There is noise in this quiet country town. A dirt bike makes endless rectangles around the grid and drags a gap-toothed main street. Its teenage rider is beyond bored. He is bored with being bored, and unimpressed with the gilded low light of autumn on stucco and shingle.

Unimpressed, too, by petunias and cannas, zinnias and hollyhocks. If color were audible, then we would not be able to hear the motorbike for the flowers. This is Dazey, ND.

Ninety years ago this young fellow might have celebrated his bachelorhood by membership in the Never Wed Club. "Their purpose was to remain single," observes a local history, "but gradually one by one left the club to take up household duties."

This is an unusually frank local history. "The roaring twenties and the dirty thirties saw the pioneers pass away, one by one," it recounts. Then after the second World War, "some veterans returned home to stay while others were lured by the better paying jobs of the larger cities. A slow, but steady, migration took place."

There was a bonanza farming frontier here, corresponding to arrival of the Sanborn, Cooperstown, and Turtle Mountain Railway in the early 1880s. Charles T. Dazey was one of the big-time wheat men. The town was platted on his place.

Burgs like this had an inflorescence in the early twentieth century. I imagine my young biker in his great-grandfather’s shoes, dressed in white uniform and while bowler hat, making noise with the Dazey Cornet Band every June or July Saturday night. After graduation from the Never Weds, he drifted into the Sons of Norway, or the Woodmen, or the IOOF, while his bride took her place in the Rebekehs or, if he were unlucky, the WCTU.

I drift from my subject. Autumn afternoons do that to me. I meant to tell you about the flowers.

Well, it all started about five years ago in the café with the old preacher, Rev. Dan Faust. He’s got sparks in his eyes that easily dance into flame, and he’s got ideas like Carter had pills. Rev. Dan suggested to the mayor that the vacant lots along main--that great open space between the tinny town hall and the brick town bar, as well as the half-block west of the Sons of Norway--be planted to flowers to brighten up the place. There was apparent consensus over coffee.

As Rev. Dan started tilling it all up, though, and hauling in load after load of manure (because the old building sites had no topsoil), the cry went up, "Oh no, don’t tear up our grass! You’re making this town look like a manure pile."

"I’ve been sworn at like very few preachers have been sworn at," he says. (I’m not sure Rev. Dan has heard everything I’ve heard said about some preachers.) There was vindication after a couple of years, and the town became a showplace, with the town council even pitching in some cash for seedlings. Rev. Dan now has moved into Valley City, although he still preaches at Our Savior Lutheran of Dazey.

He wonders if maybe, "Volunteerism is a thing of the past." Valley City, look out.

Meanwhile, before departing Dazey, he recruited Dean Omdahl and Morris Tharaldson to plant the plots this year. Omdahl is a fairly quiet fellow (unlike other Omdahls I know), an avid gardener who lets his petunias do the talking. Tharaldson says they’ll be planting again next year, "if something don’t happen to us." They aren’t that old, really, that’s just the Norwegian fatalism talking.

The watering is the biggest part of the job, 2,200 gallons applied weekly in high summer.

A Dazey is like any other flower, it needs a little swearing and a lot of manure and a certain amount of loving care. Right now the café is closed, but a woman has bought it and promised to reopen it. The bar is doing well. The owners have removed the drop ceiling to expose the beautiful tin above.

No telling what you might find around here if you dug in. Or what might grow. I’ve got to stop talking with Rev. Dan, I’m speaking in parables.