Tag Archives: small town

Dancing.

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Sometimes my job as a writer brings me to stories I am not looking for, but grateful to have found.

I visited a small town yesterday in the center of my state. In the middle of a freshly planted corn fields and along the railroad tracks cattle grazed, a construction crew pounded nails into a new roof on a sleepy Main Street building and a group of community members gathered in a small diner, opened especially for my visit to learn about their town.

We sat around a rectangle table on diner chairs in the back of the restaurant. The room was full of local men and women who were there to talk about dairy farming and population decreases, rural living and 4-H programs, the weather and how kids these days don’t understand that chickens don’t have nuggets.

I wrote down their names and got snippets of their stories: the retired school teacher, the cook, the woman from Wisconsin, the fifth generation dairy farmer.

I thanked them for their time as they dispersed after our visit to the t-ball game down the road, to check the cattle, to cook dinner or lead a 4-H group.

But as I was rushing toward the door, checking my watch and calculating what time I would land in bed if I left now and stopped quickly at the grocery store in the big town along the way, I heard a voice say, “And one more thing…”

I turned around to find that voice attached to a man in a clean pressed shirt and suspenders, holding his white feed store hat with green trim in front of him as he spoke. It was the man who sat across from me during our interview. The man with kind eyes and the daughter who was a dairy farmer.

He had something more to tell me.

And this is what it was:

My first train ride out of here was when I was nineteen. Boy was that a ride! You hear how the train moves along the tracks, squeaking and bumping along? That’s how it was on the inside, riding along like that for days.
In those days the train came through here often to pick up passengers. It took me to the service.
The Korean War.

I anticipated his next thought and he caught me off guard when I noticed a bit of a sparkle in his eyes. He gripped his cap a little tighter. I leaned in.

He smiled big and broad and looked young as he told me…

I was lucky. They sent me to Germany and, well, my family is German. It was my second language. So boy did I have a time! I think I wore out my first pair of boots dancing.
I was a cook see, and in the evenings I would go out and, well, the girls, they asked you to dance. They did! 

I was a little nervous at first, being there with all their men sitting along the bar. I asked them if they were sure, if there would be trouble, but they said go ahead and dance.
They wanted to sit and drink, see. The girls wanted to dance!  And I was young and fit and I would dance.

I was lost there in that memory with him. I wanted to be those girls, I wanted him to show me his dance steps. I wanted to know him when his eyes were young.

Young, but not any more full of life than they were at that moment.

Oh, I just I loved it. I would dance all night. 

With that he pulled his cap down over his gray hair.  I thanked him for the story and he thanked me for the time.  He held the door open for me and walked me to my car parked next to those railroad tracks, the steel lines disappearing in the distance a constant memory of the young man who took the train out of North Dakota and came home with boots worn from dancing.

 

The long way home.

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Sometimes in the middle of an ordinary weekday, one filled with spilled coffee, peanut butter toast on the run, meetings, missed phone calls and long-lost plans for supper, the world gives you a chance to throw it all out the window and just get lost.

Yesterday afternoon on my way out the office, heavy-overstuffed briefcase on my shoulder, water cup in my left hand, my list under my arm and a trail of papers flailing behind me,  I dialed Husband to remind him it was voting day and asked him if he wanted me to meet him at home so we could make the trek together.

Husband works a good thirty-plus miles away from the ranch. I work another good thirty miles away too…in the other direction.  And when you live in the middle of winding gravel roads, you do not vote in the town that you travel 30 miles to work in each day. No, you take the gravel to a smaller town sitting nice and neat  alongside the county road and cast your vote in a quaint community building as your neighbors from over the hill, across the creek and down the road filter in and ask you about your family, how the house is coming and what you think of the weather.

I thought about taking the fifteen mile detour to cast my vote on my own, but the idea of a little car ride with my husband and the opportunity to actually show up in public together sounded like a nice one. He agreed.

And so we met at home, dropped our piles of work at the door, and husband drove me north on the scoria road, past the substation, and our friends mailbox where the gravel turns to pavement,  right on the county road and into Keene, ND where we would greet the ladies who have been working the polls all day and follow their instructions to fill in the circles dark and complete, and for goodness sakes, don’t vote in more than one party column or you’ve gotta do it again.

I took their directions and my packet and followed Husband into the little gym where we played volleyball this winter and where I attended craft club last week. I waited for my neighbor to cast her vote and I took her place at the round table against the wall.

