Yesterday was an eye-opener. It made us realize both how fortunate we are to live in VT, but also what an untypical little oasis it is in the larger American scene. What we experienced yesterday was more typical of much of the. U.S., but in an extreme form (I think!): the North Dakota oil boom and bust. But let me go back.
We spent Tuesday night in Rugby, the geographical center of the U.S. Just an hour down the road from Rugby, we came to Minot, ND. I cannot think of Minot without thinking of my Drury college friend, Clarence Whitwer, whom we knew as "Ken." Ken was from Minot. I also remember him as being from Parshall, ND, but I'm unsure what the sequence was. His father, Emil, was a Congregational minister, so Ken was a P.K., like me. He also was pre-ministerial at Drury, like me. We were in the College Fellowship together, ISA (Independent Students' Association - an anti-fraternity fraternity!), we started an early morning prayer group together, etc. Ken was an obsessive punster. I appreciate puns, I pun a lot myself. But Ken was over the top. (Maybe some think I am too!). Ken would come up to you, put his finger in your ribs, twist it back and forth, and say, "Am I boring you?" The first time was sort of funny. The tenth time was something else. The layers of irony in that are staggering. Despite all that, I was fond of Ken. I recognized that while he was weird, I was too, in different ways. Oh yes, another "Kenism." For years after college, I got a Christmas letter from Ken. But it wasn't strictly from him, it was from his cat, whose name was "Mert Knitne," and it was signed with a paw. You get the picture. I last saw Ken in 2000 at Chicago Theological Seminary, when I was Pastor-in-Residence. He didn't go to CTS, he went to Andover Newton. But he lived in Michigan at the time and came down to see me. It was great to see him again after many, many years. I have a picture of him from that visit back at the house. He passed away a few years ago.
A long digression. But it provides background for my decision to stop in Minot. I thought maybe I could find his dad's church, or find some paper trail for Ken. First stop, the Public Library Local History Room. Ellen went to the P.O. while I searched. I quickly found a 1948 Minot High School yearbook that had Ken's picture in it. His senior class 1950 book was missing, but he was in what they called the "Froshmore" class in 1948 (a new term for me).
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| In the Local History Room of Minot Public Library |
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| Found the 1948 Class Year Book (taken with Photo Booth which creates a mirror image) |
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Found Clarence Whitwer - he's bottom row, second in from the right.
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So that confirmed that he was in Minot. I also found a directory that gave the address for the Congregational Church in the 1950's. Some inquiries determined that that building no longer existed. There is a Congregationsl church, UCC, in Minot, and we found it, but it was locked and no one was there. But it was built after Ken's time anyway. Minot was a mess generally, with construction. Our first taste of what was to come. Ken would hardly have recognized it, I suspect.
We were heading toward Theodore Roosevelt N.P., North Unit, which by one route could take us past Parshall, the other town I associated with Ken, much smaller than Minot, about 50 miles SW of Minot. Maybe the UCC church there would hold some secret. That proved to be a fateful decision, in a way. When we turned into the highway leading to Parshall, we hit a bit of construction. Little did we know it would go on for 25 miles! In those 25 miles, we saw more huge earth-moving equipment than I have ever seen in one project. This was like they were building an interstate. But this was a rural, isolated road. Gradually, we began piece information together. In 2006, geologists discovered the Parshall Oil Field. We were driving through it. Oil rigs began to dot the countryside. That discovery had started the North Dakota oil boom. That boom led to a huge housing bubble to house workers, and it astronomically increased tax revenues to ND. 11% on every barrel pumped, I read. ND is sitting on a $1.3 billion surplus. The road we were driving on had become a major truck artery. They were building an interstate highway - and the state had plenty of funds to pay for it.
We saw a lot of this sort of thing . . .
. . . and this . . .
. . . and this.
We got to the little town of Parshall (Pop. c. 500 when Ken lived there) which is now in the middle one of the largest oil reserves in the world, and I'm sure Ken would have been amazed. The housing boom had hit Parshall. It was hard to find the original town. Many streets were totally torn up. We hunted for but never found the UCC church. . . we needed Ken to direct us. We ate a picnic lunch near an old stone museum building - a relic of old Parshall - and moved on.
As we drove, the full enormity of what had happened hit us. Huge oil rigs, huge housing developments, huge constructions of uncertain purpose, huge malls - all had sprung up in just these past years. The countryside has been totally transformed. It is countryside no longer.
We saw hundreds of this kind of rig dotting the countryside
But then, the boom ended! When oil prices collapsed. So now, the cost of extracting a barrel of oil from the ground is about or more than the selling price. We were told that many huge housing developments now stand empty. No one knows if or when it will come back.
After all that, it was healing to go into the peace and quiet of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We were almost the only ones there. When we stood at an overlook, we could hear no human sound. Only birds and wind.
Very unusual spherical formations exposed by erosion.
Another TRNP scene . . .
. . . and another.
Tonight, we are in Alpine. We drove from Billings along I-90 to the Gallatin River canyon, which goes along the western boundary of Yellowstone NP. We stopped for a nice picnic along the River.
Picnic by the Gallatin River
We came down to West Yellowstone, entered the park there, and came on down to Teton NP, Jackson, and then Alpine. We passed some beautiful blue Camus Lily fields. We got into Alpine around 7pm. Max was very excited to see his Nana. He is in a soccer game tomorrow morning, so we're all going to that.
That blue you see on the ground is lilies, not water.
Camus lily up close
