you're happy with it, I'm happy," I say. I know just from
talking to her that she doesn't let her customers out of the barber chair
until she's satisfied. "I'm proud of every hair cut I give,"
I think she'd say again if I let her.
***
January 17, 2003
I rose yesterday about 5:15 a.m. and wrote in my journal for nearly three
hours. About 8:30 a.m., I called Don Sobolik, my contact at the Rugby
Chamber of Commerce, and touched base with him. He agreed to meet me at
the Cornerstone Cafe about 2:00 p.m. He was still feeling under the weather
from a flu that had put him in the hospital, you could still hear it in
his voice. I called Richard Lavik to set up an interview. He suggested
meeting at 1:00 p.m. I said I had an appointment at 2:00 p.m. and an hour
wouldn't be enough time for the interview. He said he didn't know what
he'd talk about any longer than an hour. I set the appointment for 10
a.m.
Then I decided to go to breakfast at the Cornerstone Cafe. As I stepped
out of my room, so did the fellow from next door. He had a piece of lathe
with orange paint on one end of it, he used it as a walking stick. He
had on a pair of insulated cover-alls. He was going to walk the several
blocks to the Rugby sale barn for breakfast at the cafe there, as he often
did on sale day, Thursdays. He said if I liked good food in a place that
wasn't very fancy, I should have breakfast at the sale barn too. Turns
out the fellow's name is Clayton Olson, turns out he's nearly 80 years
old, turns out he's the father of Therese Rocheleau, the woman who co-owns
the Oakwood Inn motel with her husband Jim. I cleaned out the front passenger
seat of my car and gave Clayton a ride to the sale barn. He seemed a little
reluctant to take the ride, almost as if it is less than moral to accept
a ride from the new fellow in town when you could just as well walk in
a temperature of twelve degrees below zero.
Clayton is from the Brookings, SD, area originally but bought a farm and
re-settled somewhat east of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, where he still lives.
He is staying in Room 31 at the Oakwood this winter at the urging of his
daughter. The room has a kitchenette and when it became available Therese
invited him to stay the winter there so he didn't have to be cutting and
splitting wood all winter to keep himself warm on the Minnesota farm.
So Clayton is in Rugby, I'm giving him a ride to the sale barn for breakfast,
we're talking about books. He likes to read, especially Louis L'Amour
novels. There's a fellow from northeastern North Dakota who also writes
westerns, Clayton tells me, "I can't remember his name, but he's
no Louis L'Amour...."
The biscuits and gravy that Clayton wanted to order have been all sold
out so he settles for hashbrowns and toast and sausage or bacon. I order
my usual - two eggs, two pancakes, two sausage patties. I end up giving
Clayton a copy of my memoir, Curlew:Home, then later in the afternoon
as I'm talking to Therese Rocheleau she says "Dad must be reading
your book already. He said that this morning you ordered the same breakfast
that you ordered on page 13 of the book...."
We talked over breakfast, Clayton and I did, about the project that brought
me to Rugby. He enlisted the help of our waitress and others in the cafe
to start a list of the people I should talk to. When we pushed our empty
plates away, Clayton insisted on paying for my breakfast. I didn't want
to try arm-wrestling the tab away from him because I know that, while
these old fellows no longer have the strength they used to, slyness trumps
strength every time. (When he bought me breakfast, that's when I knew
for sure I had to give him a copy of my book.)
We stepped into the hallway of the sale barn and Clayton introduced me
to the main auctioneer at the place, Ron Torgerson. I may have to do a
piece on the sale barn, and Ron Torgerson would be at the center of it.
I got his phone number. Clayton introduced me to a cattle buyer and farmer
("I'm a farmer first"), Ken Mattern, who gave me his phone number
and his cell-phone number. Clayton and I watched cattle sell for a few
minutes. A younger fellow was doing the auctioneering early in the day,
selling the less desirable cattle, the old cows and those not properly
finished.
"Watch those two buyers standing there at the edge of the ring, off
to the side," Clayton told me. "When one of them makes a bid,
he barely moves his hand." I watched. I saw a hand make just the
flicker of a movement, he'd bid on the cattle in the ring. Another buyer
sitting front and center with a little bit of plank table in front of
him just barely nodded his head; he was bidding too. It was flicker of
hand versus the slightest nod of head til one of the fellows looked away
- the bidding was over - "SOLD!"
I gave Clayton a ride back to the motel, he invited me into the office
to meet his daughter, and I had to sign my book for him.
*
I arrived a few minutes late to interview Richard Lavik,
who'd been a school superintendent in several places in North Dakota from
very shortly after he graduated from college until he retired two years
ago. "In North Dakota you can retire when your age and years of service
total 85," Lavik told me. "You can stay longer but your retirement
benefits don't get noticeably better. Teachers pensions aren't the best
pensions in the world."
