It's Spaeth, Not Speath

More people should do what Bob Wefald has done. Wefald, a Bismarck attorney who served as North Dakota Attorney General from 1981-1985, and as a District Judge from 1999-2011, has written an autobiography, titled “Moments.”

I bought it in hopes that I could read it and find a passage or two which would qualify for my ongoing series “The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota.” Alas, that wasn’t the case. Bob Wefald is a decent writer, as you might expect of someone who has likely written tens of thousands of legal briefs and opinions. He uses good grammar, his sentence structure is just fine, and his paragraphs are short, making the book easy to read. But, as Joe Friday (I’ll just bet he was one of Bob’s heroes) might say, he just stuck to the facts. The book just doesn’t inspire, or convey any great love for North Dakota. It could have as easily been set in Kansas or Kentucky.

I also bought it partly to see if I was in it, because I had quietly been one of the architects of his defeat in his re-election attempt as the Republican candidate for Attorney General in 1984, and then, 20 years later, helped him get through the early phases of his re-election campaign for South Central District Judge, a non-partisan office, in 2004. He came to the ad agency where I worked in 2004 for help getting out a press release announcing that he was seeking re-election to his judgeship post. He certainly knew I was still active in Democratic-NPL politics, and we chuckled about that a bit, but I was sincere when I told him I had heard good things about him as a judge (uh-oh, that’s going to draw some comments from some of my attorney friends) and would help him get his campaign started. As it turns out, he ran unopposed, as do most judges in North Dakota, so my help was of little consequence. And I wasn’t in the book.

But my money (he’s selling it for only ten bucks) certainly wasn’t wasted. I recall my friend Mike Jacobs once writing a review of an autobiography by former North Dakota State Senator Bryce Streibel. He started with something like “There are two words that describe Bryce Streibel’s autobiography: Awful. Interesting.” Bob Wefald’s book isn’t awful, but it is interesting.

I read it in two sit-downs. I read the first 25 pages or so to learn quickly about who he is, were he came from, his family, stuff like that, and then I skipped to the last 75 pages, which talk about his political life. A couple days later, I went back and read the 100 pages in between, covering the time from his high school years, through his marriage and having a family, and his Navy career and starting out as a lawyer. Total read time, about 3 hours for an average reader, I’d say. If you’re a political junkie like me, just go right to page 123 to read about lots of people you know and events you remember.

For example, he devotes about half a page to the first few days of 1985, when North Dakota had two Governors, and his role in that. George Sinner took office on January 1, but Governor Al Olson refused to leave until a few days later when the Supreme Court ruled against him. Wefald remembers it pretty much as I do. Sinner’s own memoirs will be off the press in a few weeks, and it will be interesting to see if Sinner recalls it that way as well. He also writes about Gov. Olson taking a pay raise in the middle of his term after he had told the public he would not take it, and discusses one of the key incidents in his 1984 defeat, the one in which a state crime bureau agent taped one of Spaeth's speeches and gave Wefald the tape. That’s the beauty of these “real-time” autobiographical books in a small place like North Dakota, where the authors are unimportant except in their own state. They're recording history that’s happening in our own lifetime.

I really don’t have any criticisms of the book, except to note that Wefald falls prey to the greatest danger for self-published books: sloppy proofreading. Wefald goes to great lengths at the front of the book to tell us that the book has been proofread by three people besides himself, but that he takes full responsibility for any mistakes. There are a few misspellings. For instance, he spells former Bank of North Dakota President Herb Thorndal’s name wrong a couple of times, and spells it two different ways in the same paragraph. But the most egregious error is the misspelling of the last name of the man who defeated him in 1984, Nick Spaeth. He spells it Speath every time he uses it, about a dozen times. This is the problem with self-published books. A publishing house would have employed a fact checker to check the spelling of every name in the book.

I take back my earlier sentence. I do have one criticism. There’s an incident for which he goes into pretty great detail which I wish he had left out, and I can’t for the life of me understand why he included it. You decide for yourself if you really want to know this. He’s writing about the trips that he got to go on as a member of the National Association of Attorneys General.

"The second wonderful trip (in May 1984) was one Susan and I both got to go to Japan – all expenses paid! When I heard about this trip I quickly got my name on the list. Bob Abrams, the New York Attorney General, at a cocktail party, met a prominent New Yorker – Angie Biddle Duke – who at the time was in charge of the U.S. – Japan Foundation. The foundation was funded by a gift of $50 million by a Japanese businessman who was successful “by day and by night,” i.e., he apparently controlled all the gambling in Japan. It started with us being told that all our expenses would be paid and that we could bring along our spouses if we paid for them. Then they said if we paid to get our spouses to Seattle, their trip expenses to Japan would be covered, but we would first have to attend a two-day seminar in Seattle and pay our expenses. We signed Susan up. Then we were told that if we were willing to fly business class instead of first class, the foundation would pay for all the expenses of our spouses. At the Seattle seminar we were told Japan was very expensive, so they could “only” give us $ 200 per day per AG spending money, and they handed out the money on the spot. Once we got to Japan it turned out that most of our dinners, events and hotels were covered. The trip lasted about two weeks . . . Our out-of-pocket expense for everything, including souvenirs, was less than $100."

I can’t even count the number of ethical lapses, much less the legal ones (including, likely, some IRS issues) in that paragraph. But the statute of limitations has long since expired, and the election a few months later took care of the problem, so I guess if he wants to brag or titillate us now, it’s okay. Just disappointing.

(Aside: Once, when I was North Dakota Tourism Director, an advertising agency with which we did business offered to me and my deputy tourism director a pair of tickets to the U.S. Open Golf Tournament which was being held in Minnesota. We asked the Attorney General (not Wefald at the time) whether it was okay to accept the tickets. He said it would be okay to take them if we paid for them. We did. About 50 bucks each, as I recall. We took a day’s vacation from the office and drove to Minneapolis. When we got there, we spotted the same Attorney General having greenside cocktails in the hospitality tent of a major corporation. We never asked him if he paid for his ticket.)

But back to matters at hand. You can buy Wefald’s book by going to the office of the State Bar Association of North Dakota on Washington Street in Bismarck. Bob donated a few hundred of them to the State Bar Foundation to sell as a fundraiser. As I said, it’s only ten bucks and well worth the price to read about people you know and events you may have participated in. Heck, you might even find your own name in there.

Northern Hawk Owl Adventure

Lillian and Jim adventures always start innocently enough. This week Monday it was “Jim, where is Glenfield?”

I know there is only one reason on God’s White Earth that she would want to know where Glenfield is: someone’s spotted a rare bird there.

I bit. “It’s between Carrington and Cooperstown.” And then, opening the door wide: “Why?”

“A guy on my listserv says there is a northern hawk owl there . . . (about a three second pause) . . . tomorrow?”

Well, of course, tomorrow. That is the joy of being retired. That is why we worked all those years, so that when a northern hawk owl appears in Glenfield, North Dakota, we can appear there to observe it.

The listserv message from someone at Valley City State University, which arrived about lunchtime Monday, January 24, read “I went through Glenfield on Friday, January 21 and the Northern Hawk Owl is still there. It was sitting atop a tree on the north side of highway 200 (right before you get to the intersection of 200 and 20.)”

Lillian is a devoted birder, I’ve told you before. Driving 150 miles to put a new bird on your life list is a reasonable thing to do. So we did.

We drove through a world of white, arrived in Glenfield, drove to the intersection, drove north, then south, then east, then west, then all around town, slowly, perusing the stark trees, to no avail. There’s a lot of snow out there in north-central North Dakota. In Glenfield, the city crew had cleaned Main Street and School Street (that’s the actual name on the street sign of the street the school is on) and then just cleared a path through the rest of the town’s streets, leaving banks on both sides higher than my head, and then gone back with a front end loader and tunneled into the driveways of the few occupied houses left in town. Thoughtful.

