Travel on the Gravel

It's my privilege this year to present the Tri-College History Lecture, 7:30 PM Wednesday 7 April, Reimers Room, NDSU Alumni Center. The topic: "My So-Called Life on the Plains: Confessions of the Last Picture Show Generation." Public invited. Here's a flyer--PDF file - open it in another window.

Since my last post I've been out of the country most of the time. First came an extended spring break in New Zealand, pursuing research on the explorer-surveyor J.T. Thomson and promoting agricultural history, and after that I was in Calgary doing a bit for Ducks Unlimited Canada. My next two Plains Folk columns will be on New Zealand topics; shortly I'll be posting here several bunches of photos pertaining to the columns and to other matters Kiwi.

I'm afraid if I draw attention to it things will fall apart, but post-winter (I seldom call this season "spring" in North Dakota) has advanced considerably while I've been in and out of the country. The first honkers were espied here 2 March. On return from New Zealand I heard the first redwing trilling in my backyard on 23 March; snows and mallards were in the skies. En route home from Calgary on 26 March I saw large flocks of honkers on the Red River in Winnipeg. The first robin hopped across my lawn the morning of 29 March; that evening there were two; the next morning there were three. First meadowlark sighting, 28 March. That same day I started garden seeds under lamps.

On March 2 I saw two pairs of Canada geese. This evening a flock of twelve honked over my house. Something is stirring. Meanwhile, I'm about to leave the country on a New Zealand expedition, 11-22 March. I may or may not post from there, but will be writing about it on return home.

Nearing noon, and desultory snowfall has given way grudging to sunlight and the first blue sky in two weeks. It has been a gray time, conditions typical of what I have come to call post-winter. North Dakota has little or no spring. It has post-winter, which corresponds generally to Lent and may extend well beyond Easter.

In such times, when the seasons of nature are sullen, it becomes all the more important to have other, constant rituals that remain true. One of ours is a routine for Wednesday evenings. It happens that on Wednesdays the NDSU Institute for Regional Studies keeps its archives open to 8:00. At 3:00 I meet the Senior Seminar in History, dismissing them after an hour or so with the admonition to get themselves into the archives. Which is also what my companion and I do. This is a splendid interlude. The seniors rummage through their archival boxes, sharing finds with one another. The archivist on duty is congenial and happy to have such a pleasant group of researchers with which to while the evening. Now and then one of my group has some question, but mostly I’m left to do what I wish.

Which lately has been to read through Mss 296, the papers of Myrtle Bemis Porterville. She took her M.A. in History at the University of North Dakota in 1909, married a farmer from Cooperstown in 1910, and lived the rest of her life there as a community pillar and amateur historian. She was an assertive collector of historical memorabilia. For instance, she went around to the pharmacies and copied the record of every prescription ever filled for alcohol, including the alleged malady the prescription was to answer, and naming names. Somehow, too, she made off with all the original membership forms of the Old Settlers’ Association. For a while she wrote for the WPA American Guide project. Quite a bit of her material will find its way into Plains Folk columns in the next few weeks.

Getting back to the Wednesday routine, all this archival work makes a person powerfully dry, and so we repair from the Institute to one of several favorite pubs in the vicinity. “Pub Night” is what we call Wednesday. “Archives Night” sounds just too nerdy. By either name it’s a cheap date, and it helps to hold life together. This most recent Wednesday our pub of choice was Sammy's, a pleasant pizza joint on Broadway, quiet, family-operated, not much known. One of my research assistants also came in for a chat. We ate and drank quietly. It's Lent.