I'd been told Lavik has "a dry sense of humor." After spending
four hours talking with him, I'd say instead that he has a sly sense of
humor. "This is my Norwegian grandfather," Lavik said just as
straight-faced and sincere as you can imagine. What he'd handed me was
a very old photo of an Indian, dark as the earth, holding his pony at
attention, a dog in the background.
"That might be your grandfather," I said, "but he's not
Norwegian." On the back of the photo it said in pencil: "Running
Rabbit."
I got three hours of conversation with Lavik on tape. He is especially
knowledgeable about the history of the schools and churches in Rugby and
throughout Pierce County. His real Norwegian grandfather came to Rugby
about 1919 and started the Rugby Tailoring Company. His father ran a dry-cleaning
business on Main Street, where Lavik helped out as he was growing up.
"We dumped our spent chemicals in the alley back of the building,"
Lavik said. "The alley was dirt, not paved. You didn't think anything
about it back then. You couldn't get away with that these days."
One story Lavik told that I didn't get on tape was about the 1963 murder
of a Rugby policeman. (I hate it how people seem to wait to tell the really
good stuff once I've got the tape recorder packed away.) The murder occurred
in a back alley downtown. Big Louie and his crime partner had pulled up
behind one of the buildings along Main Street. The way the buildings were
set, Louie's car was in a "box canyon" and when the policeman
saw the car back there, he knew it was trouble. Big Louie had been in
trouble before, he'd always been a bully and a petty criminal. "Yoo-hoo,
boys," the cop reportedly called out, "come on out." Big
Louie and the other fellow came out and when they saw the cop car had
them boxed in one or the other of them shot the cop and shot him again
and again. The criminals emptied one gun into the body on the ground,
then took the cop's own piece and shot him again and again with that gun,
a total of fifteen times. Then for good measure they shot up the buildings
around them. They moved the cop car out of their way and took off. Road
blocks were set up. Big Louie ran into a road block trying to enter Minot,
west of Rugby. Louie's car had the back seat taken out and that made a
cop suspicious enough that he took down the make and color of Louie's
car and the number on his license plate. ("If you're going to steal
merchandise," Lavik informed me, "you take the back seat out
of your car so you can get more stuff in it.") A dentist who had
been getting ready for work as Louie and his partner were shooting up
the buildings had seen Louie's car. He hadn't had his glasses on, still
he could see that it was a small car, reddish or pink in color. Big Louie
drove a car of similar description and soon enough the cops put two and
two together. When they arrested him, Big Louie broke into tears: "I
can't go without my teddy bear," he told the cops. "Let me get
my teddy bear...."
"How many bullets do you think you have to put into one cop before
you get locked up for good?" Lavik asked me. "Big Louie went
to prison. He got paroled, and later he died in a house fire. His buddy
got paroled too, I don't know what happened to him."
The murder was written up in one of the "true crime" magazines,
Lavik told me. A secretary at the Rugby school has a copy of the magazine.
"You know I always thought they embellished those crime stories when
they wrote them up," Lavik said, "but this one was word-for-word
a true account of what had actually happened." I asked Lavik to get
me a photocopy of the article for my reference. What he wants is a copy
for himself of the actual magazine, but he isn't optimistic that he's
going to find one.
Then Lavik remembers: "A few years before this murder, a bunch of
us kids were out playing softball in the park. Big Louie's car drove up.
Out came one big tree of a leg, then the other. Big Louie was walking
towards us and we were trying to pretend that we didn't see him. Ha. We
knew he was trouble. He wanted to play ball with us and what choice did
we have. He batted and we chased the balls he hit, that's how he played
ball. When he got tired of it he thanked us and drove off. Whew. You know
I was worried the whole time I'd never get to grow up and become a school
superintendent."
*
At 2 p.m. I met Don Sobolik at the Cornerstone Cafe as promised.
Don used to own the Cornerstone. He'd come to Rugby from the Red River
valley of eastern North Dakota to manage the restaurant, then after a
year or so he was given the opportunity to buy it, which he did. The business
started to consume his life. Wanting to start a family, he realized he'd
have to choose between having children and running the restaurant: he
chose to leave the restaurant business, which is when he got involved
with the Chamber of Commerce job he now holds. When the position opened
up, Don was the only one of the board not otherwise employed so he said
he could cover the office temporarily. After six months, the board still
had not hired a replacement; Don said "if you're not going to hire
somebody else, give me the job permanently" and they did. He has
been doing the work ever since, the past two or three years.
We sat at the Cornerstone Cafe, Don and I, we sat talking. I had a cup
of coffee, and cherry pie with ice cream. Don sipped a glass of water,
he was still a little wonky recovering from the flu. Many of the old fellows
in Rugby come to the Cornerstone about 2 p.m. each day for coffee and
talk and maybe they shake dice for a quarter, I couldn't testify one way
or the other.
