Author: Standing At The Gates Of The West

More Blogs About Buildings And Food; Do I Know You?

We stayed in Sioux Falls, SD a few weeks ago after a quick trip to Omaha for one of my niece’s high school graduations, but we stayed in a different hotel than we usually do. Sioux Falls is not often a destination for us, but on this particular trip, Lisa wanted to check out some businesses similar to hers in the downtown area. I was intrigued by the idea that although I have been to this city dozens of times over the last 25 years, a slight alteration of our routine gave me a completely different window on the community.

I wondered how often I’d formed a faulty opinion of a city, even a smaller one like many of the other Midwest ones I visit like Bismarck, Fargo, Minot, Aberdeen, Bemidji, Sioux City, or the Quad Cities, when in truth I had only seen a small fraction of it- as well, those cities change over the years, like a familiar friend, but still with the possibility of renewal by a new idea or nudged in a different direction by a younger generation. Had I been in enough restaurants, music halls, museums, ballparks, bike/hike trails, and neighborhoods to even know? Have I seen it through the eyes of family, friends, or acqaintances? In my own town of Grand Forks, I have lived in a number of different areas, but where I had lived were areas that were also separated by time or era. I certainly was aware of all of the neighborhoods, but the change my in perspective has sometimes proven to be subtle yet transformative. Perhaps my other destinations have this power too.

Lost And Found; a Breakup

We were in the city, so I thought we’d make a stop; I was following along on the map on my phone, and realizing our route to downtown would take us right by. Dalton needed to see this place, so at the last second, I’ll told him to turn off and head over to the side street where soon we parked right in front of the sacred place.

As we passed through the door, I felt a little unsettled, which was unexpected; I had been here many times before dating back to my mid-teens, but not for a long time. I’d spent many happy hours here, as I had in similar places in many midwestern cities, having even worked in one, curating and caring for these companions. Unsettled turned to blank as I walked the aisle, aimless as I tried to find a place to land. I turned mindlessly and spotted Dalton, noting I’d wandered away from him lost in the reverie of old thoughts and feelings; so much pain, hurt, and sadness that caused the tragic break, it was traumatic and I’d never looked back.

Soon I selected one in its 12 by 12 home, smooth, black, cool. Holding it in my hand, just the way I used to in a careful slide out, a rush of memories and rituals, the studying, careful handling, cleaning, only using high quality equipment to create and foster a relationship, which I now found that I still had. Tears turned to smiles as I engaged with Dalton about everything I was now thinking, stream-of-consciousness, finding the places and thoughts I had divorced myself from at the cold and muddy river all those years ago where I watched them all drown, thousands gone. This old room full of their friends who were happy to take me back, maybe wondering where I’d been all this time, Dalton meeting them for the first time.

We browsed some more, chatting up some of the clerks, and he finally settled on The Black Keys at The BBC, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Fleetwood Mac- Rumours, and a nice classic style Technics turntable. I wasn’t quite ready to have a listen with him upon our return to home the next day, but he texted me later to tell me that he was listening to the music in a different way through playing them as records; I immediately know what he meant, thinking about the days back when I was doing the same with all of the little steps that go with it, changing the way I thought about everything. 
Hello, Old Friends.

Trains

It’s sometime after 1 am, I’m guessing, as I am up to get some water, and I can hear and feel the train rumbling through downtown a few blocks away just before the horn blasts. I know the train is going east over the Red River, because the engineers can’t blow the horn in downtown on the North Dakota side. I’m taken back to my teenage years, when I would hear the mighty beasts roll on through town out on to the Platte River Valley in Kearney, Nebraska. We lived up on a high hill and the trains’ passage was very audible, the sound focused across the rolling hills, even though the tracks were about a mile away.

I never slept then either, and with my room on the second floor of the house at the southeast corner, I’d have the windows open on either wall during the summer (sometimes to sneak a smoke). We were next door to a golf course, and I’d hear the wind pass through the trees, and see the moon-splashed links and lake; off to the southeast lay the lights of the university and the town below. In the daylight, this was quite a vantage point. Grain elevators 20 miles away were easily visible in towns like Axtell and Minden. I counted the trains once when I was ill, there were 25 in a 24 hour period that day, and that always seemed like a likely average. I’d consider where the train might be going, connecting towns and cities along the way, some that didn’t exist anymore beyond a sign noting the junction.

