On Second Though: the SENSE OF PLACE issue

2ECOND THOUGHT A publication of the North Dakota Humanities Council

summer 15

on

[the SENSE OF PLACE issue]

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Photo by Joleyn Larson, Mandan, ND

IN OUR OWN WORDS

note from the executive director I received an email from a friend recently with the subject line: this is ridiculous. Attached was a link to the trailer for the new ABC television drama Oil. From the film reel I gather the show is about a young married couple who have lost everything and head to the Bakken to make a living. Once there, they are caught up in a surreal world of lawlessness and greed that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

My friend was right; it was ridiculous. But ridiculous makes for good entertainment. Just ask the folks in Fargo about the film and television series bearing their city’s name. It looks like they are going to have to start sharing the spotlight now. It seems people are fascinated by this rural outpost on the Great Plains with billions of dollars pooled under its shale. With fascination come falsehoods.

For the second time, the North Dakota Humanities Council sent professional writer and North Dakota native Debra Marquart to the Bakken for a month to conduct writing workshops to help the people who live and work there dispel some of the myths swirling around. This issue highlights a handful of the people she came across—and some she didn’t—who are taking control of their own narratives. Here you will find both established and emerging writers who have anchored themselves to their environment and its inhabitants in a profound way; people who have invested themselves in a sense of place. This isn’t a complete picture of our state at this time, but it is a small glimpse into the lives of some of the people who call it home. They remind us that there is a greater store of riches in our state than the oil we have here. I’m proud to work for an organization that continues to invest in these natural resources: Our People. Our Places. Our Stories.

Brenna Daugherty Gerhardt Executive Director

Cover photo by Bill Kingsbury, Grafton, North Dakota.

SENSE OF PLACE

4 Swallowing Water

By Taylor Brorby

10 The Science of Sacred Memories:

Nostalgia and Its Effects On Our Psychological

and Social Health and Well-Being

By Clay Routledge

14 Fargo Brick

By James Magnuson

18 Letters to Eva

By Nita K. Ritzke

27 Gravy

By Nita K. Ritzke

27 Skywriting

By Stephanie Blumhagen

30 Endangered Species

By Jennifer Strange

32 My Good Dog Bailey

By Susan Krohn

35 Boom

By Heid E. Erdrich

36 Wheat

By Patsy Ramberg

40 Annual Report

ON SECOND THOUGHT is published by the North Dakota Humanities Council.

Brenna Daugherty Gerhardt, Supervising Editor Janet Daley Jury, Associate Editor To subscribe please contact us: North Dakota Humanities Council 418 E. Broadway, Suite 8 Bismarck, ND 58501 800-338-6543 council@ndhumanities.org

ndhumanities.org Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the North Dakota Humanities Council.

NEW BOARD MEMBERS

North Dakota Humanities Council is pleased to announce the addition of four new members to the board of directors.

JOHN S. HEINEN LESLIE W. PELTIER RICHARD ROTHAUS NATE STEFFEN

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John Heinen grew up in Osseo, Minnesota, and graduated from St. John’s University with a degree in university studies. In 1989 he married Ann Marie (Fleck) of Dickinson, North Dakota, whom he met at the nearby College of St. Benedict. After a few years helping to manage the family business, John and his family moved to Cheshire, Connecticut, where he became the director of planned giving for the Legion of Christ College of Humanities. As director for sixteen years, John built gift-giving programs; spearheaded the launch of Eagle Cliff Leadership Camp in New Hampshire; and Mission Network, which offered a variety of leadership and training programs for youth and adults. In 2009 the Heinens moved home to Dickinson, where John held a development position at Trinity High School and built both the endowment and major gift programs.

In 2013 John became the branch manager at Rain for Rent, a company providing engineered liquid handling and temporary storage solutions for the oil industry in southwest North Dakota. He and Ann Marie have six children (Alex, Matt, Andrew, Chris, Clare, and Rachel)—four of whom live in Dickinson, one in Connecticut, and one in Rome who is studying philosophy as a seminarian.

Born and raised on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota and an enrolled member of Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Leslie W. Peltier attended Indian Boarding School at Stephan, South Dakota, and graduated from the University of North Dakota with a B.S. in 1979 and a master’s degree in 1992. She has been a full-time faculty member at Turtle Mountain Community College since 1989. Leslie, her husband Clark, and her children and grandchildren reside on the reservation and are involved in the traditional way of the Ojibway.

Richard Rothaus has lived all over the United States and overseas. He holds a B.A. from Florida State University, an M.A. from Vanderbilt University and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Rothaus lived in Minnesota for many years, where he served as a tenured fullprofessor of history and assistant vice president for research at St. Cloud State University until 2008. He founded Trefoil Cultural, a cultural resources management firm that focused on the history and archaeology of the Northern Plains. Rothaus has pursued historical and archaeological research in North America, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Asia, and Central America, He is currently the director of academic programs, research, and accreditation for the North Dakota University System and a research assistant at the Center for Heritage Renewal at North Dakota State University.

Rothaus lives in Bismarck with his wife and youngest son; his older sons live in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Nate Steffen is currently assistant professor of political science at Bismarck State College. He recently moved to Bismarck from San Francisco where he worked as a consultant. He has held positions at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, and at Shenyang Normal University teaching interdisciplinary studies.

The calling of the humanities is to make us truly human in the best sense of the word. – J. Irwin Miller

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SWALLOWING WATER

By Taylor Broby

Nelson Lake in south-central North Dakota is an oddity. It is the only lake in the state that does not freeze in the winter, and in the summer its water is bathtub warm.

Viewed from the air, it is shaped like an arctic seal, grown from a stream to a 573-acre lake in the last fifty years.

Due to the year-round warm waters of Nelson Lake, bass, crappie, bluegills, and other fish that swim in the lake grow heavier and longer than fish in nearby waters. Leon Rixen caught the state-record largemouth bass there on February 11, 1983. The thought of his eight-pound, eight-ounce bass lodged itself into my mind as a boy.

In childhood, Nelson Lake was a fixture for family outings. We just called it “The Lake.” High schoolers partied at the lake; friends went fishing at the lake; parents worked by the lake. The lake, like a family picture, was forever present on the wall of my mind.

My grandfather would often take me fishing on the riprap; slowly making our way down large, rough rocks, put in place by machines, to get near the water’s edge. In winter, I imagined Nelson Lake held secrets of ghosts as I watched steam swirl and rise across the lake, impairing my ability to see clearly to the other side.

Summer in North Dakota is marked by increasing humidity, with thunderclouds billowing and growing throughout heat-ridden afternoons.

In fifth grade a friend, Kyle, had his birthday party in late June at Nelson Lake. Kyle and I shared a love of fishing. Boating, inner-tubing, and splashing about in water were not options for classmates whose birthdays

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“This lake used to be a trickling stream when I was your age.

This used to be a wheat field.”

were in the fall, winter, and spring. Kyle’s party fell on a blue, cloudless day, where the sun was not obstructed and there was no wind. Instead of looking forward to it, I grumbled, “But, Dad, it’s too hot to go swimming at the lake today.”

—————————— My grandfather often took me to Nelson Lake, rambling around in his silver station wagon, filled with fishing rods, red and white bobbers, and a small, silver net. The drive to Nelson Lake is four miles south and east of Center, my hometown.

Passing the Square Butte Creek Golf Course, the road curves east towards the lake, bringing the large smokestack of Minnkota Power into view.

Pulling off the road, the silver station wagon hits gravel—my favorite part of the ride—and we begin to rumble our way towards the fishing dock. On the east side of the road a steep embankment leads to a channel, a manmade feature, where water that is used to cool Minnkota Power’s turbines is released, warmer and ready to flow back into the lake. He points, “That’s where the largest fish live, Taylor.”

I don’t know that. My father told me it would be trespassing to climb along the steep embankment, searching just for larger fish. I didn’t want my mother to risk losing her job at Minnkota Power just because her fishing-obsessed son wanted to land a larger bass.

My grandfather and I make one more final turn, past the boat dock, and into a parking lot of dust and dirt, heading closer to the lake, before parking by the fence line along the channel.

My grandfather will not trespass here, but we’ll get as close as we are damn able in the hopes to catch larger fish.

I’m the first one out as my grandfather turns off the car. I open the trunk and listen to the gentle whoosh as the door lifts on its own. I grab my own fishing rod and blue-gray tackle box, complete with scrawled childhood writing: Taylor Brorby, 416 Prairie Avenue, Center, ND 58530. This is my priceless

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treasure trove, filled with crankbaits resembling the shape of small fish, colored blaze orange, chartreuse, silver, sky blue, sun yellow—some jointed to mimic the movement of small minnows, some filled with rattling balls, drawing fish through sound; an assortment of bobbers—yellow, orange, red, white, sphered, conical, oval; split-shot in case I need to weight my line; an assortment of hooks—barbed, barbless, and treble; and spinnerbaits, my favorite, a lure with a skirt that looks like a hula skirt, with wire bent at a 70-degree angle away from the lure, complete with blades that revolve like a propeller, sending vibrations and reflections of light throughout the water.

I hurry to where the dirt meets rock, leaping between boulders like a squirrel between branches, and my grandfather is left to grab his own rods, fishing bucket, net, and the lunch pail. I want to catch the first fish and the biggest fish; we always bet a dollar for both.

Across the end of the chute, where warm water roils and foam floats as it is discharged from the channel, buoys a large log.

I often contemplate running across the log, having observed such a maneuver in childhood cartoons where lumberjacks bounce across lakes on floating timber. My grandfather tells me it’s not a good idea, that the water is too fast and there are too many sharp rocks below the surface.

“This lake used to be a trickling stream when I was your age.

This used to be a wheat field.”

The truth is that Nelson Lake is a recent phenomenon, only coming into existence in the late 1960s and early 1970s when Minnkota Power Cooperative developed a coal-fired power plant to help harness energy to power homes in eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota. By 1970, Young 1, and 1977, Young 2, the energy stations, began generating electricity for distribution. The total unit output is 705 megawatts, powered by more than four million tons of lignite coal every year. Nelson Lake was created as a type of natural coolant for the very hot process of burning enough coal to create and distribute electricity—the added benefit for residents in south-central North Dakota was a type of hot spring available in a cold weather climate.

