Who Moved?

One of the old saws I use in speachafying is:

A man and a woman are riding in a car.
She says, “We don’t sit side by side in the car and cuddle like we used to when we were dating".
He ponders and responds,
“I didn’t move."

Now is a poignant time in life. I’m in North Dakota, seeing our grandchildren, seeing our parents, driving by and thru very familiar territory with deep roots. I even visited the place in Ellendale destined for me to be buried when I change worlds and leave my carcass behind. Everything in the world is the reason why I should move back to ND.

Like a flowing river, North Dakota is never the same twice. If I step into it’s river today and a year later it’s a different place. Buddism says ""You can never step in the same river twice"".

I have an image of what North Dakota is. It’s a freeze frame of 20 years ago when I left. Two or three times per year it is partially updated by visits.

These visits are more sterile than enlightening. I do have the opportunity to see thru time warp glasses and what I see is not what I wish I would have seen.

Let me mention a few.
I loved Hunting in ND. A column in today (Sunday’s) Fargo Forum by Doug Lier was sadly amusing. I remember just such columns 20 years ago in the Illinois newspapers. Advising hunters to begin contacting landowners for permission to hunt now. No one does. Particularly an out of state hunter. In Illinois it is a lost cause. Pay to hunt is all that is left therefore hunting in Illinois is over. Completely over. Doug’s advice well meaning as it is remains useless.

Hunting in North Dakota is almost beyond repair. Anything short of a revolution will doom hunting to a chosen few landowners and their fiefs who pay homage and sometimes money to hunt. So if I were coming back to North Dakota for outdoor sports, ND moved.

I loved small towns. I have fond memories of visiting these vital villages, their bakeries, local restaurants and shops. Buying the local iteration of sausages. Visiting the local watering holes. This was the stuff of legend. Those days are gone. The small towns are filled with bitter progressively older and older people and occasional white folks way down on the economic totem pole. They are unrecognizable from 20 years ago. The 8 cities left in North Dakota now are homogenous with the rest of America’s shopping strips. I can find all the stores in Fargo or Bismarck in any other medium sized city in America. Nothing new or unique to attract anyone.

I loved the rows and rows of orderly shelterbelts that broke up the horizons and fence lines. They spoke of conservation, protection for animal, man and crop, and they had a British hedgerow feel. Now 20 years later the detritus of what remains of the shelterbelts their fathers and grandfathers planted are piled in sad brown bulldozed scrap piles.

The creeks I skinny-dipped in as a child are now brown and green slime. Fertilizer and watershed silt has made nearly every river I remember as pure mostly into a moving viscous mass.

I had a sense that we North Dakotans were a good God Honoring people. Not perfect but grounded spiritually by Catechism class. At least I felt like North Dakota had an external morality that I could count on. Not any more. In the 20 years I have been away North Dakota moved radically. First Blackjack and Pull Tabs, then casinos, then Lottery, then horse racing. None of this bad in and of itself. But all a slippery ever inclining slope. Now the Fargo Forum Want Ads have open solicitations to prostitution. Between 15 and 25 a day. I counted.

This isn’t the North Dakota I left 20 years ago. Who Moved?

Farming is changed. That’s not a surprise but now Farmers no longer really farm. They maximize mailbox government money and don’t farm by virtue of CRP. I’m not against the program. But the small towns and jobs this program destroyed is now legend. Small grains, oats, flax, rye, wheat, durum, millet, are now replaced by monoculture beans and corn and beans and corn and ………. This I can get in Illinois.

The ELCA (American Lutheran Church) which is nearly the state church of North Dakotans, particularly of Scandinavian descent, is debating marrying homosexuals, ordaining married same sex pastors, all of which I have to ask, ""why are you even talking about this""?
How can this even be an issue? Who moved?

This “open-mindedness” is fuzzy group thinking all thru the political and cultural ranks. Change the Fighting Sioux team name is a politcally correctness demand of the NCAA. Trust me there are few teams anywhere else in America caving as fast as UND. Where is your spine ND? North Dakota has become a western outpost of Minneapolis Liberalism. We made fun of Minneapolis liberal stupidity 20 years ago. Now, the liberal politics of North Dakota are becoming just as ridiculous. All the while because ND votes Democratic in all areas except president they have no political clarity, center or power. I know republicans aren’t perfect. I know they are as corrupt as the rest. But ND politics has become impotent. Try lighting up a smoke in Fargo. Political correctness in the state is beyond belief. The rest of the country isn't even close to as liberal as North Dakota has become. The most read newspaper in North Dakota is way left of the rest of the countries center. WHO MOVED?

If I were to move to anywhere in America it would have to be because I wanted to fit in. I used to fit pretty well in North Dakota; I left for economic opportunity. That doesn’t exist any more either. Very little of what was North Dakota industry and commerce of 20 years ago is owned by North Dakotans. What will they say 20 years from now when the question is asked, “What were they thinking when they put the lock in the last North Dakotan owned business in the state and the last self employed entrepreneur left. When 100 percent of everyone left in the state was on the dole, on the take, in government, or working for an out of state firm”".

That’s a fiefdom. Fiefdom North Dakota.

North Dakota, I miss you, but you moved away, you said you would be here if I wanted to come back. You lied. If I moved to Lancaster Pennsylvania or Midland Texas it’s no less foreign as what you are today. You are not who you were and you're are becoming less and less who you had promised to become.

Where have you Gone North Dakota?