2013 – Page 3 – Boomtown Diaries

How to: Guacamole

July 2, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

Although an extensive list, some of my very most favorite things about summer include:

1. Time to travel far and wide

2. Time to explore close to home

3. Time for “summer tasties.” Aka GOOD FOOD. My favorite any time of the year, of course, but something special in the summer.

I talk about the first two quite a bit in Boomtown Diaries, so this time, I need to give just a little shout-out to the third one. In the summer, the produce aisles are bursting with color, the farmer’s markets are bursting with home-grown goods, and the smell of anything on the grill tantalizes everyone’s senses for miles around. Since the last day of school (aka, my last day of packed lunches and cafeteria food), I haven’t held back on all those promises I made to myself of summer tasties, all throughout the long winter months.

Let me give you a sampling of just one amazing weekend full of summer tasties.

It started when I collected my Bountiful Basket:

This was like Christmas. I paid a reasonable price a few days in advance and on the designated Saturday, went to collect my basket. It was a beautiful sight. For days I ate fresh apple slices, nectarines, butter lettuce, peppers, and cucumbers, and drank lemon-lime-cucumber water, which apparently is bursting with health benefits.

I didn’t eat the brussel sprouts, though. Some habits die hard.

I had also never done much with avocados, but when I found them in my basket I decided I was craving homemade guacamole, so I did a little research online and whipped up my own version of various recipes I found, taking out things I didn’t like and adding a couple others. It turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. See the recipe below.

That same weekend, I hopped over to a nearby boomtown which every Saturday night from Memorial Day to Labor Day grills “hamburgers in the park” for anyone who wants to stop by and fork over a couple bucks to the local Lions Club. Why are these hamburgers so good? I don’t know. But they are. I’ve been trying to get my hands on them every summer Saturday since the days I was ten years old. Growing up, we played a game of whiffle ball every Saturday after eating hamburgers. These days, the whiffle ball gang is scattered far and wide, but the hamburgers are still tasty.

I enjoyed my first “hamburger in the park” of the summer on the same Saturday I picked up my bountiful basket. Double the bliss.

The next day, we put some of the peppers from my basket to use and grilled some pretty amazing steak kebabs.

They were also somewhere on the scale from Christmas to heaven.

(Saul was also very interested in these kebabs.)

And to top it all off, I had found a Coke in a little boomtown convenience store that was from Mexico. For those of you who don’t know, Coke from many countries south of the American border tastes much better than American Coke. My brother Joey, who once brought me a Coke from Guatemala, says it’s made with real sugar unlike our American version, which is made with high fructose corn syrup. I admit, both the Guatemala Coke and the Mexico Coke have proved their superiority in my book.

Plus, why does it taste better from a glass bottle?

It’s just one of those little mysteries of life.

Mysteries like:

Why are hamburgers grilled in the boomtown park by the Lions Club the tastiest of all?

Why did I feel an almost-spiritual connection to that beautiful, colorful bountiful basket? Can fresh fruits and vegetables speak to the soul?

Why did I use the word “bursting” three times in this blog post?

Why haven’t I made steak kebabs every day of my life?

Maybe these aren’t deep life mysteries. Maybe they are just more evidence of the fact that summer, including all of its “tasties”, basically kicks butt. Maybe summer makes everything crisper, fresher, crunchier, more tender, and more refreshing.

Here is one recipe for a delicious summer treat.

GUACAMOLE

Ingredients:

2 avocados, peeled, pitted and mashed
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 red onion, diced
2 T chopped cilantro (I used fresh)
1 diced tomato (I actually used 2 roma tomatoes since they are a bit smaller)
1-2 diced jalapeño peppers (skip if you don’t like much spice)
A pinch or dash of cayenne pepper

Directions:

Mash together the lime juice and salt with the mashed avocados. Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Add or remove ingredients to taste. Refrigerate and SERVE!

A summer tasty. Delicious.

Musings, North Dakota Living, Travel & Adventure

Just Like Lewis, Clark and Teddy

June 22, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

A recent publication in the Bismarck Tribune stated that according to Continental Resources, Inc., the Bakken and Three Forks formations together contain an estimated 7.38 billion barrels of recoverable oil. This new estimate is double the estimate from 2008 and 50 times higher than the estimate in the 90s.

No wonder I sometimes feel like I can’t see western North Dakota through the trucks, flares, wells, drills, and hastily-constructed buildings. And trucks.

There is a place where western North Dakota still shines through, however, untouched by oil and its progress. This place is one of my favorites in the world, and I go there when I need an escape. I just escaped there a few days ago. This place is the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, located only about 25 miles southeast of our farm. It’s similar to its more popular counterpart, the South Unit containing Medora, Painted Canyon, and other more well-known attractions, but the North Unit is more isolated and less traveled, so of course I like it just a little better.

If you haven’t been there, you need to go.

You need to go hike a few miles of the Maah Daah Hey trail, bike the roads, camp in the grove of trees next to the river, canoe the Little Missouri, see the bison, or just enjoy the views free of trucks, flares, wells, and drills. The North Unit is North Dakota at its best and most beautiful.

I think one reason I love it so much is my secret wish to be the early explorers, Lewis and Clark, seeing landscape after landscape in untouched beauty and solitude. Wouldn’t it be amazing to canoe down open rivers and hike over wild mountains only guessing at what might lie over the next hill? What did America look like back then? Or to be Teddy Roosevelt, ranching in the badlands, escaping Eastern urban and political life — he knew western North Dakota at its freshest and wildest, too.