Bluegill are a palm-sized fish, and were a childhood obsession. Marked by a black circle on the edge of its gill, a bluegill receives its name due to the slash of blue, resembling eye shadow, across its head and chin. Striped

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with five to nine vertical bars, ranging in color from forest green to puce, these fish can resemble a watery relative of the zebra. The belly of the bluegill is cut by a yellow or deep autumn-orange that extends across its abdomen.

When held horizontally, the bluegill approach the thinness of a pancake. The fish, to me, look odd. They are temperamental and indecisive.

Breaking the tension of the water with a bobber, I wait for the bluegill to eat my worm. Like a child taking small bites of a cookie, slowly eating until it is gone, bluegill will nibble around my hook, slowly and methodically ripping the worm apart, bit by bit, until only a small circle of flesh is left on the hook. The entire time this feeding frenzy is occurring, my bobber glides across the surface of the water, leading me to believe that, any moment, I will catch a fish. My bobber suddenly stops. What happened?

“You’re probably out of worm,” my grandfather chimes. I hoist my bobber from the water, noticing a golden flash.

Damn, my worm is gone.

—————————— At thirteen I receive my own boat, what I call a pondhopper due to its size. Nine feet long and green in color, my boat is ideal for fishing small lakes, large ponds, and streams. Powered by a trolling motor, the boat creates its own gentle wake as it takes me to places my father’s large, eighteen-foot-long boat cannot. I feel as if I pass into the rite of manhood. I am now a hunter. I am in control. I can stalk elusive piscatorial prey to my heart’s fulfillment.

Where Square Butte Creek flows into Nelson Lake there is a large swath of cattails and reeds. During fishing excursions with my father, I noticed a waterway that leads into a grove of cattails—but where? Now, with the power of my own boat, I feel liberated. Channeling Lewis and Clark, I strike out to find a new passageway in the small Square Butte Creek.

I sidle up near the entrance, swing the trolling motor to a sharp left to pivot the boat right, and blast into the greenwalled world of reeds and water. The reeds are tight, like books on a shelf, and sway back and forth in the wind. I am met with a symphony of birdsong, but see no birds. I slow the boat. I don’t want to get in a place where I cannot maneuver back into the main channel of the Square Butte Creek. The inlet narrows, bringing walls of reeds closer to the boat. I have no idea how long the inlet is; my slow

speed slows time. Ahead there is a barricade of rushes.

Damn. Even as a teenager I hate admitting defeat. I look behind me and slowly back up. I hit the motor full throttle, which throws me backward in my seat, heading fast towards the green wall. I break through and find myself in an oasis— an island of water—in the reeds.

Thwack! A beaver signals to the other animals that an intruder has just arrived. Red-winged blackbirds and finches sway on the reeds in the afternoon wind. I look behind me, the tee box for hole number one at the Square Butte Creek Golf Course is visible. I wonder if anyone has been monitoring my expedition this entire time.

Why did I come here? What is it that sent me on this hunt? Is it the lure of larger, more elusive fish, of fish that were never caught before? Maybe it’s that I want a world to myself, a world that is walled in by green reeds, bobbing cattails, and water. Maybe it’s traveling to a place where only I’ve been, a place I can tell my father and grandfather about with expert knowledge, revealing detail by detail the uniqueness of this waterhole.

My line goes taut—fish on. After a few seconds, my rod tip striking through the air like an electric current, I land a crappie—my favorite fish—and hold it in the afternoon sun; it glints like a silver coin, its eyes, large and black like onyx, unblinking. I slide the fish into the water, release my thumb from its mouth, and watch its fins propel it forward.

I set my fishing rod down in my boat, turn off the motor, and slowly let the wind push me across this lake within a stream. At thirteen I have not yet begun reading in earnest, having not yet acquired my adulthood hobbies of music and literature, and am left rolling along the water, soaking in the serenity of this solitary moment.

Thwack! The beaver is back and I take it as my cue to leave. Muskrat skirt the reed edges, dip under the surface, reappearing several dozen feet further along the reed line.

I push through the reed wall again, this time navigating the inlet faster, and return to the stream bank, hauling my boat out of the water and into the back of my small pickup truck.

—————————— My sister and I talk about Nelson Lake—about the fish my grandfather would keep, throw on ice, and then eat—with trepidation.

“What do you think we were exposed to?” Tanya asks. “Did 7

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“What do you think we were exposed to? Did you ever swallow the water?”

you ever swallow the water?”

My eyes close. Please remember you didn’t, I say to myself over and over. You didn’t swallow the water.

“A few times,” I say.

—————————— At Kyle’s birthday party my friend Connor and I decided to leave the party and swim across the lake. Wrapped in our child-sized lifejackets, we figure it would be fun to see how close to Minnkota Power we could get. While friends are skittering and screaming across Nelson Lake behind an inner tube, Connor and I pump and paddle our way, stroke by stroke, out into the widening lake.

“Watch this,” I say, and blow bubbles in the warm, green water.

Connor repeats.

Eventually we both stop, shifting from being horizontal to vertical, trying to get higher in the water. A storm of coughs erupts like thunder, and Connor’s face turns red. We’ve swallowed Nelson Lake water.

Kyle’s dad brings the boat towards us, two bobbing buoys in the water.

“You can’t be out here,” he says. “You might get hit by another boat.”

Connor and I haul ourselves up and over the steel-hull edge, sitting on the crimson-colored carpet. The boat roars across the lake and deposits us ashore.

—————————— My sister stares at me. “I think I did, too,” she says. We exchange stories. Tanya was not much of a fisherman. She is ten years older than me and spent more time at Nelson Lake, drinking and partying in high school, swimming in winter, and riding in friends’ boats. I moved away from Center at fifteen, the age many friends began driving and were on the verge of underage drinking, and so I missed the sodden rituals of Nelson Lake.

“What do you think is in that lake?” she asks.

I stare beyond her, looking out through the wall, into the nothingness of thought. My mind rolls through the 8

possibilities. Nothing, surely nothing, I think to myself. A sting of fear hits my throat.

Like many other lakes in North Dakota, Nelson Lake is littered with beer bottles, potato chip wrappers, used condoms, and dead fish. The surrounding hills and pastures empty into Square Butte Creek and Nelson Lake before flowing on to the Missouri River. I think more. I think beyond deer urine and cow manure, focusing on the smokestack in my mind.

During childhood travels to and from Bismarck, the state capital of North Dakota, forty miles from Center, I used the Minnkota Power smokestack as my symbol of being near home. On trips home from Bismarck at night, the stack was lit, a cigarette in the night, gently puffing smoke into the sky. Minnkota Power was my beacon. When in sight, I knew we were almost home.

I think back to Kyle’s birthday party, to Connor and me pumping and pulling towards Minnkota Power. What was it we wanted to see? I wanted to be near power, find where the water was sucked in, follow the heat of my desire into the hot water of the power plant. I wanted to see where my mother’s money came from, what kept food on our table, see the manmade feature that warmed the water and burned the coal. I wanted to see power.

“Tanya, do you think anything bad went into the water because of Minnkota Power?” I ask.

“I don’t think anything good can come from a lake that never freezes,” she replies.

My veins and arteries are now passageways for Nelson Lake water. As a child, soaked and saturated by its warm waters, I frolicked in delight while fishing and swimming.

The lakes of our childhoods connect to the larger lakes of our beings. I am now troubled by water.

TAYLOR BRORBY is an essayist and poet living in Ames, Iowa.

His chapbook of poems, Ruin: Elegies from the Bakken, was released this spring by Red Bird Chapbooks, and he is currently editing the

iHuman

How is technology changing humanity?

September 26, 2015 Bismarck, North Dakota

This ideas festival is for anyone interested in the future of our digital society. Whether you are a plugged-in tech addict or an off-line skeptic, your assumptions about technology will be challenged.

Leading innovators and researchers from both the tech industry and academia will share their insights into the ways rapid advances in technology are creating both amazing opportunities and dangerous new challenges.

Understanding the power and pitfalls of technology allows us to remain its masters instead of its unthinking servants.

series

www.gamechangernd.com #BeCuriousND

[sense of place]

THE SCIENCE OF SACRED MEMORIES:

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NOSTALGIA AND ITS EFFECTS ON OUR PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

By Clay Routledge

We live in an ever-changing technological world, and it is hard to keep up with the next big thing. Every time we purchase a new television, computer, or cellular phone we are acutely aware of the fact that we just bought a device that will be technically outdated and socially out of fashion very soon. For a long time I carried a basic cell phone on which I could make calls but no texting, no Internet. My students and my own children thought I was clinging to the past and needed to pull myself together and get with the times. To them, I might as well have been sending smoke signals or telegrams as a means of communication.

We seem to be living in the pursuit of the newest gadgets, fashions, diets, and exercise crazes, but is this characterization accurate? Consider what we do with much of this new technology that enamors us so. Our smart phones and tablets connect us to the Internet, and for many of us, this connection is a human one. Sure, we love being able to buy movie tickets online and instantly find the answers to those questions that once would have required a trip to the local library. But this technology also helps meet a need that is as old as our species— making a human connection. Email, instant messaging, and social media offer new ways to stay in touch with friends and family. Critically, the technology helps us keep alive the relationships from the past challenged by geographical distance and the hectic routines of modern living.

We love our compact and lightweight new mp3 players, but many of us use them to download and playlist classic songs from our youth. High-definition televisions are great, but we often use them to watch our favorite old movies now on Blu-ray. We enjoy living in the present and thinking about the future, but we also very much long to stay connected to our past. By nature, humans are nostalgic creatures. But why?

