Travel on the Gravel

I'm writing from Jamestown, having spent yesterday on the road with Pres. Chapman's "Conversations Across the Land" expedition to Streeter. This was a pleasant visit to the Coteau on a beautiful day. We were generously hosted by Paul Nyren, Director of the Central Grasslands Research Extension Center, and Ann Nyren, who runs the office there. It was an opportunity to see old friends and familiar landscapes, as well as meet some people I've hoped to meet for some time, such as State Senator Bob Erbele--an interesting fellow--bison rancher, historical society activist, German from Russia, and main guy in charge of the Lehr Tabernacle, a wonderful religious historical site I hope to visit soon. During our stop at the station Sandi Dewald, another great German-Russian who works there, was kind enough to give me a copy of her new book (published by the NDSU Germans from Russia Heritage Collection)--Gazing Forward, Glancing Back, Remembering Always: Memories Retold and Relived by the Community of Streeter, North Dakota. I particularly like the collections of proverbs! The day in Streeter closed with too many speeches but lots of great beef and fixings in the Streeter community hall. Today I'm headed on to Ellendale for events associated with the town's 125th celebration, including a reception for local artists. Then it's on to southwest North Dakota, to trace Tour 9 of the 1938 WPA guide through Adams, Bowman, and Slope counties, also to take in some Bowman centennial events. This looks like a great expedition. I'm pretty sure we can locate Custer's campsite on Hidden Wood Creek during the Black Hills expedition of 1874, along with all sorts of other stuff.

I'm posting this photo mainly for our friends in Preservation North Dakota. Last Wednesday we drove over to Valley City for the gala re-opening of the Rosebud Visitor Center. The new interpretive panels are exceedingy well done, but the ceremony of dedication was a particular joy because of the honors accorded Becky and Daryl Heise for their labors toward restoration of the Rosebud and establishment of the center. Daryl arrived fashionably late, and so in this photo, Becky is holding both of their certificates of appreciation.

Besides harvesting the berries this weekend past, we took a little drive over to Brewer Lake to pick up a few panfish. The male bluegill were over nests, inside the reef of vegetation; in the morning, before the heat came on, it was easy to take twenty of them, nice-sized, colorful. The fish fry Sunday evening made the fillet job seem worthwhile.

Back home in North Dakota, we're busy with yard and garden. This weekend it was the berries. We've been enjoying the strawberries for a while, and now comes the big harvest, gooseberries and juneberries. We picked our way through the gooseberries first. Then we lifted the nets (without which we would have no juneberries, as the robins and waxwings would eat them all) from the juneberry bushes and plunged into them. Late last night we spent a couple of hours stemming the gooseberries. How we're ready to pack and freeze them all. Raspberries, we won't have many this year, as we're just getting the bed re-established. It's amazing how covetous the birds are of those juneberries. We have to chase them away even while we're picking.

A few weeks ago the citizens of Ellinwood, Kansas, my old home town, celebrated the centennial of the placement of a Daughters of the American Revolution marker on the old Santa Fe Trail. This is to say, in 1907, as part of its general program to mark the trail, the DAR placed a marker here. In preparation for the centennial, the site of the marker, along Highway 56, was re-landscaped. Here's my photo of the DAR marker.

I'm writing from Fort Worth, as we've spent the past few days traveling on the southern plains. It's good to be in country where, if you ask a waitress for ice tea, she doesn't say, "Will you have the Raspberry Zinger or the Camomile Honey Surprise?" Ice tea in Oklahoma or Texas comes in plastic tumblers that would be buckets if they had handles.

Doing a little web work while on the road, I've moved the pages for the Historic Architectural Survey of Bowman County, long hosted in the Plains Folk website, over to the Center for Heritage Renewal, NDSU. They fit well there, and it frees up space in the Plains Folk directories for expansion of other features. Here's the new location for the Bowman County Survey.

Elroy was kind enough to send me a flyer for this year's barn dances. Great fun in the old loft! Has anyone else noticed how much Elroy looks like Ernest Tubb when he's fronting the band?

In my mail comes a review copy of a fine new book by Teresa Charland: Building an Empire: "Big Pants" Harry F. McLean and His Sons of Martha, published by Riparian House, in Ontario. McLean was a great Canadian construction boss (railroads, dams, various amazing achievements) who happened to grow up in North Dakota. McLean County, Noth Dakota, is named for his father. Harry McLean erected a number of historical monuments to engineering and construction feats across Canada, all of them bearing as legend the poem by Rudyard Kipling, "The Sons of Martha." Remember in the Bible, Mary is the center of attention, but Martha serves everyone else. So Kipling's poem, which celebrates the otherwise-unsong workers on great construction projects, became an anthem for construction engineers around the world. Well, McLean put one of his Sons of Martha monuments in Washburn, McLean County, North Dakota, and a few years ago I wrote a Plains Folk column about it. Ms. Charland and I subsequently corresponded, and so on publication of her biography, she was kind enough to send me a copy. This is going to be useful for one of my Senior Seminar students at NDSU, who will be assigned to write about McLean's monument in Washburn in our series of papers on historical monuments of the northern plains.