Going to the North Unit is kind of like that. Ok, not quite, because there is a paved road and little parking spots for your pickups and campers, but it’s still open and undeveloped and, most importantly, untouched by progress like the oil field.

When I went a few days ago, the North Unit didn’t disappoint. Four of us canoed several miles down the Little Missouri River on a breezy, sunny evening. This is something you can only do in late spring and early summer, because after a few weeks of dry summer heat, it will be a winding snake of mud and sandbars without enough water to carry a canoe. But right now, after all the spring rains, the Little Missouri is flowing along at a brisk pace, just perfect for canoe trips.

And it was a perfect canoe trip.

We had excellent views…

Good company…

The sun and the breeze were just right…

We saw wildlife…

And the turkey vultures even kept their distance this time. Thank goodness because they still give me the willies after my last experience…

Sometimes, I just had to stop paddling and take it all in…

Ok, this actually happened quite a bit, because my canoe partner was a better paddler than me, and I admit I may have slacked here and there.

But whatever.

It was perfect.

I almost felt like Lewis and Clark, out there exploring the wilderness. I suppose the big difference would be that our pickup and trailer waited for us at the end of the trip. Also, I had bug spray and cold drinks in a cooler. Also, I got to go home to a soft and comfortable bed. But even if I won’t ever see my beloved landscapes quite like Lewis and Clark and Teddy Roosevelt did, it’s as close as I can get, and I’ll take it.

Seriously, you need to go there.

Musings, North Dakota Living

That’s Why I’ve Got My Dad

June 16, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

I have a lot of things to share this week with summer finally in swing. I have oil field stories, outdoor stories, food stories, and farm stories, and also, more North Dakota stories: My friend E., a fellow English teacher and North Dakotan who is now teaching in Asia, has a blog called A Nonstirdownable Cerebral Sphere. I love travel almost as much as I love anything, so her stories about life in Asia fascinate me. Her latest post, however, turned the focus back towards home. “North Dakota, Keep Singing,” is definitely worth a read, so check it out! (After I finished reading it, I thought, “I wish I would have written that.” That’s when I know something has really struck a chord with me!)

Today, though, I’m going to skip all my other stories — just for now — and say a few words about my dad in honor of Father’s Day.

My dad, Mike, is perhaps the most unique person I know. Most adults have one full-time job; my dad is a lawyer, farmer, basketball coach, and somehow still has time for his family. Even though he has been a successful lawyer in Bismarck for many years, he still drives around junky Buicks that have the mirrors duct-taped on and parks an assortment of farm equipment and trailers in front of our Bismarck house, to the chagrin of my mother. His greatest joy when we were growing up was lining up all six of us early on Saturday morning for a full day of chores (all of those crappy jobs “build character,” you know), then taking us to the local Sta-mart afterward to buy us slushies. After I left home, he ensured that I kept up that early morning work ethic by calling my college dorm room around 7:00 a.m. and leaving messages for me and my roommate still asleep in our bunks, just making sure we were “making hay while the sun shines.” (This happened even if we didn’t have class until 10:30). He is also a master of efficiency: He liked to save room in the cupboard by mixing Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios together, which greatly annoyed all of us. Then, he would save room in the fridge by mixing milk and chocolate milk together, which greatly annoyed all of us. That didn’t stop him. He isn’t afraid to tell us who to vote for, who to date, and what car to drive, and then he laughs when we tell him to mind his own business, although, often, we don’t. I think we can all admit that he does, in fact, seem to know quite a bit.

I’ve had the privilege of being my dad’s only daughter out of six children. I know he loves all his five sons just as much, but he also says often, “Every dad needs at least one daughter.” He used to buy me Nerf guns and plastic swords for Christmas, just like my brothers, and he showed me how to drive a combine when I was 12, just like my brothers. But he treats me “special” too: He buys me pink tool sets for Christmas, and he showed my prom date in high school the shotgun sitting inconspicuously behind the front door. I assured my worried date that my dad was joking, so he laughed, perhaps a little nervously. I think he still kept one eye on my dad during the social hour.

But if every dad needs at least one daughter, then I say that every daughter needs a dad, too, if she is fortunate enough to have a good one. I thought I would share a poem I wrote several years ago because I think it sums it up pretty well. Here it is:

Me and My Dad

A girl like me won’t ask for much
Perhaps a shoulder when I’m sad
And when I need that very thing
That’s when I need my dad.

A girl like me is pretty good
At solving problems when they’re bad
But still, the times I need advice
That’s when I call my dad.

A girl like me is on my own
Through all life’s lessons that I’ve had
But girls, they need protection too
That’s why I’ve got my dad.

A girl like me don’t need a boy
For after all, they drive you mad
But all girls need one man in life
So me, I have my dad.

He’s honest, smart, he’s strong and brave
I sure am lucky and so glad
God knew I’d need a hero here
That’s why I’ve got my Dad.

Musings, North Dakota Living

My Home in North Dakota

June 11, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

I braced myself for the comment that usually comes after I say I’m a local, one of the few with roots in the area before the oil boom: “Wow, I’m sorry. What a sorry place to call home.” And it did come, sure enough. “Wow, I”m sorry,” the young man said sympathetically in the clinic waiting room while I was waiting for my weekly allergy shot.

I tried not to narrow my eyes at him. “Because I’m from here?” I was readying myself with an exposition extolling the beauty and peacefulness of North Dakota and its wide open spaces.

But then he surprised me. “No, because I bet it’s tough to watch such a beautiful place get taken over by the oil field. I’m from a small town myself, and I have to say, I would be pretty sad to watch all this happen to my town.”