DEMONS, COWBELLS, AND THE LONGING TO RETURN TO THE WOMB In 1688 the Swiss physician Johaness Hofer was concerned about what appeared to be an illness afflicting Swiss soldiers and mercenaries who had traveled from their Alpine homes to the plains of Europe to wage war in the service of European monarchs. Hofer coined the term “nostalgia” to describe this disease, from the root words: nostos (return to the native land) and algos (pain). Thus, nostalgia, as originally defined, is the pain caused by the

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...through more than two hundred years of study, one thing was consistent: to be nostalgic meant to be ill. desire to return to one’s native land. Hofer identified the symptoms of nostalgia to include sadness, anxiety, irregular heartbeat, insomnia, and disordered eating. He believed that nostalgia was a “cerebral disease” of demonic origin.

Other physicians of that era also viewed nostalgia as a neurological disorder but offered alternative, yet equally interesting, explanations of its etiology. For example, the German–Swiss physician J. J. Scheuchzer proposed that the condition may be caused by changes in atmospheric pressure that could drive blood from the heart to the brain, triggering a longing for home. Other physicians believed that the true culprit was the continuous clanging of cowbells in the Alps causing damage to the eardrum and brain.

By the mid-nineteenth century, nostalgia was no longer viewed as a uniquely Swiss ailment but could be experienced by anyone separated from and longing for home. For example, during the American Civil War, Union physicians reported thousands of cases of nostalgia among Union soldiers. A hundred years later, nostalgia was no longer considered a neurological disease but rather a mental illness similar to depression. Many psychologists of the time proposed that nostalgia was a subconscious desire to return to one’s fetal state. Regardless of how nostalgia was conceptualized through more than two hundred years of study, one thing was consistent: to be nostalgic meant to be ill.

HOMESICKNESS AND NOSTALGIA GO THEIR SEPARATE WAYS Nostalgia’s negative connotation began to change toward the end of the twentieth century. Scholars were growing increasingly interested in the psychology of homesickness and discovered that lay people generally regarded nostalgia as distinct from homesickness. For most people, nostalgia was associated with warm feelings about persons, places, and events from the past. On the other hand, homesickness was associated with the unpleasant feeling of longing to return home. Homesickness was a problem, a source of stress and anxiety, while nostalgia was not. Psychologists then focused their energy on homesickness, viewing it as the true cause of suffering associated with longing for home.

While nostalgia was no longer perceived as a threat to mental health, it had yet to capture the interests of psychologists. If we accept that homesickness causes personal distress and is distinct from nostalgia, then what psychological effects does nostalgia cause, if any? No one knew because no one had systematically studied the psychology of nostalgia using modern empirical methods.

In the 1990s, marketing researchers and consumer psychologists sparked a revival of interest in nostalgia.

They observed that products and styles popular during an individual’s youth continued to influence personal 12

preferences throughout life. In other words, consumer behavior appears to be influenced, in part, by people’s desire to stay connected to their past. People want to be reminded of days gone by. But why? Marketing research demonstrated that nostalgia influences what we spend our money on, but it did not shed light on the critical psychological question. What, if anything, does nostalgia do for people? It was not until 2006 that answers to this question began to appear.

THE NEW SCIENCE OF NOSTALGIA As humans, we are attracted to novelty and susceptible to the social pull of keeping up with emerging trends, but we also appear to be grounded in the world of yesteryear.

In a survey I observed that nearly 80 percent of university students report experiencing nostalgia at least once a week. College students are generally young and focused on present concerns, such as passing final exams, and future goals, such as having a successful career and finding a mate.

Yet, the evidence indicates that most of them also regularly think about the past.

Other studies conducted by University of Southampton professors Constantine Sedikides and Tim Wildschut—both leading researchers in the study of nostalgia—similarly suggest that nostalgia is a very common experience across different ages and cultures. Whether it is going to see the reboot of a beloved film franchise at the local cinema, downloading our favorite songs from high school on iTunes, reconnecting with an old friend, or uploading childhood pictures on Facebook for Throwback Thursday, we are regularly seduced by the past. The critical question, again, is why.

For nearly ten years, I, along with a number of colleagues at universities around the world, such as Drs. Sedikides and Wildschut, have been studying the psychology of nostalgia with the goal of understanding how this sentimental longing for the past affects people. Does it have any positive functionality? Or is it inconsequential, neither good nor bad for us?

To begin to answer this question, my colleagues and I started with some relatively simple studies. We asked people to come into the laboratory and complete a nostalgia writing task. Specifically, we provided them with a dictionary definition of nostalgia and instructed them to bring to mind an experience from the past that makes them nostalgic and to spend some time writing about this experience. We then trained research assistants to code these narratives so that we could assess common features of nostalgic memories.

The results of these initial studies provided clues that nostalgia may be good for psychological health. Specifically,

[sense of place] people were more likely to use positive, relative to negative, words in their narratives. Nostalgic narratives commonly appeared to focus on personally meaningful or cherished life experiences shared with close others, such as birthday celebrations, weddings, anniversaries, holidays, or vacations.

In short, nostalgic memories appear to be happy memories that involve momentous life events experienced with loved ones. This poses the question: does revisiting the past via nostalgia lead to any positive outcomes in the present?

To answer this question directly, my colleagues and I have conducted and continue to conduct experiments assessing the psychological functions of nostalgia. In these studies, we begin by randomly assigning people to one of two conditions. In the first condition, participants are asked to write about an experience from their past that generates nostalgia. Those in the control condition are writing about something that happened very recently. In other words, all participants in the study are writing about autobiographical events, but only some of them are writing about experiences that trigger nostalgia, assuming that people are not going to feel nostalgic about something that happened in the very recent past.

Another method we commonly use to induce nostalgia is through music. In one group, participants listen to a favorite song from when they were younger, while another group listens to a new favorite song (one they have recently heard for the first time). Listening to either song is pleasurable, but only one of them transports the person back in time via nostalgia. After the participants complete the tasks, they complete questionnaires that assess a range of variables associated with psychological and social health. These include measures of positive and negative mood, selfesteem, feelings of belonging, perceptions of meaning in life, and optimism about the future.

This method allows us to consider three possibilities. If nostalgia is bad for you, then we would expect people in the nostalgia condition to exhibit lower levels of psychological and social health than people in the control condition. If nostalgia is inconsequential for psychological and social health, then we would expect to see no differences between the nostalgia and control conditions. And, if nostalgia is good for you, then we would expect people in the nostalgia condition to exhibit higher levels of psychological and social health than participants in the control condition.

In all of the research we have done to date, the evidence appears to be quite clear. Nostalgia is good for psychological and social health. When people write about experiences or listen to music that make them nostalgic, they subsequently experience elevated positive mood, heightened feelings of self-esteem, a greater sense of feeling loved or connected to others, increased belief that their lives are full of meaning and purpose, and a renewed sense of optimism about the future. In addition, nostalgia does not increase negative mood. Nostalgia also helps people cope with stress and makes them hopeful for the future. In short, nostalgia makes people feel good about themselves and their relationships.

Our recent studies further highlight the benefits of revisiting the past. In one study we recruited adult participants above the age of forty, and asked them to write about an experience from high school. In one group, they wrote about a mundane experience in their memory, and the second group described an experience that generated nostalgia. Then we asked participants how young at heart, youthful, and energized they currently felt. Finally, we asked them to complete a questionnaire assessing how physically healthy they felt and how optimistic they were about their future health.

The results were striking. People who thought about an experience from high school that made them nostalgic indicated feeling more young at heart, youthful, and energized than people who thought about a mundane (nonnostalgic) high school experience. In other words, it is not just thinking about youth or times past that makes people feel younger, it is thinking nostalgically about youth. In addition, in this study, we found that this nostalgia-induced perceived youthfulness led people to feel healthier and more optimistic about their future health. Nostalgia appears to be a psychological fountain of youth.

Other studies also indicate that nostalgia not only makes people feel better about themselves, it also makes them behave in a more prosocial manner. For example, after an experience of nostalgia, people donate more money to charity; they are more likely to help someone in need; and they are more interested in making new friends. By boosting psychological health, nostalgia makes people more socially conscious citizens. The benefits of nostalgia thus extend beyond the individual.

THE FUTURE OF THE PAST I finally broke down and bought a smart phone. I put up a good fight but I suppose it was time. As a species, part of how we thrive is by pushing forward, striving to improve ourselves and the world around us. Yet, as historians are happy to remind us, we should never forget the past.

Psychologists are now beginning to understand that we can also reap benefits from reflecting on our own pasts. Through nostalgia, we can revisit the events from our past we cherish most and that remind us that we are loved. Recalling the past gives us the comfort and reassurance we need to take on present challenges and pursue future opportunities.

DR. CLAY ROUTLEDGE is a social psychologist and associate professor of psychology at North Dakota State University. He is a leading expert on the psychology of nostalgia and the psychology of existential meaning. He regularly publishes his work in the top psychology journals. Dr. Routledge recently co-edited a book on the scientific study of meaning in life and has written a book on the psychology of nostalgia (forthcoming). His work has been featured in The New York Times, CBS News, BBC News, CNN, and Men’s Health, and other outlets. He also writes the popular blog “More than Mortal” for Psychology Today and has served as a guest blogger for Scientific American.

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[sense of place]

...the house sprouted poetry— more than a hundred poems, tucked away in drawers, in linen closets, hidden behind cereal boxes in the cupboard.

FARGO BRICK

Evelyn grew up in this house made of yellow brick from the Fargo Brick Company, owned by her father Henry and his brother Sanford Johnson. The two brothers, both from Sweden, built homes close to each other and ran the brickyard. Henry’s home (pictured) was the larger of the two, with extra room to feed and possibly house workers in the brickyard. This home no longer exists, but Sanford’s home still stands in a city-owned park, now known as the Rheault Farm, at 2902 25th Street South in Fargo. All photos courtesy of the author.

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[sense of place]

My mother began writing poetry during the Depression, on a wheat farm

outside Fargo, North Dakota. When she was seventeen, she sent a number of pieces to an anthology for consideration. The editor wrote her back, accepting three of them, but when he discovered how young she was, the deal was off.

He promised her a copy of the anthology as a consolation prize.

She never submitted anything to anyone again.