I read the directions thoroughly, wondered if Husband, who was at the table on the other side of the room, was canceling out my votes, finished my civic duty, closed the folder and fed my sheets through the fancy machine.

Husband followed close behind. I waited while he cracked a few jokes, said goodbye to the neighbors and then followed him to the door and back out into a beautiful summer evening in the hub of our little township: Keene, ND-Population 266?

We contemplated heading back home to grill some brats and finish up the laundry. We talked about how the lawn needed to be mowed and that fence that needed a good inspection. We thought we could maybe get some work done on the new house before it got too late.

We said we probably should go home…we really should…

But it was such a nice evening, the sun was shining through the fluffy clouds, the grass was green and fresh from the recent rain, the farmers were out and it smelled so sweet. We rolled down the windows and pointed our car north toward the lake where we heard the restaurant at the marina had just been renovated and is open for business. What’s another 30 miles when the lake is calling and you heard they might have walleye on the menu?

What’s another thirty miles along new green fields, under big prairie skies, next to a handsome man with lots of things to tell you with the windows open and your favorite songs in the speakers?

It’s nothing.

It’s everything.

And the food was good, the water was crystal clear and the sun was hitting the horizon with a promise of a show as colorful as the rainbow that had just appeared in the clouds to south.

Husband pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the county road. He headed toward that rainbow, toward the ranch and our chores…but then, without a word between us, he ignored the turn that would take us there and chose the long way home instead.

I didn’t object. I didn’t ask why. I didn’t say a thing unless it was to ask him to stop so I could take a photo of the clouds reflecting off the glass-like pond in a rancher’s pasture.

The country church reaching up toward the sky.

A family of ducks swimming in reeds.

The sun sinking below the horizon.

We drove this way for hours, tourists exploring the landscape we knew so well, seeing it again with eyes wider.

Hearts more open.

I was exploring our homeland and my husband was my guide, a man who just wanted a little more time to move through the world he loves…

patient with the clicking of the camera and my need to let the cooling air blow through the crack of the window in the passenger seat…

humored by my theory on coming back after my death as a duck…

happy to hear his tires hum along familiar roads…

content to sit next to me and hum along with the songs we love.

And relieved to forget about the things we should do…


and just live in the moments, under the sky, moving quietly and slowly along the landscape that made us…

And then we sang Red River Valley…

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Sometimes in the middle of a life in the middle of America, you are handed a couple of days, or moments, where you are graciously reminded of what is so good and wholesome about a community that exists on the end of a two lane highway with no stoplight, no Walmart, no mall and no place else you’d rather be on a Friday afternoon.

And so I had a weekend filled with small town, mid-west, rural, main street, wholesomeness that began with the execution of an event I helped to plan on Main Street Watford City, ND–my hometown’s Best of the West Ribfest–where I manned the entertainment stage while community members milled around the vendor booths, ate lunch on picnic tables outside Main Street stores, breathed in the scents of barbecues warming and turning their rib suppers and enjoyed games, music and other entertainment on the big stage…

entertainment that included watching me attempt to help call bingo by turning on the bingo blower machine thingy and launching the numbered balls all over the damn street.

Lord, I just wasn’t meant for some things.

Anyway, husband, along with seventeen other businesses, vendors and crazy grillers, participated in the rib cooking contest. And at 5:30, after the judging was done, Bingo was mercifully over, my big sister’s dancers showed us their Michael Jackson Thriller moves, the kids were all settled in for the rest of the evening on those crazy, sweaty, inflatable jumper things, and Lonesome Willy and I sang for our supper, it was time to eat already.

I had a great view from the stage and watched as people emerged from their businesses, ready for the weekend, and began filling the street, up and down, waiting for the smokey, spicy, barbecue tastes of the grilled ribs. The street flooded with neighbors, tourists, new comers, children and pets.


And from my post it became apparent that this was the most people I’ve ever seen on Main Street Watford City at one time. I was proud of our town as I rested my blistered feet that were shoved in my fancy boots for the day and listened to some of the best local musicians around pick a banjo, a dobro, an acoustic guitar, and sing songs about their North Dakota home.

