NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL A VISIT TO RUGBY, NORTH DAKOTA JANUARY 18, 2003 CONT'D - (13)

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.

9:30 a.m. I just got back

from breakfast at the Cornerstone Cafe. I bumped into Richard Blessum there; he insisted on buying breakfast for me. I expected it after talking with him yesterday: he'd said he wanted to buy me a meal. We talked some about farming while we ate. He just this past year sold his farm to the man who'd been cash-renting it all these years. The fellow had resisted buying the farm in the past but the current low interest rates made buying attractive. Blessum said the fellow now farms 30 quarter sections (or a total of 4800 acres), some of which he owns, some of which he rents. Land it would have taken five or six men to work fifty years ago is now handled by one farmer.

A fellow came in with his wife and sat down in a booth near us. He told Blessum: "You know what I ate last night? Lutefisk. Oh, I love that. I'm a damn poor German. I should be Norwegian."

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4:30 p.m. I spent from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. this afternoon with Duane Baillie, talking about Baillie's Drug Store and the pharmacy business. I got about an hour and fifteen minutes of our conversation on tape, it should be good material.

It's interesting: when I asked Duane about the characteristics of the people in Rugby, he said "hard-working" and "progressive," but he didn't say "modest." However, he didn't tell me on tape about the important award he'd won this past year for service to the community, which is presented to only one pharmacist in each state or Canadian province in a year. The list of his contributions to the community takes quite a long time to recite, but he waited until the tape recorder was off to tell me! So - modesty is a trait. Baillie thinks this kind of service is what good citizens do when they are in a position to. He says he didn't do these things out of "duty" but because they needed doing. I suggested that he may be like a fish in water, which no longer perceives the water as something separate from itself; that perhaps he is no longer in a position to see what duty is, he just does it.

To be continued....