ND Day 5 - License Plate Tags, Lost Treasures, and Local Culture
Today I started doing a pretty reasonable thing to do the day after you’ve been arrested: I slept until noon. While I feel like I did the state of North Dakota, and Bismarck in particular, a bit of disservice by not actively exploring as much today and the day after, I had quite a bit of sadness and guilt over being dumb enough to be arrested the way I was arrested and to be so uncool as to have my most major criminal charge being the result of trying to see a nice garden. Fortunately, because I slept through the first half of the day, it meant that by the time I was awake my friend Julian was finished with his intern responsibilities for the day so he was able to join me on my day’s excursions.
We started by going off to see the one Atlas Obscura entry for Bismarck: a grave in Fairview Cemetery belonging to Lenard Milo Mennes, the man who invented the little tags on license plates that you get with your annual inspection. This hilariously wordy epitaph tells Lenard’s story of going from being a humble DMV employee to being the inventor of something that nearly everybody uses even if they’re not aware of it. His story is a beautiful blend of the mundane and the fantastic as the actual invention is really just a bureaucratic convenience, but it was something that could have probably made Lenard millions and he walked away from that. He thought it useful and he wanted everyone to be able to use so if he refused to patent his little tag in order to just make the world a slightly more convenient place. All he asked for was a grave that would tell his story. It was a weird pit stop, but a sweet reminder that some people genuinely live their lives doing things out of the goodness of their hearts.
After the cemetery, we drove down to a scenic historic spot just outside downtown Bismarck called the Camp Hancock State Historic Site. The big draw of the site is an imposing vintage Northern Pacific Railroad car housed under a log garrison built for armed guards to watch over the trains while the railroads were being built in the 1870s. It’s interesting that something that looks so old-fashioned and homey was built out of necessities arising from the violent unpredicatability of the frontiers.
Next to the railroad car, there was a historic church called the Church of the Bread of Life which was as beautiful as the name was insane.
Inside, they had some incredible stained glass windows with alternating simple, elegant designs and intricate, lavish religious imagery. I think they would have looked spectacular any time, but one advantage of having slept in so much was that mid afternoon sunlight was really hitting the windows just perfectly.
Other highlights beyond the windows included a gorgeously carved old wooden pump organ and some classy paintings on the walls:
After the the Church of the Bread of Life (it’s still very silly to me), Julian and I walked just a block or so down the street a great little coffee shop called Coffee Break. From the outside, it looks a bit like a convenience store, but inside it’s like delightful old fashioned soda fountain with racks of glass bowls holding different chocolates and a huge selection of flavored coffees to choose from. I went with a classic almond joy combination and I forget exactly what Julian got, but we were both very pleasantly surprised that this unassuming shop made getting caffeinated taste so good.
After getting our coffee, we had some time to kill until Julian’s roommate, Sarah, finished her classes for the day so what is the one thing two red-blooded young American men instantly set out to do? That’s right, it’s antiquing. We were just a few blocks away from the massive Bismarck Antique Mall so there was no way we were missing it.
Housed over multiple floors, the antique mall was jam packed with all kinds of things both beautiful and strange arranged into a magnificent hodgepodge. Breaking the mélange up slightly into themes, there were some incredible sets of glassware and ceramics ranging from elegant glass designs to ornate German steins to glasses perfectly shaped like corn.
Of course, somehow in every antique store around the country it’s only a matter of time before some old relic ends up being incredibly racist:
The antique mall was also filled with various pieces of art including paintings, blown glass, and sculptures by local artist as well as much goofier pieces like a poster for a baffling forgotten 1960s cartoon called Pinocchio in Outer Space (watch the insane trailer here) and a genuinely alarming poster of Santa taking a bath with the caption “Joy to the World”.
And of course there was all manner of more difficult to categorize odds and ends. Some highlights for me included: a vintage sci-fi spinning top; a bowling pin shaped cribbage board with a cartoon skunk indicating the skunk line (the point where you’ve lost without even making it halfway around the board); an original copy of one of Marvel’s Tarzan knock-off Kazar’s comics called the Skull of the Lizard Man; just a giant leaf bug in a glass case; a clock made out of a polished log of wood; a family of dolls made out of corn husks; a very unusually shaped guitar; and naturally a painted buffalo skull because what home would be complete without one.