"You've got to talk to him," Don said, pointing at one fellow,
"and him," he said, pointing at another. "And here let
me introduce you to Bill Paterson - his father and grandfather are the
ones who built the marker for the Geographic Center that sits outside
the restaurant." I promised Bill I'd be interviewing him about the
building of the cairn.
When I left the Cornerstone, I stopped at KZZJ radio a block or so to
the east along Highway 2, to see about an interview I was supposed to
do. I walked in the door at the station to find Don Sobolik there already,
paving the way for me. Bruce Allen took me into a studio and recorded
an interview that would be used the following week. Radio is always more
painless than I fear it will be. I stood at the microphone, Bruce asked
me a question or two, and easily I filled several minutes of air time
without pausing to catch my breath. This - from someone who sees himself
as a person who doesn't talk much.
I stopped back at the office of the Oakwood Inn and chatted with Therese
Rocheleau for a few minutes before heading off to the Hub Restaurant for
my interview with Peggy Burgard, feature writer for the Pierce County
Tribune. Therese's husband, Big Jim, drives semi for Fossum's Trucking
out of Rugby. Big Jim would be getting home Friday night or Saturday and
I'd get to meet him. Therese thought perhaps - as I'd hoped - I could
talk Big Jim into showing me the farm he'd grown up on some seventeen
miles north of Rugby.
I arrived at the Hub and ordered coffee; I didn't see anyone who looked
like a feature writer for the Tribune. Soon enough a woman in a black
suit walked in and went right past me. She didn't see anyone who resembled
my photo in Curlew:Home - remember, I'd just had my hair cut at DK's the
day before, I wasn't looking quite like the mountain man gone past his
prime as pictured at the back of my book. Finally Peggy turned, our eyes
met, she said "Are you Tom?" and I said "Are you Peggy?"
I had seventy cups of coffee and Peggy had a coke and we interviewed each
other. Peggy came to Rugby from the Twin Cities, she came to Rugby for
love. She'd met her husband in Cancun, they'd romanced via the telephone
and letters and Amtrak between Rugby and the Twin Cities. I'd been told
that Peggy had three jobs - helping farmers sign up for the CRP program
in the ASC office, working at the Haaland Home (assisted living for the
elderly), and writing features for the Pierce County Tribune. As it turns
out, she's given up the job at the Haaland Home, so in fact holds only
two jobs. When she came to Rugby, she said, she went to the newspaper
office to see if they needed anyone to help with typing or whatever, she
thought that would position her to start writing for the paper when the
opportunity presented itself. She'd always wanted to be a writer and it
was getting time to start writing. "Well, no, we don't need anyone
to help with the typing," she was told. I imagine her face dropped
at the news. "But we do need someone to write feature stories."
Probably her eyes lit up like northern lights, huh? This was the opportunity
she needed, she'd teach herself to write. She has been doing features
for the Tribune ever since. As we talked, it was hard to tell whether
she was pulling more information out of me for her feature story, or whether
I was pulling more out of her. We talked for a full two hours, she had
only a couple pages of notes. You could see Peggy shaping her questions
the way a feature writer shapes a story, so I know she has good instincts.
We compared notes on writing features, as I had experience with writing
them at the Fox River Patriot, Princeton, Wisconsin, back in the 1970s.
When Peggy left, stuffed with all she could stand of me, I went out to
my car with her, gave her copies of some of my books (which really is
the best way to know about me, I suppose). I gave her also a copy of the
Vagabond "Statement of Intent" and a reprint of the article
about the Vagabond project that had appeared in the Ripon Commonwealth
Press.
Afterwards, as Peggy headed home to write her feature, I went back into
the Hub for porcupine meatballs and fried chicken and potatoes and gravy
at the Thursday night buffet.
"Good night, Professor," my waitress said when the man at the
next booth left.
"Oh," I asked the waitress, "where does he teach?"
"He's not really a professor," she said. "I don't know
what he does, works up at Rugby Manufacturing maybe. I just call him Professor
because he looks like the professor in those Back to the Future movies."
***
January 18, 2003
At 9:30 a.m. yesterday I was at Richard Blessum's door to interview him,
and he was at his door to let me in.
As I put in a blank tape to start recording the fourth hour of conversation,
I told Blessum that my interview with him was now longer than one I'd
recorded with Richard Lavik the day before.
"Should I call Lavik and tell him I beat him?" Blessum wondered.
My full interview with Blessum runs to nearly five hours, not counting
the times he put his hand over the microphone or when we shut off the
tape to talk about stuff he didn't want "on the record."
Blessum was born in 1926; with the exception of his service in the Navy,
he has lived all his life in the Rugby area. When this North Dakota farm
boy first saw the ocean, he said to a more experienced Navy fellow: "Would
you look at all that water...."
