December 13, 2001

Plains Folk: Sprucing Up

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

I should not have begun the day this way. Sipping coffee, I unwrapped the brown package and extracted the videotape labeled, "The Orderly Dismantling of Fedora S.D."

The phrase was an echo. In a past column I had written of "the orderly dismantlement of civilization on the plains." I had written of the tendency of people on the plains since 1960 or so to define statesmanship as the eagerness to erase everything our ancestors had written on the land. I had written, more specifically, of the Spruce Up South Dakota campaign, the state-led and state-funded initiative to clean up all sorts of junk and, most of all, tear down thousands of old buildings, even whole villages.

Letters arrived, some from people who had spoken out publicly, others from people who were reluctant to do so. The Fedora video, shot on June 2, 2001, comes from one of the latter. It is still dead dark outside as I drop it into the player.

I write what I see.

A complex of metal-clad grain elevators stands alongside a blacktop road. Stretching back from that thoroughfare is an abandoned main street of brick and frame fronts.

Two flannel men are atop the brick facade of the Green Door bar, pulling loose bricks from the mortar with their hands, then using those to knock loose the others, which rain down, along with the occasional empty aluminum can. Other men come and go from the tavern, all with beverages in hand. Last call. The facade collapses, and kids run in. (One of the espoused purposes of the campaign is public safety.)

Salvage crews tote the bar and fixtures up the walk. A bulldozer finally finishes off the Green Door, guardsmen observing.

A crowd gathers close as a long-armed heavy excavator bites pieces from the side of a grain elevator. One of the watchers does a little dance. The excavator moves to the opposite side and is joined by another. A radio voice is directing operations. The two machines deliberately push over the structure, then reach below to flip it onto its back. The radio voice laughs. The two machines take positions on either side and feed on the building, reaching into its exposed belly. This looks Jurassic.

The images dissolve into snow and white noise. It is still an hour to dawn.

I am neither philosopher or ethicist. My training in such matters comes from catechism classes and from such places as the Green Door. I do know this: If something looks wrong, and it feels wrong, it probably is wrong.

A spokesperson in one county, observing a similar scene, has remarked to a reporter that this is like the old days, neighbors getting together to help out one another. It is not. It is not.

On the prairies we live with ruins and skeletons. I am reminded of a macabre episode in a plains country town that once boasted the national offices of a great fraternal order, one that used human skeletons for its rituals of initiation. As local chapters folded, they shipped their skeletons to the home office. Eventually the whole organization failed. Decades later a local businessperson ventured into the attic of his establishment and discovered the skeletons.

Our ruins and skeletons are not in an attic. They look back at us every day as we work our fields and drive our thoroughfares. We are uncomfortable meeting their gaze.

We tell ourselves that neglect and decay are no one's fault, that they result from large, impersonal forces emanating from some distant metropolis. We tell ourselves that. In these dark hours before dawn, though, we suspect that we have choices, that we make our choices, and the evidence is out there. Then come light we set about cleaning up the evidence.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865, gmoran@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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