I almost got tears in my eyes. I must have been tired. “Yes,” I said finally. “It is. But you take the good with the bad. I love it here anyway.”

I just can’t help myself. I love my home in North Dakota.

Is it just because it is “home”? Maybe. It is because I’m a girl just made for wide open spaces? Maybe. Is it because of the people? Surely that has something to do with it. It’s a whole bunch of things. I’ve never been able to make myself leave for good. After college, I watched friends move to cool places like New York City and Denver and Seattle and Arizona. I thought to myself, I should do that. I should move somewhere just to prove I can.

Then I thought, nah. What if I miss the summer sunsets?

What if I miss hunting season?

What if I miss the winter? I mean, real winter?

What if I miss lilacs in the spring? Do they have lilacs in Arizona?

What if I miss our annual camping trip at Lake Sakakawea? What if I miss my nephew’s birthday? What if I miss all of the hamburgers in the park on Saturday nights? What if I miss hiking in the badlands? Then the list got too long. The truth is, I love it here too much. I love many of the places I visit, too — I love the mountains, I love the coasts, I love Europe and Canada and the Bahamas and New York City. And I’m sure most of the people living in other places could write their own blogs about their own homes, and I’m glad. We should all have a place we love so much that we don’t want to leave. Maybe it’s home; maybe it’s somewhere else, but I think humans like to connect to places.

Next fall, actually, a brother and I are planning to go overseas to work in an orphanage for a while, providing everything falls together. I will write more about it later once I know more details. I’m very excited about our adventure. But when I’m done, I’m coming back home.

This week in Boomtown Diaries, I’m going to give a shout-out to my cousin Adam, who wrote a song that explains it perfectly and which is aptly titled “My Home in North Dakota.” We play it sometimes in Dwaylors shows and Adam always gets compliments. A while back, he and his brother Nick created a music video, which now has almost 50,000 hits on Youtube. That’s because it’s awesome. Here it is:

Musings, North Dakota Living, Travel & Adventure

The Zoo, 22 Years Later

June 8, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

This week, I escaped the oil field and the turkey vultures and experienced something equally as wild: watching my 2-year-old niece Dahlia and 3-year-old nephew Jesse while their mother is out of the country. After being cooped up for 3 days of rain, on Thursday we piled into the car and took a trip to the Dakota Zoo in Bismarck. I hadn’t been there in years, but I remember my mother packing up anywhere from four to six of her children and taking us on trips to the zoo several times each summer. We would feed the goats, eat cotton candy, fight with each other, and ooh and ahh at the otters (my favorite) and grizzly bears. My mom must be a saint disguised as a mother. Just look what she had to put up with back in 1991:

Danny and Rachel at the Dakota Zoo, 1991

I don’t know how my mother did it all those summers, to be honest. You don’t really realize how much work it is until you are the one trying to keep the little guys out of the street, out of the puddles, and away from each other’s throats. This week we were only watching two of them, and in my case, only for five days! My mother had six for, oh you know, a couple decades.

I just have to say, these little guys are lucky they’re so cute.

So on Thursday, off to the zoo we went, my brother Joey, my mom, myself, and the little guys.

I learned a few important things while we were there.

1. BRING QUARTERS.

(However, the quarters are not just for the little guys):

2. Fork over the three dollars to rent a double “tiger” stroller. It’s worth it.

3. Also fork over the buck-fifty for popcorn. It’s also worth it. But maybe buy two popcorns, because there WILL be fights over the popcorn box. Vicious fights. I didn’t even know 2-year-olds were capable of that kind of ferocity.

In fact, I saw a very strong resemblance between the fight over the popcorn box and these two young fellas here, except the bears were probably a lot gentler:

4. Don’t forget to ride the train! (It’s even better when you are sitting next to Grandma.)

And finally, 5. The little girl you are with may literally shake with excitement over every “kitty-cat” and “guck” (duck) that you see, which makes the whole thing pretty darn fun.

My trip to the zoo this week, circa 2013, was a little more work and responsibility for me than it was back in 1991. That’s ok, though. As adults, sometimes we forget how exciting it is to feed the goats, and we don’t usually shake with excitement when we see a tiger. But why not? We should probably do those things more often. These little guys reminded me.

And they also gave me a new respect for my mother, 22 years ago. Thanks, Mom 🙂

Musings, North Dakota Living, Travel & Adventure

Ticks and Turkey Vultures

June 6, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

There are two things my Canon camera and I can never resist when we are together.

The first is flowers: wildflowers, garden flowers, apple blossoms, really anything remotely related to flowers, including clover buds and even golden wheat stalks. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that the gentle lilacs rank on top of the list: a sweet but fleeting signal of spring. There has been a lavender-colored explosion around the Midwest in the last week or so, enhanced by the large amount of rainfall we have patiently suffered through. My camera and I have been itching to get out of the car every time we drive by. It’s not just the lilacs. All the little pops of color coming to life all over the countryside are too irresistible to ignore.

Even a dandelion can be almost as pretty in the rays of a spring sunset, don’t you think?

The second fascination my Canon camera and I have is for old abandoned buildings. I cannot leave them alone. If I don’t have time to get out and actually photograph the old farmhouses and barns I drive by, then I at least take time to imagine the stories behind them: Who lived there? How many people were crammed into how many bedrooms? What did they do? Could they afford wallpaper? What dreams did they have for their homestead, and for themselves? At what point did they close the door and never look back?

Or did they look back?

I wish the old buildings could tell their stories.