After an hour or driving very slowly on the streets and highways around Glenfield, we were ready to admit defeat, but Lillian said “Let’s drive a little ways east one more time, and she did. We spotted it at the same time. It was perched high atop a tree at the far end of a shelterbelt running perpendicular to Highway 200, probably 250 yards off the highway, just east of town. I could see Lillian looking at the same thing I was, and I said “That’s not big enough to be . . .” and she cut me off with “Yes, it is.” She pulled into the driveway of the shop beside the shelterbelt, a metal building with a couple pieces of machinery and a purple Jeep Grand Cherokee, all plugged in and ready to start, beside it, and grabbed the binoculars.

“That’s it!”

The Northern Hawk Owl is about the size of a crow, with a typical owl face, no visible ears or neck, but with kind of a long pointy tail, unlike most owls, more like a hawk (hence its name, I suppose) and when it flies, it looks much like a kestrel. It flew after we had observed it for about 15 minutes, disappeared behind the building, and then miraculously flew right to the top of a tree right beside our car and perched on the tip-top branch of a Siberian Elm, about 60-70 feet up, I suppose. We watched it there for quite a long time, snapped a few pictures with our point and shoot camera, and then left it there and headed home. We sent a picture of the bird against Tuesday’s bright blue sky, a great break from this dreary white-sky winter, to a birder friend in Grand Forks, and he wrote back that it couldn’t possibly have been taken in North Dakota because the sky isn’t that color here.

The Northern Hawk Owl is not a North Dakota bird, so seeing one is rare here, and a birder’s delight. You can learn more about it and see better pictures here. According to Lillian’s bird books, it is found in the boreal forests of North America and Eurasia usually on the edges of more open woodland. It is not migratory but occasionally will fly south of its breeding range (which this one seems to have done, settling in Glenfield for the winter). It waits on a perch and takes advantage of its rapid flight to overtake prey. The Northern Hawk Owl has exceptional hearing and can plunge into snow to capture rodents below the surface. I wish we’d have seen that!

For the record, Lillian counted the birds on her life list this morning, and announced the Northern Hawk Owl was her 350th North American species. Pretty amazing. I’ve decided birding is a great hobby. We got to spend an entire day driving across North Dakota, accomplished what we had set out to do, and all it cost us was 30 bucks worth of gas and 11 dollars for two Subway sandwiches in Jamestown. Keep those listserv messages coming!

The Delegation Speaks

Long ago, in another life, I was a reporter and copy editor for The Dickinson Press. My main job was to “put the paper to bed” five nights a week, but we only had one full-time reporter, so I also spent much time taking phone calls from people with prospective news stories. Some were legitimate tips: there’s a big fire at the Farmers Union Elevator, or a semi loaded with hogs just tipped over on the Interstate and there are pigs everywhere. Some were people just seeking a little free publicity.

Some of the most frequent callers were the three members of the North Dakota congressional delegation—at the time, Senators Milton Young and Quentin Burdick and Congressman Mark Andrews. Actually, they didn’t call themselves—they had staff press people who called. Usually they were calling with news of a special project benefiting North Dakota that had received some positive Congressional action.

Most of that Congressional action involved grants or loans to rural electric cooperatives. In those days, the early to mid-1970s, there wasn’t really the profusion of earmarks like we have today. But a $300,000 low interest loan from the Rural Electrification Administration to Slope Electric in New England, North Dakota, to upgrade electrical service in Hettinger County was a pretty big deal then. From time to time there would be highway projects, like approval of a $100,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration for a new bridge over the Cannonball River. Those are the kind of projects that grew into the earmark system we North Dakotans have enjoyed for the last couple of decades when “Team North Dakota” was running a full-court press to fund energy corridors or research corridors or rural water systems.

In the ‘70s, there was no quicker form of communication than the telephone. These were the days before e-mail, before even fax machines, so I would sit at my typewriter (remember those?) with the phone scrunched between my ear and my shoulder, and take dictation from a Congressional press aide. The only other alternative would have been Air Mail (remember that?) from Washington to Bismarck and then next day postal delivery to Post Office Box 1367 (all these years later, I can still remember that box number), zip code 58602.

Of course, all three members of the delegation wanted to take credit for the special project, so when something happened, it was not unusual for my phone to ring three times in the space of a few hours with the same news. I didn’t want to have to take dictation on the same story three times, so I developed a policy that whoever called first was the one who got his name in the paper. “Senator Milton Young today announced . . .” News is news, the first time you hear it. The second and third times, it is not news. So if Andrews’ guy called first, when Burdick’s and Young’s guys called, I would just say “Thanks, I’ve already got the story.”

Eventually the press aides, who subscribed to the North Dakota Newspaper Association’s clipping service, figured out my policy. They’d get this big envelope full of clippings of stories with their boss’s names in them once a month (today of course, their job is much easier—they just read the online versions of each paper each morning), and if it looked like one of them wasn’t getting his fair share in the Dickinson Press, maybe they’d move me up their priority list for calls. Instead of calling the Forum or the Tribune, or KFYR first, they’d think about calling me first. I used to just chuckle at the thought of these press aides running through the halls of Congress to get to a phone (no cell phones in those days) to call this damn reporter out in the boondocks of western North Dakota so their boss would get in the paper.

This was all brought to mind last week when I read a story in the Tribune about a federal loan guarantee for a new Holiday Inn in Williston to accommodate oil field workers. The story began:

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - North Dakota's congressional delegation said the federal Agriculture Department's Rural Development agency will guarantee a $4.7 million loan for the construction of a Holiday Inn Hotel in Williston.

Adequate housing has been a problem in western North Dakota because of the booming oil fields. Sens. Kent Conrad and John Hoeven and Rep. Rick Berg said North Dakota's oil producing counties have 23,000 more people today than they did a decade ago.

Now, that would not have been unusual between 1986 and 2010, when the North Dakota’s delegation was all Democrats. But we’ve got a mixed marriage down there now, like we did in the 1970’s, and I guess I didn’t expect to see joint press releases from Senators Conrad and Hoeven and Congressman Berg. That just wouldn’t have happened in the days of Burdick, Andrews and Young. I remember that there wasn’t much love lost between those three at any time in their joint service, which ran from 1963, when Andrews came to Congress to join Burdick and Young, through 1980, when Young stepped aside and Dorgan joined the ranks.

So I was pleased to see that the cooperation that started in 1987, when Conrad joined Burdick and Dorgan, and ran through the end of last year with Dorgan, Conrad and Pomeroy, is continuing with Berg and Hoeven joining Conrad. At least I hope that is what is going on. It could be that they all three e-mailed a similar press release to the AP office in Bismarck and the reporter just combined them into one story. But I hope that’s not the case. I hope this cooperation is real. There’s talk about Republicans and Democrats sitting together at the State of the Union speech next week. Wouldn’t it be nice to see our three guys sitting together? I’ll be watching.