After antiquing up a storm, Julian and I went to go pick up Sarah who was taking a Lakota language class, which was super interesting to learn about. She’s part Lakota herself, and it was great to get to talk someone who’s actually lived with and experienced the culture as opposed to just reading about it in a museum exhibit which can be incomplete at best or horribly biased at worst. Sarah was no stranger to this as she had worked with the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology to get the museum to acknowledge their role in stealing certain cultural artifacts and misrepresenting Harvard’s treatment of local native peoples as much more positive than it really was .
All that being said, once we were all together our first move was to head to the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. I wanted to go because it was supposed to be one of the top tourist spots in the city, and Julian and Sarah had been meaning to go but hadn’t had time between classes and internship work so they were happy to have an excuse.
Outside the museum, there was a really stoic statue of Sakakawea (North Dakota’s preferred spelling of the name most state’s write as a Sacagawea, as it is more accurate to the Hidatsa language). While I think everyone learns a little bit about her helping Lewis and Clark, it really can’t be overstated how much she constantly saved theme by gathering food, finding paths, and working as translator to assure other Native American tribes that their intentions were exploratory and peaceful. The fact that she did all this while only 16 and about to give birth to her first child, little Jean-Baptiste featured in the sculpture, is just insane. My favorite thing about the sculpture is that the artist, Leonard Crunelle, actually got Sakakawea’s grand-daughter Mink Woman to serve as a model, and while she looks like she was probably older than her grandma was on the actual journey she really lends it a sense of gravitas and wonderful continuity.
The first exhibit we saw when we walked in was a special exhibit on political cartoons. While some of them were really artistically well done, I think it’s almost impressive how at every point in history political cartoons are almost never actually funny. Still this one was bizarre enough that I got a real kick out of it.
There was also a small display about the Métis people, descendants of Native Americans and the first European fur trappers and immigrants to the Americans. There was a fantastic blending of Native and European traditions in their quilting, fur, and saddle craftsmanship and it was a great way of honoring the cultural background of many of North Dakota’s European immigrants.
The museum’s main exhibits began with a collection celebrating the natural world of North Dakota. Highlights for me included: an unnecessarily intense scene of a hawk obliterating a rabbit; a hilariously plump beaver seemingly trying to look tough despite his paunch; and a sweet family of buffalo in front of a beautifully painted backdrop.
Next up was a collection of Native American arts, crafts, and cultural artifacts. There were some beautiful hand-made pieces, with the various ceramics and quilts really standing out. It was great having Sarah there filling in details when she could and questioning the curation and how the museum chose to represent certain items in ways I wouldn’t have thought to on my own. Some highlights for me included: an evocatively painted animal hide drum; a sleek white tent; an ornate headdress in front of a beautifully vibrant quilt; a very intimidating wooden weapon of some kind; a squat little raft brilliantly insulated in Buffalo hide to make sailing on cold rivers not so unbearable; an impressively carved horse-shaped pipe;another ornate headdress in front of a beautiful quilt; a winter count detailing in pictographs the major events of the year for the artist’s tribe; and some really stunning pottery.
While it wasn’t an original artifact, I think my favorite part of this exhibit was this beautiful painting the museum used as a backdrop. The warmth and playfulness of the children was just so sweet.
The display I found the most interesting though was this breakdown of common signs used in North American Plains Indian Sign Language. This sign language long pre-dates the American Sign Language common in the Deaf community as it was developed hundreds of years ago as a way for various tribes to trade and communicate with each without having to learn all the complexities of each other’s spoken languages. It was a really fascinating bit of history, I had never heard before.
Next up was a special exhibit on local pottery either made by or carried by European immigrants to the Dakotas. The highlights for me here were: an intricately designed delft plate; a set of figurines representing the grumpiest rendition of the Three Little Pigs I’ve ever seen, and a simple but very effective plate with a large building glazed on it.