The other fellow said: "Yeah, and you're only seeing the top of it...."
When he returned from service, Blessum married a high school sweetheart
and took over his father's farm north of Rugby. Blessum and his wife have
three sons, all of them living now in Washington state. Blessum's wife
died a few years ago.
Blessum became heavily involved in the Geographic Center and Prairie Village
Museum when he moved off the farm in the 1970s. He has been on the board
of directors of the organization ever since, and until a few years ago
he was "curator" of the museum, a job which put him in charge
of day-to-day operations.
You can't imagine sitting with a fellow who can recall from memory all
thirty-one buildings in the Prairie Village, in their proper order and
with highlights of their contents. Blessum has had plenty of opportunity
to see the buildings over the years, including helping with school tours
in May when as many as 800 kids will tour the museum.
"I remember one of those kids was opening and closing drawers in
a cabinet at the general store," Blessum said. "I thought he'd
open and close every drawer in the place. I said 'Say, did you find the
one with the mouse in it yet?' Well, that stopped it. He didn't open another
drawer."
Before I left him, I asked Blessum what he would identify as the characteristics
of the people of Rugby. "Friendly" is the first trait he listed.
He said visitors to the museum have told him they couldn't believe how
friendly the people of Rugby are.
The second characteristic: "The people here are willing to do most
anything for you." I have to agree: Blessum let me pick at his brain
for six hours. It was 3:30 p.m. when I left.
*
I got myself something to eat at the Cornerstone Cafe -
an open-faced roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy and dressing.
Comfort food. And a fellow needed some comfort. The weather forecasters
were promising temperatures to nearly 20 below zero and winds approaching
50 m.p.h. and a little snow mixed in just to keep everybody nervous. As
I ate, I could see the wind shaking the traffic signs, I could see snow
blowing and drifting across the highways, I could see the light disappearing
from the western sky and a grey pall of darkness approaching like sadness.
What did I come to Rugby in January for? For this, just this, a Great
Plains blizzard. The wind slapped me hard as I walked out to my car after
my meal, the wind slapped me like it meant business. Yet by morning I
saw that it was just a lot of empty bluster. Oh, it was cold, sure, but
the wind has died and there was hardly any new snow. If the wind blew
50 m.p.h. during the night I didn't hear it shake the building.
I stopped at the motel office on my way back to my room yesterday afternoon.
I was talking with Therese and Teddy the maintenance man when Big Jim's
truck rolled into the parking lot - the tractor part of the tractor-trailer,
at least. He was just back from his run to Nebraska and Iowa hauling rocks.
"In Nebraska, they've got to get their rocks from Montana,"
Jim observed. "Nebraska rocks aren't good enough. In Montana, they
haul their rocks from Nebraska. That's job security for me."
You might talk to Jim Rocheleau only five minutes before you recognize
you'll need a bull-dozer if you're going to keep yourself dug out from
under his stories. He hadn't even kissed his wife hello yet and already
he'd told three jokes. He did kiss his wife, we did get introduced, I
got invited to a surprise party Jim's mother would be throwing on Sunday
for Jim's uncle's 81st birthday. "It'll be lunch and supper,"
Jim predicted, "there'll be plenty of food. On the farm my mom cooked
for four big hungry farm boys and all the hired help and she hasn't learned
to make small recipes yet."
Characteristics of middle westerners? I don't ask, but Jim offers this:
"My mother is so tight she can squeeze a nickel and end up with a
dime."
Jim and Teddy started talking about the work they'd done tearing out a
piece of concrete in the Rocheleau's house across the street from the
motel, a place where Jim bumped his head when going to the basement. "The
fellow who had the house before us started tearing it out," Jim said,
"but he stopped when he ran into the concrete re-inforcement."
Jim and Teddy wanted me to see that it was a great adventure getting that
concrete out of there; Therese wanted me to know how much grey dust settled
onto everything on the first and second floors of the house while Jim
and Teddy were banging on the concrete. I think she wanted me to know
how much dust they stirred up and wanted to make Big Jim feel guilty about
it, but I don't think he did.
Jim and I talked about making hay and about hauling hay. In Iowa when
I was growing up, we put up high quality alfalfa for our cattle. Here
in North Dakota, they harvest grass out of the sloughs and feed that all
winter. One slough that Jim and his father and brothers harvested was
fifteen miles from the home farm. Another - harvested only once, during
a drought - was thirty miles away. "When we were working in the fields,"
Jim recalled, "my mother would bring meals out to us, otherwise we'd
waste half an hour driving back and forth."
