Travel on the Gravel

So, my knuckleheaded retriever was laid up over Thanksgiving, when otherwise we might have done a little bird hunting, on account of some minor surgery. This morning, though, I went out in the ice storm, wind howling from the north, and opened his gate to let him run. He immediately turned into the wind, ran across the frozen creek, and disappeared beyond the shelterbelts, heedless of my epithets. I followed, and from the road, looked to the neighbor place a quarter-mile north, and saw that the wind had overturned their dumpster. The dog was racing for it, which looked like trouble. To my suprise, he dived into the dumpster contents, pulled out a rooster pheasant, and raced back to me with it.

Birds are messengers, of course, the message in this case being that the dog is ready to hunt again. It reminded me of Sunday morning, when as I was filling the bird feeder, I spied a flash of crimson among the dreary finches. It was the first redpoll of this winter. Just one of them. I thought of that later in the morning at church. I had forgotten it was First of Advent until I watched the single candle being lit in the church Advent wreath.

And speaking of messenger birds, I'm not sure what the pair of owls that moved into our shelterbelts last week are trying to tell me. One of them hoots, and the other squawks. Most every year, come January deep winter, we have a pair of great horned owls in our trees, and I always enjoy them when we snowshoe on a still night. These early-arriving owls are smaller than great horned owls, maybe 14". I'm not a good enough student of raptors to identify them in dim light, but maybe someone will help me out with that.

A Plains Folk column from 1999 generates a call now, six years later, from Darrold Scholl, in the Minneapolis suburbs. It seems he has a painting signed by one H.B. Bartron. It's a seascape with a boat coming into harbor, mountains in the background. He got curious about the painting, and a web search turned up my column about the Empress Café, Drake, North Dakota. In that piece I wrote, "On the walls of the café are four large oil paintings signed by one H.B. Bartron. It is said this fellow Bartron was a hobo who showed up every summer in the late 1930s and painted in exchange for room, board, and beer." This turns out to be remarkably similar to the story behind Scholl's painting. His grandparents, John and Margaret McCormick, ran a café and bakery in Doyon, North Dakota (a little east of Devils Lake on Highway 2). They also recalled the artist as a transient, perhaps a harvest hand, who exchanged his artistic efforts for food. This leads me to wonder, are there other paintings out there by this fellow, H.B. Bartron? Will others come to light? It's an intriguing little mystery.

It’s been a joy and privilege to participate recently in two public forums—the first in Wishek on October 30, and the second in Gackle on November 13—discussing the work of the Dakota Memories Oral History Project. It was my job to moderate the forums, introducing Mike Miller, who talked about the conduct of the project; Jessica Clark, who recounted her work in south-central North Dakota during the past summer; and Kim Porter, advisor to the project, who discussed the importance of oral history as an enterprise. The real stars of the programs, and of the project, of course, are the narrators, the thirty or so interviewees who shared their knowledge and recollections for posterity. It seems to me everyone involved is aware of the specific value of what they are doing as they record their experiences. I’m not sure everyone is aware of how their contributions stack up as a larger landmark. This is developing into a landmark oral history project distinguished not only by its volume but also by the quality of technique and technology it exhibits. There is so much more to do, but it has been a fine thing to celebrate what has been done thus far with the people of Wishek and Gackle. Many thanks to the people who hosted these forums at St. Luke's Lutheran Church and at the Gackle American Legion. Side benefits of participation: enjoying the lovely soup dinner at St. Luke's and the artful baking of Alma Janke Schott in Gackle.