They Didn’t Make Right Tour of North Dakota

The trouble with Scott Kraft’s article (Nov. 5) and Bruce Davis’ letter (Nov. 16) is that they didn’t make the right tour of North Dakota. No wonder they only remember the cold. The home tour is the only one to take.

My memories of my childhood are of family reunions with glorious picnics, cousins galore and vaguely familiar grown-ups smiling and saying, “So you’re Mary’s daughter.”

There were rodeos, parades and carnivals. There were trips to the Badlands where you could see buffalo and smell sagebrush. The most fun was watching for a prairie dog town. If you found about an acre of round mounds, you would sit very still until curiosity got to the little prairie dogs, First one would peek out, then another, until they all came out to play.

If you visited a farm or a ranch, you could ride a horse, collect eggs from real chickens. Once my friend’s Dad insisted that I drive the combine--a giant of a machine. I was 13, had only driven a Jeep. I drove the crookedest line you ever saw, had chaff all over, but never ever forget that day.

In the country you find gorgeous sunsets, the best food and the world’s greatest story tellers.

Other trips were to Medora, where the lovely lady of that name had lived in a beautiful home, so unlike the prairie around it. You could go to the Peace Garden on the North Dakota-Canada border or to “Dad’s” University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. At the state capitol in Bismarck there is a statue of Sacajawea, the young Indian woman who led Lewis and Clark through the Northwest. There were concerts and ballet at the local college, as well as the wildest basketball games I’ve ever seen.

And there were natural wonders of the seasons--pussy willows in the spring, lilacs that filled the world with fragrance, golden fields of wheat that went all the way to the horizon. In the fall there were billions of yellow cottonwood leaves that scrunched under your feet, and then there was the long long wait for the first quiet snowfall. For kids, you see, snow is a pleasure--time for ice skates, sleds and snowballs.

A person always “goes home” this time of year. My memories of North Dakota are of warmth--the family gathered round the feast for Thanksgiving, “real” Christmas caroling and church bells on a clear Christmas Eve--the glow of my mother’s smile.

Remembering all these makes me feel a certain sadness for anyone who thinks there is nothing in North Dakota. Perhaps the publicists need to take another look at what North Dakota really has to offer.

ROSE M. SAYLIN

Los Alamitos