Since they can’t, my Canon and I take photographs and I let myself imagine. Who knows if I will do something with the photos someday. Maybe I will publish a book; or maybe when I’m old I will just dig them out of a box and remember the satisfaction I got from my imagination and from the wide open prairie, whispering of the pioneers who lived there, who struggled to make a living there, who built houses there, who died there.

But lest I get too poetic, I must give you all a warning about photographic urges like mine. Last week, Boyfriend and I were on a hiking date at Cross Ranch State Park next to the MIssouri River. It was a beautiful evening; the park was peaceful and hardly occupied by other humans. It would have been romantic, really, were it not for the 1500 wood ticks that we continued to pick off of each other and ourselves for the next day and a half. I’m really mad at the one that I found on my neck at 5 a.m. the next morning. Needless to say, he ruined my sleep, considering every tiny tickle I felt after that was surely another one. I rolled around in the covers for an hour, imagining ticks crawling all over my body, and finally got up at 6 to do another thorough check. I’m pretty sure I’m still feeling ghost ticks after that infestation.

So anyway, we were driving home from Cross Ranch when I saw the abandoned building. Naturally, I had to stop and hike through the prairie grass with Canon camera; Boyfriend was on the phone so he stayed in the car; I was dreaming of the building’s inhabitants and vaguely noticing a very loud rustling coming from inside the structure.

That’s when it happened. Only feet in front of me, the hugest winged creature I have ever encountered in close proximity burst out of the house, nearly knocking me over on her way out. Surely it was a flying dinosaur! But no. A dinosaur would have been better-looking. The red, naked head and hooked beak gave her away. A turkey vulture. A black monstrosity of a bird. I thought she would fly away, but instead, she scared the bejeebers out of me by swooping back to cycle over my head. And continuing to circle more and more closely over my head. I’m pretty sure she was protecting babies in the house. Guys, she was huge.

So what did I do? I took pictures, of course. I began to envision myself lying in a field, murdered by a turkey vulture and served as dinner to her babies. I wanted evidence of the last moments of my life, cold hard proof right there on my Canon camera.

She cycled closer.

And closer.

I decided to give up the search for amazing old abandoned building pictures momentarily and hightailed it back to my car, looking back over my shoulder all the way. The Bird of Death was still following me, but veered off when I reached my vehicle and threw myself into the driver’s seat.

You know what? Boyfriend was laughing. I couldn’t believe it. Here he almost witnessed my untimely death in a North Dakota pasture, and he was laughing. So much for romance. Ticks and turkey vultures were third wheels on our date, and I can’t say I enjoyed their company much.

I have a confession though: If he was the one getting chased by a turkey vulture, I’m pretty sure I would have been laughing even harder.

And taking pictures, of course.

Musings, North Dakota Living

Blog Wars

May 30, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

Andy, my eldest of five brothers, has decided to start a war with me. This will not be the first. Our sibling combat throughout the years has consisted of many situations that have demanded determination, intelligence, and of course, deceit and treachery on both sides. Well, the deceit and treachery was mostly on Andy’s side.

I’m just the innocent little sister.

Let me give you a sampling: How many of teenage Rachel’s land-line phone conversations can Andy eavesdrop on, in order to find out which boy Rachel likes? How many of Rachel’s diaries and journals can Andy read, in order to find out which boy Rachel likes? How many of Rachel’s bedroom closets can Andy hide in, in order to best hear her conversations with her closest friends, in order to find out which boy Rachel likes? (You get the picture.) Also, who has the highest GPA? Who has the highest ACT score? Can Andy and the other brothers ambush Rachel with plastic pellet guns when she is walking into the house? Can Andy make angry Rachel laugh, which makes her even angrier because she really wanted to stay angry? Who can collect the most wheat, brick and ore supplies in the game Settlers of Catan in order to win? (I have one thing to say here: Only one of us tricked our dear, sweet mother in order to win a recent game of Settlers of Catan, and it wasn’t me.)

Who is Grandma Marilyn’s favorite? (Duh.)

And now, we present Blog Wars: Who has the most enjoyable writing style, sharpest wit, and best knowledge of semicolon placement?

My opponent is good, I will give him that.

Andy has started a new blog called Tetra Dad, named for his newborn son Oliver’s heart condition, Tetralogy of Fallot. I am dying to meet little Oliver myself, but with Andy’s family being so far away (he, his wife Shawna, and their kids Clara and Oliver live in North Carolina), the blog is a good tool for Andy to share some of those moments the rest of us might otherwise miss. It is intended to share updates and information about Oliver’s condition, offer support to other parents experiencing similar situations, tell stories about life in North Carolina, and generally focus on the positive things in a stressful situation.

You can find Andy’s blog here. I also have a link to Tetra Dad in my sidebar, in case you’re ever looking for it again.

Of course, I should mention that one of the goals of Andy’s blog is to “demonstrate that” he is a “better writer than Rachel.” (That is a direct quote.) It’s on, Andy.

However, I feel like I also need to point out that he has two of the cutest kids in the world on his team. I feel this is unfair: I have two sloppy dogs on my team.

296241_10151515247493725_610394593_n — Adorable children, Clara and Oliver

See what I mean?

Someday this auntie will steal said adorable children, take pictures of said adorable children and post them, and dramatically improve the overall cuteness of Boomtown Diaries.

Blog Wars, as Andy calls it, has revealed to me that our sibling combat hasn’t gone away as we’ve gotten older; it is simply evolving with the times. Fifteen years ago, it involved stealing diaries and eavesdropping on landline conversations because none of us had cell phones. (I can’t help but think that my adolescent life would have been much simpler if I had an iPhone with a secret pass code then, like I do now. Oh, the possibilities!) Now, it’s blogging. But Andy’s challenge is a reminder to me that regardless of age, miles, and life events getting in the way, we are still siblings in the end. Plus, this morning I finally felt motivated to update my Boomtown Diaries home page and links. Nothing like a little healthy sibling combat.

