NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

April 2, 1998

Plains Folk: Ole and Michelle Pfeiffer

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

©1998 Plains Folk

Okey-dokey, this is it—one more column on the "you-must-be-from-North-Dakota" theme. From the wealth of items sent in by readers, here's a final selection. Quite a few of these Dakota-isms have to do with miscellaneous aspects of regional culture and belief. You must be from North Dakota if,

• Ole and Lena jokes remind you of real people (ethnic identity—most items are either Norwegian or German-Russian),
• Even though you're not breaking the law, you break into a cold sweat when the game warden appears (our preoccupation with hunting and fishing, along with Lutheran guilt),
• Every time you see a Michelle Pfeiffer movie, you tell everyone within earshot that her parents came from New Rockford, and her grandma still lives there (our regional insecurity, leading us to lionize celebrities with roots here),
• You own a jacket with the name of a seed company embroidered across the back (our farm fundamentalism),
• You apply for a job as a nanny in Connecticut and the only reference you need is your driver's license (belief in the moral superiority of rural people),
• Your children can read and write and do math and stuff (North Dakota as the last sane place in the country).

Many others took up the subject of our distinctive (and much-denigrated) regional cuisine and tastes:

• If a pickle in a Bloody Mary does not surprise you,
• If you're asked by your transplanted aunts and uncles to bring a bottle of Everclear when you visit them in Washington and Oregon (sounds like somebody's making a little red- eye out west!),
• If you only eat at restaurants with a salad bar,
• If you know where Juneberries grow, what they are, and what to do with them,
• If you know what people are talking about when they say, "The bar is having an oyster feed tonight,"
• If your caterer and social director is the American Legion, then you're not likely to starve in North Dakota.

And for the last word on this subject, let's consider some North Dakota words: if your answer to "How are you?" or "How's the weather?" or "How was your crop?" or "How's the ranchin' goin'?" is the same—"Not so bad,"—then you must be from North Dakota, or at least, you're learning the language of the natives.

It's been mighty instructive gathering these Dakota-isms over the past few weeks. It means something, I'm still figuring out just what, that so many people were primed and ready to spin them out when I called for them. Taken as a collection, too, they say something about the country we live in.

I don't mean to say there is something like a regional character that fits everyone. That's for the movies. What I do mean to say is that there are these commonalities in regional life that we recognize and feel good enough about to say in public. Perhaps we ought to do that now and then.

###

Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339

Editor: Barry Brissman (701) 231-7866