Jim told me about the custom-built truck his father bought to haul the
loads of hay home. "The fellow who built it spent $200 on telephone
calls just to get all the transmission and gear ratios exactly right,"
Jim said. You could engage the PTO to start the chain that pulled the
load of hay onto the tilted flat-bed and at the same time put the truck
in reverse: the truck would back under the load of hay at the same speed
the hay was being pulled onto the truck. The Rocheleaus could haul a lot
more hay with this truck than their neighbors could with their rigs for
tractors, so they hauled hay for the neighbors, too. "The driver's
seat in that rig was sweet," Jim remembered. "The passenger
seat was just a foam pad and the front end suspension was real tight like
it was in trucks back in those days. When we hauled hay for the neighbors,
they'd want to ride along. There I'd be driving along just as nice as
you please and in the passenger seat the fellow would be bouncing up and
down, up and down. It got so they'd just ride out and show us where their
hay was and when we got the first load home they'd jump out of the truck
and let us haul the rest of the hay on our own. They'd had all the bouncing
around they could stand."
"I really loved that truck," Jim said. "I really hated
it when it caught fire and burned up on us."
*
9:30 a.m. I just got back from breakfast at the Cornerstone Cafe. I bumped
into Richard Blessum there, he insisted on buying breakfast for me. I
expected it after talking with him yesterday, he'd said he wanted to buy
me a meal. We talked some about farming while we ate. He just this past
year sold his farm to the man who'd been cash-renting it all these years.
The fellow had resisted buying the farm in the past but the current low
interest rates made buying attractive. Blessum said the fellow now farms
30 quarter sections (or a total of 4800 acres), some of which he owns,
some of which he rents. Land it would have taken five or six men to work
fifty years ago is now handled by one farmer.
A fellow came in with his wife and sat down in a booth near us. He told
Blessum: "You know what I ate last night? Lutefisk. Oh, I love that.
I'm a damn poor German. I should be Norwegian."
*
4:30 p.m. I spent from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. this afternoon with Duane Baillie,
talking about Baillie's Drug Store and the pharmacy business. I got about
an hour and fifteen minutes of our conversation on tape, it should be
good material.
It's interesting: when I asked Duane about the characteristics of the
people in Rugby, he said "hard-working" and "progressive,"
but he didn't say "modest." However, he didn't tell me on tape
about the important award he'd won this past year for service to the community,
which is presented to only one pharmacist in each state or Canadian province
in a year. The list of his contributions to the community takes quite
a long time to recite, but he waited until the tape recorder was off to
tell me! So - modesty is a trait. Baillie thinks this kind of service
is what good citizens do when they are in a position to. He says he didn't
do these things out of "duty" but because they needed doing.
I suggested that he may be like a fish in water, which no longer perceives
the water as something separate from itself; that perhaps he is no longer
in a position to see what duty is, he just does it.
***
January 20, 2003
I went to Edna Rocheleau's house yesterday at 2 p.m. for a surprise 81st
birthday party for Jim Rocheleau's uncle, Richard Rocheleau. I got on
tape four hours of conversation with Richard Rocheleau, Big Jim, and Big
Jim's brother Jerry, who farms north of Rugby.
It was a family experience not unlike what I'm used to - grown children
and grandchildren intermingling, a great pot of scalloped potatoes with
ham and ground meat, a tuna and macaroni hot dish, salads like you'd see
at an Iowa picnic.
As Richard Rocheleau was Jim's dad's brother, his experience of the world
would be similar to that of Jim's dad. Rocheleau (Richard) talked of growing
up in those hard days, of serving in the Navy during World War II. He
was on board his vessel as far as Hawaii where he and several other sailors
whose names began with "R-O" received strict orders to get off
and stay in Hawaii while the ship and everyone else on it went off to
battle. Rocheleau spent most of his Navy career not far from Waikiki Beach.
When he returned to North Dakota, he was home only a week when he realized
how lonely his existence was - in the Navy he'd grown used to the hustle
and bustle of humanity around him. Yet his father talked him out of re-enlisting.
Rocheleau thinks he missed his moment to break free of North Dakota right
after the war, and he might regret having missed the opportunity. Once
you start putting down roots in a place, once family has its hold on you,
Rocheleau thinks, that's where you'll stay, you can't get away.
Rocheleau served three terms in the North Dakota state legislature. He
was an auctioneer and an inventor, he farmed, ran a tree moving business,
removed stumps. He removed stumps right up until last year and thinks
the hard work and exercise kept him fit. He pats his tummy and says: "Now
I've gone soft."
One of Rocheleau's stand-out moments in the legislature was during debate
on a bill about auctioneering that he was opposed to. When it came his
turn to speak, he rose up and said his piece entirely in the chant of
an auctioneer. Nearly thirty years later he could repeat the chant for
me. The words rolled off his tongue rhythmically, punctuated by the auctioneer's
up and down and pause and burst. When he finished for the legislature,
there was absolute silence in the chamber. No one knew what to say - time
stood still for that moment. Then a thunder of applause from all corners
of the room. "Even so," Rocheleau said, "everyone voted
'Green,' I was the only 'Red' vote." A few days later the Governor
waved him over from across the street - "Oh now I'm going to get
it," Rocheleau thought. He walked across traffic to take his licking.