And the music filled the street, the ribs sold out, I announced the world’s longest chicken dance, signed an autograph for a couple of confused guys who thought I was a famous D.J. and then wondered who the hell’s name was on the back of their shirt as they walked away, the big band showed up, the full moon rose, I found myself a beer and watched my community laugh, relax, dance, shake hands, meet one another and enjoy themselves in the middle of the street, in the middle of America, in the middle of an oil boom, in the middle of a season that passes all too quickly around here.

It was necessary. It was appreciated. It was hometown as hometown needs to be…

I loaded up in husband’s pickup and he drove me home, pulled off my red boots, poked at my blisters and then I got up to do it all over again the next day. Because as wholesome as Friday night was, I got another dose as I put on a dress and headed back to town to sing at a wedding at our hometown church and then pointed my car north to meet the guys out at a farmstead near Hazen, ND.

Because we were scheduled to play a community barn dance and, so, when you’re at a barn dance you need the proper footwear. I did a quick outfit change, squeezed on my fancy boots again and followed the highway out of oil country, down a gravel road and into a perfectly mowed, perfectly beautiful, perfectly placed farmyard on the edge of Lake Sakakawea.

And in the middle of the yard stood a white and green barn that reached up the prairie sky and was spilling out people and children laughing and chatting and singing in cowboy hats and boots. The smell of burgers on the grill greeted me as lugged my guitar towards the band milling around outside, waiting for 8:00 to get behind their guitars, behind their microphones and behind their music.

We climbed the steps to the hay loft where the festivities took place and instantly I was transported to another place, another time, where the world still had barn dances, where the table cloths were still checkered red and white, where people danced the two step and sang along with old time country music, where they still wore cowboy boots.

I was on a movie set, you know, like the one where Sandra Bullock wears a beat up hat and jeans and takes photos and drives around a classic old pickup. The one where the small town band sounds straight out of Nashville. The one where she falls in love at the end after Harry Connick Jr. swings her around the wood floor of the barn as the lead singer taps his foot to Peaceful Easy Feeling and the crowd sings along.

Seriously.

But I wasn’t Sandra Bullock. Sandra Bullock was that beautiful blond in the black hat dancing with her boyfriend. No, I was the band.

And the guys playing next to me, some of the best musicians around, picked all the right songs and played all the right beats. Their grins spread wide as the family crowd requested songs the guys knew and then danced and cheered when they played them. The lead part drifted out through the hay loft window behind me and on over the prairie and to the lake as I sang harmony to my dad’s chorus and then a song I wrote and then Red River Valley and oh my, there they were, singing along.

So we all sang together. That family, that community. We sang Red River Valley and then Home on the Range and stomped our feet and clapped our hands as our voices joined together…

“May the circle, be unbroken, by and by Lord by and by…there’s a better home awaiting in the sky Lord in the sky…”

We sang it again…

and again…

and so did they, the crowd, our hosts for the evening. They sang with us too as they bounced their sleepy children, swung around their grandma, slapped their cousin and uncles on the shoulders, and just genuinely enjoyed themselves.

Genuinely.

I headed home into the dark sky, the guys with the band trailer pushing through the early hours of the morning in front of me, with a renewed hope that the world maybe hasn’t changed much.

That maybe in the hustle and bustle of progress, politics, and technology even the fancy cell phones that can tell you what road your on when you’re on it still can’t tell you where you really might be headed…

to a place where people still wear cowboy boots, where time has been preserved in the wood floors of a nearly hundred year old barn, where the only agenda is to laugh and dance with one another for goodness sake…

where the music really matters and so do the friendships.

A place on the end of a paved street with no stoplight, a place on the edge of a wheat field under the moon under the roof of a green and white barn that the GPS would never find…

but that we should never forget still exists…

Small town reunion

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Here I am. Graduating from high school.

Do I look happy? Maybe just a little.

That was 10 years ago.

WHAT! Aren’t I still 17? What happened?

Yup, today I celebrate my 10 year class reunion.

Me and 54 of my classmates from ranches, small town neighborhoods, farms, the outskirts of town and tiny communities along the way graduated from WCHS at 17, 18 and 19 years old and made our way into adulthood somehow.

I just finished going through old photos and memorabilia to bring with me to the event this evening and was struck by how long ten years actually is (and how bad I was at managing my hair back then…).

To be honest, I am known for my poor, if not selective memory. I am also known for having a camera attached to my hip at all times. So I am thankful to my 12, 15, 17 year old self for having the foresight in the time of film cameras to dish out the cash to get these priceless photos developed, you know, the good old fashioned way.