Footnote: I emphasized zip code 58602 a few paragraphs ago. I want to tell you a short story about that zip code. Zip codes were implemented in the early 1960’s. The way it worked in North Dakota was that all North Dakota zip codes started with 58, and then the urban centers were given the third number, starting in the east, (hence 580 for Wahpeton, 581 for Fargo, 582 for Grand Forks, all the way across the state to 588 for Williston. Then, the postmasters in those urban centers were assigned to dole out the 4th and 5^th numbers to the small towns in their geographic region, generally based on the alphabet. They had some discretion on how many they wanted to reserve for their own towns. An old friend of mine, C. Ray Culver, was the postmaster in Dickinson at the time. So C. Ray started assigning numbers. Amidon was 58620. Beach was 58621. Belfield was 58622. Bowman was 58623. And so on. But Dickinson was 58601 for home delivery, and 58602 for post office box delivery. The numbers 58603 through 58619 went unassigned, and remain so today. Why? Because in 1963, C. Ray was one of Dickinson’s greatest boosters, and he was absolutely convinced Dickinson was going to grow and grow and grow, and would eventually need that many zip codes. Today, Fargo, for comparison, has 15 zip codes and Bismarck has 7. Dickinson still has 2. But hope springs eternal. There’s a big oil boom going on out there. C. Ray’s been gone for a long time, now, but I’m still cheering for him.

Thanks, Kent

I’ve been involved in North Dakota politics a long time. I’ve said many times politics is the greatest spectator sport ever. My involvement has always been as a coach or cheerleader, not a player. I’ve never sought, or even thought of seeking, public office. I’ve jokingly said that will have to wait until all my college roommates are dead. I’ve been involved in winning campaigns and in losing campaigns. I’ve never fretted much about either, because politics is cyclical, and winners and losers change into each other frequently.

Still, I have fretted some about the November 2, 2010 election, because it was such a sea change from two years earlier, and I’ve been trying to sort it out. Yesterday, I decided it was time to try to put some thoughts on paper (online, actually, since that is my communications vehicle these days). So I pulled a book off my shelf that has been sitting there for a dozen years or more now. It’s called “When Incumbency Fails: The Senate Career of Mark Andrews.” Its author, political scientist Richard Fenno, Jr., wrote books in the late 1980s and early 1990s about the political careers of five U.S. Senators: Andrews, Dan Quayle, Arlen Specter, Pete Domenici and John Glenn. His work on Andrews came as a result of befriending the North Dakota senator and making numerous trips with Andrews to North Dakota between 1980 and 1986—the six years Andrews served as our state’s junior senator.

“When Incumbency Fails” is Andrews’ story, mostly told from Andrews’ perspective. Fenno gives Kent Conrad little credit for defeating Andrews in 1986, laying the Andrews loss generally at the incumbent’s own feet, generally for “losing touch” with the folks back home. Conrad, Fenno says, just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and ran a credible campaign. Based on Fenno’s analysis of the election, he could have called the book “The Accidental Senator: Kent Conrad’s Unlikely Senate Victory in 1986.”

I was something of a coach and cheerleader in that campaign, and I know better. Kent, and his then-campaign manager, Lucy Calautti, ran a brilliant campaign, took advantage of some Andrews missteps, took some big gambles, and won by just a couple thousand votes, stunning everyone in the country except themselves.

I read through the book yesterday looking for some thoughts that might help me understand the 2010 election. Answers to the questions “Why did Byron Dorgan decide not to run?” and “Why did Earl Pomeroy lose?” Into the evening, I pondered those questions, started developing some answers, and then put it aside to watch Prairie Public Television’s hour-long documentary on a couple days in Byron Dorgan’s last months in office (good show, by the way—kudos to Bob Dambach and Dave Thompson). When it was over, I reached for Fenno’s book and a notebook, and started to make some notes so I could write today. I also grabbed my Blackberry, which I had silenced during the show, and saw an e-mail from Sara Garland, Kent Conrad’s chief of staff, with a short note: “Kent would like to speak with you. Best #??? Thanks.”

I hit “reply” and typed in my cell phone number. Two minutes later, at 9:55 p.m. EST, my cell phone rang. It was Kent.

“Jim, I want you to know that tomorrow morning I am going to tell my staff, and put out a statement, that I am not going to seek re-election.”

There followed a brief conversation, about 5 minutes, in which Kent said all the right things, things you are reading and listening to in the media this morning. “Jim, I deeply believe the country is in serious financial trouble. I don’t want to spend my time the next two years campaigning. I want to get this deficit under control. I want to spend my time doing that. I hope that my legacy will be that I helped get this debt under control. I really deeply believe that this country is headed for the financial cliff, and I can’t allow myself to be distracted by raising money around the country.”

I said I respected his decision and hoped to see him in the Obama cabinet sometime in the future.

The Washington Post broke the story on its blog at 8:30 this morning. I, along with thousands of others who have signed up to receive periodic e-mails from Kent over the years, got an e-mail from him at 9:00.

When I was reading the Fenno book yesterday, I flagged a page which included one of the few direct quotes from Kent in the book. According to Fenno, in 1990, when he was preparing to write this book, he asked Conrad how and why he decided to run. Conrad’s reply, according to Fenno:

“You would have to start when I was fourteen years old. I came to Washington when Kennedy was president, and I visited the Senate. When I got home, I said that I wanted to be a senator some day; and I figured out the best time for me to run would be in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Everything I did afterward pointed toward that goal. I decided to start with a statewide office to build up my name recognition and then to run for the Senate. Which is what I did. I know that sounds crazy, that no one could have that kind of confidence. But I always had the confidence. I believe it was my destiny . . . I lost some races. But I always believed I would win, whenever I ran. I think you have to have that kind of confidence, especially when you were like I was (in the Senate race). I had absolutely no money, and no one thought I could win.”

I don’t know if Kent really said exactly that to Fenno. Neither does Kent remember clearly exactly what he said. What I DO know, because I’ve known Kent so well for so many years, is that he almost never does anything without a plan. What I also know is that in the final days of that 1986 campaign, Kent and Lucy both told me that the race was very, very close, and that there was a chance he could win. And he did, pulling off the biggest political upset in North Dakota history.

But this is all about today’s news. I started out re-reading Fennos’ book yesterday so I could comment on yesterday’s news—the 2010 election. Why did Earl Pomeroy lose to Rick Berg? If Fenno were writing a book today about the 2010 Pomeroy-Berg race, he might sense that Earl committed the same sins as Mark Andrews—he didn’t pay enough attention to his supporters and the general public back home. Let me give you an example—something that’s been troubling me for a couple of years.

Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad and Earl Pomeroy are all personal friends of mine. All have been for many, many years. I’ve volunteered on all their campaigns, and I’ve been on the paid staff of their party when they have run for election or re-election. Over all those years, I had never really asked them for anything except good government—until 2009. In the spring of 2009, I went to Washington on a short, two-day trip to lobby the three of them on something that was pretty much inconsequential in the big picture, but important to me at the time. I called each of their offices and talked to their scheduler and got an appointment to meet with each of them briefly over a two-day period. My first appointment was with Kent Conrad, at 1 p.m. the first day I was there. That morning, I got a call from Kent’s scheduler who said Kent might be a few minutes late, but to come into the office anyway and visit with a bunch of my friends who worked there. I did. Kent arrived about 15 minutes late, apologizing by saying that, at the last minute, he had to have lunch with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He said he had a meeting shortly with the budget conferees—they were negotiating the budget for the United States that afternoon—but that he had 20 minutes or so to visit with me. We did. He said he would see what he could do.

My meetings with Byron and Earl were the next day. When I got to Byron’s office, his chief of staff, Elizabeth Gore, ushered me into the conference room and said Byron would be in shortly. She and I visited a few minutes, and then Byron came in, apologizing that he had another meeting going on in his office, but they could wait a few minutes. We talked. He said he would see what he could do. He went back into his other meeting.