"I want to commend you on that speech," the Governor said. He
praised Rocheleau's chant and Rocheleau wondered how the Governor could
be talking about it as if he'd heard it. "I was on the phone with
a legislator," the Governor said. "The fellow held up his phone
when you started so I heard the whole thing."
Jim and Jerry Rocheleau talked also - the afternoon wasn't an interview
so much as it was a discussion, family talking over Sunday dinner, over
cake and ice cream. Jim and Jerry brought my sense of the family's life
on the farm forward a generation. They are only slightly younger than
I am, so I was hearing the North Dakota version of my childhood.
One thing that Jerry said which stands out: "There are no trees out
here, we are used to seeing the horizon, so we are wide-open and a little
untamed. When we go east and end up among all those trees, we feel confined.
When a fellow from the east comes out to North Dakota and sees our horizon,
he feels naked."
*
Earlier in the day yesterday, I'd gone in to downtown Rugby to get some
supplies. I walked around the streets for awhile. And while the temperatures
had moderated considerably, it was still cold enough I didn't want to
walk for long, but drove the length and breadth of Rugby to get a sense
of how it lays upon the land. You have to admit this is a community made
by the railroad, the way a river town is made by the river. Here the tracks
run right through the heart of downtown. Back when Rugby was founded,
the railroad had the power to create communities like Rugby, the power
to determine which settlements thrived and which died.
*
At breakfast yesterday, I sat at the Cornerstone Cafe lost in my own
thoughts. I was pulled back into the room with suddenness when I heard
an old fellow behind me say: "And that's what you had to do when
you had no money." I'm sorry I'd missed what he'd said before that
- these Rugby people tell a good story.
Later, I heard a woman say: "I don't feel sorry for them. They don't
feel sorry for me either."
And this exchange. One woman said: "I want to tell them 'we love
you, we just don't want to talk to you;'" another responded: "My
children were strange too."
*
I stopped to see Matt Mullahly at the newspaper this morning, then spent
an hour and fifteen minutes at the library. I went to the Lions' Club
meeting at noon as the guest of Lila Brossart of KZZJ Radio. Lila is the
only woman in North Dakota who is sole owner of a radio station, and I'll
want to do an interview with her on a future visit.
On my way downtown this morning I stopped to see Don Sobolik to thank
him for all his help. He is back at work and feeling better. I also stopped
at Pamida and bought $20 worth of 90-minute tapes (14 tapes), as I seem
to be running out. I don't know why?
***
January 21, 2003
I met Dale and Marilyn Niewoehner yesterday afternoon at their apartment
above the funeral home. They live in a museum - quite a collection of
elephants of various sorts which belong to Marilyn; of ocean-liners, which
belong to Dale; and various other obsessions sprinkled in, including a
collection of most of the translations of Gone With the Wind. Dale and
Marilyn salvage architectural features from old buildings, so you'll see
stained glass windows from a church, doors from a school, etc.
I interviewed Dale in his capacity as the most vocal advocate for keeping
Amtrak alive and well in Rugby; in his capacity as mayor of the city;
and to talk about his family's story in North Dakota.
Marilyn prepared a wonderful supper for us, chicken baked with rice, broccoli,
salad, ice cream and a Rippin' Good cookie for dessert. The salesman for
one of Dale's suppliers lives in Ripon, Wisconsin, and brings the Niewoehners
cookies from the cookie factory there, just eight miles from my home.
Dale has his obsessions - Amtrak service to Rugby, ocean-liners, old bells,
old fountain pens. Marilyn has her obsessions - sewing, a collection of
sewing machines, reproductions of women's clothing from 1860-1907 that
she sewed herself, elephants, Gone With the Wind. The Niewoehrners showed
me their apartment, Dale showed me the funeral parlor on the first floor,
both of them took me to the old Presbyterian church next door where Marilyn
runs her business selling embroidered goods, "Embroideries."
She also has the Victorian Dress Museum in the former Episcopal church
the Niewoehners own, where she displays the forty dresses she has sewn,
some of them award-winning reproductions. At one time the Niewoehners
also owned the Methodist church in Pleasant Lake but they've since sold
it.
When I return to Rugby I will interview Marilyn for her perspective on
life in Rugby, for she comes to the topic as an outsider and one who doesn't
seem to accept the accepted wisdom. Dale introduces himself to new people
in town as Rugby's "trouble-maker." Both Dale and Marilyn appear
to bring passion to whatever they do, enthusiasm for what Rugby has to
offer, and - having come into the community from outside - perhaps a bit
of distance that those born and bred in the city can't manage.