Just remember one thing: Regardless of what anyone says, I’m the innocent little sister.

From left: Me, Danny, and Andy, back in the pre-blogging days — An oldie but a goodie: Me, Danny, and Andy at breakfast, back in pre-Blog War days

Musings, Teaching

Trading It In

May 25, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

One day in late May every spring, a teacher puts away the whiteboard markers, stacks the textbooks on the shelf, takes one last look at the empty desks, and locks the classroom door behind her.

She is trading in her teacher hat for three short months, trading it in for another hat: a second-job hat, a student hat at the local college because she needs more education credits, maybe a more-time-to-be-mom hat, or even, if she is lucky, a much-deserved relaxing hat.

She is trading in her chalk for gardening tools.

She is trading in her red grading pen for a Canon camera and her gradebooks for a passport.

She is trading in her high heels for a pair of hiking sandals and her book bag for a hiking pack.

She is trading in her parking space at school for a boat dock.

She is trading in school lunch chicken nuggets in the cafeteria for fresh-cut strawberries on the porch.

She is trading in hours spent teaching other people’s children the ins and outs of grammar, literature, and respecting others, and instead, she spends those hours teaching her nephew how to ride a horse.

She is a little sad. She is sad to say goodbye to those students, knowing she will not teach most of them again and will maybe never see some of them again. They will move on to other paths, other states, other teachers, other desks in other classrooms. She hopes she has done her job well, hopes they have learned how to write a little better and think a little more, how to treat each other nicer and see the world as a big, wide playground, a place waiting just for them.

But she is also happy.

She is happy to say that she has put her heart and soul into her students this year, even if they don’t know it. She is happy that one student found a love for reading this year, and another student figured out he is good at poetry. And she is happy that she can forget, for just a short time, about PD and PLCs and IEPs and remember, instead, how wonderful it is to sit on the porch in the sun in the middle of the day.

In what seems like a blink of an eye, she will be back in the classroom, handing out textbooks, digging out whiteboard markers, and hanging up bulletin boards.

But for now, she is taking her teacher hat and trading it in.

Musings, North Dakota Living

Multiple Modes of Mobility

May 11, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

I love mobility. I love transportation. I love travel. I just love getting from here to there, and back again.

I think I just love seeing everything I can possibly see.

I’ve loved it since the moment I got my license when I was 14. I’ve loved it since I learned to combine wheat and barley fields when I was 12. (Driving around in circles counts as mobility, right? In fact, I also ran cross country and track for ten years. People used to ask why I liked to “run around in circles so much?” I guess I’ve always had a thing for transporting myself in circles.) I’ve loved it since my brother and I used to push our plastic purple and red Hot Wheels trikes to the top of the cemetery hill and fly down to our driveway so fast our feet couldn’t stay on the pedals.

I’ve loved it since I realized there’s so much of the world to see and only one short life to see it.

And I think I love almost every kind of mode there is to accomplish all the seeing:

A walk down our gravel road on a cool summer evening…

A bike ride in the North Dakota Badlands right at the set of an autumn sun…

A road trip across the Middle of Nowhere, Montana, in a Buick that’s going to break down in about 150 miles…

Which, after the Buick is properly checked out by a mechanic, who tells us to only drive it back to North Dakota at our own risk, which of course we do, turns into a hike in one of our nation’s most beautiful national parks…

A jetski ride across a Minnesota lake…

Or better yet, a free kayak ride from Auntie…

Being on a farm, we get to vary our transportation modes a bit more…

And just for the heck of it, why not drive a short bus around the state of North Dakota every once in a while?

And why not ride around in a oil-can cow train, just to see the sights of the pumpkin patch on a bright autumn afternoon? (If it didn’t attract so much hostile attention from other adults, I would have been seated in an oil-can cow, too, right next to my niece and nephew. I resigned myself to taking a picture instead, sighing a little to myself. Kids are so lucky.)

I don’t think I could pick a favorite mode of transportation. The joys of mobility and seeing all the sights there are to see are too… joyful. But if I had to pick one, I think I might have a new favorite: flying. My brother Danny earned his pilot’s license a couple years ago, and I’ve become spoiled with this new way to travel from town to town around the Midwest. Besides the convenience of cutting hours off of travel time, flying is one of the few transportations where you just have to look out the window. I usually have a book in hand when I travel, because one of my other great joys in life besides traveling is reading, but flying doesn’t allow such a distraction. Looking at the tiny cars and houses and oil flares below is too fascinating.

All of the phrases about “a bird’s-eye view”, and “as the crow flies,” and “on eagles’ wings,” aren’t false advertising. Flying in a small plane is a luxury that if I could, I would bestow upon all of you, so that you could see little farms and checkerboard fields like this:

The checkerboard will be even prettier in a couple months when the wheat fields are gold and the canola fields are yellow and the flax fields are purple.

And you could see neat-o controlled burns like this:

And you could see the lights of a hundred flares lighting up the sky at night, looking like little outlaw campfires from the seat of the plane.

But my camera died before I could take a picture of that.

Thanks, Danny, for the ride last week.

Luckily, I don’t have to pick one favorite mode of mobility. Flying, and biking, and hiking, and driving tractors and combines and four-wheelers, and gliding across the water in a kayak, and even cruising down a two-lane highway in a Buick with a transmission valve going out, are some of my favorite things. They are the stuff that memories are made of. And I can do them all, as long as I have life in my lungs and legs and sometimes, a few dollars for gas.