As I was leaving to grab some lunch before heading for my meeting with Earl, my cell phone rang. It was Earl’s scheduler, calling to say Earl needed to reschedule our meeting for later in the day. Ended up, the only time he could see me was about 15 minutes before I had to get in a cab to get over to the Baltimore airport. I said I could make that work, because I only needed to talk with Earl for about 15 minutes. I arrived at Earl’s office a little early—just in time to see him walk down the hall toward his conference room with a small group of lobbyists. His receptionist asked me to have a seat. I sat. After a few minutes, Earl’s chief of staff, Bob Siggins, came into the reception area and sat down beside me. He said Earl was going to be tied up, and what did I need? He did not even invite me into his office to visit. Just sat there in the reception area. So I told him what I had intended to tell Earl, and he said that he thought the Senators were better equipped to handle that, and I jumped up and left to grab a cab to the airport.

All the way home, and for the next two years, I remembered that trip, how Kent had squeezed me in between Ben Bernanke and the Budget Conferees, and how Byron had left one group sitting in his office and come to hear me out, and then how Earl had been too busy with other things to see me. To be fair, it might have just been "one of those days" in Earl's office, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. And I wondered, all the way up to Election Day 2010, how many other of Earl’s North Dakota friends besides me had gotten a phone call from Earl’s campaign staff last summer or fall seeking help, and had said they were just a little too busy this year to volunteer to knock on doors or make phone calls or stuff envelopes for Earl.

Footnote: I told Kent Monday night that I was pretty disappointed that Earl had just moved his office a few blocks, down to K Street, to become a lobbyist, and that there had been a small story in the papers here about Byron being hired by a Washington law firm as well. And that one of the problems with Washington was this “revolving door” setup where Senators and Congressmen just hang around and get paid way more than they were making in office, to talk the same people, only now on behalf of special interest clients. Kent assured me that Byron wouldn’t be doing much lobbying, if any, and he assured me that HE was not going to be a lobbyist. Period. I believe him. He has, or is making, other plans. I’ve known Kent for almost 40 years. He has never done anything without a plan. I am eager to see what it is.

Since the first day Kent took office in 1987, he has focused on the budget deficit. I know one thing: There is no one better equipped to lead the process of solving our country's budget problems than Kent Conrad. Now, with re-election pushed aside, I think he will be one of the leaders to get this country straightened out. He's still a young man. He could serve many more years. He's put the country's interests ahead of his own. I'm proud of him for making this decision. But I am a little fearful of what all this means for North Dakota. The loss of all this seniority is a sobering thought.

On the other hand, it may be that Kent is saying we're entering an era when seniority--the ability to deliver for your home state--isn't so important any more. Kent is saying the country is in deep financial trouble. And if the system has to change to solve our country's problems, he's going to lead that change by example. Good for him.

Meanwhile, thanks, Kent, from the bottom of my heart, for everything you’ve done for our state and our country. I know you, like Byron, have enjoyed it. And also like Byron, you have decided not to do it any more when the enjoyment is gone. God bless you and Lucy.

It’s almost time for Spring Training. Play Ball!

Winter Of The Blue Snow

A month ago today, a clear, crisp December morning, I walked into Bismarck’s Medcenter One to have some routine surgery on a small disk in my lower back that was protruding a bit and needed some trimming at the hands of one of Bismarck’s finest neurosurgeons. In on Thursday, out in time to spend the weekend at home was the expectation. And then, Murphy’s law took over. Anything that could possibly go wrong, did.

To make a long story short, three surgeries and twenty nights in the hospital later, I am back at my computer, but not much else, recovering from a fusion of disks 4 and 5 in my lower spine. Angel/nurse/wife Lillian will now guide me through a couple more weeks of recovery as the residual pain fades and I can resume things like walking and driving.

Old, out-of-shape, overweight bodies react differently to things like surgery than they used to. I can’t do much about the old, except to act younger, but I can, and will, do something about the other two. Starting now.

Well, then. While I was captive in Room 471 of Medcenter, Christmas and New Year’s and Brett Favre came and went, we got a new Governor and Senator and Congressman, the Legislature came to town, and winter arrived in all its glory. I am pleased about some of those things.

I shall have a good bit of time to read for the next few weeks, so I dragged out my old copy of “Ranching With Roosevelt,” by Lincoln Lang, which includes, as I told you a couple months ago, some of the Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota. Lang devotes 40 or so pages to the winter of 1886-87, the “Winter of the Blue Snow” as it came to be known later. Here’s an excerpt, with a carefully crafted conservation lesson which, I suspect, may have had its beginnings in late night campfire conversations between Lang and the future 26^th President of the United States.

In quick succession came more blizzards, so that by the middle of December travel had become practically impossible. Everywhere monstrous snowdrifts were in evidence, often packed solidly to a depth of a hundred feet or more beneath the faces of the bluffs bordering the river and creek valleys. Except for an occasional let-up, while the northern furies were concentrating for a new drive, it was always snowing, blowing, and intensely cold. When the sun came at all, it appeared as if viewed through lightly smoked glasses, always attended by the omni-present halo and sun dogs.

There were twelve of us at the ranch, all told, inclusive of my mother and sister. For all we could learn of what was going on outside, we might as well have been in the Arctic itself. Even our nearest neighbors could no more reach us than we could reach them. Of outdoor work there was but little we could do save to go around on foot, whenever possible, among the cattle ranging in our immediate vicinity and keep them moving. As we had no feed for (our cattle), they at first made a valiant attempt to rustle a living off the scant grasses exposed here and there between the drifts. Cleaning this up, they became reduced to such sage-brush they could find protruding above the snow. Soon—very soon—that, too, was gone. Then they lost heart. Bunching up in the more sheltered corners, they refused to be chased out. Refused to do anything save stand there and invite a quick release from their misery. As the snow piled up around them, many became drifted under and smothered. Others froze to death, often on their feet, to fall and receive celeritous snow burial.

As the winter advanced, darker and darker became the outlook. There could be no denying that, even if we were not admitting it, for we were never easily depressed. Perhaps conditions were not so bad elsewhere on the range, we thought. So, like many another, we lived in the vain hope that the bulk of our stock might pull through.

Hardest of all, perhaps, was the experience of the women folks. However, they had already learned to adapt themselves to the new country and the conditions as they found them. They always made the best of things as they came, finding occupation of one kind or another and maintaining a cheerful front, so that they pulled through as well as any of us.

But it is a long road that has no turning. In the latter part of March came the Chinook wind, harbinger of spring, releasing for the first time the iron grip that had been upon us. At last, it seemed, the wrath of Nature had been appeased. She had taught us our lesson. Had in part wiped out the herds that had been overrunning and destroying her preserves—the home of her wild kinsfolk. Now she would go about rehabilitating the land in her own fashion and would breathe upon it the soft breath of spring that would ever stand notable in the history of the Bad Lands and be one of phenomenal growth, which she would follow with a series of favorable seasons.

A few days later such a grim freshet was pouring down the river valley as no man had ever seen before or would ever again. For days on end, tearing down with the grinding ice cakes, went Death’s cattle roundup of the Little Missouri country. In countless valleys, gulches, washes and coulees, the animals had vainly sought shelter from the relentless “Northern furies” on their trail. Now, their carcasses were being spewed forth in untold thousands by the rushing waters, to be carried away on the crest of the foaming, turgid flood rushing down the valley.

With them went our hopes. One had only to stand by the river bank for a few minutes and watch the grim procession ceaselessly going down, to realize in full the depth of the tragedy that had been enacted within the past few months.

And watching it, too, in the mind of the man who knew, there was more than room for the thought “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” The White Man had desecrated Nature’s preserves. Had saturated the earth with the blood of her wild kinfolk. Had replaced them with his herds. Nature had come back at him in full measure and had retaliated in her own peculiar way. Now she was sweeping out the carcasses as something obnoxious in her sight.

