Things are happening in Western North Dakota that never used to happen before, sighed Stan's rancher cousin Harold tonight. Stan had phoned congratulations to him for the stunning Bison victory over the Gophers, but talk soon turned to crops, cattle and oil.
The family farm sits on the massive Bakken Shale formation, site of an epic oil boom that has changed everything in North Dakota and points west. "Two thirds of the vehicles on the road have out-of-state plates," he said. "There's more traffic around here than on the Interstate."
Trucks pass on rural roads, laden with tons of sand and water for cracking fissures during explosions to be set off in the rock formations a mile below. It's boggling. Different.
Others are telling stories of the economic impact this region is having on the country. Of the population surge, the wages, the housing shortage, the price of milk.
We'll tell these two:
1. This time of year, bulls get horny so it's not unusual for an occasional fence line to get busted out and livestock spread around. One day Rolfsrud cattle were reported loose on the roadway, so Cousin Dave dutifully went to round up the usual suspects. But this was no bull rush: Four strands of barbed wire had been neatly cut from BOTH sides of a steel fence post, leaving a big opening to greener pastures. "What kind of enemies have we got?" mused Harold, upon seeing the handiwork. But it turns out that a pipeline construction crew working in the area had chained a four-wheeler to the bottom of the Rolfsrud fence post for safe-keeping. A thief had then snipped the wires, which allowed the chain to be slipped over the top of the fencepost, freeing the prize. The Rolfsruds got their cattle back. Don't know about the workmen's four-wheeler that started it all.
2. Cousin John, a volunteer firefighter, helped pull two men from a crashed vehicle. Neither spoke English, though one possessed a North Dakota driver license, possibly counterfeit. They were carefully strapped to backboards and rushed to the emergency room. Once there, the story goes, a doctor released the straps on the boards to begin his examination. The pair promptly popped up and skedaddled.
These things just never used to happen in North Dakota.