And maybe, this year at the pumpkin patch, I’ll just say to heck with it and take a ride next to my niece and nephew in that oil-can cow.

Musings, North Dakota Living

Lucy the Terrible

April 28, 2013September 18, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

I moved to the oil field and decided I needed a guard dog. Not only would the extra protection be nice, but I could use a companion, someone to run with, someone to listen to my problems, someone who would always be there for me. Living on a farm makes having an animal quite easy, so the living arrangements wouldn’t be a problem.

I began researching guard dog breeds: German shepherds? They seemed pretty neat. Rottweilers? No, not furry enough for me. Labs? Although these have always been popular in my family, they’re not the protective type. Most of our labs would welcome robbers and riffraff with a wag of the tail and probably hold the door open for them. I was pondering this difficult decision when the answer fell into my lap one August day. My dad texted me, “Rachel, would you like a dog? A German shepherd puppy has been abandoned by your brother’s house.”

I could hardly say no. This tiny, four-month-old blob of fur had been left at Jack’s neighboring farm, which had previously been an unwanted animal drop-off site. Besides, it made my decision easy. I didn’t have to search for a dog at a shelter or buy a particular breed, and I could feel good about saving an animal and giving her a home.

Lucy, as I named her, quickly became part of my daily life. When I left her in the mornings for school, she would stare at me forlornly from the yard. When I came home, she would accompany me enthusiastically on a 30-minute walk on a dirt trail before I began cooking dinner for the boys. She was rambunctious, outgoing, and irresistible. Everyone grew to love her, including Jake, our yellow lab, and Abby, my dad’s black lab (although she took a little longer to come around).

Lucy is cute, I will give her that. She has the right coloring for a German shepherd, her distinctive black-and-tan face made especially expressive by markings that look like raised eyebrows. As she grew, however, eventually becoming taller and lankier than our other dogs, it became clear that she was no purebred German shepherd. Part German shepherd, certainly, but her ears stayed floppy like a lab’s, her tail curled over like a husky’s, and she doesn’t have the body type. She looks like a conglomeration of different breeds.

Even more, it became quite clear that she is no guard dog. If I ever go out into the yard at night, Lucy is the opposite of helpful — she actually scares me more, jumping at every tiny sound and staring intently into the dark before bolting back into the garage to hide in the corner. Very reassuring when you are outside in the dark with the wind blowing eerily in the trees. I once found myself hiding in a locked house with a shotgun, and I blame the incident entirely on Lucy.

So what is Lucy good at? They say certain breeds are happiest when they have a “job,” a dog career of sorts, whether it’s hunting, herding, guarding, guiding, or policing. She’s no cattle dog: We have no cattle anymore. She’s no guard dog: That’s been proven. She loves to chase up birds, but she’s no hunter: She won’t listen. In fact, Lucy is just plain naughty. She chews up boots, eats rotten grain, drags the little barn cat Saul around the yard, visits the neighbors miles away, leaves dead birds at the bottom of my stairs, poops in the garage on a regular basis (even when the garage door is wide open), barks nonstop at the horses every morning, and wrestles the other dogs relentlessly. My family loves to tease me about how terrible she is, and I have to admit that it’s somewhat true. She’s been trained; she knows how to sit and lie down and stay and come, but life is just too interesting for her to care much about all that boring stuff. Lucy the German Shepherd conglomeration mix is probably better labeled as Lucy, the Terrible.

I love her anyway, of course.

But at last, this spring, Lucy has found a job. She has actually turned out to be somewhat useful.

Another one of our ill-behaved animals, Chico, a 12-year-old Morgan horse, has figured out how to get out of the small pasture east of our farmyard. We don’t know how. The fence isn’t down. The other horses stay put. Two weeks ago, for example, I was pulling out of the yard to go to school, when I noticed him standing in the yard nonchalantly, trying to blend in as if nothing was out of order. (I did the logical thing: Called my brother to go put him back.)

This is where Lucy comes in. Ever since we brought the horses to winter in our yard pasture, her obsession with them has been almost unhealthy. She cannot leave them alone. Every morning, she barks at them for long periods of time. Some mornings, she herds them into a group or chases an individual horse just for fun. I shake my head every time I notice it. She’s going to get herself killed someday, I think. But through this obsession, she has become Chico’s personal sentinel. It’s wonderful. He gets out; she barks like crazy and keeps him at the fence. He gets out; she chases him across the yard to where he is supposed to be. The other day, Danny was trying to get him back into the gate. Chico wouldn’t budge. Danny called Lucy. Chico took one look at her flying across the yard full of fury and decided he would be better off in the pasture after all.

If only she would spend as much time guarding me as she does keeping Chico in line.

Chico, of course, doesn’t appreciate Lucy at all. But she’s turned out to be quite useful in this one regard. I can finally say, Lucy the Terrible may actually not be so terrible.

On a side note: Does anyone have a guard dog for sale?

Lucy the Terrible keeping a close eye on Chico. — Lucy the Terrible keeping an eye on Chico.