Hardly were we surprised when our tally sheet, succeeding the spring roundup, showed a loss of about 80 per cent. At that we were better off than many of our neighbors, it being estimated that 85 per cent of the vast herds roaming the Bad Lands in the fall of ’86 had been wiped out of existence. Becoming thoroughly discouraged after that, most of the ranchers sold out the remnant of their holdings and quit the business and the country.

Theodore Roosevelt, of course, was among those who cried “enough.” He absorbed his losses and afterward spent little time in the Bad Lands—vacations and hunting trips interrupting his political and writing careers, both of which were flourishing in New York City. The rest is history. Having read my way through the first two-thirds of Roosevelt’s life in the biographies by Edmund Morris, I am resolute to finish by spring the final piece of the Trilogy, “Colonel Roosevelt.” It sits beside my recliner now, a marker between pages 64 and 65—just under 700 pages to go. I’ll share some of it with you when I am done.

Billy Peeble's Christmas

I’m kind of on hiatus from some medical procedures for a couple days, and I’m not sure what my schedule is going to be for the next week or so, so I’m going to share with you today my Christmas offering of Some Of The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota.

I’m not a big fan of James W. Foley, our long time North Dakota Poet Laureate, but I'd agree with most North Dakotans that he’s a pretty good poet (technically, at least--he writes in classic verse) and he has a good feel for our state and the prairie and its people.

Short biography: Born in Missouri in 1874, moved to North Dakota with his family almost immediately after his birth, lived here, mostly in the Medora area, until ill health sent him seeking a better climate in southern California. His biographers have said he had a “homespun” philosophy of life and the enviable ability to put it into words of the common man.

He published numerous volumes of poetry, apparently with sales enough to support himself, and many of them targeted at children. He died of cancer in 1939 at age 65 in California and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Here’s my favorite, I guess, of his poems, in my opinion probably the best Christmas poem ever written in or about North Dakota. Especially if you read the last two lines very, very slowly. Merry Christmas.

BILLY PEEBLE’S CHRISTMAS

By James W. Foley

Billy Peeble he ain’t got no parents—never had none ‘cause

When he was borned he was an orfunt; an’ he said ‘at Santa Claus

Never didn’t leave him nothin,’ ‘cause he was a county charge

An’ the overseer told him that his fambly was too large

To remember orfunt children; so I ast Ma couldn’t we

Have Bill Peeble up to our house, so’s to see our Christmas Tree.

An she ast me if he’s dirty; an’ I said I guessed he was

But I didn’t think it makes no difference with Santa Claus.

My his clo’es was awful ragged! Ma, she put him in a tub

An’ she poured it full of water, an’ she gave him such a scrub

‘At he ‘ist sit there an’ shivered; and he tol’ me afterwurds

‘At he never washed all over out to Overseer Bird’s!

‘An she burned his ragged trousies an’ she gave him some of mine;

My! She rubbed him an’ she scrubbed him till she almost made him shine,

Nen he ‘ist looked all around him like he’s scairt for quite a w’ile

An’ even when Ma’d pat his head he wouldn’t hardly smile.

“En after w’ile Ma took some flour-sacks an’ ‘en she laid

“Em right down at the fireplace, ‘ist ‘cause she is afraid

Santa Claus’ll soil the carpet when he comes down there, you know

An’ Billy Peeble watcher her, an’ his eyes stuck out—‘ist so!

“En Ma said ‘at in the mornin’ if we‘d look down on the sacks

‘At they’d be ‘ist full of soot where Santa Claus had made his tracks;

Billy Peeble stood there lookin’! An’ he told me afterwurds

He was scairt he’d wake up an’ be back at Overseer Bird's.

Well, ‘en she hung our stockin’s up and after w’ile she said:

“Now you and’ Billy Peeble better get right off to bed,

An’ if you hear a noise tonight, don’t you boys make a sound,

‘Cause Santa Claus don’t never come with little boys around!”

So me an’ Billy went to bed, and Billy Peeble, he

Could hardly go to sleep at all—ist tossed an’ tossed. You see

We had such w’ite sheets on the bed an’ he said afterwurds

They never had no sheets at all at Overseer Bird’s.

So we ‘ist laid and talked an’ talked. An’ Billy ast me who

Was Santa Claus. An’I said I don’t know if it’s all true,

But people say he’s some old man who ‘ist loves little boys

An’ keeps a store at the North Pole with heaps an’ heaps of toys

W’ich he brings down in a big sleigh, with reindeers for his steeds,

An’ comes right down the chimbly flue an’ leaves ‘ist what you needs.

My! He’s excited w’en I tell him that! An' afterwurds

He said that they never had no toys at Overseer Bird’s.

I’m fallin’ pretty near asleep w’en Billy Peeble said:

“Sh-sh! What’s that noise?” An’ w’en he spoke I sat right up in bed

Till sure enough I heard it in the parlor down below,

An’ Billy Peeble, he set up an’ ‘en he said: “Let’s go!”

So we got up an’ sneaked down stairs, an’ both of us could see

‘At it was surely Santa Claus, ‘ist like Ma said he’d be;

But he must have heard us comin’ down, because he stopped an’ said:

“You, Henry Blake and William Peeble, go right back to bed!”

My goodness, we was awful scairt! An’ both of us was pale,

An’ Billy Peeble said upstairs: “My! Ain’t he ‘ist a whale?”

We didn’t hardly dare to talk and got back into bed

An’ Billy pulled the counterpane clear up above his head,

An’ in the mornin’ w’en we looked down on the flour-sacks,

W’y sure enough we saw the soot where he had made his tracks.

An’ Billy got a suit of clothes, a drum, an’ sled an’ books

Till he ‘ist never said a word, but my, how glad he looks!

An’ after w’ile it’s dinner time an Billy Peeble set

Right next to Pa, an' my! how he ‘ist et an’ et an’ et!

Till he ‘ist puffed an’ had to leave his second piece of pie

Because he couldn’t eat no more, an’ after dinner, w’y

Ma dressed him up in his new clo’es, an Billy Peeble said

He’s sorry he’s an orfunt, an’ Ma Patted Billy’s head.

W’ich made him cry a little bit, an’ he said afterwurds

Nobody ever pats his head at Overseer Bird’s.

An’ all day long Pa looked at Ma an’ Ma she looked at him,

Because Pa said ‘at Billy looked a little bit like Jim

‘At was my brother, but he died oncet, years ago,

An’ ‘at’s why Billy Peeble makes my mother like him so.

She says ‘at Santa brought him as a present, ‘ist instead

Of little Jim ‘at died oncet. So she ‘ist put him to bed

On Christmas Night an’ tucked him in an’ told me afterwurds

‘At he ain’t never going back to Overseer Bird’s.

Dancing Dakota

It all started with a posting on my blog back in July, when I was writing in praise of Chuck Suchy and his music. I said “My two favorites (of Chuck’s songs) surprisingly, are a couple of waltzes, “Saturday Night at the Hall” and “Dancing Dakota.”

That prompted a response from Tom Isern over in Fargo, he of “Plains Talk” fame, who wrote:

“So Jim, will you join a campaign to designate "Dancing Dakota" the new state song of North Dakota? I believe a waltz is the appropriate sort of song for a prairie state, and this one is just right.”

I wrote back that I agreed, but was nervous about finding a legislator who would introduce legislation to do that. After all, our North Dakota State Song, “North Dakota Hymn,” is embedded in Section 54-02-04 of the North Dakota Century Code (along with the State Bird, and the State Tree, and the State Fossil and the State Grass and the State Beverage, among other official things) and has been there for almost 90 years. There is also a North Dakota State March, “The Flickertail March,” designated in NDCC 54-02-09.

