Bob Rosenvold bows his head in prayer in a prayer circle for victims of the Red River flooding during a citywide worship service at the Ramada Plaza Suites Sunday in Fargo. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, March 30, 2009
Fargo ND is pretty much a prairie version of PEI and most rural North America. A supply city in the middle of an agricultural economy, on Sunday people go to church. With the dikes holding Fargo citizens split their time between worry and the Lord. While the Lutheran faith dominates the Fargo church scene due to the strong Scandinavian and Germanic background of the people, there are churches of every denomination for your choosing.
Being in Fargo always felt like home here on PEI except with cowboy hats.
The main difference is Fargo is flat and floods from time to time. The worst may be over but the risk is still severe. A woman was arrested on Sunday trying to drive her van on the dikes. Engineers are shoring up dikes from wave action damage. Seepage is a problem and more snow is on the way. Moorhead MN is looking for volunteers today. Only a few homes have flood insurance so the losses will require Federal assistance. Down stream the towns and villages wait. Grand Forks has done major work since the 1997 flood devastated the downtown. Will it hold the Red River in check?
Roger Maris Museum, West Acres Mall, Fargo, ND
The people of Fargo, like people all over the world, are hard working decent folk who will try to help if they can. They mix old values with new values of younger people enjoying themselves and discovering life at the local rock or country bars on the weekend. Many people are religious and pious: others are more secular in the age of technology and consumerism.
PEI has 150 more years of European settlement so people in Fargo celebrate their grandfather’s and great grandfathers stories a little more than we do. PEI has a stronger Celtic music heritage than Fargo which in my time there seemed to have merged the settlers music with country and rock.
Besides being a farm centre, Fargo has a large university NDSU with rabid football boosters, hence the Bison Dome. It sports local business including the makers of Bobcats and Great Plains Software, now part of the Microsoft empire. Pick up trucks are popular along with SUV’s. They have the same shopping centres and stores we do, although some of them are larger. They sell real cowboy gear in the largest regional shopping centre the West Acres shopping mall. West Acres is a glitzy mall with a small showcase museum to the local boy who hit 61 home runs in 1961, NY Yankees slugger Roger Maris.
Bob Dylan went to Fargo in his teenage years from nearby Hibbing Minnesota to watch Bobby Vee perform. It gave him big ideas of stardom as a rock star. He didn’t tell the world until be broke out of folk music into folk rock in 1964.
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