The Patriot Post® · The Great Plains Through Southern Eyes

I am a Southern boy. There is no getting around it. I still fry things, make a “mess” of greens when I can find them, use bacon grease as a starter for a dozen different things, and I cook and make cornbread in a cast iron skillet. And no, I definitely don’t put sugar in my cornbread.

I say “Yes sir” and “Yes ma'am” with a conviction born of the belief that if I didn’t there would suddenly appear a dozen or more well-known Southern evangelists condemning my soul to a place hotter than my homemade chili — a dish so hot I have only found two people out of three-quarters of a million North Dakotans who can stand to eat it.

I still call all hunting dogs “bird dogs” and know that everything beyond the front door is called a “porch,” and that’s where the dogs that can’t hunt belong and where I will likely wind up in my old age — sitting in a cane back rocker with my memories and a glass of what only Kentucky can do with water and corn. If I am a lucky man, alongside will be a sweet old dog with whom I have shared hill and dale but whose time has slowed due to aches that keep her on the porch instead of the fields of our mutual youth.

I have only said “Bless your heart” twice in the 10 years I have lived in North Dakota. Both times were richly deserved. Neither recipient had a clue what the phrase meant.

But since I write a column titled “Grassroots From the Plains,” I think it only fair I tell you something of this place.

The people of the Dakotas are warm and inviting. It is “Southern hospitality” with a Norwegian/German/Russian accent. They are extremely helpful and go out of their way to assist their neighbors with any calamity that might arise. This is no doubt born of generations of settlers facing conditions so brutal that the only way to survive was to collaborate. These memories would be passed to subsequent generations and have ultimately created an attitude of cheerful helpfulness among the population here.

Winter is cold. There actually needs to be a word far more descriptive than merely “cold” to truly describe what 30 below zero with 30 MPH of wind feels like, but everyone here just deals with it and life goes on. When a few snowflakes cancel schools in the South, a blizzard dumping 22 inches of snow overnight in North Dakota might see schools starting an hour late.

Living in the South, snow was a magical and beautiful thing that we looked forward to the same way a child views an overstuffed stocking on Christmas morning. After a decade of heavy snows here, I am still defining my relationship with that weather event, but I have definitely deleted “magical” from the list of descriptive adjectives.

The crime rate in North Dakota is extremely low. Many don’t lock their homes here and just as many never pull the keys from the ignition in their vehicles. Early on I asked some of the natives here about these habits and the general reply was, “The cold keeps the riff raff out…” Touché.

In many ways, life in the Great Plains reminds me of the ‘50s and the '60s in the South. The good parts. The parts where people were respectful of one another and life just had a slower pace. The part where a kid could gain valuable life lessons just by sitting on the porch with the old folks shelling green beans and drinking iced tea as they told their stories while the lightning bugs began to light the sky and the crickets and cicadas sang their chorus.

Life is much the same here. Different but the same. Not a bad different either, just born out of different geography and heritage. The stories are still told and the kids actually listen and learn.

I have acquired a love for both Knoephla soup and Lefse flatbread, neither of which will be found very far out of the Dakotas. I enjoy introducing both of these delicacies to the gentlemen of the South who come to hunt with me in the fall.

I most certainly have learned the profound implications of an often-heard phrase here: “Before the snow flies.” Get your gutters cleaned. Get your winter survival kit in the truck. Make sure the snow blower works. Make sure you have a full tank of gas. Get your Christmas lights up (even if it’s October). And for some, board everything up and head for Arizona. All “before the snow flies.”

The small cafés in the even smaller towns are very reminiscent of so many now missing in the South from my youth. These cafés are usually the social center of these small towns but are also the repository of wisdom gained through the ages by the local farmers, ranchers, and octogenarians seated in the corner at what I refer to as “the big table.” I can walk through the door in my jeans and rundown cowboy boots and hat after a morning afield with my dogs and they greet me as a local and push out a chair for me. I like that.

But let’s get one thing straight: BBQ only exists through the magic combination of hickory smoke and indirect heat, the classic “pit BBQ,” and it takes a long time to get it right. Low and slow is the only way. Fight over Memphis, Carolina, or Texas sauce and seasoning all you like, but let’s agree on the hickory pit.

So if one more person in the Great Plains tries to pass off Sloppy Joe as BBQ, I’m buying a cabin down South to get out of the worst parts of winter here and indulge in some good old genuine Southern cuisine.

After a decade in the Great Plains, I will always love it here and return. That being said, however, you may take the boy out of the South, but never the South out of the boy.