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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2010 Where you don’t have far to go to find nice folks fargo from F1 I don’t have a dog, and decided
against borrowing one. I brought my mother along with me in- stead. I also couldn’t carve out enough time for the whole voy- age, so I picked Fargo asmy final destination. Steinbeck went to Fargo because, he wrote in “Char- ley,” he was “curious how a place unvisited can take such hold on the mind so that the very name sets up a ringing.” Ina letter to his wife from the road, he wrote that he had heard of the place all his life and simply had to go. And so I did, too.
DETAILS I planned to leave from Ver-
mont, pick up Steinbeck’s route roughly in Rouses Point,N.Y., and follow it west, stopping, for the most part, where he stopped. “Charley” is an exuberant log of life on the road; I wanted to see what Steinbeck had seen, and consider what 50 years had done to the route. After Rouses Point, my stops were Erie, Pa.; a Flint, Mich., detour to see aGMfactory, one of the Rust Belt “hives of production” that Steinbeck wrote about only in passing; Chicago; Mauston, Wis.; Detroit Lakes, Minn.; and Fargo. It was a reasonable enough
plan, but for the first day and a half of the drive, I was battling doubts. The voice on the GPS device would say, “Turn right,” and then I could almost hear her add, under her breath, “Why are you doing this?” and “Steinbeck didn’t have a GPS,” and some other judgmental things about my life choices. Then I met Jean at a Stewart’s
gas station near Philadelphia, N.Y. She tried to sell me a large quantity of discounted ice cream with my bottled water. When I told her that I couldn’t take it because I was on the road, she said, “Take me with you!” The evening’s destination was
Erie. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go theremyself.Whywouldshe want to come along? “Because then I wouldn’t be
here,” she said. “I’m 52 years old, and I’ve never been out of New York state.” I was onmyway into and out of
several states that very day and would hit 11 total in two weeks; I couldn’t take her with me, but I could carry the salve to travelers’ doubt that she’dgivenme:a quick reminder of how lucky I was to be able to pick up and drive off on a journey that I’d thought about for so long.
Having a destination selected
for me by a literary guide infused all the miles with a strange sort of purpose. The scenery was all something that Steinbeck might have seen: the Upstate New York secondhand furniture store called It-L-Do; the slight hills in Wisconsin, tufted with just- turned red and yellow trees; the eerily empty proto-Main Street of “Main Street” fame, in author Sinclair Lewis’s boyhood home of Sauk Centre, Minn. And finally, North Dakota’s largest city. Today, most people don’t come
to Fargo on literary historical reveries. They come to shop. That’s according to BrianMatson of the Fargo-Moorhead Conven- tion and Visitors Bureau. It is, he said, “the largest shopping desti- nation between Minneapolis/St. Paul and theWest Coast.” I took in that information and proceeded to avoid the enormous West Acres mall and the checker- board of wheat fields turned big- box stores entirely. Instead, Iwandereddowntown
Fargo’s Broadway, stopping in art galleries, small boutiques, coffee shops and the uncategorizable Zandbroz Variety for a novelty T-shirt listing key world travel destinations: “Moscow. London. Paris. Fargo.” Broadway is anchored by the
Fargo Theatre, and its beautifully restored marquee cheerfully re- minded me in bright lights every time I caught sight of it that I had made it tomy destination. It was all pretty picture-per-
fect, all the more so because I’d been told how desolate the down- town used to be even 10 or 15 years ago. Most people outsideNorth Da-
kota probably know Fargo best from the 1996 Coen brothers film “Fargo,” a movie that residents insist reflects nothing like life there, except for the dedication of the “hardworking sheriff.” Sec- ond to that, what puts Fargo on the national radar is the reason Steinbeck had always heard of it: It’s a place of weather extremes. Themost recent has been danger- ously high flooding of the Red River. I was told that to under- stand what kind of community Fargo is, I should head down to
PHOTOS BY RACHEL DRY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Clockwise from top: Lunch specials at Rockin’ Relics, an antiques store and diner inRugby,N.D., include cheeseburger chowder.Areplica of a wooden Viking ship fills the atrium at the Hjemkomst Center inMoorhead,Minn., right across the Red River from Fargo. The author’s trip also brought her to Alice, where John Steinbeck went to nurse his “mythological wounds.”
the dike near Island Park, just a few blocks from Broadway, and picture thewholeplace filled with volunteers and sandbags and wa- ter.
