Road trips have a feeling of being unstuck anyway, but this trip to the land of my people was like slingshot time travel. Glancing at a cloud, a memory starts foggy. Wait for the shy, buried parts to emerge. But then all the memories explode straight at you. Both slow motion and at blinding speed. Go beyond the stories you’ve heard all your life and see with fresh adult eyes. Even as you know it’s all in the wind. Road trips are always surreal, but this was whiplash.
We turned west and crossed into North Dakota. My parents grew up here. They married after WWII, and when I was one, moved to Minnesota and eventually Washington. They were a strange species that left their tribe to raise their young and didn’t return until we left the nest. I can count the times we saw relatives on one hand, and most of those were before fourth grade. My parents raised me to think North Dakota was home, but we didn’t visit there. I thought it was because we couldn’t afford it.
Few campgrounds up here, but we settled into Icelandic State Park for two nights. It’s in a forest with a lake and the most privacy anywhere we’ve ever stayed. We set up and took a walk to the lake so the dogs could watch me wade. I am a woman who rates the pleasure of my feet in cold water right up there with a full body massage. The dogs, not so much.
In the morning, I unhooked the trailer so we could travel light. We took two-lane back roads that were straight and flat, between fields that spread to the horizon. The only traffic was large trucks hauling farm equipment that looked like giant mechanical dinosaurs. The sort that ordinary farmers can’t afford. There was no livestock, no animals at all. All the small farms were gone. The treed corners were still there, but grain storage silos had replaced the family homes. Google says this is the highest-producing canola and wheat county in the country.
The first stop was the Hannah Cemetery, which is close enough to the border that my iPhone welcomed me to Canada. I worried because my GPS couldn’t find it. The cemetery has no sign either, but it was the only patch of grass and trees in miles of fields. I turned in, and to show my good manners, left the dogs in the car. Many of the graves were from the early 1800s, and many were of children.
Finally, I found the marker with my name on it. My name because I have never changed it. That’s how I lost track of the female side of the family, off buried with their husband’s people, vanished from their own. Behind the huge gravestone were smaller stones for my father’s parents and his two brothers and their wives. My parents weren’t there. Weren’t there?
Barely a breeze and totally silent, I kept walking and reading headstones. Finally, I found my parents. They couldn’t be any farther from the family plot and still be in the same cemetery. How did I feel? It was the first time I’d seen their grave. I took a breath and felt around myself for feelings. I spent months helping each of them pass, there when they needed me. I waited for the emotions to scream and clutch at me with their boney fingers. It didn’t happen. I did a full body search, why wasn’t I feeling miserable? Is it wrong to say I’m oddly grateful for the time we had at the end.. The only good thing about cancer is that it gave me time to make peace with our lives together. No regrets, no grudges.
I don’t know who put the plastic flowers by their marker. Mom loved fake flowers for their, dare I say it, eternal nature.
I looked back toward the family plot, our family dynamic in plain view. Like everyone in the county didn’t know my father didn’t get along with his father, and it trickled down to his relationship with me. In our family, the women were silent; the men were prone to rage and anger. How did he feel, knowing that his father excluded him in death as he had in life? My mother, out in limbo with him. Why would they choose to be buried here? As I gazed across to the Blake headstone, a bird sang to the heavens. How much unresolved pain lies buried in cemeteries? How many generations of feuding families? Grateful again for those decades of therapy and for knowing that I would not be back. My parents are at rest close to a tree, just feet from an ocean of wheat. It was peaceful here. I’m not sure either of them knew that in life.
Grandpa Blake was a horse trader and a farmer. Wealthy by comparison. The last time I saw him, he was on his deathbed. He had skin cancer and looked like a terrifying, monstrous reptile. I have another Mohs surgery next week. Afterward, Grandma Blake gave me a jelly glass of the sublime delicacy, canned apricot juice. She did not trust me with her depression glass, but it was the most exotic thing I’d ever seen. I collected it as an adult. The glass is over a hundred years old now, but antiques are out of style. I found this out while trying to raise funds to publish a book. Depression glass has aged out of value, they said. No longer collectible.