And of course, what hallway would be complete without a fully reconstructed wooly mammoth skeleton right in the middle of it? This old fella was truly massive!
Past the mammoth (a prepositional phrase I’m didn’t think I’d ever use) there was an early wood-bodied automobile that looks so alarmingly rickety to think people actually rode in it. Yet I’m sure at the time people thought it was the height of luxury.
The next major permanent exhibition was called North Dakota Yesterday and Today and it was a delightful mishmash of all sorts of artifacts from North Dakotan daily life throughout the ages. The first item we came across we initially thought was an electric chair but it turned out to just be an old hair salon chair.
Next up was a series of historic outfits ranging from handmade Native American shawls to lavishly embroidered European garments to an early spacesuit. The last one was a bit of a surprise, but a fun one.
In a collection of items brought over by European Immigrants, this one extraordinarily painted Scandinavian wooden box really stood out.
Next up was a collection of various local arts. My favorites were: a charmingly painted folk art scene of a people drinkin’ and a-carousing; a gorgeous polished stone sculpture of a turtle; an elegant brass relief of roaring waves and art-deco femininity; and a hauntingly sparse contemporary landscape painting.
Next up was a collection of homegoods and kitchen wares. My favorites were an insanely decorative waffle iron and some cute house shaped napkin holders.
After the homegoods was a wonderful collection of musical instruments from both Native and European musical traditions. They were really lovely pieces of craftsmanship and I really loved that there were was no sense of regional distinctions with Native American drums side by side with Scottish bagpipes and German Accordions because I think it speaks to the universality of music.
The next displays were on hunting and fishing, which weren’t really my main areas of interest but I did enjoy seeing a ludicrous pistol that looks like the thing Jack Nicholson’s Joker uses in the first bat man movie and a mount of one of the goofiest dang fish I’ve ever seen.
Hanging on one wall was a pictographic account by an artist named Stone Man depicting the arrest and death of Sitting Bull, a great Lakota leader who had triumphed in the Battle of Little Big Horn but would ultimately be killed by police after resisting an unwarranted arrest they made in attempt to keep him from joining a Ghost Dance and inspiring other Native Americans to continue fighting against their treatment by the US government.
The next display was all ornate religious items including some incredibly carved silver ceremonial pieces and simple elegant prayer shawls and mats.
Probably my favorite part of the museum was the next exhibit which was a full scale replica of a 1950s ice cream shoppe and soda fountain. This included some quirky vintage soda bottles, a sleek and stylish fountain area, and a glorious old jukebox.
Next up was a collection of vintage vehicles. I particularly liked this goofy looking tractor that sort of looked like a miniature steam engine and a particularly snazzy ethanol pump.
There was also a simulator for driving one of those giant harvesters and I think Julian looked really right at home up there:
naturally the real ones tend to have wheels
Last but not least was a few special exhibits of local art. My favorites here included cute, wooden owl and hear keychains; incredible wooden vases and bowls with beautiful geometric designs handmade by a retired farmer name Dale Sauer; and an exhibition of winners from a school art competition asking children from grades K-12 to draw different birds. Closer to the K end of K-12, the drawings were charmingly abstract, and closer to the 12 they got legitimately great so it was really win-win all the way around.