As a child, I was dimly aware that she wrote, and she may have shown me a half-dozen poems over the years. But two days after her death, at the age of eighty-three, when several of her grandchildren were searching for photographs to put up at the funeral home, the house sprouted poetry—more than a hundred poems, tucked away in drawers, in linen closets, hidden behind cereal boxes in the cupboard. Some were scribbled on the back of church programs and shopping lists, on Motel 6 stationery.

Her granddaughter Anne typed the poems, bound them, and distributed copies to the family.

My father, who died within six months, asked me to do something with my mother’s writing, but what that might be, I didn’t know. I was deeply moved by the poems, but I was her son. How could I judge their literary worth? They were a long way from doggerel, but they weren’t Wallace Stevens, either, and I wasn’t about to send them off to The Paris Review.

Five years passed. Then this spring August Kleinzahler and his wife, Sarah Kobrinsky, came to dinner. August was our visiting poet at the Michener Center for the semester and Sarah is a fine poet and writer as well, no surprise. The surprise was that she’d grown up in Fargo. We started trading stories and before the evening was over, I pulled out the Kinko’s-bound sheaf of my mother’s writing.

Evelyn (on the right) with her friend Esther Lee in the 1930s. According to Evelyn’s daughter, Mary Magnuson Loew, the two girls wrote letters to each other in the form of poetry, and Esther compiled the first book of Evelyn’s poetry and gave it to her as a gift. Mary added, “Mom had mentioned dressing up just for fun [in this photo], celebrating the end of winter and an early spring. Serendipity . . . Mom’s ability to find delightful moments.”

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Evelyn and her husband, Roy Magnuson, ​with t​heir first child, Jim, born in 1941. The couple had three more children: Mary in 1944, Joan in 1946, and Mark in 1949. The family later moved to Middleton, Wisconsin.

It seemed a great cosmic joke that our mother, one of the world’s most modest people, had somehow become a celebrity.

She called me several days later.

Delighted by the poems, she was filled with questions and ended up writing an article for The High Plains Reader, Fargo’s alternative newspaper.

In her digging into all this, Sarah made a number of discoveries, the most miraculous of which was that the farmhouse, where my mother had spent much of her childhood and where I had lived as a child, was still standing and was now a city park. I remembered it as an astonishing place, built from the yellow clay bricks of my grandfather’s brickyard, surrounded by hollyhocks, purple lilacs, and a windrow of silver Russian olive trees.

The upshot of all this was that in July, I drove to Fargo with my brother and sister and our spouses. Sarah flew up from Austin and we did a reading of my mother’s poetry in the hundred-year-old farmhouse.

I did not expect a crowd. I assumed we would be reading to ourselves and

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maybe a few members of Sarah’s family, but when we arrived at the farm we were greeted by two television crews, a newspaper reporter, the director of the Nordic Culture Club, even the caretaker for the Parks Department and his wife and daughter who’d meandered in for coffee.

just experienced with the universe I occupy most of the year—not just the world of young writers and MFA programs, but the wider literary world as well. Perhaps a comparison like that is unfair. My mother wrote poetry as a private act. She didn’t consider it a profession or even a vocation.

The next day Sarah and I did an hourlong interview on the radio, followed by another reading that night on the rooftop of a downtown hotel that had been planted with prairie grasses.

All the same, when I consider how much time we “real writers” waste licking our wounds and obsessing over where we rank on some mythical literary ladder, almost any alternative can seem attractive. Envy is the great occupational hazard. I admit that I enjoy grousing as much as anyone.

What crummy book just got a great review? Who got a fellowship-prizesix-figure-advance when it should have been me? We have our work judged too often. We stay too roiled up.

It was an emotionally charged weekend. Still the big brother, I found myself shooting my sister looks, hoping she wouldn’t burst into tears, but to tell the truth, I was as much on the edge as she was. It seemed a great cosmic joke that our mother, one of the world’s most modest people, had somehow become a celebrity. It was a revelation to sit in an audience, hearing Sarah read my mother’s work, and think, “Geez, this is real poetry.”

Sarah had selected the poems, picking some that were written when my mother was young—playing and toying around with Swedish country accents, experimenting with form. These were followed by devotional pieces, letters to God, poems with a lot of snow and wind. Much of the later work was no more than fragments, dealing with the death of a daughter, other losses, religious doubt and struggle.

Listening to the poems, I found myself struck by two ideas simultaneously. The first was how powerful language is, how it can convey its force, seventy years after the fact. Words were as durable as the yellow bricks from my grandfather’s brickyard. The second thought was how easily all those poems could have vanished without having been uttered by anyone.

The drive back from Fargo was long, with miles of wheat fields, distant silos, and plenty of time to think. I couldn’t help but compare what I’d

To be fair, writing is a seriously anxietyprovoking profession. It takes bravery or bullheadedness to commit yourself to a life of this. You can spend five years on a book and come up with nothing. Or a decade. There is more rejection than is good for anyone. The blows keep raining down.

Still, it is important to remember that most writing of value comes from some quieter place. It furnishes its own rewards, sustains us in ways we couldn’t have imagined when we started, and, in time, with a few breaks, is capable of making its own way.

This article is reprinted by permission of the author from his website: http://www. jamesmagnuson.com/essay-fargo-brick.html JAMES MAGNUSON lived in Fargo in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, has been the Playwright in Residence at Princeton University, and has directed the James A. Michener Center for Writers (MCW) at the University of Texas at Austin since 1994.

His plays have been produced at Playwrights Horizons and Lincoln Center, and he has written extensively for television. The author of ten novels, his new novel, Famous Writers I Have Known, was published by Norton last

[sense of place]

SAMPLES OF EVELYN MAGNUSON’S POETRY Evelyn Johnson Magnuson was born September 23, 1917, and died March 16, 2001, at the age of eighty-three.

year.

“It must have been the coffee I couldn’t sleep a wink.

I’m sure it was the coffee.”

“Yah, dot’s vot you tink.”

“Of course it was the coffee.

What else?” “Now ain’t dot tuff!

Yumpin Yimminy can’t you see That you is in luff.” (dated 1937)

THE FARMER Under his tattered hat, under his frown, Under his shabbiness, scorned by the town, There’s a “devil-may-care” optimist heart.

There is a poet and the earth is his art.

He doesn’t so often go to preaching, and such, but he’s seen God caressing the grain And he listens, beholding his work all undone, to God’s chastening voice in the rain.

His work is with life, and watching life grow That clamorous men may be fed.

And the grain fields in harvest, the corn bending low Are the fulfillment that sweetens his bread.

They say “He hasn’t lived!” He has life in his hands: And he knows many things no one else understands.

They may laugh at his tatters or call him a clod.

He smiles to himself and winks up to God. (no date)

Then here are three short poems that she wrote when she was an old woman.

To find red sneakers where I left them— And a jar of instant coffee on the shelf Just to breathe fresh air again and be myself

Dear Lord—keep kneading me in the right direction keenly in my mouth kind things to say make me aware of others’ needs —help me to be kind—what else is there The last of the three poems was written just days before she died.

Close the door gently as you go Leave only love behind 17

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By Nita K. Ritzke

All photos courtesy of the author.

LETTERS TO EVA

[sense of place]

The summer of 2014 had crisped the grass before I got around to cleaning out the small memento box. My yard in Bismarck was hard, cracked and felt like a scrub brush under my bare feet but direct sunlight made the onionskin paper easier to read. I had planned to finish sorting out my grandmother’s old letters and postcards in a manner of minutes. Instead, I became transfixed by the words of a young man who sailed to Austria in September 1936. He was about eighteen, the same age as many of the college students I teach. Like them, he was full of aspiration, energy, and marveled at new discoveries. As I opened each envelope, I was caught up in the suspense of a personal history whose outline I knew but whose mysteries would keep me searching the rest of the summer.

Grandma Eva and Grandpa Paul Ritzke built a farmhouse near Parshall, North Dakota, after their first home in Van Hook was inundated by the waters that became part of Lake Sakakawea in the late 1940s. My grandmother had always a small chest —a shoebox-sized cedar case with brass hasps and clasps that made it look like a treasure chest. Within the chest were rosaries from “the nuns” (three of her sisters belonged to the Order of Saint Benedict), a lock of blond hair from when Eva was young, a number of photographs, and a stack of letters addressed to “Mrs. Paul Ritzke, Rt. 2, Van Hook, N.D.” The letters were from her younger

brother, Herman Niermann. While Eva was struggling through the dirt and drought of the Depression in 1936, Herman was on his way to a Jesuit seminary in Austria. Grandma Eva rarely spoke about sad or uncomfortable subjects so the ten pieces of correspondence she had saved—written from 1937 to 1944— must have held some particular significance.

After brushing up on the years leading up to World War II in Europe, I went back into my grandmother’s photo albums and Bibles in an effort to understand the references made in her brother’s letters. I wondered if somewhere there were relatives I didn’t know who might have the letters she had written to Herman.

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[sense of place]

LETTER 1

Canisianum Innsbruck, Austria Feb. 21, 1937 Dear sister & Family: Quite a time has gone by since I received your interesting letter.

Whenever I have nothing to do for the moment, I sometimes reread letters and I can assure [you] that I reread your letter also a few times. Especially during the last few days as I haven’t received a letter from the States for the longest time that I reckon that something must have happened that they didn’t write sooner. And that picture of Teddy that you enclosed certainly is a good one of him. I suppose that he is having “Teddy” Ritzke (1936). a good time now with the toys that he got for Christmas. Does he still remember me? I’ll bet he doesn’t. Does he go to school when it is so cold like it is in the States now? In the last letters that I got from home everyone wrote that they were having snow and that it was colder than ever. So I suppose that you got some of the cold up in the Dakotas also.

During our Christmas vacation almost all of the Americans went to a sort of a hotel which we call a “Gasthouse” over here. It is on the side of a mountain near a town which is about six miles away from Innsbruck. I have a few exams I have to take yet. After they are over with I had intended to go to Rome to see the Pope but as he is quite sick and one cannot be certain if a person can get to see him, I thought that perhaps it will be just as cheap to wait a year at least and then go. This year it would be very cheap as the Italian lira has fallen and this year we can get about 22 lira per dollar while last year a person could get only about 14. So you see, there is quite a difference. As it is, I think that I will make a small trip through southern Tyrol, the name of the county or province in which Innsbruck itself is.