From the Hannah Cemetery, I drove to the town of Wales, population eight. Back in the day, it had a population of 150, but that didn’t count the dozens of families on the surrounding farms that came to town for church and groceries, and a drink sometimes. Now it looked like a set from a post-apocalyptic movie. There were houses the color of ash. Other houses more recently abandoned. Rusty cars and broken windows. One corner of town seemed alive with a long row of extra-huge metal grain silos, with acres of open ground all around. A shipping center in a town with no gas or food.
I located the main street of Wales, a dirt road as it had always been. I found bricks that used to be the school. From there, I could locate the lot where Grandmother Uhrich had a small house with no indoor plumbing. My Blake grandparents had the wealthiest house in town, but both houses were razed, along with the churches and bars. I’d seen this level of living before, but it was on reservation land.
We’ve all heard about it on the news. Farm consolidation is a sanitary term for losing a family home. Large operations hollow out rural communities. Local businesses fail, and kids move away for opportunities. I had heard stories over the years, relatives losing their farms as we had. There was no future. I didn’t expect how it would feel to be there on a remote cusp of world change. In three generations, it’s unrecognizable. Even so, painfully personal.
My Uhrich forbears were in a cemetery a bit east, but I didn’t have the heart to go. Instead, I headed back to camp, pulling over when dinosaurs passed. Mister squints and lets out a big sigh. He’s right. I was feeling prehistoric, like I’d seen all the destruction I could stand. Unlike around my farm where the town is encroaching, this place is on life support.
In Langdon, I pulled into the Dairy Queen for a brain freeze. Straight across the street was the Maple Manor Care Center. I recognized the name from several obituaries. Both my grandmothers died there, and a few aunts. So that’s the landmark, my only legacy still standing, and as close to a family home as I have. Ironic, Mister says.
Returning Sunday night to the state park, we found it totally empty. We were the only camper there. Alone in the woods with that bear. But all I could think about was a family that I didn’t know. A family that didn’t value family. I was raised that way. To love the land more. I hope I can hold on to mine. Land endures. “It’s the land, Katie Scarlet.”
In the morning, we headed toward Sturgis, the first populated area we’d seen in three days. I hoped Jolene wouldn’t wake up. These are her people. Harley riders are the closest thing we have to Vikings. If I’d gotten a male puppy, I would’ve named him Sturgis, in the old Norse meaning. Jolene is close enough. The name of a woman who doesn’t play by the rules. Someone told me that Jolene was not a good name. The woman in the song was no one’s idea of a feminist hero, she told me, as if I did not know the earworm lyrics by heart. Just to be clear, my Jolene will steal your man, your kids, your dogs and leave you singing along.
One day, I will tell Jolene about trading t-shirts with a biker at a gas pump in Wyoming. I got his worn Harley t-shirt, almost like a scalp. He got a peek and a peach-colored t-shirt from a lesbian bookstore. I clearly won the trade. Now I’m pulling an RV. The bikers passed me in a cloud of thunder, their gray hair flying. These guys are old. Yeah, they’re my age.
The horizons are just as far away, but now turning into huge open prairies for cattle. Moving from farming to ranching. Most of the trip has been on patched two-lane roads, 65 mph. It shakes up the trailer, but you see so little from the freeway. This trip was an American history lesson from start to finish. Mister says, absurdity is the norm. Jolene says, you would know.
Dawn in Lusk, Wyoming, we’ll be home tonight. Jolene perches outside to guard the camp while Mister and I rub our crusty eyes and squint at the new day. I can only think about the dead for so long until an eighteen-pound soprano toad barks and I’m slingshotted back to reality.
Everything turns to dust, I explain to the dogs. But don’t we all eventually become irrelevant in the face of what passes for progress? Mister says, speak for yourself. Jolene says, let’s run as fast as we can. Then, let’s sleep in a pile.
(Here is Part One in case you missed it.)
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Women Aging Cantankerously