Dale offered, on tape, that sometimes Rugby can be a hard place to come
into - it can appear closed to outsiders, a little cliquish, which is
a complaint similar to what I've heard in Ripon, Wisconsin, from outsiders
coming to live in the city. In addition to not having grown up in Rugby,
when Dale started his funeral home in the 1970s, he was setting himself
squarely in competition with the Anderson Funeral Home, which advertises
"Quality Care with Quiet Dignity Since 1921."
Dale and I talked some about the need to say Thank You in both our business
and our personal lives - he thinks this has become something of a lost
art. We talked about the need to create and maintain relationships with
those who have power over the things that are important to you - in his
case, keeping Amtrak service in Rugby. He recalls that a fellow called
him for help when Amtrak was ready to discontinue service to Devil's Lake,
some fifty-six miles east of Rugby along Highway 2. Dale had to tell him:
"It's too late. This isn't something you can do anything about now,
you needed to be working on it five years ago."
Dale has served sixteen years on the Park Board and sixteen years on the
City Council, in addition to his time as mayor. He is not only an advocate
of keeping Amtrak healthy in Rugby, but also of keeping Rugby healthy.
He admits, however, that if he had the answer to the problems of small
towns in rural America, he'd be in big demand. He thinks that if it is
to succeed in the future, Rugby needs to do a better job of marketing
the wonderful resources it has. The intersection of Highways 2 & 3
where Rugby sits is a prime location that has yet to be taken full advantage
of.
You come away from a visit with the Niewoehners full of enthusiasm for
Rugby, yet with an understanding that there is much to be done as the
city heads into the uncertain future that is promised rural America.
***
January 22, 2003
Yesterday at 8:15 a.m., as planned, I met Wanda Nielsen at her house.
She greeted me with coffee and warm crumb cake. I think that in Rugby,
as across much of the middle west, food is love. Wanda is a widow. She
is wise and she is giving. I'd been told she is Rugby's "bird lady,"
and so she is. You can see the bird feeding stations just outside the
window of her breakfast nook, and a bird bath with heated water that stays
open even in the below-zero temperatures of Rugby's winters. Soon enough
three bossy blue jays appeared at the feeders, all of them wanting to
be in charge of business, then came a chickadee feeding upside down. As
we talked of her interest in birds, Wanda mentioned that in spring Baltimore
orioles come through Rugby; when she hears of their first appearance she'll
put quarters of an orange in the back yard. If she has six or eight pieces
of orange out there, she'll have six or eight Baltimore orioles feeding
at them. Wanda has taught a lot of Rugby people about birds - Boy Scouts
and school children and senior groups and just about anybody who asks
her. Her interest spills out and she has to share it. The American Birding
Association lists Wanda's phone number for its members looking for more
information about birds that summer in Rugby or that pass through in spring
and fall migrations. People can call her with questions and sometimes
they can get her to lead them on bird-watching expeditions to the J. Clark
Salyer National Wildlife Refuge north of Rugby.
Wanda is a transplant to Rugby from Iowa. She was born in Des Moines.
Her father was a sheriff there, he was killed in the line of duty when
Wanda was four years old. Wanda attended Iowa State University, which
is where she met her husband. He was studying in the Food Sciences program.
They married and she followed him to Rugby. They raised a family in Rugby
while her husband operated the Rugby Creamery. The business had been owned
by the Nielsen family since 1915. When it was sold in the latter part
of the last century, that was the end of the independent dairy in North
Dakota - Rugby Creamery was the last of them.
Wanda seems to be a wise, a sophisticated, a humble woman. Of being widowed,
she says the first year is the toughest: "We are not prepared to
be alone." Friends and neighbors, she notes, are quick to offer support,
but it lasts only for two weeks or so, then they go on to help the next
person who needs it and you are left to wrestle your own grief. When her
husband died suddenly some twenty years ago - he was not yet sixty - she
asked the doctors for a moment alone with his body in the hospital room.
"I told him I'd be along shortly," she said. "But that's
not how it has turned out." She continues to live and give in Rugby.
And she was not content to tell me her story only, so Wanda called her
next door neighbor, Tammy Fossum, and invited her over for coffee and
conversation with me.
Tammy was the impetus behind the founding of a Moms' Club in Rugby. She
met her husband Randy through her work in the trucking industry when she
was living in Grand Forks. Discussion over the phone and via fax turned
from business to things more personal and romantic and soon enough they
married. When Tammy moved to Rugby, it wasn't long before she found that
the Rugby natives in her circumstances - the stay-at-home moms with small
children - already had support systems in place, family and friends, and
they had little time left to welcome a newcomer who felt awfully alone
in her new community. Convinced she couldn't possibly be the only one
in Rugby in her predicament, she wondered what to do. On the internet
she found information about the Moms' Club and got instructions from the
national organization on how to go about founding a chapter in Rugby.
