April 25, 2012

HAT TIPS

Hello,

I hate to admit it, but I have been a Minnesota Twins fan for a number of years. I never played the game. The “boys of summer” just didn’t fit into a farm and ranch schedule when I was a kid. And besides that, baseballs were hard and hurt when they hit you. I was a little weak on the hand-eye coordination thing.
But when driving truck, tractor, or pickup, the radio was a great invention. For a while. But after you’ve listened to the news a couple of times in the morning. Then listened to the same music over and over and over, or listened to a radio talk show for a few hours, you have two choices. Either silence, which is all right, or Twins baseball, which for a few years was fine.
But this year it is taxing. And you know how people hate taxing. The Twins got rid of the only two good players they had last year, and brought up some guys that couldn’t make it for the Fargo Red Hawks.
The purpose of today’s lesson is to point out that all you hear from Minnesota is not gospel.
A Minnesota legislator was critical of the North Dakota State Capital this last week. And the governor and everyone else that is running for election in North Dakota is jumping on this as if it were manna from heaven.
I think the legislator said something like “State Farm wants its office building back.” Which, I hate to admit, is not the worst thing that has been said about the capitol building. It is functional, if not ornate. A lot of capitals have domes. North Dakota is not big into dome roofs. We’re kind of into squares and rectangles. I suppose it comes from the state being pretty much a rectangle, if it weren’t for that nasty Red River that runs the wrong way and screws up the east boundary.
Oh, North Dakotans are used to being picked on. Remember when there was that television spoof about North Dakota being the least visited state in the nation. The Bakken is changing that!
But I had a relative here several years ago. And as we participated in a lengthy discourse over pitchers of refreshments we began arguing the virtues of North Dakota. I bragged on all of our wonderful assets. Number one in wheat, honey, durum, barley, sunflowers….
He wanted to visit about our tourist’s sites. You start at Fargo and drive a hundred miles, and then you see a big buffalo on a hill. Then you drive 60 miles and see a big sandhill crane (a bit off the road). Then you drive 40 miles and see the state capital (he thought it looked like an office building). Then you drive 23 miles and see a big cow on a hill. Then you drive another hundred miles and see some erosion (the Badlands). Those were fighting words! I threw a pitcher of beer on him! He hasn’t been back.
And that Minnesota guy has probably never visited our Hall of Fame in the capital. Why, we have Lawrence Welk, Peggy Lee, and Angie Dickinson in our Capital.
And that beats having the Twins and the Vikings.

Later,
Dean

WATFORD CITY WEATHER