I have great plans for next summer; there is a nice fellow here who comes from Louisville, Kentucky. If everything turns out all right for the two of us, we intend to make our trip through Germany on bikes and sleep in a tent. That certainly will be a nice experience. We asked a German about it and he said that it would be just the thing. He had done it several times already, he said. I’m dreaming of the pancakes we will have then. Will they ever taste good! I’m

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sure that they will be the best pancakes that I ever tasted, because the last one that I ate was one that Mother made at home. The food is so different here. Hardly anything is like it is at home. I wrote to our relatives in Germany already and found out that I have an Uncle there yet. He was Dad’s half-brother, I think. He called himself my uncle when he wrote. I don’t mind as then I will certainly be welcome there. That is the way the German people are; if you are any relation of theirs at all, and if it is only their fifth cousin, you will be welcome to stay there as long as you like. I’m going to try to look up Mother’s relatives also.

Her mother came from Trier and I’ll be going through that city on my way back from Ibbenburen which is where Dad’s relatives live. I have great plans now and I hope that they won’t change any more. I’ll let you know more about it next summer when we will be eating grapes along the Rhine. Find out about the relatives of the Ritzke’s and maybe they live just on my way up there, so I could visit them also.

Right now I’m eating a piece of dry brown bread which is almost as solid as a rock. That is what we can get all kinds of to eat between meals. Oh! It’s great stuff! (Gr-r-r!) For breakfast we get a piece of dry white bread and some coffee made out of fig juice, or milk. And for the rest of the stuff that we get for dinner and supper, I believe that the nuns who fix it are the only ones who know exactly what is in it.

Well, I’ll ring off and get back to my studies, hoping that this letter will interest you although I don’t see how it can.

When you get time again let me know how the wind blows out there in Dakota.

Am remembering you all in my prayers, Your brother, Herman

[sense of place]

LETTER 2

Canisianum Innsbruck, Austria July 12, 1937 Dear sister Eva & family: A long time has already passed since you have heard from me. During the months of June and part of May, I did not get much of a chance to do much writing, on account of the many exams that I had to take.

From what I hear from home this year, you will most probably have a good crop this year. I only hope that hail or something like that doesn’t happen to the crops. I heard that you and Paul are running two farms this year. I guess that the only thing that one can do is pray, and that real hard.

Yes I remember you all in my prayers. Not that you especially need them, because you are so bad but who is there among us who doesn’t stand in need of prayers?

You spoke something about traveling about a bit if you had the necessary money; that reminds me, I got a letter from a cousin of ours who lives in Florida. I found out quite a bit about our relationship from her. There are 11 children in their family, but I figured, they haven’t got ours beat have they? That is mother’s brother’s family. I have to write to her yet, too. I also write to a cousin in Germany, whom I expect to see within a few weeks after I leave here.

For my Easter vacation I went to South Tirol with a German. The vacation lasted ten days, and I enjoyed every day of it. We took all our stuff along in a knap-sack which we carried on our backs. At nights we slept in some small place as it cost only about 12¢ per person and we had private beds and everything. We didn’t get so very far because we walked all the way. Most of the time we stayed on some small mountain-path where we could see the whole valley below us. I am sending you a picture which was taken up on the mountainside. That what I have in my hands is a real old Tirolean plow. It certainly is different from the ones which we use in the States isn’t it?

You can see my pack laying on the ground in back of me.

It sure was heavy towards the end of the hike. Way in the background you can see a part of the mountain further back. The white spots on it is [sic] snow.

About a week ago we had our Independence Day Banquet. It was held about 15 miles south of Innsbruck on the road to Italy. It was real “hoity-toity” if you know just what I mean. We had a real feed and everyone got enough to eat. The Englishmen are allowed to go to the same banquet because they belong to the same “Landsmannschaft,” that is the American landsmannschaft.1 That is because they haven’t enough men over to start a schaft of their own. We had a great feed and a good time while we were out there. We even had real American pie even though it didn’t taste anything like one that is made at home. The next day everyone was feeling “down in the dumps,” at least I was.

No doubt you are quite busy right now, as you have two farms on your hands instead of just the one like you had last year. I wish that I could help you out this year for some time, for I surely would appreciate it to do a little work for the salt in my bread. I hope that I can find something to do while I am up at my relatives.

Dad surely will be pleased if I can find something which once belonged to him when he was yet here in Germany.

There’s supposed to be a big picture of him up there somewhere which was taken while he was in the army.

If only I can get a hold of that, it will tickle him pink.

Right now, they are having quite a bit of trouble in Germany, on account of the Hitler men bothering the priests and the Catholics. About 46 priests were put in jail and many more were tried before a legal court. Also some of the Bishops were called on as witnesses. It’s getting worse and worse up there. Most probably it will get as bad as it was when dad was still there. Of course if I go up there, I won’t have any trouble because I’m an American and they can’t do anything to me. I just feel sorry Herman in the garden at Canisianum (1938).

1

In this context, he is referring to a group of compatriots celebrating a national holiday: Independence Day. 21

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Stockholm.

for the people who live there. The worst part of it is, that they are not even allowed to leave the country, first of all because it is forbidden and secondly because they are not allowed to take any money out of the country. At one time there were about 150 Germans here in the house, and next year not more than ten are expected to come back. There is one German priest here at present, and he is staying in Austria during the summer, because he is sure that if he went back, he would never be allowed to return again. It is a tough ball game for them. Some of them realize that the time will come for them when they will have to choose between the Church and the State in Germany, that is Hitler. I just hope that Austria will be able to keep out of his way because there are heaps of real poor people living in Austria.

Give my best regards to the rest of the relatives up there, and say a prayer for me once in a while, for I’m sure I need it badly.

The shrine at Lourdes.

Thanks to the State Historical Society of North Dakota Archives, I spent a few days trying to imagine how Eva paired Herman’s words against reports in the paper. The Van Hook Reporter printed photos of Hitler’s youth groups touring Rome and within a year would show massive Nazi military displays in Nuremberg.

POSTCARD 1

Stockholm, Sweden Aug. 26, 1937

Your brother, Herman

By the time I had read the second letter, I realized Herman would not have been able to please his father due to the escalation of Hitler’s power. I wondered what Eva might have been doing aside from cleaning the face of my then six-year-old father. I envisioned the life of a farm wife and imagined she read the letter leaning on her fencepost or while soaking the laundry. I exhausted the RitzkeNiermann ancestry documents I possess and invested time on the internet where I found a Ritzke-Niermann contact in Maryland. I learned Herman—one of fourteen siblings— may have engaged with the Church for economic reasons: a vocation of necessity. He likely felt obliged to the Church for sponsoring his studies while he lessened the burden on his family back in the States. Perhaps Eva felt a similar motive. I was told it was common at the time for sibling families to marry: my grandmother married Paul Ritzke around the same time her brother Anton married Paul’s sister Margaret. Whatever their motives, I felt the stark difference between our generations.

Besides Herman’s letters, Eva received local, national, and world news via radio or through the weekly paper.

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Dear sister and family: I’m in Sweden now with my two friends. We came here on bicycles. We sleep in tents, wash our own clothes and prepare our own meals and so it’s quite cheap. Sweden is very beautiful and very much like at home, only the people speak “Swenska” instead of English. Ha! From here we are going to Oslo, Norway on bikes. I hope you had a good crop this year. Wish I could have helped you harvest it. I have to start studying again on Oct. 2.

Until then, Your brother, Herman Greetings to all from Sweden!

Shortly after Herman’s return to Austria, he learned of his father’s death. I wondered if this was the reason for the year’s gap between the letters and no mention of the loss later. I was told that Herman knew his father had been found dead but was spared from learning of the conflicting reports as to cause or that the body was found in a church. Amid any personal grief, Herman’s life was upturned when Germany assumed control or “annexed” Austria in March of 1938. Almost a year passes between correspondences.

Vatican.

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Paris.

and death were closely related. Five years earlier, Eva had given birth to her second child, Rose. The baby had only survived for two weeks during the Depression and cold of December 1933. Herman’s note of encouragement was postmarked two months before Eva’s due date, a time when polio, encephalitis, and disease related to consuming unpasteurized milk were taking their toll on North Dakota children.

POSTCARD 3

Paris, France August 27, 1938 Dear sis and family: Received your letter and was glad to hear Teddy’s grown up to be so big already. Surprised to hear that Mary has twins!

I will leave Paris for the relations tomorrow, and am sorry to leave Paris. So many interesting things here. Wish I could help you harvest your bumper crop this year.

Love, Your brother, Herm Eva holding her son Joe Denis with Ted on the horse (1939).

POSTCARD 4

November 4, 1938

POSTCARD 2

Lourdes, France August 13, 1938 My dear sister and family: Am praying for you here at Lourdes before the shrine of the Blessed Virgin, that she may help you through your hour when it comes. Am enjoying my stay here as a stretcherbearer for the sick and crippled that come by the hundreds to pray before the shrine. Only wish I could remain here longer!

Love, Your brother, Herm

I was curious about Herman’s comment regarding Eva’s “hour” and initially thought of “hour of death” as in a Hail Mary prayer. Later, it dawned on me that he was referring to the time Eva would deliver her child. Birth

My dear sister: Greetings from the Vatican. Am on my Easter vacation.

Saw Florence, Assisi, now Rome. When I’m in Austria I can’t write what I want to anymore. Am enjoying my trip OUT of Austria (or Germany) very much.

Love, Your brother, Herm

POSTCARD 5

December 30, 1938 Dear sis & fam: Sorry I couldn’t send you a Xmas card—the Canisianum is taken over by the government & we had to leave—that’s 23

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why. We are in Switzerland now, where it is much better.

Perhaps mother wrote about it to you. I’ll write later on.

