At 9:00 a.m. Sam and I showed up
at Winger Cheese for coffee with Ed Johnson. The factory is shut down now, except for the small store in front, which is open for business on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
North Dakota has had more dairying over the years than a poet from Wisconsin might like to report. Indeed, some of the immigrants who came to North Dakota brought a strong cheese-making tradition with them, especially the Germans-from-Russia. For many years Sam Thomas worked as a state dairy inspector for North Dakota, so he knows a thing or two about the dairy business, which is why he joined Winger Cheese when he got tired of all the travel required of a dairy inspector and the opportunity arose for him to develop a quality control lab at the factory. Sam had been in the Air Force - indeed, it was the Air Force that brought him to North Dakota, and it was on the airbase at Grand Forks where he met Linda, who worked in the commissary there. Linda grew up on that farm near Lignite, so she came all the way across the state to find Sam.
Ed Johnson was expecting us. He was a good host - he had hot, fresh, strong coffee for us. And we were good guests - we came bearing muffins that Linda had baked the night before. Over coffee we talked a little bit about the cheese factory - Ed had been manager; and about cars - Ed still has every car he has ever owned. Some of them are quartered in one of the cheese factory's unused buildings. We took a walk through the empty plant to see them.
It must be like moving around inside a lifeless animal, to walk through an empty, dead factory like Winger Cheese. All the noise, the steam, the men working, joking with each other, stirring the great tubs of curds - all that was imagination now; the place was quiet as a mausoleum, was empty. A great dead creature, no life in it at all.
Yep, Ed Johnson does still own every car he's ever had - I've seen 'em. He is attracted those big, long gunboats from the sixties - the Galaxie 500s and Crown Victorias that seem to stretch halfway to Minot. Deer cars, we call them in Wisconsin, because in a collision with a deer, those cars win, hands-down.
We looked at the cars and then went back to Ed's office, where the coffee was, and the muffins. And Ed was minding the store, so we couldn't stay away for long.
We had another cup of coffee. Some more talk about how things were and how they are no more. Ed got a phone call. We had to get up to the church to meet the quilters. We said good-bye to Ed and took our leave of that big hulk of a cheese factory.
To be continued....
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