A BRIEF LOVE SONG

When the movie "Fargo" came out, people automatically associated the quaint, hickish, backwoods accent and personality traits of the movies stars with North Dakota. If you watch the extras on the DVD or the special edition DVD (I do not remember which), you discover that the movie was based partly on memories of "Minnesota Nice" and that the Coen brothers were originally going to name the movie "Brainerd" -after a small Minnesota town. However, at the end of the day, they felt that the name "Fargo" had more substance with the added benefit of fascination for the movie going public. As I used to like to tell people, "Only the killers were from Fargo. And they didn't sound like back-woods hicks."



I recently posted about Fargo. I obviously am going to post about it again. I was there three weeks ago or so for the AIA North Dakota annual event and, in fact, had the honor of giving a little breakfast speech about our companies products to the architects attending. This room full of women and men were and are past friends, foes and colleagues.



Fargo, as some of you know, is about the flattest area or territory in North Dakota. The "Valley" is the result of a glacier flow from a bygone era. The rich, dark black soil is a result of the same event. The people, on the other hand, are the real event.



I don't mean to wax rhapsodic often, but I fully intend to do so now. I am behind on two or three posts, so if this kind of sing-song praise bothers a person of your constitution, perhaps you may want to skip ahead, Sparky.



I drove by the house I once lived in behind a pizza joint. The small apartment was the low point of my existence so far. The neighbor in the apartment next door subsidized his food with wild edible berries and plants that grew by the nearby railroad tracks. He would go on daily summer and early fall journeys to see what he could salvage from the plants. He built small wooden crosses and decorated them with flowers. We shared a bathroom at the end of the hall and the water came out of the shower head in fitful spurts, a thin pencil like stream, or not at all. I lived off of either Ramen noodles or potatoes -depending on my affluence by the day or week. I slept on the floor in an old sleeping bag that my father had bought for me while I was an active member of Boy Scout Troop 32 years before. Life pretty much sucked and, for the longest time, I associated my lack of funds, lack of food and lack of a decent living standard with North Dakota in general and Fargo in particular. Many years later I learned that I should have been associating those life polemics with me and not with location.



Shortly after the pizza house living experience, my life turned around and I moved to Portland, Oregon. I lived there for a few years and then returned to North Dakota to pursue an architecture degree. When I arrived back in North Dakota, as now, I would drive by that house and feel a sense of dread and foreboding -I didn't want to return to that place called Scarcity. (Thank the good Lord above, I haven't as of this posting.) I tell you all of this because it is never easy for me to return to North Dakota due to some of those dark and brooding memories. And yet...



North Dakota is one of the most underrated states in the union. As you fly in or out of eastern ND, the lakes of Minnesota start to give way to the prairie-quilt of farmland. And like the visual warmth one can take from a quilt, the people are, for the most part, warm and friendly. I tell people that the people in the South are more polite than those that live in North Dakota, but the North Dakota people are more friendly and accepting of outsiders.



The land ranges from the stark, at first blush, to the dynamic shapes and forms of the badlands in the West. The rolling prairie on I-94 will lull you to sleep, like a baby carriage, if you let someone else drive and relax. Sleeping, however, would be a mistake. For even in the flat East side of the state, there is a great exuberance and diversity of life in those fields, rivers and shelter belts. The deer and raccoon and ducks and geese and fox and the occasional moose (I saw one in North Dakota) will be in those fields in greater numbers than you may imagine. The fields will go from greens and browns to golds, silvers and rust colors. Purple will dance among the gold like some sort of royal procession and everywhere you turn, at every stop, you will find the people.



At first the people may appear simple or naive to you. This too would be a mistake on your part. Like the hard cold January winds that blow through this part of the country, these people are strong and hearty to the core. They will think nothing of shoveling feet of snow, going to work all day, coming home and shoveling some more. Many of these people will have two or three jobs at a time while managing their homes, their families and the elements of nature. At one time, when I was a kid, North Dakota had more millionaires per population than any other place in the country. This was due in part to the low population of the state and also due to the fact that when a farmer gets done paying off millions of dollars worth of equipment and land, he is in fact a millionaire -if not only on paper. The East Germans have a cliche about being smart like a dumb potato farmer... a lot of well fed farmers out there. Some may say, "Millionaires and farmers aside, why would you live there? Why would you want to shovel snow twice in one day?" The residents will say that it comes down to a standard of living. More often than not, what they mean is that it comes down to a very low crime rate and outstanding people. As far as the snow is concerned, they will say only half joking, "It keeps the riff-raff out."

Speaking of riff-raff, when crime appears in North Dakota the people stop and stare and talk about it. When crime happens in the big city, people change the channel. If I had power beyond imagination I would do two things: I would transport the entire state of North Dakota to the freeways of California, New Jersey and a few other places and teach them how to drive. I would also transport the entire United States (in small handfuls) to North Dakota and teach them how to be real, honest and humane.

Suffice to say that this is one exit that is very close to me and one that I highly recommend that you take. You can multiply that statement by ten if you are talking about central and western North Dakota. Next time you are driving through North Dakota -don't. Drive into North Dakota and stay a while.

PHOTOS TO BE POSTED SOON

Disclaimer: The North Dakota Department of Tourism is not paying me for these kinds words. These words are lofted out there for the world to see based on a deep-seated love for the state. However, if you are with the NDDoTourism, my mailing address is...