reunion wrap-up

oy vey, i haven't written in a long time. i returned from north dakota last week. the trip was fabulous, though i 'bout killed my grandma. she's always wanting to leave for places way earlier than any reasonable person needs/wants to leave, like leaving for the airport for our 6:45 flight home an hour before departure, even though it only takes 10 minutes to get there, and the airport only has 5 gates or something--not like there's a big crowd flying out of bismarck, nd at 6:45 on a tuesday morning. urg.

anyway, the reunion was nice. north dakota is beautiful, in a remote, isolated, lonely kind of way (at least, that how it seems to someone who grew up on the congested east coast). it's prairie out there, with miles and miles of uninterrupted grass and farmland. in every direction, all you can see is green land. no trees, no bushes, no telephone/electric wires, no cities, no houses... it's amazing. rolling green fields meet vibrant blue sky.

'course, it's lonely and cold in the wintertime, i would imagine. mostly, the feeling i got while there was one of emptiness, of the landscape the way it always has been.

on the interstate, there is hardly any traffic, even at "rush hour". at one point, we stopped on the highway and backed up, to get a better look at a buffalo on the side of the road. let me say that again: we stopped and backed up while driving on the interstate. raise your hand if you can do that where you live. anyone? anyone? i didn't think so.

my relatives are all very nice people. my grandfather's siblings (7 brothers, 2 sisters) are lovely, funny people. the brothers all look alike, talk alike, laugh alike. seeing them is like seeing my grandfather (who died in december 1998). as long as they are alive, he is alive.

as kids, growing up in the 30s in rural north dakota on a farm, life was hard. harder, i think, than any of them will admit. their father was stern. my mom remembers trips up to see him--a thick leather strap hung in the kitchen of the farmhouse, for sharpening knives and whipping boys. their mother died young, with the birth of her last child, at age 32. she had had 10 children (and i don't know how many stillbirths). her body just gave out. the oldest child, a daughter, took care of the house for a couple of years, crying and making bread, until the father remarried. then she ran away and found a husband. all the boys joined the army as soon as they could, just to get away from the farm. only one child, my great-uncle john, grew up to be a farmer.

as kids, the farmhouse was heated with coal. they got the coal by mining. mining. they could never do their schoolwork because they spent all their time farming. farming before school in the morning, farming all afternoon until dark after school. there was no running water, and the entire family of 12 lived in a 3 bedroom house.

my grandfather and his brothers used to get in trouble with the neighbors for throwing watermelons at their bulls, trying to get the watermelons stuck on the horns. the neighbor used to come out and shoot at them. my grandfather's high school class had 7 people in it. the town they lived in (outside of, really) had a population high point in 193? of 303. my great-grandfather was put in jail for making whiskey in the backyard.

life was different then...

tomorrow's my birthday. i'll be 25. i remember thinking when i was a kid that i'd be 25 in the year 2000. back then, i thought that was so old. heh heh.

on friday i'm having a big party at camp (that's what i call my house). i've never thrown a big party before, so i'm a little anxious. it'll have a camp theme. i'm serving (alcoholic) bug juice, gorp, s'mores, etc. mostly, i don't know what to do about the music. my housemate has said he'll hook me up with his cd-changer. i hope he does. even still, though, i feel like i should make some mix cd's of good party music and put those in the changer, so all the songs are good. but that's alot of work, esp. considering i haven't started yet.

the one really good thing about camp is the roof. you can climb up to the roof through nikolai's room. it feels like something out of mary poppins. fabulous. i sat up there the other night with laura and michael and jason, and we got drunk and played "i never". geez. what a game. it always ends up being a "tell everyone about our sexual exploits" fest.

i'm not going to go into it.