Musings, North Dakota Living

Oil Field Dating Service

April 16, 2013January 10, 2016 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

This morning, I had a rather unusual commute to work. I was only a few miles away from home around 7:45 a.m., waiting to make a right turn onto Highway 85. The long line of semis and pickups with a car or two sprinkled in trickled by slowly in the early morning light, cautious on the layer of ice from last night’s snowfall. I sipped the coffee from my travel mug and vaguely noticed a large cherry red pickup with dark tinted windows suddenly make a sharp left onto my road. I perked up a little more when it pulled up next to me. A young man got out and swaggered confidently toward my vehicle. I assumed he was asking for directions, but I didn’t like the looks of him much, so I rolled down my window only a crack, ready to throw my coffee in his face and barrel through the ditch in my little Ford Escape if necessary.

It turns out he was not asking for directions. Ohhh, no. Our conversation went something like this:

Him: “Hello, miss? May I have your number?”

Me: “Excuse me?”

Him: “I said, may I have your number?”

Me: Stunned silence. Isn’t it too early in the morning for this kind of thing?

Him: “My friends said they would give me 100 dollars if you gave me your number.”

Me: Stunned silence with raised eyebrows. “Uh…” I am not very often speechless.

Him [starting to sound more desperate]: “You can have half of it! I will give you 50 bucks right here for your number!”

Me [inching my car forward]: “Fifty bucks?” [Sadly, I considered the money for a moment, then thought better of it.] “I don’t think I believe you. Actually, I have to go to work.” [Inching my car forward some more, wishing there were a gap in the traffic line.]

Him: “Miss, please — it’s fifty bucks! Aw, c’mon, please!”

At this point, I would have loved to make a dramatic exit by pealing out onto the highway in a squeal of tires on pavement. Unfortunately, the steady line of trucks still trickled by, not allowing me an exit of any sort, dramatic or not. I think I said something like, “I’m very flattered, but I really have to go to work!” I attempted a smile to make my harsh rejection a little easier. “It was a nice try though!” I added as an afterthought. I rolled up my window in what I hoped was a firm gesture.

He made his way back to his red pickup where I am sure his friends were laughing uproariously, his swagger a little less confident.

I got different reactions to this story from the people I told. Some thought I should have taken the money. Some thought I should have given him a fake number. Some agreed that I did the only thing I could have done: leave. My brother, however, pointed out that his approach was all wrong. “He made a mistake,” he commented. “He SHOULD have said, ‘My friends offered me a hundred dollars to ask for your number, but I don’t care about the money. In fact, I will give you the hundred dollars because all I really want is your number.'” It’s true; that would have been a much smoother attempt. Should I be insulted that he offered me money in the first place, or that he only offered me HALF of the money?

Jokes aside, this incident made me think a little. We have some serious issues in the oil field: housing, traffic, infrastructure needs, you name it. Dating is a whole new ball game, and while it may not seem so serious as these other issues, doesn’t everyone need just a little affection from the opposite gender now and then? But there is a problem: men outnumber women here by A LOT. The few available girls that are not married are either 1. dating someone or 2. tired enough of the obnoxious male attention to be a bit cold and standoffish to the males providing the attention. (For some additional background, see my previous post titled “There Are Plenty of Fish in the Sea, but Mostly Sharks Where I Live.”)

The men at my second job at a local hotel lounge have shared plenty of these woes with me, and I feel for them. Just last night, a middle-aged man lamented, “It’s not easy being a single guy in the oil field.” Another one, this one a bit younger, said to me, “You’re a nice gal. But I bet you’re married or got a boyfriend or something, don’t you?” A man next to him added ruefully, “There aren’t ANY single girls around here!” I found myself wanting to help these poor lonely souls, but what can we do? Should we start a mail order bride service? Lure fellow females here by some other method? Last year, a man even planned to have a “Party in the Patch,” a singles dance in Williston to attract dateable girls to the area. To my knowledge, the party never happened, but I think it illustrates a pretty desperate need for better balance of gender. (Read the article here.)

These ideas are extreme, but there just might be another, simpler way. A few months back, my friend A, another teacher, thought of an excellent plan: An Oil Field Dating Service. I think this could be a new calling for us. “Just think,” she said, “how much better off some of these men would be if they even just knew how to ask a woman out!” She wasn’t thinking along the lines of a matchmaking service, but more of an… etiquette workshop of sorts. Lessons on making a first impression on a woman. How to be a gentleman. How to woo the few available ladies here with your charm and wit. How to show manners and therefore have the upper hand over all your rivals.

It’s not a bad idea. I think we could do some good here. Maybe even charge a fee and make a little extra cash, without having to give out our phone numbers on random highways. I have heard a colorful array of pickup line since moving here, and I’m sure other females in the area would concur. Some situations are humorous, others not so much. But what if we could give these men a few tips from a local woman’s point of view? Here’s a start: Don’t offer money for phone numbers in the middle of a highway.

Just don’t.

Ok, I should put in a disclaimer: I think there are plenty of courteous, well-meaning men here. Just a couple weeks ago during my hotel shift, a man in his mid-30s observed as two other, rather forward men made an uncouth comment or two in my direction. It didn’t bother me, but apparently it bothered the observer. After they left, he stood up, quite tipsy, and threw down his napkin, proclaiming gallanty, “I just want you to know that although I think you are beautiful, I’m just going to leave it at that! I’m not coming on to you, and I would never say those things to you!” He left, head held high, stumbling just slightly to his hotel room. I had to smile to myself a little at that one. But his manners actually DID impress me more than the other two men next to him. Maybe this guy could be a coach at our Dating Service once he sobers up.

Yes, times are tough in the oil field. Women are scarce. Men are lonely. Both are working hard to make a living, but humans need a little more than just survival. Hopefully as our boomtown continues to adapt to the growing pains, the lopsided numbers will even out a bit and love will flare up all over the oil field (pardon the pun — I admit, it was bad).

