This is where it started: my first visit to the first community: Rugby, North Dakota, January, 2003. Why does one go to Rugby in January, you ask? If you want to see what a town is made of, you have to see it in the tough season, as well as the sweet, and January in Rugby is the tough season.
January 18, 2003
At 9:30 a.m. yesterday I was at Richard Blessum's door to interview him, and he was at his door to let me in.
As I put in a blank tape to start recording the fourth hour of conversation, I told Blessum that my interview with him was now longer than than one I'd recorded with Richard Lavik the day before.
"Should I call Lavik and tell him I beat him?" Blessum wondered.
My full interview with Blessum runs to nearly five hours, not counting the times he put his hand over the microphone or when we shut off the tape to talk about stuff he didn't want "on the record."
Blessum was born in 1926; with the exception of his service in the Navy, he has lived all his life in the Rugby area. When this North Dakota farm boy first saw the ocean, he said to a more experienced Navy fellow: "Would you look at all that water...."
The other fellow said: "Yeah, and you're only seeing the top of it...."
When he returned from service, Blessum married a high school sweetheart and took over his father's farm north of Rugby. Blessum and his wife have three sons, all of them living now in Washington state. Blessum's wife died a few years ago.
Blessum became heavily involved in the Geographic Center and Prairie Village Museum when he moved off the farm in the 1970s. He has been on the board of directors of the organization ever since, and until a few years ago he was "curator" of the museum, a job which put him in charge of day-to-day operations.
To be continued....
Comments