Because it reminds me, as I imagine I’ll be reminded tonight, what it really meant to me to have grown up as a student of a small town. I thumb through photos and it is like thumbing through family albums. Because these kids making goofy faces at me from the pages of my scrapbook were by my side, for better or worse, during the years of my life when I was trying desperately to figure out who the hell I was. And for a girl from the sticks, a girl who wore wranglers and boots and took the dirt road on the small yellow bus to a country school until I was 11 years old, it was of vital importance that there were a few souls who could help save me as I opened the glass doors to the big school and prepared myself for a world completely foreign to me.

Me and my country school pal

Oh, yes, there were issues. There were fights, there were misunderstandings and tears in the halls of WCHS–that’s a given. That’s what happens when you are working your way into and out of best friendships, relationships, difficult tests and the fact that you weren’t cut out for the basketball team.

I wasn't cut out for the basketball team...

But you know what else I found in the halls of that high school besides teachers who inspired me and continue to cheer me on to this day?

Friends.

Friends who helped me remember the combination to my locker, who welcomed me into their homes after school while I waited for musical or volleyball practice to begin, who practiced with me for hours as we perfected the art of goat tying, barrel racing and cowboy chasing at high school rodeos across the state. Friends who sat next to me in the back of the pickup on the way home and got me laughing even though I may have bobbled my tie or face-planted from a tumble off my horse.

Friends who helped fix my hair for prom and came to listen to me play my guitar at my first real concert.

Although many of us may not ever be in the same room together again like this (in a matching velvet trend) I can’t forget that it was those girls who taught me about friendship, what it is and how truly amazing and heartbreaking it can be.

And the boys? The boys  have no doubt turned out be some of the best men. Because they just don’t make them like that anywhere else–good North Dakotan boys who grew up in baseball caps, tinkering with the engines of their father’s trucks, fishing on the banks for Cherry Creek and Lake Sakakawea, hugging their football teammates after a sorry loss, helping their neighbors brand cattle and always searching for the next big adventure on the back of a horse, a 4-wheeler or anything they can drive too fast.

I love one of those boys and love him more everyday.

And that a man who first met me when I looked like this…

married me anyway is a gift my small town high school gave me that I will never be able to repay.

And it makes this reunion for me more reflective, more special I think.

A Junior Prom version of husband and I...

Because in a small town you don’t have a large pool of friends and boyfriends to pick from, so it is my theory that you love stronger, hold them closer and lean on each other and often, as a result,  a bond forms between two opposite people who may have not connected otherwise.

All grown up with my very blond, very athletic, very clean and organized, very lovely, very opposite high school best friend...

And between the blacktop and dirt roads that didn’t stretch far enough for teenagers with windows open and plans stretched out wide, sometimes the rumors hurt, you felt confined and wished away the time it would take to get you to the date when you could leave this place…a place where you knew all your friends’ parents’ names and they knew what time you were to be home at night.

High School Musical, "Bye Bye Birdie"

Yes, as students of a small town we grew up in a circumstance that gave us every reason to set our eyes wide on the open highway ahead of us. But as we drove the gravel roads at night with a CD of Red Hot Chili Peppers blaring through our speakers, or built a bon fire in the middle of a field or on the edge of the big lake, when we celebrated birthday after birthday with the same neighborhood kids who drank Kool-Aid with us and gave us our first My Little Pony when we turned six, when we could sit on the roof of our boyfriend’s house in town and count the stars in the quiet of the hour before curfew, when we had our first kiss in the back our best friend’s old, beat-up car, we didn’t realize how free we really were.

And when we pushed the limits, when we drove too fast, drank too much, yelled too loud or loved too quickly, when we got our hearts broken, missed the winning point, forgot the lyrics to the song, or failed the test, we thought, indeed, the world would come to an end at 14 or 16 years old. We didn’t have all our muscles yet and didn’t understand, we didn’t appreciate that the world we lived in protected us enough to allow for these kinds of mistakes.

We didn’t appreciate that our world just picked us up, shook their heads and said things like “she’s a good kid, this will be a good lesson for her…”  and then went on loving us anyway.

And now as I prepare to reunite with old friends at 27, 28 and 29 years old, I can’t help but think that’s what most of us want right now: our best friend living next door, a place where our children, born or unborn, can see the stars, casual conversation between friends on Main Street, an open road and a home that welcomes us, no matter how far we’ve traveled away, with open arms.