July 11, 2002

Plains Folk: Words and Juneberries

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

A reporter from an eastern metropolitan daily kept asking about it, and--violating my usual rule against trying to explain life on the plains to people who just aren't going to get it anyway--I tried to explain, until finally I gave up. It may be that the matter which mystified her is one that could not be explained, even if I were perfectly articulate, and she were perfectly perceptive.

This is a hard thing for me to admit, because I consider myself--ahem--a man of letters. Words, and this time of the year juneberries, are the things I live by. Still, I do admit that when it comes to some things about life on the plains, such as juneberries, words are inadequate. My friend John, the heat-packing professor of religious studies, would be pleased to hear me say that these things are ineffable.

What we were talking about, the reporter and I, is why people would invest time, treasure, and sweat in what seems an impractical cause. A bunch of us from the Valley City area have been going out to work on the Ladbury church, near Sibley. Ladbury is an old white frame Congregational church that hasn't had an active congregation in more than a generation. It's uncertain what use the building will have when it is fixed up. People will be married in it, be buried from it. There will be Memorial Day observances and family reunions. Beyond that, we'll have to wait and see.

Why? the reporter asked. And I gave two reasons. The first is that such a church deserves preservation as a monument. It stands as a remembrance. If we won't give over a little time and treasure for remembrance, then we are shallow people.

The second reason looks forward, not back. Things are stirring all over the northern plains in ways such as we have not seen since the 1920s. In decades to come we will lose more farms, towns, people, and institutions, surely. At the same time, every locality today has newcomers. The wholesale depopulation of the plains that characterized three-quarters of the 20th century has given way to something more ambivalent. Now there are choices. Something new is taking shape. I hope it will be good. It's too soon to say. I plan to stay around and see.

Anyway, as these things happen, as some new pattern of life crystallizes on the prairies, we will need crystallization points, that is, stories and structures that define the sense of place.

Keeping structures in place for the new society of the plains is difficult. There are those among us old-timers of northern European stock who resent that newcomers are going to inherit our earth. Many of these people are otherwise good-hearted and are respected in their communities. They sit as church trustees, school board members, town councilmen, or county commissioners. They feel called to dismantle the civilization of the plains and leave nothing for those to come. Were it not for the loss of retirement income, they would sow salt in the fields. We want to raze the place, not let them take over our things. This is mean-spirited and wrong. We all need to be sent back to catechism class.

Enough with the law, now for the gospel. What really stumped the reporter was that we were investing ourselves in a building that stood in what appeared to her an empty landscape. Who is this for, she wondered. You're alone out there, she said.

This difference in perception cannot be bridged. Alone? On these prairies? I cannot turn around on these grounds without bumping into someone. It's crowded. There are plenty of people to talk to. They are keeping an eye on us, too.

This little essay formed in my head as I hung two-thirds out of the belfry of the Ladbury church, my ankles hooked around the heavy iron bell once again set in place. It may have looked precarious reaching way out with scrapers and brushes, but I'm not going to fall. There's too much work still to do.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Tom Jirik, (701) 231-9629, tjirik@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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