Tag Archives: Sunday Column

Sunday Column: Oh Christmas Tree, spindly Christmas Tree

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Husband and I don’t have many traditions. Unless you count paddlefishing in May, sending him off to pheasant hunt in October and sometimes remembering our own anniversary enough in advance to buy a bottle of Champaign, I would call us sort of go with the flow type people.

Unless it comes to Christmas. We have traditions at Christmas. We eat pancakes and prime rib. I dip pretzels in chocolate and make a holiday shaped cheese ball.  I dress the pug in a Santa suit.  And we cut our own Christmas tree.

That Christmas tree thing, that’s my favorite one.

And since we moved back to the ranch we have held true to it being a magical sort of process, one that starts with a dreamy vision of the perfect cedar waiting lonely in the coulees of our favorite pasture in the sparkling snow and ends with us laughing and smiling under its boughs covered in twinkling glitter and lights.

And that’s how we remember it no matter the snow drifts, the chill or the one time when we got stuck miles from home and big brown dog puked in the pickup.

We remember it that way because our hunts usually end with a great tree. A tree that spoke to us under a beam of light. One that whispered “pick me, pick me” as we slowly walked toward its light shining down from the prairie sky. One that reached out its arms and asked to be ours, filled our house with the scent of holiday and became the backdrop to many nearly perfect Christmases spent on the ranch.

That didn’t happen this year.

No.

This year we had one day. One hour on one frickin’ freezing Sunday before the sun went down to head out into the -25 degree sunset and find our Christmas centerpiece.

Because in the middle of a life that we seem to insist on overbooking, Christmas seemed to have snuck up and bit us in the ass.

So we had no plan. We had no direction. We just had our coveralls, a saw, each other and one mission.

To fulfill our Christmas tradition.

And what we brought home isn’t pretty.

No, not really.

It’s sort of twisted and it leans and turns to the left. The branches are spindly, they gap and sag and have grown so accustomed to the relentless prairie wind that they have yet to relax so that while it is perfectly calm in the little house we’ve built, that tree, safe and sound under our roof, seems to make us believe that the wind is still blowing.

But you know what else it makes me believe? That Charley Brown, Grinchy little cedar covered in bulb and lights?

That it doesn’t matter.

That it’s sort of perfect for us, really.  Perfect for us and this year we’ve spent muddling through plans that just don’t quite turn out right.  Perfect for a man who falls of ladders and a woman who falls of ledges into snow banks in the middle of Main Street.

Perfect for a couple that doesn’t make time to keep up with the laundry or the dishes and spends way to much time eating noodles and not enough time doing sit-ups.

So when I reached for the 175th Christmas bulb, that carbohydrate loving, overly ambitious carpenter husband of mine told me to stop.

No more bulbs.

The tree is good.

The tree is his favorite.

Because it’s like us.

Just happy to be here and trying its best.

Coming Home: A perfect Christmas includes plenty of imperfections
12/20/13
By Jessie Veeder
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

Sunday Column: A way to celebrate winter

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Despite the hostility I harbor for the recent sub-zero temperatures, I do believe this season comes with gifts, and I’m not talking about the ones that hang out under the tree.

And besides, things are looking up. Today it got up to a balmy -5.

Taking time to enjoy a snow day
by Jessie Veeder
12-8-13
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

Sunday Column: The coyote incident

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This week’s column coming at ya from sunny Florida. Yup, we’re still here with the nieces meeting princesses, getting splashed by Shamu and risking our lives navigating through the masses who have also decided to celebrate Thanksgiving with Mickey and friends.

This is adventure when you’re 4 and 7 and 10.

Back home at the ranch we had a few
adventures of our own…

Sunday Column: Sometimes nature gets a bit too close
By Jessie Veeder
12-1-13
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

 

Sunday Column: A string of headlights heading toward Boomtown…

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This town we drive to for groceries and work, it buzzes and hums and creaks and groans and crashes and grows and creeps in on the neighbors and the wheat fields and cattle pastures every day.

And it’s filled. Filled to the brim with industry and progress, locals and non-locals, passers-through, brilliant minds and lost souls, people looking for a place and people who’ve found their place long ago.

It consumes us. This oil industry. The way that it kicks up dust. The way it brings wealth and eats up the landscape and changes the horizon. Some say it’s bad. Some say it’s good. Most understand that nothing comes without a price.

