This is me, about forth grade I suppose, back when Garth Brooks was king (and so were his wild Brush Popper style western shirts) and I spent my recesses planting a garden with my friends outside the window of the lunchroom of the country school down the road.

This summer they’ll start work to turn Johnson Corners Elementary School into a travel center. A gas station.

A place to buy Cheetos and Red Bull and fuel for the hundreds of trucks and pickups that pass by my old stomping grounds every day.

A sign of the times….times we never thought we’d see when they shut down that little school 15 or so years ago, sending those country kids to town…

This year, in Watford City, they built an addition to that elementary school in town, making room for the 100 + kindergartners that need to learn their letters.

In 2014 we’re making plans to build a new high school.

We couldn’t have known then what we know now about what lay below our scuffed cowboy boots as we kicked the soccer ball around and dangled from the monkey bars.

We couldn’t have known all these years later, after growing up along quiet highways and dusty scoria roads, that the world would pass by that abandoned playground, bringing with it a new life…

Coming Home: Boomtown makes room for travel center in old schoolyard
by Jessie Veeder
2-16-14
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