The train that rolls through downtown now is right out the window at the coffee house in a hundred year old building where I hang out; always enjoying them when I stop to consider them in their smooth controlled power, connecting me to the past times, archetypal, with many memories as one.

Baseball In A Hockey Town (Walt Whitman, a cold day in North Dakota, and the American Game)

“I like your interest in sports ball, chiefest of all base-ball particularly: base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character….Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic! That’s beautiful: the hurrah game! well—it’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life”
-Walt Whitman

My daughter and I went out to the University of North Dakota baseball game against Chicago State last Sunday, and typical of early April in our area, it was cloudy, windy, and cool. From our vantage point on the first base line, I noticed to the 2 indoor ice hockey rinks across the street. No doubt, like all of these facilities in Grand Forks, they were likely full in use. Hockey is king here; baseball is kind of an afterthought, but many follow the Minnesota Twins- mostly after the NHL Stanley Cup has been handed out in June. Wintertime in the city parks and back yards brings little outdoor rinks, usually busy with kids in pickup games dreaming of glory at the U, or hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup. The sports culture here is clearly hockey oriented- very Canadian-like in its fanaticism, but really has its own identity. It is really a big time college sports experience, not unlike what you’d see at big football schools like Nebraska (where I did grow up), or basketball schools like Duke. My daughter did grow up here, however, and she loves the fast paced, hard-hitting, yet athletic and graceful skaters of her beloved North Dakota team. We’ve seen 2 national championships together, and she has a closet full of shirts and jerseys, including a team autographed one from 2010.

In making a run at minor league baseball in Grand Forks, Minot, Bismarck, and Fargo in the mid 1990’s, a major flood put the kibash on the Grand Forks Varmints, and soon the others failed as well. Save for Fargo, now North Dakota’s lone franchise, pro baseball is gone in North Dakota. They have a great little park, holding about 4500 people, new enough to have nice amenities, but also has the neat feature of having the same outfield dimension as old Yankee stadium. It’s a fitting tribute to Fargo’s own Roger Maris, the ex-Yankee and one-time single season home run record holder in the big leagues (although many in Fargo still think that he does, dismissing the steroid era home run hitters like Bonds and McGwire). Fargo’s ballpark plays a lot like Wrigley Field in Chicago with its wind and fickle temperatures. We’ve seen dozens of games and several championships there in the last 15 years, and the fans are loyal, but it’s not like a hockey night in North Dakota; the modern, pro-style arena packed with 12,000 fans and a broadcast that reaches the entire state generating the proverbial Monday morning “water cooler” talk.

My Grandpa Nyquist loved baseball, particularly his beloved St. Louis Cardinals; we spent some of his last days together watching the 1999 major league playoffs on TV. We spent many hours working on the farm in south central Nebraska listening to games on the radio, sometimes into the twilight. I am thinking of him today, smoking his pipe, occasionally telling me about the greats he saw at old Sportsman’s Park like Hall of Famer Stan Musial. Lindsey was just a young child when my Grandpa passed. I wish he was here to see his great granddaughter  clapping and yelling as an opposing batter is out on a close play right in front of us at first base on this Sunday afternoon.

The wind howls out to left field, aiding North Dakota batters to the tune of 15 hits, including 4 home runs. It’s a blow-out, but we’re having a great afternoon as Lisa brings us some lunch in the picnic area. Soon enough, summer will be here, and we’ll likely make the rounds of Fargo, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Winnipeg (another hockey town with baseball), and maybe even Chicago. Although she doesn’t say, I can see that my sports buddy is drawn in by the chance to reflect, think, and enjoy some time outside in a singular, almost literary way that only baseball, the greatest game, the American game, offers.

Play ball. 

The Forks

On the corner where the old southside neighborhood’s angled streets meet the squared off south end of downtown, there is a convenience store that may be one of the most diverse places in the city.  Although the university at large represents a number of nationalities and backgrounds, the focal point that is this store is most interesting. 

Right across the street is the homeless shelter; the police station is one block north entering downtown; 3 churches are on the same block, 2 of which face the parking lot; the large downtown high school, Grand Forks Central, is about 3 blocks away, many downtown businesses are closeby,and there are numerous law offices around the courthouse to the northeast.   In the late afternoon, this corner is filled with students, people from the shelter (many of whom have come to North Dakota from points around the country looking for work), businesspersons closing out their day, police officers getting coffee, and people from the neighborhood, like me, out for a walk or maybe to grab a simple grocery item.  Most everyone smiles, someone holds the door for me, and stories are shared as we all make our way. 