Nothing is simply black or white.

I allow myself to ponder it because it’s fascinating and it’s my life.

And the world seems to be pondering it too, grabbing for the stories so that they might be the mind to reveal some sort of hidden truth in the one place in America the economy is booming. The one place in America small towns are bursting at the seams.

The one place in America there is an abundance of hope that if we can all just keep working we might pull ourselves up and be able to take root and stay planted or grow wings and fly the hell out of here.

Me, I’m on the side of the roots.

So I spend my days telling my story and listening for others’. What I see in Boomtown, what I think we look like–mothers and men, children and teachers, fifth generation farm families and oil industry professionals, young men with big plans, good men gone bad, bad men starting over and women on their own, leaders and preachers and helpers and people in need, lonely people, happy people, fed up people, inventive people, people in love, people who’ve lost and people who will. not. give. up. My best friends, my husband, these kids’ future–this is not what the world gets to see in the headlines.

Between tragic car wrecks and the dramatic stories that beg to be told of the nameless men who’ve arrived in the wild, wild west in search of their cut of black gold there are people, people like us, building lives and drinking beer, meeting up for a movie, holding open doors, buying steak for dinner and loving each other.

Coming Home: Living in a town of labels, assumptions
by Jessie Veeder
11-10-13
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

Download my song “Boomtown” on iTunes
or listen at
www.jessieveedermusic.com 

Watch: Jessie Veeder’s Boomtown

Sunday Column: Sisters

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On Mondays Little Sister calls me to see what I’m doing on Friday.
Or Saturday.
Or Sunday.

My little sister is a planner and she likes to know well in advance that she’ll have something to look forward to at the end of a long week teaching kindergartners to hola hoop in gym class.

So she might come over to help move cows, or have a margarita, to gorge on popcorn and watch a chick flick, play guitar or take a walk in the trees with our cameras.

Or we might go to town and dance to a band. Plan our next trip, make a big meal or just hang out in the kitchen catching up and watching funny videos of cats on YouTube.

Like me, Little Sister is easily amused.

When I moved back to the ranch for the first time after we got married seven years ago, Little Sister was still in high school, getting ready to graduate and make her way in the world. I got to go to her volleyball games, see her win Homecoming Queen, take pictures of her and her prom date and help at her graduation party.

When she left home I would go and visit her on the other side of the state and we would hang out at her favorite restaurants, catch her favorite bands, shop for clothes we couldn’t afford (while convincing one another that each purchase was an investment), go to movies and just be sisters.

Then I would head back to wherever it was I was living at the time and miss her face.

Well, now I don’t have to miss her face anymore. The changes happening in our Little Boomtown have made our once small town a enticing place to come back to work. It happened with Big Sister and now it happened with Little Sister and so, despite the odds, here we are, all together in a 30 miles radius, just close enough to borrow those shoes I helped her pick out, pick up Little Man for the weekend, swing by mom’s store with coffee and come over with guacamole and chips and be the kind of friends sisters were meant to be after they grow up and stop fighting so much.

I try to explain what it means to me to be close enough to these sisters of mine to watch them accomplish goals, fall in love, raise a family and be a close knit part of our own again.

I try to explain…

Coming Home: Rejoicing as little sister returns home
by Jessie Veeder
10/6/13
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com

Sunday Column: When summer’s over

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The hay is baled up and waiting to be moved out of the fields.

he hot sun is starting to turn the leaves on the trees a little bit lighter.

The cattails are bending and swaying in the warm breeze.

The water in the stock damns is getting low and covered in moss.

The tomatoes are ripe.

The school busses are kicking up dust on the back roads.

The days are getting shorter.

Coming Home: Summer can’t last as life goes on
By Jessie Veeder
9/1/13
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com

 

Summer’s almost over.

Sunday Column: The road

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I’ve had some pretty great adventures in the name of music. This summer almost every weekend has been filled with some sort of gig that takes me away from this place for a bit.

I’ve loaded and unloaded my car and pickup dozens of times.

It’s been months since I’ve completely unpacked my bag.

Please don’t look in my closet.  I don’t even want to look in my closet.

