I did a presentation
about my Vabagond project at the Haaland Home in Rugby at 1:45 p.m. on Monday, March 13. I came in at the invitation of Sam Thomas, my new friend from Towner, North Dakota, who volunteers at the Haaland Home and helps arrange the Monday programs. Activities Director Lisa Oksendahl was on hand to greet me and a group of twenty-five or more of the residents gathered in an informal setting to hear me speak.
After a general description of my project, I focused my presentation on Rugby materials - excerpts from journals of previous visits: having breakfast at the Sale Barn Cafe with Therese Rocheleau's father, Clayton Olson; visiting Jim Schmaltz at his farm north of Rugby and talking about the Germans-from-Russia who settled in North Dakota; and visiting Edna Rocheleau's house for a birthday party. Edna was hosting a party for Jim Rocheleau's uncle Richard Rocheleau. Edna used to work at the Haaland Home. Jim Schmaltz is now a resident of the complex, having been brought low by the West Nile virus. Even Clayton Olson is a step slower and a stone deafer.
After my presentation, the residents shared their sense of the region [see here], most notably the loss of the smaller communities. Towns which used to have schools, three banks, two grocery stores, three car dealers, and two cafes are now almost ghost towns, some houses still being occupied but the businesses gone.
When I asked which adjectives they would used to describe the people of the region, the first I heard was "hardy." If you want to live in North Dakota, you have to be tough. Second, I was told that people here take care of each other. When I asked why they said that, I was told it's because most of the people here are good neighbors. When I asked for an example, an old woman recalled harvest-time of her first year of marriage, when her husband was badly stricken with illness and unable to bring the crops in. One Sunday all the neighbors in the area showed up and did the harvesting.
After the presentation I had coffee and cookies with the residents in the lunchroom, and my tablemate George Kraft shared further information with me about the Germans-from-Russia. And we talked. The combined age of the three fellows that Sam Thomas and I were sitting with was not 300 years, but it was dang close. Those fellows from North Dakota - they're tough!
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