As I start walking the block or so to my house in the historic neighborhood,  I’m thinking of the nearby Forks of the Red and Red Lake Rivers, another more ancient junction near here, as a gathering place also in the near southside.  I’m thinking that then, like now, many different stories have lead here; some tragic, some hopeful, some more routine, yet all richly human in our passage.

Snow Reverie

We’ve had some 50 to 70 degree days here in mid-March in northeast North Dakota, which are well above average.  People get out in full force at these first signs of spring, and a real buzz is created.

This morning, we’re greeted with about 1 inch of fresh snow, covering all in the early morning blue.  

It’ll be 50 later today, so this snow cover will be brief. As I drive along, I’m thinking how some will complain or be very disappointed that “winter is still here” (and it should be), but I’m enjoying it and meditating on it while it is still here- and while I am still here too.

An Unlikely Conduit

I was greeted by a medical student the other evening off campus, and I inquired about how it was going for him. He noted it was exam week, but he said he was glad to see me, as it “helps him know he can make it”, and that our occasional brief conversations are a “break from the insanity from his studies”.   Twenty-Five years ago about this time of year when the Fargo winter was just beginning to soften, I was having a crisis of confidence in my post-MD residency training which would prove to be life-changing. I smiled as we parted, thinking that nobody would’ve considered me a “break from insanity” back then       (I WAS the insanity!).

A couple of days later, an elderly retired physician from north central Minnesota stopped at the front of the hall to visit following a lecture I had given for community education.   I had never met him before-his eyes sparkled as he talked about medicine and his practice, noting that he too had suffered a stroke which changed many things for him. The doctor had not grown up in the area, he was from a medium sized city like myself, and like many of his generation, had also been in the service. He was a marvelous story teller, and I could tell he really enjoyed sharing his old stories of medical practice in the rural upper Midwest, where he really did everything- taking care of sick kids, delivering babies, even many surgical procedures. In his early 80’s, walking with a cane, I saw a little of myself in 30 years.

Later that afternoon, I needed to go up to the medical school to do some paper work and pick up some mail. On my way out of the building in the early evening, I walked by the glass-walled library, and the same student looked up from his studies and gave me a friendly nod- sealing some chain of mentorship, reflecting on all I’d learned from my professors all those years ago, some of whose portraits I pass every day in these halls.

And so it goes.

Viva Zen  Vegas

I’ve been in Las Vegas for just an overnight, following a diabetes related presentation at a national medical conference. I spoke in the evening last night to a very dedicated group of medical professionals, and then went out with some friends affiliated with different universities and the American Diabetes Association.

The city always captivates me, people watching, the steady hum of the casino activity and the throb of the clubs, but the absolute quietude of my hotel room’s outdoor terrace is positively meditative this morning. Eating my breakfast out there on a sunny, windless morning with relatively quiet streets below and mountains in the distance across the desert are a side of Las Vegas perhaps not always appreciated. 

 Viva Zen Vegas.

Plattsmouth, Nebraska, Summer 1986

The rain was exploding around me, almost overpowering me, it seemed a struggle just to stay sitting up.  I’d felt the presence of every molecule of water, as I imagined the trip the vapor had made from somewhere in the Rockies.  Soon collected into the gathering thunderstorm across the plains and now totally immersing me, wet, warm, symphonic in its energy.  I could see the lightning, but the thunder was inaudible, yet viscerally impacting my body.  I suddenly became aware that I was wearing sunglasses as I looked across my small yard sloping downward toward the Missouri river.  The old, chipped, weathered cement staircase to nowhere, now my focus as it gathered water and herded it on its never ending cycle, predating, and in all likelihood, postdating my time on the planet, awesome in its force, especially in my exhausted reverie.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting here, in a lawn chair chaise, shirtless, wearing cutoffs and Birkenstocks.  Each raindrop seemed cataclysmic in its demise, yet time suspended as my mind seemed to hold and contemplate their individual, and finally, collective fate.  It had to have been over 30 hours, but a watch would’ve been useless by now.   From the dead zone that was where the night before was a recent memory, before the new day was really realized, the extension of this madness now launching me into the classic late afternoon thunderstorm in eastern Nebraska.  I had the faint, distant realization of a tape I had of the Grateful Dead at Red Rocks in ’84 playing somewhere in my apartment.  “Wake up to find that you are the eyes of the world..” Freak On.