Anyway when you live in the middle of nowhere, pretty much everywhere you need to go involves a road trip.  So it’s a good thing  I’ve had years to master hours of car time. Sunflower seeds. Coffee. An updated play list on my iPod. A mental list of the most convenient places to stop for fuel. Not a bit of hesitation about singing at the top of my lungs, even when pulling up next to you at a stoplight. Windows open when the weather’s nice and the time is right.

The road to and from this place is early mornings, peaceful and dewy, running-late afternoons and evening sunsets where I don’t really feel like it but I’m going.

Some of my most creative times have been behind the wheel of my car, alone out there somewhere on a road in the midwest.

Some of my scariest have been out there too. Blizzard and tornado watches, black ice, flooding and miles and miles of antelope and sagebrush fields with an emptying tank and not a gas station for miles.

In the last few weeks my road trips have involved the men from my hometown band. It’s nice to have a pickup full of voices and stories about the old days playing in bar bands and bowling alleys. I welcome the company in the car and beside me playing guitar.

And it’s nice to have a crew that understands the life of a musician is mostly just an absurd train of events that involves setting up on flatbed trailers as a thunderstorm rolls through town, hauling around and hooking up sound system after sound system, laughing off requests to play “Smoke on the Water, ” to turn it up, to turn it down, to play something faster, or slower or something we don’t know. It’s good to know that this group won’t mind if a gig doesn’t quite turn out the way we planned, or the night drags on into morning, or we have to haul our guitars through a foot of mud to the stage. It’s alright. Because sometimes it’s great, and the harmonies are on and the audience is swaying and singing along and you know that they know that there’s more to music than the miles we’ve put on to get here and home in one piece.




So when you get back to the ranch at 3:30 in the morning only to wake to a call that the cows are in the neighbor’s wheat field, you don’t complain, you just take a swig of coffee, pull on your snap shirt and boots and head out the door to saddle a horse and bring them home.

Because it’s the life I chose. The one I write about and sing about and bring with me when I go.

Coming Home: Freedom sometimes means settling down
By Jessie Veeder
August 4, 2013
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com 

Music and miles, late nights and cows with terrible timing…

And it’s good.

Sunday Column: Some days the Bakken ain’t so Rockin’

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On Friday evening we took a ride through the east pasture checking cows. The sky turned from blue to pink in front of our eyes and a small storm pushed through.We caught the breeze but didn’t get caught in the rain.

We caught the juneberries and the raspberries before the birds.

We caught Pops over the hill filling his mouth and his pocket and we were caught in one of the greatest things about living on this place.

Today I will attempt Juneberry pie because Husband packed his saddlebags and the breeze is blowing nice through the kitchen windows and it’s Sunday.

This is the kind of life I like to talk about. The kind of things I moved back here for. Sunsets and wildflowers and the sleek back of horses and fat happy cattle and Sundays and family.

These are all part of my reality.

But so is the dust kicked up by trucks tending to the oil well a mile down the road and the slick mud they make when it rains.

Sometimes I get stuck on my way out of this place.

Sometimes my car breaks down and so does our pickup on the way to get it all fixed. Sometimes the price of progress means you won’t possibly make it to your appointment on time.

And sometimes, after all that, one of those big trucks kicks up a big rock and you get another big chip to add to the 27 you already have in your windshield.

Sometimes I use my middle finger and think, hell, it’d be easier to just ride my horse out of here.

Sometimes it rains like hell and I’m reminded that I’m not perfect and neither is this place.

Sunday Column: Some days the Bakken ain’t so rockin’
By Jessie Veeder
7/21/13
Fargo Forum

I’m not perfect and neither is this place.

Sunday Column: More misadventures.

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My goodness it’s absolutely gorgeous out here these days. The rain has turned to sun and everything’s green and fresh, I want to soak it all in so badly that not even the “little hangover” I caught from the Miranda Lambert concert last night was going to deter me from showing up a “little late” to get in on the action of at our neighbor’s branding.

Now I’m smelly and sweaty and sunburned and just kinda, still a little hungover.

Ah well, as you’ll read in this week’s column, I always seem to find a way to make life a little more difficult.

But mostly, really truly, seriously, pretty much I most definitely, almost always have fun. And I don’t care what you say, you can never have too much of that.

Too much to drink? Well, that’s another issue…

Coming Home: Mishaps provide plenty of stories
By Jessie Veeder
June 9, 2013
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com

Hope your weekend was free of mishaps.

Or full of them, you know, depending on your definition of the word.