We’re not entirely settled as yet. Am staying at this hut for skiing now.

Love, Your brother, Herm By the time Eva received word of her brother’s safety, her son Joseph Denis was two months old. Herman was displaced and signs of unrest—both around and within him—become more obvious.

LETTER 3

College Americain Sion, Valais, Switzerland July 7, 1939 My dear sis: It’s been an awful long time since I’ve written to you.

However, now since you have visited with Mom you no doubt know all about what I’m doing. I am leaving tomorrow morn right after Mass—I need not tell you about my summer plans as you no doubt got all that at home.

Was glad to hear that you (at least) expect a good crop this year. I also heard all about Joe Denis from the nuns.

Guess they liked the little shaver. He ought to be quite big when I get home. I’ll bet Teddy does not remember me, does he?

You know, I’d give a few of my summer vacations over here for just one on the farm again back home. The Lord knows I’m not worth much there, but I can do quite a bit. Over here most of the Americans do not know anything about a farm and that at times makes me feel out of place.

At times things are not going so smoothly for me either.

I am making this pilgrimage to Lourdes for a very special intention and I hope that my request is granted.

Greetings to Paul and Teddy. If Ted is old enough to write, tell me to write me a little letter too, the next time you write. (I don’t know how old he is now.) If he did, I’m sure he would get a kick out of it. I will write back to him in my next letter then. Guess I’ve just run out of news, so will close.

Love, Your brother, Herm

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LETTER 4

College Americain Sion, Valais, Switzerland Nov. 23, 1939 My dear sister: Was glad to hear from you again and also that you have hopes of having a good crop this fall. I suppose that by the time this reaches you, all the grain etc. will be in the barns, and you will be settling down for the long winter months.

I suppose that you are wondering what has happened to me now that the war has scared so many people at home.

Mother and all the rest at home thought that I would have to come home soon, but that will not happen unless Switzerland is invaded, and that is not very probable. Next year we might not be here anymore, but if we won’t then we will move again to some other country, Italy perhaps.

The Lord alone knows. But in any case, I’m sure that I’ll have to come home soon. Right now, all I hear of the war is what I read in the newspapers, which are not very many, as we are not allowed to have papers.

Some of our relatives in Germany are in the army now, and I suppose at the front. They are not allowed to write things like that, but a person has to be able to read between the lines when they write. I feel sorry for many of them, as things are not as they could be in Germany. Last summer I had intended to pay my yearly visit, but this war prevented my doing so. One of the men who was in the last war has long ago been called up for military service again. This I know for sure. I don’t know very much about Mother’s relatives, and I wanted to stop in there during the summer and find out more about them. I hope that I’ll be able to see them again before I go home. If the war lasts that long then it will surely be impossible.

Give my best regards to Paul and Ted. If you gave them to Joey, he wouldn’t understand them anyway! Ha! Ha! Love!

Your brother, Herm

LETTER 5

College Americain Sion, Valais, Switzerland March 31, 1940 Dear sister & family: I was glad to hear from you for Christmas and I thank you for the card, too. Since that time I have been kept very

[sense of place]

Herman and Harriet with Joe, William, and Patty (late 1940s).

Like his sister, Herman had two boys and one girl. Herman and Eva each had a son named Joseph.

busy and considered myself lucky to get off a quick letter to Mom every two weeks.

No one here knows yet if we have to move out of Switzerland or not. We ought to know in another month at least. If we do move it will be either to Rome or northern Italy. I do not mind that, but only hope that we will not be forced to return to the States, as it would be hard on us to change professors now.

I was glad to hear that Paul got a bit of fur in his trapping.

I wish I could try my hand at things like that.

Just a little more than two years and I’ll be back home again. Maybe sooner, if we are sent home. Then I’ll have only my studies to worry about.

My kindest and best regards to Paul and the boys. I remember you all in my prayers.

As ever, your brother, Herman

Herman was sent home probably weeks after posting the last extant letter. He was living with his widowed mother

and sisters in time to be counted by the 1940 U.S. Census.

Since he had dedicated so much effort to his seminary studies, I was surprised by the last token in the chest: a wedding invitation to the nuptials of Harriet Elizabeth Forge to Mr. Herman B. Niermann.

Rather than taking the sacrament of Holy Orders, he was married June 7, 1944—the day after D-Day. The date resonated with me that summer as I watched seventieth anniversary commemorations on television. June 7 is also the birth date of my daughter, making the connection to Herman and Eva’s lives even more vivid. I discovered other coincidences of birth and war. Like his sister, Herman had two boys and one girl. Herman and Eva each had a son named Joseph. Eva’s son Joe Denis would himself father two girls and one boy (Joe Jr.). Her other son, Theodore, broke ranks and had five children, including me, and none of them are named Joe. Eva outlived her husband, her son Ted, as well as Herman.

She kept the cedar box with the letters on her dresser at the farm and took it with her to the nursing home. Now it rests on my dresser. Herman’s letters connect the events in Europe leading to World War II to lives at home on the prairies of North Dakota. Eva also kept letters and postcards from “Teddy” during the Korean War and from Joe Denis when he deployed to Vietnam. Perhaps as they 25

Photo courtesy of Nita K. Ritzke.

[sense of place]

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[sense of place]

GRAVY

By Nita K. Ritzke

Breakfast at dawn had been four fried eggs, ham, cooked wheat berries with cream and sugar and coffee boiled hair-on-your-chest strong.

The cream coated his throat.

The coffee washed it down.

She had it ready for him on the table as she packed his lunch in the oleo tin and thought about supper later.

She would butcher the chicken before the sun got too hot. She would fry it with enough fat to make gravy then throw in potatoes, onions, greens lots of salt and pepper slap on the lid and let the whole thing stew long and slow as she got onto the darning.

When it was time when his back, his arms, his thighs, his stomach burned red as the tractor he went back to the car and took out the tin she had handed him that morning: half-inch slab of cheese on inch-thick slices from the loaf she had baked the night before stuck together with lard.

Coffee.

Two oatmeal molasses cookies.

His favorite.

He was glad he had remembered to kiss her.

SKYWRITING

By Stephanie Blumhagen

Grey dusk, November sky, skeleton grasses flattened tangles, brittle and bent beneath my boots.

Over the pink-laced horizon hangs under-ripe, a ghost moon, cloud-hidden in purple-tinged sky.

Endless flocks of zigzag geese make arrow-headed silhouettes, south pointed, inverted, aerial compasses synchronous wings and whispering drum beats cryptic rhythm, a secret song.

A graceful love letter in the sky, written with

V’s Y‘s

W’s I am the solitary recipient of a message I cannot understand.

Thousands of mournful geese cry out “journey”

“longing”

“cold.”

My heart answers

“staying”

“lonely”

“home.”

Miles north, a train rolls on, rhythmic, insistent, destined east or west, bound to its track.

In my mind’s eye, the cars roll past strung together letters, words, sentences, phrases, stories passing on, one by one, into Elsewhere and I stand here on the crumpled faded grasses, craning my face to see the geese intersecting the train’s westward journey with their southward flight.

The whistle blows, two short Morse code blasts and the singing geese sketch indecipherable sonnets on the sky—the train chugs by.

The geese cry, “winter” “family” “homecoming.. love... loss... …distance.”

STEPHANIE BLUMHAGEN is from Drake, North Dakota, where her family has farmed for four generations. She currently resides in Bottineau where she is a grant writer at Dakota College at Bottineau and runs a small home bakery called Meadowlark Granary.

She is passionate about writing, the outdoors, and local food.

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Killdeer Fire Department volunteers in front of Wetsch Bros. Red & White Store, 1939. Left to right: Lawrence Malmstad, Senster Anderson, Manley Malmstad, Arba Lawhead, Ed Oukrop, Earl David, Fire Chief Anton Wetsch Sr., Jack Jesty, Jim Olijnyk. (Photo courtesy of Dunn County Historical Society & Museum).

ENDANGERED SPECIES

By Jennifer Strange

The produce aisle at Hinrich’s SuperValu—Killdeer’s rundown and overrun grocery store—is ripe for socializing. Today I’m visiting with Verna

Wolf, a sixtysomething transplant from Minnesota whose family tree is rooted in Bohemia. She moved here in 1967, the year I was born, and is one of a handful of people I’ve met on the Western Edge whom I would call a trusted friend.

Both wise and naïve, Verna usually prefers to go along to get along—it’s called “North Dakota Nice”—but every once in a while she’ll say her mind about politics, about greed, about prejudice, about the paradox of despairing the oil industry while benefiting from its financial opportunities.

Verna’s yellow V-neck flatters her blue eyes, and her short, gray-and-brown hair bobs with a fresh perm. She clutches a bag of spring greens, eagle-eyes its list of ingredients. “I’m trying a new recipe tonight—a salad with peaches and basil and walnuts,” she says. Satisfied with what she’s read, she puts the greens in her cart. “Not that Rodney will eat it; he just doesn’t like to eat at all.”

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... he owns the authority that this rural ranching community has bestowed upon its oldest living butcher.

We’ve chatted about this before. I’ve suggested she’s kind of lucky that cooking isn’t her thing and that her husband doesn’t much care for food. “Keeps you nice and slim,” I’ve said, patting my ample belly.

I’m wondering if we’ll go down this beaten conversational path when Tony Wetsch announces himself. Spry and wiry, he leans hard toward ninety. He sports dirty workman’s jeans, a plaid shirt with metal snaps for buttons, and thin hair combed stiffly to the right. One hand grips a giant, red plastic mesh bag of yellow onions.

I do not argue.

“First,” he says, “you use the leanest, best ground beef you can buy. Do you understand? Not the cheap stuff.

Lean. Chop up your onions real fine then mix ‘em in. With your hands. Add your spices. Lots of garlic powder. And my secret ingredient …”—his voice becomes a dramatic whisper—“… just a pinch of MSG.” Tony fixes me with a daring stare. He’s reached his crescendo: “You eat it with lots of beer!” he bellows.

“Makes you real horny!”

“Verna!” he says. The bag of onions swings our way.