At this point, I went stepped outside to take a call from my cousin Andrew. Andrew’s a lawyer, and a very good one at that, and I guess news of my arrest had made it through the family grapevine so he was checking in on me. The gossiping of Irish aunts was expected (and sweet in its way), and it was nice to hear from him, even if I’d have liked the circumstances to be different. I’d spent a good chunk of last night and this morning furiously googling North Dakota drug laws and making sure i was aware of my rights and what I could reasonably expect to come next, but it was still super helpful to talk to someone who actually knew what they were talking about. My big takeaway was that however you plead in an arraignment doesn’t necessarily determine how you have to plead if your case goes to trial, so essentially pleading “not guilty” is saying that you are making an appeal for your right to a free trial while pleading “guilty” would be tantamount to waiving your right to a trial. That’s a pretty big deal, because even if it’s a small misdemeanor like mine, waiving your right to a trial puts your sentencing fully up to the discretion of the judge. Presumably, your judge is fair and decent and your sentence will be reasonable, but if it isn’t then you are up the proverbial creek. If you plead not guilty, you have the right to a trial where you can always plead guilty if that’s the right thing to do later, but you at least have a shot to get a little more say on the terms. There could even be a chance that the state or the court decides it’s not worth their time to have the trial and might throw the case out. It was a lot to think about, and it absolutely blew my mind how different your experience with the justice system can go just depending on your access to knowledge. I was really lucky to have a talented lawyer a phone call away, and it didn’t hurt that my friends were interning at a law firm, but if you ever end up in legal trouble without connections or money, I found out there were also free legal advice hotlines that were very helpful if you don’t mind waiting on the line a bit. It’s good knowing there are services like that out there, because, even if I was lucky, it shouldn’t require being related to a lawyer to get a fair chance in the legal system.
I was so caught up in the heavy phone call that I almost didn’t notice it was an absolutely beautiful day outside, and the perfect blew sky was really complementing the museum’s sleek architecture. Luckily, I noticed just in time to snap this photo of Julian looking like a real bad ass dude:
After the museum, we drove to the next town over to get some excellent brick oven pizzas at a restaurant in Minot called the Starving Rooster. We split a veggie pizza and a mushroom with restaurant’s signature 4 cheese blend and a perfectly crispy oven-fired crust. Contrary to the look on my face in the picture Julian took (took the right) it was actually a really fun dinner. What could be better than good friends and good pizza?
After dinner, we went to a cool waterfront bar called The Drink at Lakewood, where we met up with some of Julian and Sarah’s friends from the law firm. We got fun cocktails at a table looking out over the Missouri River, and we just hung out, drinking, chatting, and occasionally taking breaks to play cornhole all in the pleasant summer evening sun. It felt so nice and normal, which were two things I was really looking for after this whirlwind of a week.
I really liked their friends Joe and Hilary, who were together but probably too hip and free spirited to call it dating. They were fun, funny, and easy to talk, and, unsurprisingly, two people working to fight with Native Americans against the Dakota Access Pipeline were also just really sweet and caring.
As the sun was setting, we bar-hopped over to a fun dive called the Tap In Tavern because they were doing karaoke. I wasn’t too too excited about karaoke, but I was happy for the company and Julian was being our designated driver so I couldn’t say no to $3 beers.
Karaoke was fun and silly. Highlights included: the panic on a white guy who decided to rap’s face as he had to make the game time decision of whether or not to say the N-word along with the song (he didn’t thankfully); me doing my drunk karaoke staple of just yelling the words to Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl); and all of joining for a sing-along of I’ll Make a Man Out of You from Mulan do a very unamused North Dakota dive bar. It was a good night.
Favorite Random Attractions: Snortland (no clue); a coffee shop called Bitty's Bean; a place advertising “Design that feeds the insides” (I feel like nobody has the heart to tell them that technically everything feeds the insides); Carter's Capitol Shoe Hospital; a machinery store called Butler Cat (sadly not a fancy feline); a horribly named auto-shop called Mr. Lubester; Prairie Patriot Firearms (Yikes)
Regional Observation: Bismarck was nice, but definitely one of the least city-like capitol cities I’d been to thus far.
Albums Listened To: 10 Day by Chance the Rapper (the mixtape that launched him from a suspended high school senior to a superstar)
Joke of the Day:
Upon entering the little country store, the stranger noticed a sign saying "DANGER! BEWARE OF DOG!" posted on the glass door. Inside he noticed a harmless old hound dog asleep on the floor besides the cash register.
He asked the store manager, "Is that the dog folks are supposed to beware of?"
"Yep, that's him," he replied.
The stranger couldn't help but be amused. "That certainly doesn't look like a dangerous dog to me. Why in the world would you post that sign?"
"Because," the owner replied, "before I posted that sign, people kept tripping over him."
Song of the Day:
cute video
Bonus Video Because it’s crazy to see Chance doing an open mic a cappella just months before he becomes a nation-wide success: