Culling The Herd

Michael Black
Contributing Writer

10:30 12/17/2011 sunny 32 degrees

First stop Happy Harry’s Liquor Store. It looks like a food center on campus, students streaming in and out. Pocket sized pints being bought. My brain assumes it’s “SnoShoe Grog”, my pocket drink of choice when using firearms or attending outdoor sporting events in
olden times.

Football games at the outdoor Dacotah Field made alcohol mandatory, even on the infrequent autumn days when the sunlight bathed the hard, natural grass field, the air so crisp, light so sharp it hurt your yes. I recall the times I bellied under the fence and turned
misdemeanor into money vending concessions. In those innocent, prepubescent days there was no booze involved for me, save the frigid exhalations on those not so much crisp as brittle days when everyone was freezing their asses off.

I proceed to Ground Zero, the western parking lots of the FargoDome. The flock is in full tailgate mode even at 1100. A sea of green and gold banners and American flags flutter overhead. Kids act out amazing football plays, barbeques of all kinds are being stoked, a frenzy
building. All manner of vehicles are parked in neat rows, some in the $500K neighborhood, some you would find in your state park fish camps. A True Democracy (Auto-cracy?). All manner of “fashion” is on display. I could be apres ski in Aspen or Ashtabula, Park City or Park Rapids.

West of the “high rent” camp I cross a drainage ditch to another section of tailgaters. No Prevosts or Greyhounds here. Mostly just pick-ups, pop-ups, tents, and vans. Low rent. Barbeques of the charcoal variety; no high-end Charbroils here. Similar banners and flags flap in the breeze, coal smoke drifting sideways, hanging over the field. This could just as easily be 1863 Gettysburg. A chill runs up my spine.

Shockingly there is drinking going in spite of the signs prominently prohibiting the consumption of alcohol. Huh? College boys are “shot-gunning” beers. These could be the youngsters I see barfing on Downtown Baby Broadway weekend evenings. “Having fun yet?”, I ask a
regurgitator one night. “Hell yeah!”, retch, gag, upchuck. I recognize the wife of a friend amongst a cluster standing on their “front porch”. A vintage Greyhound has a tent annex serving as a dining room/bar. A Coat of Arms identifies them as the Fargo Beer Club (FBC). I need to join. I find Doug who opens the bar to me and returns to socializing. Suddenly there is a cacophony to my right. Blaring horns, bass drums; the Bison Band has fired up the Fight Song. They have obviously been practicing. I read that though the student population was technically on break having just completed finals, 80 percent of The Band had remained to add pep. They are good. And peppy. As they play they use all manner of choreography, marching, turning, twisting and hopping before high stepping it on to the next
performance.
. Blue Man Group imitators in yellow and green, multiple furry bison heads, green and gold striped pajama bottoms, colored glass beads ala Mardis Gras. I doubt they had to “show their Bison teats“ to get them. Every imaginable fashion in Bison colors is present, one big blur of Gold and Green. A particular jacket catches my eye. “Rajahs” is embroidered across the back in cursive. I remember them from Dacotah Field games. A quasi-formal group composed of students, they complimented the stuffy, pip-pip-tally-ho-old-chap demeanor of

The Bison Boosters Club. But, alas, they were a tad too “energetic”. Ala “Animal House”, they were put on double secret probation (or something) for Acts Unbecoming The University. I imagine Dean Wormer saying “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” One Rajah told me that his was a reproduction his wife had made. The original sits in the Property Room of the Grand Forks Police Department, dating back to “an incident“ circa 1975. Slipping nimbly into the role of his Attorney, I advise that the Statute of Limitations on whatever crime against humanity they had committed had assuredly lapsed (barring involvement in a homicide, grand larceny, barnyard animal abuse, etc.). His face goes ashen and he stares blankly past me into the distance. He seems suddenly Frightened. Demurring and slowly backing away from me, he cuts my counsel short, mumbles something to the effect of “…I wasn‘t even there; my friend had my jacket…” and moves toward the doors of the Dome. I wonder what horror had transpired to cause such Fear. There are also furry animal skins on women and men. I shake my head at the irony. The majestic Great Plains Bison was virtually eradicated for hides. Their coats, worn by dandies and working men alike, meant bad juju for the Bison. A good paying job was bringing in $1 a day and a pelt would sell for $3 in Kansas City. Teams would descend on the herds, sometimes shipping in on rail cars from the east. Professional hunters, backed by teams of skinners, gun cleaners, reloaders, chuck wagons, wranglers, blacksmiths, pep bands, guards, teamsters with
numerous horses and wagons would locate The Thundering Herd and kill as many as possible as quickly as possible. The gathering here sort of reminds me of them, transient and fast moving. This crowd, though, is here to support The Herd, not deplete it. Marksmen (like the dearly beloved folk-hero Buffalo Bill Cody) could knock down over 100 of the beasts in one sitting. Coats from hides could command upwards of $50.

The European market was huge in the trade of Bison skins. Railroads considered them as pesky as bugs splatting on the windshield on the drive home from The Lake. They slaughtered them wholesale, leaving them to rot so there would be fewer of them to derail their trains. The Wheels of Commerce rolled over the vast plains. Native Americans played their own role in the near annihilation of the species once they got hold of the white man’s horses. They would drive herds into dead ends and pot shoot them or just drive them over a cliff and call it a day. At least they used more of the animal than the good ‘ol boys. But still, dead is dead. And almost gone. I picture Bill Cody and his boyz in a man-camp of that era. How little has changed really. Only now it is Norwegian oil companies shooting holes in the ground for their piece of The Plains Bounty.

A Disturbance in the Force. Silently, a few people break camp. It begins to ripple throughout the encampment. As if someone were blowing one of those high-pitched, dog whistle thingies that only canines could hear, The Herd heard. What began as a trickle turns into a
stream, then a wave, then a flood into The Dome. Within minutes I feel like The Only Person Left On Earth. The aisles are empty, the street quiet. A feeling of desolation pours over me. The only thing missing is a tumbleweed. An empty beer can rolls past. I turn and head south…

Dacotah Field, home to The Thundering Herd until 1992, opened in 1910 and held 13,000 people. I circle the periphery, snapping pics. A late arriving truck enters the tennis court cum parking lot. “Any extra tickets?,” I ask, my first half-hearted attempt to Get In. “No, sorry.“ I shrug and head toward an opening in the fence. The grass field has been replaced by plastic turf, probably for use by club sports, flag football, that sort of thing. I walk the front of the stands, quiet ringing in my ears. A solitary chair sits facing the turf. It dawns on me that though the game has started in the pile of bricks across the street, I heard nothing. No roar of the crowd, just the hiss of car tires along the deserted street. Paint is peeling from the stands. Wooden benches sit neglected, unpainted, splintered and broken. The Press Box where Jim Adelson and Boyd Christenson once broadcast for National Championship Teams, boarded up and locked. As I climb to the mid-point of the stands a muffled roar floats over me. It has come through the bricks and mortar and found me. The Ghosts of
Dacotah Field. Another shiver runs up my spine and the hair on the back of my neck bristles.

I cross over to the dome and hear the radio feed from the speakers mounted outside. Cigarette smokers are corralled in holding pens. They look like cattle, the coup de gras for the wide ranging Plains Bison. Barbed wire and then more permanent fencing sectioned off The Prairie. Settlers defending their farms from cattle drives interrupt and ultimately end the ancient roaming of the Bison. I circle eastward to the main entry and gaze at the letters on the façade. “Fargod…” is hidden cryptically in the letters. A man is outside trying to get a
signal for his cell phone. He is holding a NCAA plastic bag. I feebly ask him for his ticket stub, not really wanting to get it. “No.” I enter the main lobby and find a bench. NCAA Bag Man follows me in, pulls a green football jersey out and pulls it on. A television silently flashes images of the game on the gridiron (gridplastic?). 19,000 of The Herd bellow. They are a matter of yards from me. They may as well be in Another Galaxy on a Distant Planet, Far, Far Away. Our Bison are en route to an easy win and onto The Championship Game in Frisco, Texas. Another irony. Longhorn cattle were largely bred and grown in Texas. Their long drives to market, the first wave of animal husbandry on The Great Plains, was harbinger of the end of the Bison legacy. Now our Bison are heading down there, driving many of The Herd inside with them.

Half-time commences and I see hoards of people milling about like cattle in the concourses. I get a call from a Shanley High School way-back girlfriend. She picks me up just as the game resumes. I never set foot in The Dome Proper. We head off to Café Alladin for some
shawarma, spinach pie and falafels. My, oh my, how things have changed.

Go Bison.

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