Originally published in the High Plains Reader, 1999
Many a codger has been heard of an afternoon here in North Dakota praising the extreme weather. “Keeps the riffraff out,” Old Boy says, motioning over his cup of scalding black coffee through the window of the local café.
Outside rages a blizzard with howling winds and wind chills of 60 below, or there’s a hailstorm with golf ball-size hail, or the shimmering effects of 110-degree heat with 95 percent humidity. In the latter case, Old Boy motions over his iced tea.
Maybe only we stalwart few (around 600,000 of us) of German and Norwegian descent, with sturdy constitutions, are – what? – determined enough to live through what we do year after year and hang around for yet another round. Perhaps we’re a bit “touched,” as they say of those who aren’t bright enough to come in out of the rain, but for one reason or another we’re here to stay. It’s quiet, a little slower, we still help our neighbors and know them by their first names. We like it this way.
Sure, it takes a thick skin, and maybe a thicker skull, to live here. But, lately, the North Dakota digs have found their way under that skin and started to itch. We aren’t known for complaining much, but, geez, sometimes an itch needs scratching.
We know what you all think and say about us. Foreigners (like Minnesotans trying to be funny or New Yorkers who really don’t know any better) ask how we get around out here. “Do you ride your own horse, or do you drive a team and buggy?”
It’s enough to get us steamed. Before we get there, though, we step back and have a look at the evidence. Then, despite the chaffing on our thick hides, we have to admit how crazy living here must seem.
Take the winter-spring of 1996-97, when North Dakota frequently made national news. Evening after evening, Americans watching the national news saw horrific images of one blizzard after another, sheets of snow so white and blinding that they got up and pounded the sides of their sets, thinking something was wrong with the reception. Then came the ice storms. More snow. More ice. And then, the water started to rise.
In the valley on our state’s eastern border, the Red River of the North flooded to a magnitude the likes of which haven’t been seen around her for more than a century, and there were problems from one end of the state to the other. Again, the awesome images went out night after night – cows drowning in sloughs, weary residents tossing sandbags, downtown Grand Forks looking like a post-war recovery zone after the waters flushed out the entire city and electrical shortage blazes that obliterated downtown buildings and spewed black smoke into the prairie sky.
Advertisers and popular media have not done anything to quash the misconceptions in the pasts few years.
Not long ago, a TV ad for Walgreen’s stated its big sellers in Fargo, N.D., were cold and cough medicines, “…even in summer.” The voiceover accompanied an image of a man shoveling three feet of snow off the roof of his log cabin on a sunny, blue-sky day. Snow in summer? A log cabin? Give us a break.
In his novel, “Skin Tight,” Carl Hiaasen described one of his many way-out-there, wild, weirdo, south Florida characters this way: “His parents had belonged to a religious sect that believed in bigamy, vegetarianism, UFOs and not paying federal income taxes; his mother, father and three of their respective spouses were killed by the FBI during a bloody ten-day siege at the post office outside Grand Forks, North Dakota.”
Of course.
Writers for the X-Files get rid of nasty characters by dumping them in missile silos in – where else – NoDak.
In a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, in the “Hot Sheet” segment, the magazine said this: “Northwest Airlines strike, North Dakota is without major air service. Tens of tourists are stranded.”
And then, of course, the big daddy of them all, Fargo by the Coen Brothers. The entire film is fun at North Dakotans’ expense. There are multiple other examples from the world of cinema, but you get the picture.
The digs are everywhere. We here on the plains must remain vigilant to ensure they don’t lead to more ridiculous suggestions from East Coast professor types who suggest the Dakotas are worthless ground and push the notion of turning North Dakota back over to the wild, roaming Bison. Buffalo Commons, indeed.
Just once, I’d like to see the folks from ABC’s World News Tonight do a story on our state when it isn’t in crisis. Come on out and shoot a panoramic piece when it’s actually nice outside. Capture perfectly sane, happy people enjoying 75-degree, blue sky weather. Given the way our state and the people who live here have been portrayed lately, it would certainly be newsworthy. Just imagine it… “And there you have it, Peter, a sunny, enjoyable day in North Dakota. Now back to you…”
Maybe I’ll give Mr. Jennings a call and invite him out…
Aw, heck, forget it. What they don’t know won’t hurt us. Besides, maybe I should quit spending so much time watching TV and movies and reading popular novels. But, hey, what else is there to do? It’s frigid out here in the winter.
Pass the sugar for my coffee, will you Old Boy? Thanks.
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