The North Dakota Hymn was written by our former Poet Laureate James Foley. In 1926 Minnie J. Nielson, North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction, asked Foley to write the lyrics for a song about North Dakota. Foley created a poem that could be sung to the “The Austrian Hymn.” Dr. C. S. Putnam, conductor of the North Dakota Agricultural College Band in Fargo, arranged music for Foley's work. The first public presentation of the “North Dakota Hymn” was in the Bismarck City Auditorium in 1927.

Frankly, that was probably one of the last times it was performed in public. First, it’s not a very good song—oh, the lyrics are patriotic enough, but very 1920-ish—and second, there probably weren’t 40 Austrians in the entire state, so why we chose their tune was a mystery. Maybe Minnie and Foley and the Legislature just figured there weren’t enough Austrians around to object to us stealing their melody.

I can honestly say I have never heard it. Or if I did, it did not make enough of an impression on me to register. It wasn’t part of the repertoire of the Hettinger High School Band when I was there. So I certainly wouldn’t have a problem “joining a campaign” to change it. Except that my record at trying to get official things changed is pretty dismal.

So I did a little research. And I found out some very interesting things. Most of all, it is not unusual for states to have a number of official state songs. There are official State Waltzes, State Polkas, State Hymns, State Anthems, State Folk songs, and even a State Rock Song.

So I suggested to Tom that perhaps we should just ease into this by trying to get “Dancing Dakota” designated the Official North Dakota State Waltz. Who could be opposed to that?

I called Chuck Suchy. He really didn’t want any part of another one of my schemes, but would not object to us seeking such a designation. And Tom said, “What the heck? Why not?” So we’re off.

A few weeks later, I mentioned this to a friend of mine, State Senator Connie Triplett of Grand Forks. And she thought it was a great idea! I mentioned it to another friend of mine, State Senator Tim Mathern of Fargo, and he agreed. (Tim, coincidentally, was the Senator who introduced the bill to change the name of North Dakota to just Dakota back in 1989. He’s a fearless soul.)

So I guess we’re going to do that. I wish I could play the whole song for you right here on my blog, but we don’t have an mp3 available (although Chuck told me last night he’d work on that). But you can listen to the first few bars of it here. And Chuck was nice enough to send me the lyrics, which I’ll include at the end of this post. If anybody out there knows how to make an mp3 and put it on YouTube, we can use my CD, and we could all really appreciate the song. Otherwise you’re just going to have to buy the CD, or come by my house and listen to it.

I know, I know, some of you are just itching to say “But Jim, it’s called ‘Dancing Dakota,’ not ‘Dancing North Dakota.’ You trying to pull something here?”

Don’t worry, it’s okay. I’ll tell you why. State songs come in all colors and flavors. For example:

North Carolina’s state song is “The Old North State,” and the lyrics never mention “North Carolina”—in fact Carolina is only mentioned once, but it’s a pretty good song.

One of Florida’s official state songs is “Old Folks At Home” (better known as “Way Down Upon The Swanee River”) and doesn’t mention Florida at all. Same with “You Are My Sunshine,” the state song of Louisiana.

“Home On The Range” is the official state song of Kansas—no mention of the state though.

Washington’s State Folk Song is “Roll On, Columbia, Roll On” by Woody Guthrie. The Legislature discussed, but never passed, adopting a State Rock Song: “Louie, Louie” written by Richard Berry and made famous by The Kingsmen back in the ‘60’s.

Ohio, though, did adopt a State Rock Song, “Hang On Sloopy,” by the McCoys (you’ve got to be my age to remember them). The McCoys were originally from Dayton, Ohio. In 1985, the Ohio General Assembly approved "Hang on Sloopy" as Ohio's Official Rock Song after Joe Dirck, a columnist for the Columbus Citizen-Journal, wrote a column about the State of Washington considering the adoption of its own rock song. The Ohio General Assembly responded by making "Hang on Sloopy" Ohio's rock song. Ohio is the only state to have an Official Rock Song.

The resolution adopted by the Ohio Legislature read, in part:

"WHEREAS, "Hang On Sloopy" is of particular relevance to members of the Baby Boom Generation, who were once dismissed as a bunch of long-haired, crazy kids, but who now are old enough and vote in sufficient numbers to be taken quite seriously"

and

"WHEREAS, Adoption of this resolution will not take too long, cost the state anything, or affect the quality of life in this state to any appreciable degree, and if we in the legislature just go ahead and pass the darn thing, we can get on with more important stuff. . . . ."

"Hang on Sloopy" is now also the official song of the Major League Baseball team the Cleveland Indians who play at Progressive Field (no, the name has nothing to do with the political affiliation of the city, the team or its owners—naming rights were sold to the Progressive Insurance Company, so all you conservatives can just take a deep breath and relax) Cleveland Ohio. The song is played during the middle of the 8th inning. You can read House Concurrent Resolution of the 116th General Assembly of Ohio in its entirety, and also read the Lyrics to “Hang On Sloopy,” by going here.

There are a lot of seriously great state songs, many of them well known nationally, such as “Rocky Top” and “The Tennessee Waltz” in Tennessee, “The Arkansas Traveler” in Arkansas, “Rocky Mountain High” in Colorado, “Georgia On My Mind” in Georgia, “My Old Kentucky Home” in Tennessee, “Oklahoma” from the musical of the same name in Oklahoma, “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny” in Virginia and “Yankee Doodle” in Connecticut.

No doubt folks in those states are proud of their state songs (okay, we’ll forgive Connecticut). But I doubt there’s more than a handful of North Dakotans who can sing the North Dakota Hymn. Now “Dancing Dakota,” there’s a song to be proud of.

I think Connie’s going to get this done. I think she’ll find lots of co-sponsors, and lots of Senators and Representatives who like to waltz, especially to Chuck Suchy’s music. Here are the lyrics. It’s such great poetry. I hope you can hear the music soon, if you haven’t.

DANCING DAKOTA

Chuck Suchy copyright 1989

The music is calling

quiet and clear

A voice gently falling

on the listening ear

It calls from the river

the wind and the trees

It calls I know you

do you know me?

For I am a dancer

I am the dance

I am a dreamer

living romance

I am all ages

timeless I be

I am Dakota

please dance with me

Chorus:

Dance Dakota

far as you see

Dance and the

spirit renew

Dance Dakota

long may we be

Dancing Dakota

with you

I am the magic

of mid-winter night

I am the warmth

of Spring morning bright

The aura of Autumn

in quiet repose

A sunset of Summer

a wild prairie rose

I've been dancing

thousands of years

Many for partners

I dance joy and tears

Flags o'er me flown

I've given the chance

I am Dakota

may I please have this dance

Chorus

I dance with the sun

I dance with the rain

I dance with the one's

who come home again

I dance with justice

with dignity

I am Dakota

please dance with me .

Chorus

Roosevelt In The Bad Lands

A niece of mine recently sent me a text message asking what would be a good biography of Theodore Roosevelt to start learning about TR. I wrote back suggesting a couple, and then said “But if you want to know about Roosevelt’s time in North Dakota, read Herman Hagedorn’s “Roosevelt in the Badlands.” And then, just to refresh my own memory, I dragged out my copy. You could do that as well. It’s history-reading weather now. To get you started, let me share the opening of his introduction.

