North Dakota III
Friday, June 28
We drove a mile, at most, to a place with an unpromising name, the Donut Hole. There, we shared a Carmel Roll, a pastry neither of us had experienced before, probably because we are trying to give our arteries a break. (Mine deal with too much crap already.) Our friend Ann had recommended trying the North Dakota carmel rolls and, in fact, they tasted darned good. Also, the coffee was decent in a 1964 way. It was the standard beverage, black, but well-made with clean containers, strainers, and percolators in the back and so on.
The manager came to our table and chatted. She asked if we had seen the tornado, which apparently swung one or two streets south of our apartment. But it was no big deal, she said, "'cause it didn't touch down."
"We're having a parade," she announced. And this was the big news.
She recommended we stay in Dickinson for the biggest event of the year, which was scheduled for the next morning. It was going to be a rodeo parade, led by the members of a touring rodeo. In a way, it sounded fantastic. It also sounded like we would be trapped in a sea of humanity with street blockades, floats, people shouting 'yee haw' because they can, and probably giant, inflatable cartoon characters. If I could have known in advance which cartoon characters, I would have stayed.
Instead, on the way out, Diane and I agreed to flee Dickinson the next morning before the street to our apartment got shut down. From the signs along the parade route, it was definitely scheduled to happen.
That day, we drove to the scenic loop of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where we saw:
- Prairie dog homes, thousands of them. Based on their behavior, ages ago they formed primitive homeowners associations. Every ground entrance has the same 'look' and they go on for miles.
- Bison, one of nature's ways of reminding you about the limits of your car insurance.
- Wild horses, who always seem to me like secret fashion models for L'Oreal. No matter what the weather conditions, wild horses have great hair and are ready to pose with Fabio on the covers of romance paperbacks.
- Killdeer, which have a great name but are just birds.
- More cactus than I expected. Because I didn't expect any this far north.
And we saw buttes everywhere. There were even signs for Big Butte, White Butte, Table Butte, Blue Butte, Saddle Butte, and more. These weird and probably involuntary North Dakota attempts at humor about buttes just went on and on.
We also noticed, "Thrifty White Pharmacy," a name that seemed like it had to be a relic of a more innocent time - and so it is. The Thrifty White chain, which I'd never encountered before visiting North Dakota, is named after the family founders who started the first store in the Dakota Territory in 1884.
The Ukrainian Cultural Center
Gosh, this was sort of a busy day. I noticed the Ukrainian Cultural Center as we drove through town and immediately wanted to visit, if only to get an explanation. We foolishly ate lunch before we stopped by. If we had wandered in earlier, we could have eaten a Ukrainian style meal with our local Ukrainian-American neighbors.
There are any number of immigrant groups who settled in the Dakota territory. Very few of them were Ukrainian. But they formed a number just large enough to establish this cultural center.
We chatted. We took pictures.
I had noticed another oddity on the route to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, signs pointing us to the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame. Naturally, I was curious. We passed the national park again along the way to it. I was surprised to see some of the wild bison sleeping near the southern border next to the fence. Not much later, we saw wild horses on a different stretch of the southern fence. Apparently, some of the animals feel the park is a bit small for them. They stray to its limits.
North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame
We headed upstairs immediately in the HOF because the nearest corridor took us to a stairwell. A sign said 'More Exhibits Up Here,' so I figured it was as reasonable to start up the staircase as anywhere.
Seeing the exhibits out of order may have been unintentionally revealing. I was struck right away by how many plaques in this section didn't extol cowboys at all. The achievements of the people pictured were often 'owned a ranch for forty years' or 'gave a lot to the community.' They were examples of rich people memorializing themselves and their friends. That's not too terrible a thing - I've seen it in nearly all museums - but the element of local old-friend congratulations was out in the open and served as fair warning. There were also a couple of genuine cowhands remembered via plaques. In the back stairwell, we saw a series of paintings and posters referring to the local Objibuay, Dakota, Lakota, and other prominent tribes.
But I was seeing it all out of order.
On the main level, I would have seen a better display of Native American materials if I had walked through the front entrance. There was no explanation of how these exhibits connected to the cowboys in the hall of fame, though. It was merely an acknowledgement that the United States broke a lot of treaties specifically with these groups.
Beyond, in the north wing to the right after the main entrance, I encountered the rodeo champions of North Dakota. There aren't a lot of professional sports in this state. Rodeo, in which local cowhands have excelled during national competitions, is the most obvious chance to brag. Alvin Nelson, Brad Gjermundson, and many other North Dakotans succeeded at high levels in the 1970s and 1980s. This includes their national championship runs in multiple events. Before them, in the 1950s and 1960s, the state bragged about a 'six pack' of young cowboys making it to the national championships. Even before, North Dakotans played a role in establishing the championships, deciding events, and so on. The national rodeo championships seem to be usually held in Texas or Oklahoma, perhaps due to the weather, but plenty of the trophies get awarded to northern cowboys.
We watched an educational film about the history of rodeo events, which I needed in order to establish any context for myself. I couldn't help noticing the lack of people of color in it even though, historically, there should have been quite a few. For two or three seconds, the announcer mentioned that 'local indians came and participated' at a North Dakota rodeo but that was about it. Likewise, the film passed up the chance to talk about women in the competitions. Although women were allowed to compete, eventually, and they had their own events like goat roping, the film didn't seem to know what to say about them. Instead, it spent five minutes (a long time in a short documentary film) talking about the rodeo queens. This is the tradition of voting for beauty queens to lead the rodeo opening or closing ceremonies.
You can tell the curators of the museum are really trying to be inclusive with the Objibuay artifacts, the mentions of women, and so on, but they don't seem to understand the point of it. They are trying to be nice. And that's great. But probably everyone, even the North Dakota rodeo fans, would have been happier to hear about their neighbor Becky getting seventh place in a national event (here, I assume the museum would have bragged if a local woman had won first prize) than to hear a general 'women also participated' message.
No comments:
Post a Comment