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.
Schmaltz's father helped him
get established well north of Rugby among the French and Norwegians there. "I had a friend among the Norwegians," Schmaltz said, "a fellow who was half French. He told me one of the leaders in the community said when I moved up here: 'Well, we've got to be careful now, we've got a German from Russia up here amongst us.'" Schmaltz farmed the place anyway, and now his son Jeff works the land. Schmaltz still helps out: "I don't know if he needs me but I have to do it, I can't sit in the house and watch him work...."
We sat in the house drinking coffee and talking with Schmaltz for three hours. His family's story will be important for me in understanding the life of Rugby and Pierce County. Like so many others in Rugby, Schmaltz opened his house to me, opened his heart, his life, and shared his understanding. How do you say Thank You for such a gift? I don't know. I suppose that the best I can do is write the truest account possible of the Germans from Russia in Pierce County.
***
LEAVING NORTH DAKOTA: JANUARY 2003
A dirty tooth of snow, heartbeat, frozen
sound. The approaching headlights are so far
away. The early morning sky is like
an airplane with wheels set for landing,
lights on, hung like a planet in the east.
Invest nothing, you lose nothing. If you
lose, lose big. There are ghosts on the landscape
behind me, like a flash of blizzard snow,
like the fog of one's own breathing - enough
to make us grieve for what we've lost, for what's
been taken, been taken and not put back.
Comments