To write any book is an adventure, but to write this book has been the kind of gay and romantic experience that makes any man who has partaken of it a debtor forever to the Giver of Delights. Historical research, contrary to popular opinion, is one of the most thrilling of occupations, but I question whether any biographer has ever had a better time gathering his material than I have had. Amid the old scenes, the old epic life of the frontier has been re-created for me by the men who were the leading actors in it. But my contact with it has not been only vicarious. In the course of this most grateful of labors I have myself come to know something of the life that Roosevelt knew thirty-five years ago—the hot desolation of noon in the scarred butte country; the magic of dawn and dusk when the long shadows crept across the coulees and woke them to unexpected beauty; the solitude of the prairies, that have the vastness without the malignance of the sea. I have come to know the thrill and the dust and the cattle-odors of the round-up; the warm companionship of the ranchman’s dinner-table; such profanity as I never expect to hear again; singing and yarns and hints of the tragedy of prairie women; and, at the height of a barbecue, the appalling intrusion of death. I have felt in all its potency the spell which the “short-grass country” cast over Theodore Roosevelt; and I cannot hear the word Dakota without feeling a stirring in my blood.

Hagedorn spent a considerable amount of time in the North Dakota Bad Lands in the years shortly before and after Roosevelt’s death in 1919, doing research, with the former president’s blessing. Hanging on the wall in the Rough Riders Hotel in Medora is one of the president’s letters of introduction which Hagedorn carried with him when he visited here, one of those countless rare documents Harold Schafer collected as he was rebuilding Medora to share its amazing history with visitors from around the world.

Hagedorn finished his book in 1921 and it was greeted with much acclaim and enthusiasm. It begins with Roosevelt’s arrival in the Dakota Bad Lands to hunt buffalo in September of 1883. Here's Hagedorn’s description of the place Roosevelt encountered his first morning in the town of Little Missouri, Dakota Territory.

It was a world of strange and awful beauty into which Roosevelt stepped as he emerged from the dinginess of the ramshackle hotel into the crisp autumn morning. Before him lay a dusty, sagebrush flat walled in on three sides by scarred and precipitous clay buttes. A trickle of sluggish water in a wide bed, partly sand and partly baked gumbo, oozed beneath banks at his back, swung sharply westward, and gave the flat on the north a fringe of dusty-looking cottonwoods, thirstily drinking the only source of moisture the country seemed to afford. Directly across the river, beyond another oval-shaped piece of bottom-land rose a steep bluff, deeply shadowed against the east, and south of it stretched in endless succession the seamed ranges and fantastic turrets and cupolas and flying buttresses of the Bad Lands.

It was a region of weird shapes garbed in barbaric colors, gray-olive striped with brown, lavender striped with black, chalk pinnacles capped with flaming scarlet. French-Canadian voyageurs, a century previous, finding the weather-washed ravines wicked to travel through, spoke of them as mauvaises terres pour traverser, and the name clung. The whole region, it was said, had once been the bed of a great lake, holding in its lap the rich clays and loams which the rain carried down into it. The passing of ages brought vegetation, and the passing of other ages turned that vegetation into coal. At last this vast lake found an outlet in the Missouri. The wear and wash of the waters cut in time through the clay, the coal and the friable limestone of succeeding deposits, creating ten thousand water-courses bordered by precipitous bluffs and buttes, which every storm gashed and furrowed anew. On the tops of the flat buttes was rich soil and in countless pleasant valleys were green pastures, but there were regions where for miles only sagebrush and stunted cedars lived a starved existence. Bad lands they were, for man or beast, and Bad Lands they remained.

"Roosevelt in the Badlands" has gone through many printings, the most recent by the Theodore Roosevelt Nature and History Association, headquartered in Medora. You’ll find it for sale at the Visitor Center in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, The Western Edge Bookstore in Medora, and the North Dakota Heritage Center in Bismarck, and for lending at most North Dakota libraries. It’s one of the best books ever written about a North Dakotan.

A Man As Big As The West

There’s a table in the dining room of Sheila Schafer’s house in Medora that has hosted many important and not-so-self important visitors to Medora in the last 45 years. It’s “a large round mahogany table with a heavy center pedestal and four supporting legs, each ending in a finely carved dolphins head.” That description is from Nellie Snyder Yost’s biography of Ralph “Doc” Hubbard, and those are Doc‘s words.

Doc was the historian Harold Schafer brought to Medora in Harold’s early days of rebuilding that town in the 1960’s. Doc served as museum curator for the Museum of the Badlands that Harold created as an attraction for visitors. The museum sat where the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame is today.

Doc, born in 1885, was a colorful character, a pretty good Indian and Old West historian, a dreamer who never prepared for old age. So it was given to Harold, the philanthropist, to take care of Doc, who lived into his early 90’s. There were some medical bills and transportation costs that Harold had his Gold Seal company pay while he just looked the other way. Not ungrateful, Doc from time to time gifted or sold items to Harold from the historical collection he had picked up along the path of his life. There wasn’t much in the way of record keeping, but Rod Tjaden, who managed the Medora operation for Gold Seal for many years, told me once that there was no doubt that Doc got the better end of the deal. Harold never took advantage of anyone in his entire life, but that was often a one-way street.

One of the items that Doc sold to Harold was the table that Doc’s mother had built for their home in East Aurora, New York, on the Roycroft campus. Now a National Historic Landmark, the Roycroft Campus was home to an artistic revolt in the late 1880’s in the United States against the societal changes and restrictions ushered in by the Victorian Age. It was founded by Doc’s father, Elbert Hubbard and it became a Mecca for master craftsmen and a gathering place for notable artists, authors, philosophers, and power brokers, according to the Roycroft website (view it here) and Yost’s book. The elder Hubbard later perished as a passenger on the Lusitania.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Sorry for the long introduction. In the last years of Doc’s life, in the 1970’s Yost, no spring chicken herself, came to Medora for months at a time and interviewed Doc. The book which resulted, Doc’s definitive biography, carries Yost’s imprimatur as author, but it is mostly a first-person narrative as recorded by Yost. It’s interesting. I have no doubt that most of it is true. Most of it. In her introduction, Yost writes:

“Doc has had a lifelong love affair with words. Frequently, during the interviews, he would use a good descriptive word, then pause to ask me how I liked it. Over the period in which we were engaged in writing the book, Doc wrote me many letters. Here, too, his pleasure in words was evident and his breezy anecdotes a delight, right down to the signatures: Old Confucius, Rocky Mountain Moses, Sagebrush Socrates.

“A sincerely modest man . . .” she continues, and she goes on telling about how she had to learn a bit of his history from others.

Okay, Okay, I’m getting there. Back to the table. I sat at the table in the Schafer home in Medora the other night and looked through the book. As I said, the Hubbard home at Roycroft became a gathering place for the famous of the last part of the 19^th century and the first part of the 20^th. Let Doc take over:

As I look back on it now, the names of some of the people who sat with us at that table come to mind as follows:

Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist leader

Carry Jacobs Bond, writer of “The End of a Perfect Day.”

Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, wife of the great American statesman

Maude Adams, fine American actress

Edwin Markham, beloved American poet, author of “The Man with the Hoe”

Edgar A. Guest, American poet, author of “The House By The Side Of The Road”

Stephen Crane, author of "The Red Badge of Courage"

John Burroughs

John Muir

Ernest Thompson Seton, writer, painter, Boy Scout leader

Rudyard Kipling

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American journalist and poet

Harriet Beecher Stowe, American writer, author of "Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

Isabell Irving, great English actress

Henry Irving, British actor

Ellen Terry, English actress

Eugene Field, American poet and journalist

Joel Chandler Harris, author, writer of Uncle Remus stories

Frank Bacon, actor and playwright

James Lane Allen, American novelist of Kentucky

George Washington Carver, American Negro botanist and chemist

Booker T. Washington, American Negro educator and author

Sherman Coolidge, Arapaho Indian, rescued from enemy tribe as a boy and named by an officer, a Coolidge relative

Joe Jefferson, famous player of Rip Van Winkle

David Bispham, fine singer

Clara Barton, organizer of the American Red Cross

Captain Jack Crawford, poet

Richard Le Gallienne

Anne Besant, famous student of Sanskrit and other eastern languages

Anna Kathryn Green, popular mystery writer of that period

Ida Tarbell, popular writer, exposed the Standard Oil scandals

Mark Twain

Eugene Debs

Margaret Sanger, famous American advocate of birth control

Judge Ben Lindsey, well-known Denver juvenile court judge

Gutzon Borglum, American Sculptor, carver of the Mount Rushmore heads

Clarence Darrow, famous American lawyer

Sir Harry Lauder, Scottish comedian, singer, and writer

Andrew Rowan

Whew! Doc later qualifies the list a bit:

“Some of these, such as Kipling and Crane, were our guests at Roycroft before Mother had the table made, and some came to visit her after she moved to Buffalo and took the table with her . . .”

Still, it’s an impressive list of guests for a table now sitting in little old Medora, North Dakota. One of these days I’m going to sit down with Sheila and have her try to remember some who have sat at it since its arrival in Medora.

Doc lived long and traveled much. Among his other acquaintances, some fleeting, some long lasting, were Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Buffalo Bill Cody, Jim Thorpe, Gene Autry, Owen Wister, Ben American Horse, (”last chief of the Teton Sioux Dakota Nation,”) Dan Beard, illustrator of Mark Twain’s books, and Dr. Charles Eastman, who, Hubbard says, was a witness to the Custer massacre as a young Indian boy and later became a doctor and treated the victims of the Wounded Knee massacre. Doc died in Dickinson in 1980, at age 95, and is buried in the Medora cemetery.

The book is “A Man as Big as the West” by Nellie Snyder Yost, published in 1979 by Pruett Publishing Company of Boulder, Co. It’s not one of the best books ever written about North Dakota, but it’s an interesting read. It’s out of print now, but still available from time to time from used booksellers. Doug Ellison at Western Edge Books in Medora says he still gets requests for it and has been thinking about having it reprinted. Ellison, also Medora’s mayor and a fine historian in his own right, was instrumental in 2009 in officially getting the street on which Hubbard lived in Medora renamed as “Doc Hubbard Drive.”

According to a story printed earlier this year by Kurt Eriksmoen in some North Daktoa newspapers, on May 14, 1983, astronomer Norman G. Thomas discovered a new asteroid in space that he named “Hubbard” in honor of Doc Hubbard. Doc would have liked that.

Ranching With Roosevelt: Part I

One of my favorite books (and a favorite of a couple historians I know as well) is Lincoln Lang’s “Ranching With Roosevelt.” Lincoln Lang was a boy when Theodore Roosevelt arrived in the Bad Lands in the early fall of 1883, living with his father (his mother had remained behind in Scotland until father and son had established a ranch) in a cabin at the mouth of Little Cannonball Creek on the Little Missouri River south of Medora.

Our copy of the book, published in 1926, came from an online bookseller some years ago, and we were delighted to discover when it arrived in the mail that the bookplate on the inside cover said it was a discarded copy from, of all places, the Panama Canal Library, book # 27678 (How about the irony in that?). A second plate carried the Panama Canal Library rules, which said, among other things, that it could be kept 14 days and if it was not returned in 14 days, the borrower faced a fine of 2 cents a day. It also still had the original library card pocket on the facing page, and it showed that its first return date was Nov. 9, 1926, and its last Nov. 24, 1958.

Lang’s descriptions of the Bad Lands, where he grew up, and life there, and anecdotes about the people who lived there, are among the most vivid I have found. I’m going to excerpt from his book a few times in the next few months, because they are Some Of The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota. To start, here’s his account of Theodore Roosevelt arriving at the Lang cabin in September 1883, Roosevelt's first trip to the Badlands, seeking to shoot a buffalo.

Temperate September days were now upon us. More and more acceptable were we finding the shelter of the cabin as the chill breath of the Arctic began to manifest itself in the increasing crispness of the lengthening nights.

Assembled in the cabin one evening, when about to sit down to supper, father having returned from town, we heard a rig drive up to the door. In the weirdly characteristic manner common to the region, already the looming, ascensional shadows of the night arising softly, stealthily, as if from their couches in the depths of a myriad labyrinthian water-ways, had merged into the single somber shadow of gray gloaming, paling to the westward in the wake of departing day.

Upon stepping to the door, I was enabled to distinguish the outline of a light wagon and team, together with a driver of bulky build sitting in the seat. To the rear, sitting on a pony with a rifle laying across the saddle in front of him, was a second individual of lighter build. Even before the booming hail “Hello Link” of the driver reached me, I had recognized him as “the power end of the pile driver,” my erstwhile boss, “Joe Ferris.” Just who his mounted companion might be, I could not tell. Evidently a stranger, but aided by the beam of light showing through the cabin door, I could make out that he was a young man, who wore large conspicuous-looking glasses, through which I was being regarded with interest by a pair of bright twinkling eyes. Amply supporting them was the expansive grin overspreading his prominent, forceful looking lower face, revealing a set of large white teeth. Smiling teeth, yet withal conveying a strong suggestion of hang-and-rattle. The kind of teeth that are made to hold anything they once close upon.

Father had stepped out past me to welcome our guests; whereupon, with my responsibilities to cook in mind, I re-entered and proceeded to include the newcomers in my supper preparations.

A few minutes later, father ushered the stranger into the shack.

“This is my son Lincoln, Mr. Roosevelt,” he said.

Then, somehow or other, I found both my hands in the double solid grip of our guest. Heard him saying clearly and forcefully, in the manner conveying the instant impression that he meant exactly what he said. That he was not merely passing out the ordinary stereotyped society phrase, which so frequently fails to ring true, I felt sure.

“Dee-lighted to meet you, Lincoln.”

I do not know if it was the direct, forceful manner of his speech, his sincere hearty grip, the open friendly gaze with which he regarded me, or something of all combined, that instantly reached for and numbered me among his friends. I did not know then, of course, that I was meeting one of the world’s greatest men; the man of destiny; a future and great President of the United States. But I didn’t need to. Young and all, as I was, the consciousness was instantly borne in upon me of meeting a man different from any I had ever met before. Just where the difference lay, I could not have told although in good time I would learn, but certain it is, right there and then, I fell for him strong.

More from this wonderful book at another time. I wish I could put the entire 367 pages in front of you. If you have taken a liking to Roosevelt, or the Badlands, or even just North Dakota history, buy this book for yourself for Christmas. Even if it is the only book you buy this year. You can buy it here. Or here. Or here.

Note: The exact location of Lang’s cabin, where Roosevelt headquartered in the days before he finally shot his buffalo that fall of 1883, is known today (although,unfortunately the exact location of where he finally shot the buffalo is somewhat a mystery--Roosevelt historian Clay Jenkinson is working on it). The Lang cabin was at the mouth of the Little Cannonball River due north of Marmarth, in the Limber Pine area of the Badlands. It’s on public land owned by the U.S. Forest Service and hard to get to by car (I’ve done it-I can admit it now-the statute of limitations has run out) but it’s a great stopover if you’re canoeing the Little Missouri north from Marmarth, and I’ve done that a couple of times. The cabin was a semi-dugout structure with a log front and sides and dirt floors, and the depression where the earth was dug out is still discernible. It’s a marvelous location. From what was likely the front stoop, you can throw a stone into either the Little Missouri or the Little Cannonball. You can feel the history there.