“How’s Rodney?”

Then he cackles and does a little shuffle right there between the deli wraps and my grocery cart.

“Oh, yah, Rodney’s fine,” says Verna. She smiles and nods at Tony then nods in my direction. “Tony, this is Jennifer Strange. I met her last year at the museum.”

I can’t help it—I blush hard. I look weakly at Verna. She’s either used to such language in front of the packaged lettuce or is practicing selective hearing. “You put it on those square white crackers,” she offers.

Tony and I move to shake hands. I feel callouses against my plump palm.

“Call me Tony Baloney!” he says with an exclamation point. “Or Tony the Bloody Butcher!”

Tony is tickled to have an audience for his prickly tirade: The wife has left him to his own devices, gone to visit family in Wisconsin. He’s got hunting pals coming in for deer season opener and plans to feed them some “tiger meat.”

I squint a question mark at Verna. She picks right up on my culinary curiosity. “Tony,” she says, “tell Jennifer what tiger meat is.”

Tony is giddy to oblige. His shoulders square and his skeleton grows an inch or two—he owns the authority that this rural ranching community has bestowed upon its oldest living butcher. He looks right at me. “Serious business,” Tony says.

“You mean it’s raw?” I ask, testing the acorn squashes to my right for firmness. “And you eat it with saltines?”

“Yah, sure, that’s right,” says Verna, curls bouncing.

“Saltines.”

Tony swings his onions back into the fray. “It’s men’s food!

Eat it while we’re hunting!”

By this time, we’ve completely bottlenecked the produce aisle. Other shoppers push their carts around the pumpkin display, necks craning, ears cocked.

Fine, I think. There’s no way I’m going to wilt in front of this guy. After all, I’ve tended bar in Deadwood, South Dakota, during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

“Sure sounds like everyone’s going to have a real good time, Tony,” I say. I turn innocently to Verna. “Verna, does Rodney like tiger meat?” (Rodney is rather straight-laced.)

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[sense of place]

Killdeer’s old-timers are stepping into the grave exactly as their dusty town is being taken over by Oil Patch roughnecks—people who have no history or real investment in the area past another paycheck.

“Oh, yah, sure!” says Verna, all sweetness and nods.

Never before has Tony heard such good news. His arms practically part wide; he is the Wizard of Oz. “Well, send him over tomorrow and I’ll give him half a pound!” he declares.

A moment of silence drops over our trio like the closing curtain at a play. Tony’s sun-wrinkled face slackens. He lifts the onions up and down, up and down, weighing his options. I barely hear him mutter: “Hmmm. Making nine, ten pounds. Beef costs four, five bucks a pound. Onions sixty cents a pound. So the more onions you add, the more money you make.”

Is Tony planning to sell this stuff?

He’s still calculating when he eyes Verna. “So Rodney likes it then?”

“Oh, yah,” she says, with a wink only I can see. “Don’t worry. He’ll be there tomorrow.”

Tony makes up his mind. “Ok then. Tell him to come by.

30

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I’ll give him a little bit.”

So much for the half-pound, I think.

“Lucky for Verna!” I say. “I guess tiger meat’s cheaper than dinner and a movie.”

Splat! My joke hits the floor like a rotten kubocha. Not even a grin. Tony just gives us a little bow of the head then walks off, swinging his onions at the jellies and pickles.

“Oh, I’m so glad you got to meet Tony,” says Verna. “He had the butcher shop behind the Buckskin Saloon. They ran a grocery store—him, his brother and his mother, and his father before that. From Russia. Tony’s the only one left.”

Verna pauses. A memory seems to pass over her. She shivers and pats my hand. “That’s a little taste of what Killdeer used to be.”

Killdeer’s old-timers are stepping into the grave exactly as their dusty town is being taken over by Oil Patch roughnecks—people who have no history or real investment in the area past another paycheck. Of course that’s where my husband, Terry, and I fall on the spectrum,

too. Despite my Dakota roots, we’re newcomers to the area whose financial future will be largely determined by the continued exploitation of the Bakken’s shale play—and of all the region’s hamlets. Then again, I remind myself, the same is true for lots of Dunn County’s lifelong residents and landowners who have leased their mineral rights to Big Oil. Verna heads to the checkout line. I inspect a bag of bruised and bruisingly overpriced apples and think of Tony’s tall tales. If I ever want my husband to enjoy the brawny benefits of a Saltine piled high with tiger meat, I figure I’d better move fast … and maybe offer Tony twenty bucks—or at least a bag of onions—for his next batch.

JENNIFER STRANGE is a sixth-generation “Missouri River Rat” whose ancestors founded the Strange Bros. Hide & Fur Co. in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1870. An investigative-turned-narrative journalist, Jennifer has published extensively on the environment and sustainability. She writes for journals and newspapers, produces humanities events, and is executive director of Dunn County Writers, a nonprofit organization of grassroots writers on the

Left: “Killdeer, No. Dak. Largest Primary Shipping Point for Stock in United States.” (Photo and caption by Leo D. Harris, courtesy of Dunn County Historical Society & Museum) Above: Killdeer, 1914 (Photo courtesy of Dunn County Historical Society & Museum) Right: Wetsch Bros. ad in Killdeer Mt. Roundup Souvenir Program, 1941 (Courtesy of Dunn County Historical Society & Museum)

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32

[sense of place]

MY GOOD DOG BAILEY

By Susan Krohn

It is 9:30 in the morning and my dog is staring at me, wagging her tail and panting.

“It’s time to go!” she insists. There are no acceptable excuses. We go.

The thermometer says twenty degrees outside, and the hoarfrost is thick on the tree limbs as she and I make our daily crosscountry ski trip through the forest in the hills of the Turtle Mountains where we live. Snow is bowing the branches of the conifers while the birch trees stand white and naked, sending their shoots out from the central trunk. Poplar trees tower above us, breaking off high up the trunk to fall into the nearby branches and hang above our heads until they complete their drop to the ground some windy day in the future.

Snowmobiles have packed the trail to a four-foot width but this morning there is no one here but us. I can feel the early March sun getting stronger on my face as the days lengthen. The temperature today felt so cold in October but now sweatshirts are in order, at least briefly. The snow that fell in November is the snow I still see, blown about with fresh flakes on top. Not much melts in northern North Dakota from December to March.

I stop my skis, hold my breath, and hear no sound at all. When I first moved here the lack of background noise was upsetting, the intense quiet weighing on me. Now I am used to it and visiting anywhere else is unsettling.

My dog Bailey is a black lab/boxer mix who has taken me on these outings since the beginning thirteen years ago. She crawled into my lap as I sat on a friend’s living room

When I first moved here the lack of background noise was upsetting... floor, one of eight puppies. I have heard since that the dog that picks the owner is the best dog of all. I had prepared a box for her to ride inside on the drive home, but she howled and cried so pitifully that she was back in my lap before we got down the driveway.

It took a couple of weeks for Bailey to climb up the steps to my bedroom from her blankets under the stairs, but once she’d made it up, I had to keep the door shut to keep her out of my own bed. She has always guarded the doorway from the threshold on the other side.

Through the years, Bailey has always stayed close, usually no more than fifty feet away when I am home. She has protected me against everything from moose to skunks as we ski the hills around our house. At eightyseven pounds and very fast, she has chased coyotes as far as I can see, never catching them, thankfully. One time I saw crows fussing about something in a thicket of brush and trees. When the wolf emerged about two hundred feet ahead, it stopped and stared at us. I said, “Oh, Bailey, what do we do now?”

Looking back for her response, I saw she was

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halfway across the hayfield, headed for home. The wolf and I looked at each other and went opposite directions.

As she and I were moving from Colorado to North Dakota, it was late at night and pouring rain when I pulled into a rest area in Buffalo, South Dakota.

Somehow, we both curled up on the front seat of my Mazda pickup and slept until morning, keeping each other warm.

Today we see tiny squirrel tracks crossing the trail and, of course, evidence of the deer and moose who use it to travel their territory. The chickadees are singing their mating songs. We come upon an animal killing, nothing but fur scattered over the snow and many coyote prints telling the story of the last few minutes of life for the deer. Bailey is intrigued and I am relieved that it was nature in action rather than poachers, as has happened twice recently. I ski ahead as Bailey investigates the site and finds what is left of the hide, trying to drag it along on our outing. I return and explain that she can leave it; we’ll come back, and she can retrieve it then. Eventually she is convinced and we move on to our neighbor’s pole barn, where butchering has been going on. Bailey usually finds some sort of treat thrown out there for her.

We circle our property, the dog checking for anything new since yesterday. We take turns leading each other on our private ski path to access the snowmobile trail. I compact the snow to a trail about eight inches wide, a narrow trough with knee-high powder on each side. If Bailey missteps from this packed track, her leg sinks a foot into the softness on either side, which happens regularly now that she is old. She gets ice crystals between her toes that freeze in place until they melt. I can see that our walking is difficult for her, but there is no way she will stay behind.

Once, we used to go out in any weather, but now we stay close to home in sub-zero or windy conditions. We usually go skiing for about fortyfive minutes, and then I bring her home to sleep by the woodstove while I go out again alone. Her brown eyes seem to say that she knows she can’t go anymore today, and she too is sad. She can no 34

All photos are courtesy of the author.

I can see that our walking is difficult for her, but there is no way she will stay behind. longer jump into the back of the pickup and sits at the top of our long sloped driveway instead of walking with me. But she watches attentively to make sure I don’t get lost when I collect the mail or newspaper. She no longer hears vehicles that drive into our yard nor is she quick to move out of the way for them. She sleeps twenty hours a day. Her legs slide out from under her on linoleum at home so I have put down throw rug “islands” in the kitchen and hallways to give her traction.

As I am writing, she is napping on my feet, gently snoring and uttering occasional whimpers and yips as she dreams of younger days, her feet pedaling the air as though she is chasing squirrels from the porch. I suspect Bailey’s ashes will soon find a place next to those of my first dog, which I brought with me in the move from Colorado, too precious to bury. Bailey has been a good dog, and I will miss her.

