We left the church; we came down
out of those hills. Ody was talking about the fields. He said, "This isn't very good farmland down through here - too salty. It doesn't drain very good." Looking out across the roll of the land, you could see that - it wasn't very good farmland; it doesn't drain very good.
We drove past the strip mine where coal has been taken. It's a long stretch of rough ground, roughly treated. Under this big arching sky, you might take to believing there is always more land, so let's take what we can get here, and move on; that is the miner's way. Mostly, I think, the coal mining has gone on - to other deposits, richer lodes, better coal. The wind rustled through the grass of winter. We were driving north, towards Columbus, North Dakota.
Columbus is a community of about one hundred and fifty souls. Like many small towns, it has had its hard times. The people hang on, because that's what you do. You look trouble square in the eye, pull your cap down tight, and lean into it. You hold on.
In that North Dakota wind, of course, a fellow develops a bit of thirst, so we stopped at the tavern in Columbus. In these small towns, a tavern is a tavern, with much in common from one of them to the next.The woman behind the bar here could step deftly into a hundred other taverns and she'd find the top shelf whiskey in the same place; she'd know your drink without asking; she'd know the trouble you've seen. These old taverns collect a lot of sadness over the years, a lot of hard luck. Sadness and hard luck are pretty much the same from town to town, don't you think? Pretty much the same on the east side of the 100th meridian as on the west side of it, in Fairwater, Wisconsin, and in Columbus, North Dakota.
I ordered a bottle of beer. The two fellows I was with had something more like a man's drink. And we sat there talking. Ody Berg lived in the area all his life, remember; and Sam Thomas for many years. With that kind of embrace in a communiuty, it is easy to make conversation. I listened and learned and looked.
And I wondered if the tavern we were sitting in was a metaphor for the town? Every tavern a metaphor for its own town, the way that our churches are? I don't know.
There was a jar on the counter collecting donations for the family of a fellow who had died recently. Suicide. Is that collection jar a metaphor for something? I don't know. You don't want to think so.
"Only so much wind a man can stand" might be an epitaph for any of us.
We talked with the woman behind the bar, with the other fellow in the place. You talk. You sip your beer. You soak in the sadness. Into every pore. Longing. The stray ray of hope. There is nothing like the knowledge of a suicide to lead me to count my blessings. Oh, I am a lucky man.
To be continued....
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