In the meantime, I’ll be working with my partner A on our Oil Field Dating Service so we can provide a valuable service helping our community… one unfortunate pickup line at a time.

Musings, Teaching

Out of the Mouths of Babes

April 14, 2013July 23, 2015 Rachel@BoomtownDiaries

Repeat after me: “We do not have hurricanes. We do not have hurricanes. We do not have hurricanes.”

I saw that little quip online this morning and I thought it was funny. Blizzard conditions are currently raging outside. It is the middle of April. There has to be a positive, even if it’s acknowledging that hey, at least in the Great Plains we don’t get hurricanes, too. I’ve mentioned before that I love winter, and I do, but that’s when it stays inside the confines of winter. We are almost a month into spring with only a few warm teasing days, and I think I speak for everyone when I say a little break would be nice. The kids are getting antsy at school. The farmers are getting antsy for spring’s work. Even the tractors look antsy. Outside my window, our big red is sitting in the snow, ready for seeding. But he’s not going anywhere. Just like me.

Until winter decides she is ready to release us, we wait. And keep repeating, “We do not have hurricanes.”

Meanwhile, I thought I would occupy my time indoors by reading through some of my most recent freshmen essays, and I thought I might share with you some of the wisdom out of the mouths of babes. In this essay, I asked my students to address a problem in our school or community and propose a possible solution, using both their own wisdom and outside sources. While they are not exactly “babes,” freshmen in high school are fairly new to exploring and writing their ideas clearly and logically. It can be a real struggle, let me tell you. Why shouldn’t they be able to demand that school is canceled forever for all students? Why shouldn’t they be able to ask for a Six Flags amusement park in their small town in western North Dakota?

We spent some time in class discussing feasible topics. Once we eliminated the topics that were a little too unrealistic, many of my students really embraced the project with alacrity. Whether they care to admit it, they are concerned about their community. In reading through the essays, I discovered that young teenagers can be remarkably perceptive in understanding the real issues surrounding them. They addressed everything from the dangers of our roads to the need for more emergency personnel in the oil field, and less serious topics such as adding more restaurants or community activities in our small boomtown to improve the overall quality of life. Some of their arguments:

“[Our community] should hire a full-time fire department because our local firemen are overworked. Our fire department is run on a volunteer basis, which means in addition to all the hours these men are on call, they also have to maintain full-time jobs.”
“If major highways like 85 and 23 were four lanes, there would be less congestion, which would make people feel less likely to pass.”
“I want our high school to start a recycling program.”
“If we built a new Civic Center, it would be a great place for kids to hang out… Right now, our town has few places for us kids to get together, so more kids are getting into trouble.”
“Having a bowling alley in Watford City could involve all ages in the community. Having leagues would allow kids and adults to compete and have fun at the same time.”
“Fixing and repaving the roads will be very beneficial… Drivers will have less of a chance of hitting an obstruction, such as a pothole, and going into the ditch or other lane.”
“Having more restaurants with different types of food would make it easier on our travelers and truckers.”

They had some decent ideas, actually. The state of North Dakota is scrambling to keep up with the massive demand of an increased population: housing shortage, services shortage, and higher rate of crimes and traffic accidents, among other things, and it’s obviously not an easy job. However, the fact that my students were able to identify some of the serious and the less serious problems in their community and propose meaningful solutions made my chest puff up a little with, well, pride.

But lest you go around amazed at my teaching skills and ability to coax well-written essays out of previously clueless students, something like the English teacher in the film Freedom Writers, let me share that it’s not quite like that. Not all of my students are so, well, eloquent. Here are some from the other side, some that help keep me humble as a writing instructor, so my head — and my ideals — don’t get too big.

Sigh.

“It would benefit our community by having the speed limit set to 65 instead of 45 close to town and will help the people on the bus so we can GET HOME FASTER.”
“When the roads are in bad condition, a lot of people complain about it but don’t do anything. When people get blamed, a lot of fighting starts to happen. So better roads would reduce the number of fist fights.”
“I think it’s horrible the smokers got our open lunch hour taken away. We are all teenagers and we like our freedoms. If we can make a deal with the school board, we will!!!”
“If you wear something that isn’t dress code you get in trouble. Kids don’t like to get in trouble. It makes them sad and agitated. In conclusion, dress code makes children unhappy. It brings unhappiness to the world and needs to be stopped.”

And my personal favorite: This student had found a hair in his food at lunch one day, so he based his entire essay around this apparently traumatizing event:

“If a lot of hair is in your food it could make you constipated. If you get constipated, you will have to go to the doctor for medicine and the bill can be more than some people can afford. [Also] I puke after I find hair in my food, so you know that hair can’t be good for you. If the food tasted better, we would probably eat more and the school wouldn’t have to buy as many garbage bags. With the money that we saved from the garbage bags, we could buy even more hair nets.”

Dramatic? I would say so. Although I had a hard time appreciating the logic of the arguments in this essay, I admit finding that unknown hair is never fun. (In this particular case, I suspect some of the student’s friends as the hair culprits.)

I do enjoy my students and their various colorful ideas, even the not-so-eloquent ones. In my classroom, we’ve had many discussions over issues like these, inside our small community and across the state and even the country. Students keep our jobs as teachers interesting, and as long as we stop to hear what they have to say, we may be surprised, even pleasantly surprised. Try it sometime. Listen to a kid. Heck, listen to another adult. In our crazy piece of land called the oil patch, it’s worth hearing some of the stories that people have to tell, some of the places that people are coming from.

This April storm outside my window, however, is not much of a pleasant surprise.

We do not have hurricanes…