SUE KROHN retired twelve years ago from being a rural mail carrier in Longmont, Colorado, to move to Bottineau, North Dakota, where she spends her days entertaining her dog, cross-country skiing, quilting, gardening, and writing. This story is the result of a writing workshop with Debra Marquart.

BOOM

By Heid E. Erdrich

Pale wool, blue horizon design, an itchy landscape.

We all wore the same bargain sweater, in an airplane, in a dream. Boom. A fight erupts.

Take your seats please, and can we have peace?

No more argument from you, Mister Mr. Not-Our-Same-Sweater-Wearer.

The radio wakes me with its cultured accent: “The Labor Department today said…”

Push. Push. Push, my beloved urges as he snaps it to snooze.

Snow and silence fill things with nothing. But you all know that from Stevens.

Still, stillness.

Swirls of subconscious speak still, so early my yearning bares itself: prairie, butte, air so huge you gulp, you might go down, drown from so much sky.

Such perfect absence. There’s nothing there but birds whirling, snow geese as far as the eye sees.

North Dakota winds in grassland, now that’s constancy. Buffalo grass glows, frosted, flowing, speaking low, secretive.

Used to be there was nothing there.

Close it up, they used to say.

Return it to the Buffalo. Forget Indians.

Wind churns a million watts.

Gas burns ancient marshes off.

Coal pits deep and busy, like messy little cities.

Tell you what, drive out at night.

This is what an engineer in Fargo urges.

Flares for miles, he promises, as far as the eye…

Boom.

Reprinted by permission of Heidi Czerwiec, editor, North Dakota Is Everywhere: An Anthology of Contemporary North Dakota Poets (2015, ND Institute for Regional Studies Press, NDSU).

The title of the anthology comes from a famous line written by one of North Dakota’s best-known poets, the late Tom McGrath. The book is published by and available through the Institute for Regional Studies Press at North Dakota State University, at the UND Bookstore, and other venues in the region. In paperback, the cost is $12.50.

A description of the anthology notes, “The scope of the poets in this collection is as broad as the landscape itself, including work by Heid E. Erdrich, Mark Vinz, Debra Marquart, Ed Bok Lee, and North Dakota’s Poet Laureate, Larry Woiwode.”

The poets anthologized in the book include “seasoned and emerging voices, women and men, old and young, those from the ranching and oil-flared badlands west of the Missouri, and from the flood-prone river valley farmlands of the east,” Czerwiec says in the introduction.

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Gramma Christina, Tracy, and Eddie (author’s dad) on Christina’s lap. C. 1909. All photos courtesy of the author.

36

[sense of place]

A long time ago, people had families.

WHEAT

By Patsy Ramberg

North Dakota skies are endless. The sun’s ferocity turns the blue to black as it tumbles toward the horizon to

approach whatever, but the sun floods back and the wheat ripples in the never-ending sea. North Dakota wheat ripens from green to amber in July.

When I take that summer drive up I-94 from my apartment in suburban St. Paul, I watch the turnover billow for miles and acres and more miles and acres.

Corn grows close in by the city, a clicking, clacking emerald sea of spiking tassels, ears still hidden, unhearing, embryos in the warm stock. Wheat grows to the north and ripens earlier. Tiny, hard kernels, geometric Vs, grow between flowing silky beards, its secrets kept inside. A common wonder.

I-94 runs northwest through the farmlands; the rolling hills of mid-Minnesota gradually turn flatter, but I can never tell exactly where. The cornfields gradually become smaller and the wheat fields become larger. Finally, I-94 pulls itself up and over the railroad bridge at Barnesville and the valley stretches, pulling me down into the flat heat of the wheatland. Coming off the bridge and around the curve, I drive into unforgotten time.

In the city, all I have is Wheaties—the hard, brown flake General Mills makes out of the hot, northern summer stored in the kernel. Wheaties is not enough. I have to keep green-turning-to-amber wheat in a vase in the apartment where I live with myself. A long time ago, people had families.

A wooden house with a slanting roof. Daddy says it was his grandmother’s; his parents worked her farm for a time. Daddy had scarlet fever in that house. He said he heard trains running through his bedroom. Gramma nursed him back, but he lost some hearing. After Daddy came Uncle Henry; then diabetic Fred who spent his teenage years as an invalid. When tiny Uncle Warren was born, Gramma kept him alive on the warm oven door.

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My sister Louise and I went one summer to pick some greenturning-to-amber wheat...

I have a photograph from 1909 of Gramma, Daddy, and his half-sister Tracy, daughter of Grampa’s first wife who had died. Gramma is about twenty in the photo. She wears an elegant Victorian dress; her hair is piled into a neat knot on top of her head. Her face is somber, one eye slightly closed like the lid won’t work. Tracy is about five and doesn’t smile. Daddy is sitting on Gramma’s lap; he won’t smile either. He’s a pretty baby with a broad forehead and wide-spaced Germanic eyes.

Daddy told how, when he was young, he could see the Indian rings on the other side of Wolf Lake that sprawled in the middle of the farm. They were wide rings of stone and the teepees were long gone, of course, but until his death, I think, even in the city, Daddy still heard his imagined Indian songs and drums from across the lake.

His dad tried to grow wheat, but he wasn’t a farmer. He was just keeping to the dream. He tried to play the wheat market one year and waited too long; the wheat fell before he sold. That was when Gramma started to grow turkey and chickens. She packed the eggs in a pail cushioned by oats, and Daddy and Henry stuck a long pole through the pail’s handle and walked them into town all winter. The boys kept warm in the hats, mittens, and scarves that Gramma knit for them. The family lived through many winters on her turkeys, chickens, eggs, and cream, eating them or selling them.

I look like her, Daddy says. Short. Square. Solid. Hardly an American girl’s dream appearance.

My sister Louise and I went one summer to pick some green-turning-to-amber wheat from a field north of Fargo. I thought we had a pruning shears in the trunk of my car, but we didn’t so we pulled it up, roots and all. Grey-black Red River Valley dirt clung to the short root hairs. Neither of us had known wheat was so shallow rooted. We stood together, wheat in hand, the wind ruffling Louise’s blue calico jumper at her knees and curling my hair into my mouth and eyes, as we scanned the endless wheat field under a blue-black North Dakota sky.

As kids, we rode in the sleek ‘49 Fleetline Chevy to visit Gramma and Grampa on sun-drenched fall afternoons, Louise and I in the back. The windows were so high we couldn’t see out. We always arrived long after dark and the house was an oasis of light and warmth. Grampa’s Model A Ford guarded the yard.

A dinner of Gramma’s canned chicken was waiting. Even to this day Louise says it was the best chicken she ever ate. I remember the Kerr quart jars filled with yellow chicken wings and drumsticks lined up on the shelf over the cellar steps.

I also remember the Lysol smell from the chemical toilet; at least we didn’t have to use the outhouse anymore. The wood stove was across the kitchen from the bathroom. I sometimes put wood in the burn box. I liked that, to see the flames leap around the splinters of a split log.

When we left after a visit, they would stand and wave under the arbor at the gate; morning glories grew around and over the top of it. They’d wave until they couldn’t see the Chevy anymore. I would wave back as long as I saw a speck.

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The November Gramma died of diabetes, Louise came from Bemidji State Teachers’ College, and we all drove together from the small Minnesota town we lived in at the time. We ate Gramma’s chicken together in that brightly lit house. For the first time, I noticed how much Daddy had begun to look like Grampa. Short. Square. Gray haired. Shuffling.

At the funeral, Grampa stopped at Gramma’s casket. In a tone as vast as the Dakota sky, he said, “Oh, Ma!” She was the third wife he had laid in a grave.

Daddy told how one day when he was plowing a neighbor’s wheat field, he came across a small, fenced area in which he saw a rudely made grave marker. Just a young man then, and curious, he stopped the horses and had a look-see. Meadow grass nearly obscured one of the stones, but the other clearly bore the name “Philip” and Daddy’s surname. The age span on the marker was only a few days. It was the first Daddy knew about this wife or baby boy, his half-brother. Grampa had never spoken of either of them.

He finished the plowing but as long as he lived, he could not remember where under that blue-black North Dakota sky those graves were.

The prairie holds its secrets.

Sometimes, in the morning, before I go to my job in the city, I will eat a bowl of Wheaties. Or Cream of Wheat. Often, as I eat, I will read a book, but from the table I can see a picture of the North Dakota farm, and, on the shelf under it, the vase of wheat. Its shallow roots have stretched all this way across space and time.

PATSY RAMBERG lives in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where she writes, reads, knits, gardens, and admires her grandchildren. Her first memory is of the golden, rolling wheat fields on her grandparents’ North Dakota farm near Harvey. She edited and added her reminiscences about her heritage (Germans from Russia and northern Germany) to a memoir written by her father, Eddie Knalson, The Farm at Pony Gulch, published in 2012 by the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, NDSU, Fargo.

Eddie Knalson (1909-1995) with his parents, John and Christina Knalson in 1947.

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Board of Directors CHAIR Melissa Gjellstad, Grand Forks

VICE CHAIR Elizabeth Sund, Minot

Bethany Andreasen, Minot Aaron Barth, Bismarck William Caraher, Grand Forks John S. Heinen, Dickinson Leslie W. Peltier, Belcourt Carol Kapaun Ratchenski, Fargo Richard Rothaus, Bismarck Nate Steffen, Bismarck Ken Schmierer, Ellendale Jessie Veeder Scofield, Watford City Iris Swedlund, Velva STAFF Brenna Daugherty Gerhardt, Executive Director Kenneth Glass, Associate Director Stacy Schaffer, Development Director Angela Hruby, Administrative Assistant The North Dakota Humanities Council is a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The humanities inspire our vision of a thoughtful, respectful, actively engaged society that will be able to meet the challenge of sustaining our democracy across the many divisions of modern society and deal responsibly with the shared challenges we currently face as members of an interdependent world.

“Whether we like it or not, we all come from someplace.

And at some point in our lives, we have to make peace with that place.”

— Jeffrey Stepakoff, The Orchard