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

November 18, 1999

Plains Folk: Georgia, on the Mind

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1999 Plains Folk

Today is the day for answers to all those questions you've been saving about Georgia's and the Owl, the notorious watering hole in Amidon, North Dakota, a place where I have seen starving graduate students unable to finish the prime rib.

Question No. 1: Who is Georgia, anyway?

Answer (from our waitress): "Georgia is LK and Marie's little girl--she's 13 or 14 now."

(Wait a minute, can this be dark-haired Georgia behind the bar, looking longsuffering while LK cracks jokes and insults the patrons? "Little girl," indeed; this girl has to be the heartbreaker of Slope County.)

Question No. 2: What's the difference between dining upstairs and downstairs?

Answer (LK): "You don't get to visit with me. I won't go up there."

Another answer (our waitress): "Tablecloths and napkins and stuff."

Question No. 3: If we eat upstairs, do we have to drink out of a glass?

Answer (waitress): "You'll have a hard time getting a glass anywhere here."

Question No. 4: Are the tips better upstairs or downstairs?

Answer (our waitress again): "If you're a good waitress, you make tips anywhere."

Question No. 5: What did this place used to be before you made it into a restaurant nine years ago?

Answer (LK): "A Farmer's Union station, then a Cenex."

Question No. 6: Who did all that welding of wagon wheels and bears and stuff out front?

Answer (LK): "Me, and that big guy over there." (The one hunched over a table.)

Question No. 7: How come you're dropping the Oysters Rockefeller from the menu?

Answer (LK): "Cause I'm sick of shuckin' the [expletive concerning ancestry of the shellfish]s."

Question No. 8: Do you do much business in here, other than hunters?

Answer (LK): "Sure. It's just this time of year the law requires these idiots to wear orange suits. The rest of the year you can't tell who they are."

Question No. 9: If you shoot a deer that has been running, does that spoil the meat?

Answer (oldest hunter in the crowd): "Once them [reference to deer's lineage]s run for half a mile they're done. I'd rather shoot the [alternative reference to deer's lineage]s standing by a salt block."

Question No. 10: Do you run this place, or does Marie?

Answer (LK): "I'm a welder. I just do this at night, mainly for entertainment."

Question No. 11: Is Marie in the kitchen, then?

Answer (chorus, from patrons): "She's the work horse. I don't see how she does it."

Question No. 12: You mean cooking for all these people, or living with LK?

Answer (chorus again): "Both!"

Question No. 13: Are you from around here, then?

Answer (LK): "My grandfather homesteaded here in 1909. Marie's from California."

Question No. 14: Where did you get that owl in the picture with Georgia?

Answer (LK): "I found him lying along the interstate between Belfield and Dickinson. Game and Fish said they were going to put him down, but I said I wouldn't let them have him."

Question No. 15: Is it true that the Lord will appear again in Amidon on Jan. 1, 2000?

Answer (LK): "What do you mean, again? Did you miss him the first time?"

###

Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136

Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable for printing.
(isern.tif - 512KB b&w photo)

Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable for printing.
(isern-h.tif - 426KB b&w photo)