First I had to find the dike. On
the cross-country road trip we’d takenwhenIwasa kid, I’dtried to pretend not to be a tourist, em- barrassed at being a AAA-guide- toting stranger in a strange land. I realized that I’ve outgrown that completely when I stood on the bank of the Red River and inter- rupted the quiet contemplation of a trio of fishermen to ask: “Hi, umm. Excuse me. Where is the dike?” I posed this query while stand-
ing probably no more than 15 feet from the sloping grassy hill that I had just walked down—the dike itself.Oneof the fisherman point- ed me back the way I had come and didn’t even laugh. I stood at the top of the incline
and tried to picture the river coming all the way up to the 40-foot marker, as it had in 2009. But on this day, it was safely high and dry. I had a week of weather so
lovely that local meteorologist John Wheeler said he was “run- ning out of synonyms for nice.” Peoplekept tellingmehowlucky I was to be in town for these tem- peratures. And there were other reminders: Several skywalks link the civic center to the main drag, an efficient way of avoiding the elements when the high might hover in the minus-20s. The cold can be brutal, every-
one said, but also character-en- hancing. That seems like an aw- fully chilly silver lining, but it does work out pretty well. On the highway outside Fargo, I’d seen the following billboards: “Be Grateful.” “Be Kind.” “Be Nice.” They seemed like the most un- necessary large-type imperatives you could put on a billboard in this Zip code. Everyone here is kind and nice. Amelia Young, president of the
Fargo-Moorhead Curling Club, took me to watch the ice being made at the group’s indoor rink. We couldn’t curl, as I’d hoped to do, but she toured me around, showed me the North Dakota State University campus and told me about life in Fargo for young professionals. My mother took a longer stroll along the river and said that everyone nodded and
smiled at her. It seemed as though, if we had
stuck around another few days, we could have found ourselves on a committee of some sort, or preemptively filling sandbags in time for spring.
Steinbeck wanted to go to Far-
go for a very unscientific reason: because, he observed, “when you fold a map of the U.S., Fargo will be in the crease.” The middle of the continent. So possibly the place to take the pulse of Ameri- ca? I wasn’t really pulse-taking, but since I was already all theway to Fargo, we drove the extra 200 miles to Rugby, the Geographic Center ofNorth America. At least, someone at the Interior Depart- ment once proclaimed it to be the center, even though the center is actually a fewmiles away. And it does feel like you’re at
the center of something. We stopped for lunch at Rockin’ Rel- ics, an antiques store/diner, and enjoyed cheeseburger chowder. That’s a middle-of-it-all delicacy. There’s a Prairie VillageMuseum, but that was closed. So with the wind blowing pretty fiercely even on a mild day, knocking over trash cans and dusting the main street with cattail fuzz, I had to imagine how difficult life had been for the pioneers. Life in the center is a little
different from life anywhere else, longtime resident DeeDee Bis- choff told me. “I’ve been to the ocean, and I realize when I’m home that I can take a step in any direction and get closer to the sea,” she said. Either coast does feel quite far
away at the monument to the geographic center, just off the highway right outside town. The obelisk stands on a heart-shaped base—they’re pretty on-message here—and the flags of theUnited States, Canada and Mexico flap wildly behind it. The monument was actually
moved a bit several years ago to accommodate a highway expan- sion, so the definition of “the center” is sort of elastic. Dondi Sobolik, formerly with the cham- ber of commerce, said that when tourists used to wander into the diner near the monument look- ing confused, the locals would always help them out. The visi- tors would say, “I could have sworn that monument was in
another place when I was here 30 years ago.” And the regulars would smile and say, “Yeah, well, there was a big earthquake in Alaska and part of the state fell into the ocean, so we had to move it.” Sobolik reports that the tour- ists would always nod and agree that that made sense. We laughed at the silly tourists,
andthen I piled intomy rental car and took off. But maybe the joke was on me. Gullibility is a hazard of just passing through.
Rugby was a diversion from Steinbeck’s route, and it opened up a non-Steinbeck-dictated part of the journey. From Rugby, I wanted to get to the tiny town of Alice, near theMaple River, close to where he had camped, and back toFargo for the evening.The in-between part was a wide-open scenic loop that included the tiny college town ofMayville. I have trouble with decisions
generally, but eating at Paula’s Cafe — on the stoplit corner in this one-stoplighttown—wasthe easiest choice of the trip. And the tuna melt and cherry pie offered clear, whipped-cream-topped af- firmation of that decision. Betha- ny Bertrand, who owns the place with her husband, said that the Wednesday lunch crowd we were seeing, with nearly all the two- dozen or so seats taken, was pret- ty much the usual, though it gets more crowded from 3 to 4, with the 25-cent coffee happy hour. A North Dakota map takes up
most of the back wall, and Ber- trand said that people like to gather around the map and talk about farming — beet prices, corn, everything — and news from across the state. I understood the ice-breaking
allure of a map.We studied ours, too, and plotted a course from Mayville through the Sheyenne River valley to a stop at Little Yellowstone, no geysers in sight. The road was marked “scenic,” but I actually preferred the larger Highway 2. I loved the expansive fields and the tidy rows of trees that had been planted between the fields and around the houses and barns as some measure of protection against the wind.
I endedmy journey by learning about someone else’s journey, en-
shrined at theHjemkomst Center inMoorhead,Minn., right across the river from Fargo, where a replica of a wooden Viking ship fills the atrium. I climbed a stair- case to peek into the hull, where the cots are arranged so that you can see what it might have been like to cross the Atlantic in a boat like this. (Soggy and splintery, it seemed.) We watched a low-budget doc- umentary about the ship’s 1982 journey from Minnesota to Nor- way, the dream of Moorhead school counselor Robert Asp. It took him six years to build his replica, working over the sum- mers when school was out. Before the project was com-
plete, Asp received a diagnosis of leukemia. After his death, his children continued the project and eventually made the trip he’d dreamed about. Watching the film alone in a small room at the center, mymomand I both got a little weepy.
Steinbeck didn’t like Fargo, at
least not as much as I did.He had expected it to beonething, atown blizzard-buried in the middle of October, maybe, and instead got just a lovely fall day. It wasn’t one of the great mysterious places of the world, as he’d imagined. In “Charley,” he recounts driving out oftownandcampingfor the night near Alice to nurse his“mytholog- ical wounds.” He decided that what he’d ac-
tually seen didn’t matter much; it wouldn’t disturb his notion of the place. “I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stron- ger,” he wrote. This is where I disagree with him, or need to makemy own addendum. The reality of the road trip
made the romance of the road even stronger, and I was only sorry that I had to leave the road too soon—before I was sick of it, or sick of Steinbeck, ormythologi- cally wounded. I went to Fargo to follow Stein-
beck.Now I want to go back.
dryr@washpost.com
GETTING THERE If you don’t want to travel with Steinbeck, United Airlines has connecting flights fromWashington Dulles to Fargo, N.D., from $440 round trip.
WHERE TO STAY Hotel Donaldson 101 Broadway 701-478-1000
www.hoteldonaldson.com Rooms in this boutique hotel feature work by local artists—lots of cornfields in black and white— and there’s a “sky prairie” (think garden plus hot tub) on the roof. Rooms from $159.
Radisson Hotel 201 Fifth St. N. 701-232-7363
www.radisson.com/fargo-hotel- nd-58102/fargo At 18 stories, the tallest building in town. Rooms from $104.
WHERE TO EAT JL Beers 518 First Ave. N. 701-492-3377
www.jlbeers.com North Dakota leads the nation in malt barley production; its farmers also grow a fair number of chipping potatoes. So it’s practically a requirement to sample the local beers, freshly made potato chips and, yes, delicious burgers at this downtown spot. Burgers $3 to $4; beers $3.50 to $6.50.
Fargo Billiards and Gastropub 3234 43rd St. S. 701-282-4168
www.fargobilliards.com North America’s largest (self- proclaimed) pool hall also serves tastier-than-average bar food, with burgers from $7.50 and sandwiches from $5. Live music Wednesdays could feature the Deb Jenkins quartet—and Jenkins’s version of Bob Dylan classics. (Dylan once lived in Fargo.)
Rockin’ Relics 205 S. Main Ave., Rugby, N.D. 701-208-1365 Specials including cheeseburger chowder start at $2 to $3.
Paula’s Cafe (Steakhouse and Lounge) 11W. Main St., Mayville, N.D. 701-788-4026
www.paulassteakhouseandlounge. com Try the cherry pie (about $2). And 25-cent coffee happy hour from 3 to 4 p.m. weekdays and all day Sunday.
WHAT TO DO Fargo Theatre 314 Broadway 701-235-4152
www.fargotheatre.org Independent film and live performances at this beautifully restored art deco theater at the center of downtown.When there’s no show going on, peek in on the Wurlitzer Theatre Pipe Organ.
Zandbroz Variety 420 Broadway 701-239-4729
www.zandbroz.com Shop for books, including local titles, and other unique gifts.
Plains Art Museum 701 First Ave. N. 701-232-3821
www.plainsart.org Open Tuesday,Wednesday and
Friday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m; Thursday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. $5.
Historical&Cultural Society of Clay County Hjemkomst Center 202 First Ave. N., Moorhead, Minn. 218-299-5511
www.hcscconline.org See a Viking ship replica that made it from Minnesota to Norway in 1982. Open Monday and Wednesday-Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Tuesday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sunday noon to 5 p.m. $7.
INFORMATION
www.fargomoorhead.org
6
on
washingtonpost.com On the road
For more photos of Fargo and environs go
to
washingtonpost.com/travel —R.D.
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