She scheduled a meeting for interested moms at the library and found plenty
of interest. Soon the group had a charter and bylaws and a president -
Tammy herself. Soon they were meeting in the basement of Tammy's house
because there was no other space available in Rugby where the noise of
all the women's children would be welcome. For the safety of its members,
the national organization has a rule against chapters meeting in private
homes, a rule Wanda felt she could bend because "I haven't met anyone
in Rugby I wouldn't be comfortable inviting into my house."
Each year the Moms' Club has to do one public service project in the community.
One project was gathering winter coats from the community and dispersing
them to those in need. The group has established its own once-a-week pre-school
using the various expertises of the moms in the group to enrich their
children's learning experience. The most recent project involved putting
together "overnight bags" for children taken from their parents
and placed in foster homes. Businesses in Rugby were "overwhelmingly
generous" in helping fill the overnight bags with necessities such
as tooth brush and tooth paste, comb, soap, etc. The Land's End Company
donated forty bags. When prepared, the overnight bags were turned over
to the county's social services department to dispense as the need arose.
For its efforts, the Rugby Moms' Club recently won its organization's
"Most Outstanding Chapter" award. Tammy served a year and a
half as the chapter's president and has now let go of the reins and works
as a member of the group rather than as its leader. "It's hard to
let go of control," Tammy said, "but I'm learning."
As Tammy didn't grow up in Rugby, she brings an outsiders view to the
discussion of the issues facing the community. She doesn't wear the blinders
that the rest of us have when we live all our lives in a community. Yet
sometimes because she is not native she is not privy to why things are
the way they are. This is a tension - between accepting and being accepted,
knowing and not knowing - that may be common in all the Vagabond focus
communities, and indeed across all of rural America generally.
*
In the afternoon Jim Rocheleau and I drove north out of Rugby to see
Jim Schmaltz on land he's farmed all his adult life. Schmaltz helped to
found the Germans from Russia organization in North Dakota, and the chapter
in Rugby (which has recently disbanded). Schmaltz is a man with a large
voice and expansive gestures. Though he speaks German, you wouldn't say
he speaks it with a German accent; rather his is the high, tight speech
of his fellow North Dakotans: they don't talk like Canadians here, exactly,
but you sure wouldn't confuse them with Texans either.
Schmaltz talked to me about the migration of Germans from Germany to Russia
in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and about their migration from Russia
to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s when the rights
promised by Catherine the Great to the German immigrants started to be
revoked by Czar Alexander and open persecution followed. Perhaps the fortunate
of these Germans from Russia migrated to the United States; of those who
didn't, some were shot, some were exiled to Siberia, most traces of them
were erased from the Black Sea area they'd settled originally.
Schmaltz's grandfather ended up farming south of Rugby; his father farmed
south of Rugby too. Life was not easy for those who immigrated to the
extremes of the North Dakota winter. Schmaltz told a variation of the
story I'd read in the Rugby Centennial book, about his grandfather and
the local priest traveling by sleigh on a clear day when a fierce blizzard
suddenly blew up. Schmaltz said they freed the horses, turned the sleigh
box over, and took refuge in its protection. Next day neighbors or relatives
saw the tongue of the sleigh sticking out above the snow and freed the
men who had been singing hymns all night and praying to keep from falling
to sleep, falling into the sleep that would mean death by freezing. In
the bright light of the following afternoon, they were freed from the
snow that had buried them, that had imprisoned them, that had protected
them.
Schmaltz's father helped him get established well north of Rugby among
the French and Norwegians there. "I had a friend among the Norwegians,"
Schmaltz said, "a fellow who was half French. He told me one of the
leaders in the community said when I moved up here: 'Well, we've got to
be careful now, we've got a German from Russia up here amongst us.'"
Schmaltz farmed the place anyway, and now his son Jeff works the land.
Schmaltz still helps out: "I don't know if he needs me but I have
to do it, I can't sit in the house and watch him work...."
We sat in the house drinking coffee and talking with Schmaltz for three
hours. His family's story will be important for me in understanding the
life of Rugby and Pierce County. Like so many others in Rugby, Schmaltz
opened his house to me, opened his heart, his life, and shared his understanding.
How do you say Thank You for such a gift? I don't know. I suppose that
the best I can do is write the truest account possible of the Germans
from Russia in Pierce County.
***
LEAVING NORTH DAKOTA: JANUARY 2003
A dirty tooth of snow, heartbeat, frozen
sound. The approaching headlights are so far
away. The early morning sky is like
an airplane with wheels set for landing,
lights on, hung like a planet in the east.
Invest nothing, you lose nothing. If you
lose, lose big. There are ghosts on the landscape
behind me, like a flash of blizzard snow,
like the fog of one's own breathing - enough
to make us grieve for what we've lost, for what's
been taken, been taken and not put back.
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