1986: Final days in North Dakota Part I

There are times I often regret documenting my past very well through photos, datebooks or even a journal. I was a very prolific letter writer until I got swept up in the numerous distractions of college. The shoeboxes filled with past correspondence is scattered about somewhere in my house.

This last weekend was the whole brouhaha known as Easter Weekend or as I prefer to call it, Zombie Jesus Day since contemporary “Christians” would’ve taken a shotgun to any dead popping out of their graves. Plus my friend Helen had her late Spring Break around now, as if pre-school kids need one. It got me thinking about my time in North Dakota wrapping up since I’ve never been back.

When I was wrapping up my senior year at Beulah HS, the students were given a long weekend starting on Thursday. How I wish when it exactly was. I know it was in late March or early April, before I went to Bismarck for Close Up (Part II) and graduation (Part III). Why though? The time off period was my last trip to Canada, a nation I would so love to visit again. I even thought about moving there after Bush II was legitimately elected in 2004. With their upcoming election, it’s hard to tell if our Northern neighbors are safe from Right-Wing idiocy as Harper demands a Conservative (Tory) majority next month. Don’t even get me started about Canadian politics. I admit to only having a rudimentary understanding through The Toronto Star yet Harper has the same coat of slime I see on Berlosconi whenever the news discusses either.

By late Winter, Mom had rejoined us in Beulah. I think it was after Brian scored his driver’s license in Illinois. When the long weekend was upon us, Mom and I convinced Dad to take the time off so we could all make the drive to Winnipeg. The past experience in 1985 made it worthy of a repeat visit. For those of you who’ve never lived in the Great Plains, let me quickly explain why we chose this rather distant, obscure Canadian city. Beulah, ND is way over in the western part of the state. The closest thing one could call a city is Bismarck. However, everybody in town hits that place on the weekends, making it rather routine. Hit I-94 West and you’re not going to find any metropolises until the Pacific Ocean; probably Seattle or Portland. South? Forget it, South Dakota is less urban and recently, showing its cultural backwardness. Taking I-94 East means Minneapolis-St. Paul which is a drive across two very large states for over eight hours. On the other hand, Winnipeg takes almost as long due to no highways necessarily leading to the border.

However, Winnipeg trumped Minneapolis for three reasons:

  1. The exchange rate heavily favored the greenback, it was $1 USD = $1.35 CND; sadly it has dipped the loonie’s advantage, $1.04 USD = $1 CND.
  2. Winnipeg was an isolated enough metropolis (roughly the size of Austin in the Eighties) that US and Canadian companies would test new products there before launching them nationally. A trip there meant a possible peak into the near future: Cherry Pepsi was the only thing I encountered.
  3. Compared to North Dakota-Minnesota, Winnipeg could be seen as more exotic because the Canadians still have different tastes in certain things (tea, music, television, etc.) no matter how close they are to the American border.

Being a passenger in the car was a breeze thanks to the walkman I received last Christmas. I loaded up on mix tapes/compilations and I’m confident I probably read the current novel Mrs. Hoff assigned in English IV. From time to time, I had to answer some question from the ‘rents up front. The border crossing was easy. It was a pair of houses, one for each nation’s inspector. The Canadian guy figured we were the usual tourists and the only thing I remember they’re a stickler for is cigarettes; Americans often smuggle these to aid the Canadian black market against cigarette taxes. Dad also stopped for directions at a farm and I had to hold my breath from laughter, the nice, helpful dude could’ve been the third McKenzie brother by the way he dressed.

When we were within FM radio range of Winnipeg, I switched over my walkman to tune in their stations which can be confusing, they don’t have public interest stuff relegated below 92 FM. Several things I took away from them: a quick history of the Payola$, Simple Minds were coming to play their arena and the debut Fine Young Cannibals record was awesome. While sitting in car, waiting for Dad to get something at Canadian Tire, there was some comedy bit ripping on PM Mulroney’s recent troubles with a bribery/influence peddling accusation (some things never change with the Conservatives/Tories).

Outside of taking in the Canadian radio culture, I was often free to roam around downtown over a couple days. I have no clue what my parents were looking for, maybe clothes. One thing I don’t recommend shopping for in Canada is clothing, it’s more expensive than in America and often it’s the same imported crap from the Third World. Hence when I lived in North Carolina, the female Canadian teenagers I encountered (their parents worked for NorTel, BASF or the Hurricanes) were nuts about buying/having more clothes than they had “back home.”

Back to my story…

Being 17, I was mainly out to find the things I couldn’t get in Beulah or Bismarck: records and these new lines of comic books. I stumbled upon a great place to get the latter. Weeks ago, Dad gave me a subscription to Rolling Stone (it didn’t take me long to realize how far out of the loop they were musically) and there was this huge piece covering Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns miniseries. I was really looking forward to reading it. This store in Winnipeg had the first two issues! I gobbled those up and scored the first issue of New Teen Titans (1980) as a joint gift to my friend Jon (Mike and Jason chipped in some cash). The store was my first experience with the growing world of direct sales, aka places dedicated to selling just comic books. It sounds rather silly today as these places are more common. When I was growing up, comic books were usually sold through newsstands and the magazine rack at groceries stores. During the Eighties, the publications were undergoing a tremendous shift to allure a better, longer-term audience. Back in Beulah, my friends Jason, Mike and Jon already had substantial collections; I remember Jason at the time, had all but 12 issues of every Spider-Man-based title. They drew me in through the DC Heroes game and Jon loaned me all his New Teen Titans, New Mutants and Crisis on Infinite Earths. Being a perfectionist, I read these things pretty quickly to hone my skill with the game. Comics finally cutting back on how much advertising there was helped; in the Seventies, this was every two pages and often for products no one bought.

The bulk of my money was saved for a bigger endeavor, music. Here the exchange rate was in my favor (with comic books, it was at parity). I scoured several places looking for nothing in particular, it just needed to be something I was into and had no chance of being played on the mediocre Bismarck station we got in Beulah. The one discovery which blew my mind was the new Split Enz album See Ya’ Round being plugged. All previous research I had done over Christmas through those back catalog books stores used to have said Split Enz broke up in the last couple years. I scored it plus got solid deals on Tim Finn’s first solo, Adam Ant’s Vive Le Rock and a couple others. Rather odd I didn’t bother with anything by the Payola$ after the tutorial on the radio.

There other things we did beyond shopping. To me, the overall pleasantness was being in a decent-sized city again. The weather was crap but it wasn’t anything too different from what we were accustomed to in Beulah. In the back of my mind, I was thinking Winnipeg was a preview of what life may be like in Milwaukee since I had been recently accepted to Marquette.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t wait to return to school the following Monday to share all the awesome new swag I scored. Those Dark Knight comics and some good tea were greatly appreciated by the Danish exchange student in my class; Christian often said American tea was as water-down as our beer.

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