Transcripts of Interviews

Prairie Public Interiew with Tamie & Shawn Maddocks

Tamie and Shawn Maddocks, of Hunter, ND, talk about their move to a rural area and how they balance the joys of small town life with the dearth of insurance coverage and distance from medical services.

Prairie Public
Tell me about your family and why you chose to live in Hunter.

Shawn Maddocks
We have two girls. Brooke is our oldest one. She’s 11. Bailey is our second girl. She’s seven. We moved to Hunter due to being flooded out of a little farmstead north of Mapleton, and we bought a house up here. It’s close toTamie’s work and mine--nice quiet, little town. We’re both originally from Mapleton area.

Prairie Public
Tell me about small town life.

Tamie
We both grew up in Mapleton, and being out here just so much reminds me of being in my hometown. I grew up being able to ride my bike in the street and not have to worry about safety—in a small town the kids are on the street all the time. They’re playing the street. They’re walking in the street. Rollerblading, whatever, and the cars watch for them. When you’re in Fargo you have to watch for the cars. It’s important for the kids to just be able to go outside and play and not really have to worry too much about where they are and what they’re doing and then knowing that they’re not going to get hurt or get in trouble.

Shawn
We’re pretty much at ease here because when we first moved up here, there was a lot of people in town that had come right up to the yard or to our door and introduced themselves and welcomed us to the town so it really put us at ease.

Prairie Public
When you were flooded out, what were your thoughts?

Shawn
We wanted to be in a small town. We were ideally looking for a little farmstead but just couldn’t find anything at the time, and I was working up here at the farm where I am. And we just decided to move up here. It was a nice, quiet, little town, and talking with different people that lived up there, it had a lot of good talk about it .

Tamie
It was far enough away from the hustle and bustle of the city but yet close enough that it doesn’t take hours to get there. We can still do our major shopping that we need to do in Fargo so we’re close enough that way yet far enough away that it’s more like being out in the country.

Prairie Public
Tell me about your health insurance.

Tamie
We have Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Dakota, and it’s through the North Dakota Grain Dealers Association, and it’s paid for 100% by the elevator. All of the employees have their health insurance paid. When I first started working there, we weren’t married yet, and I was carrying the girls on my health insurance at that time. It was single plus dependent. When we got married, we switched to a family policy which is big increase in cost, it was never an issue.

Prairie Public
So you’ve got a small town business that’s really doing a good job providing health care coverage than many bigger businesses where employees have to pay their own coverage.

Tamie
Yup. We’re very fortunate. The elevator does pay. I don’t pay any of it.

Prairie Public
Where do you go for care?

Tamie
AmerCare is here now. When the girls were little, it was a bigger deal. You don’t just run over to the emergency room like you would do if you lived close. We moved here when the girls were a little bit older so a lot of the childhood sicknesses were done by the time we moved here. In town, when they are sick it’s a situation where seven o’clock in the morning you’re calling the clinic first thing, and you’re like how soon can we get there. That convenience just isn’t here. So you don’t just run ‘em over there for the sniffles and the earache. It’s really got to be something.

The girls don’t get sick much. They’re really not complainers when they’re not feeling good unless they’re really feeling bad. Then you know. Then we will take ‘em in. There is a clinic in Casselton which would be only 20 miles from here so it’s closer than Fargo. Shawn’s gone there a couple times when he’s been wounded at work. He’s gone there a couple times for stitches because it’s closer, but our girls haven’t gone there.

Prairie Public
Tell me about care when you got accidents at work.

Shawn
It was just a matter of having stitches. I had five, six stitches put in my finger here. I had sliced it open and broken the finger. I’ve been down there three, four times I suppose. It’s quick. It’s easy. They do a good job down there for real light, small stuff.

Tamie
And we do have an ambulance in town here, and we have first responders in all the rural areas. I really don’t know of anybody in town who’s been hurt badly enough that the ambulance here in town has actually needed to be called. But if the girls got hit by a car there is a peace of mind. I’m five minutes away at my job. I could be here in five minutes, but the ambulance could be here in 30 seconds.

Shawn
It is definitely a peace of mind. There’s many people that work in town that would be able to respond to the situation immediately. It’s not a matter of 15, 20 minutes before the ambulance would even be started and gone there. They attend to it right away.

Prairie Public
How important is it to have those small town ambulances?

Shawn
There’s been a few instances out here with elderly people where if it hadn’t have been for an ambulance, it could have been serious. Oh here a year ago, I believe somebody was having heart problems, and they had attended and did CPR, and that right there was enough to take care of it. Where if there wouldn’t have been an ambulance in town, it might have turned out bad.

Prairie Public
How about when you were pregnant?

Tamie
We lived in Fargo while I was pregnant and while the girls were small and needed lots of medical visits for their ears. It wasn’t until Bailey was older and already had tubes in her ears that we moved out of Fargo to north of Mapleton.

Prairie Public
How about medical care access in winter? Is it an issue?

Tamie
You think about it, but you try not to make too big of it. The fire department in Arthur recently offered a CPR training which I went to, and not that I’m going to save somebody’s life by being able to perform CPR but just knowing first aid and things like that help a little or make me feel better. It’s all psychological.

Prairie Public
Is commuting to Fargo common in your area?

Tamie
I commuted to Fargo for a year and a half after we moved here until I got the job at the elevator. There are a fair amount of people that do commute. Maybe not both of them but one of them. It’s a pretty high percentage I would say.

Shawn
There are a few people that live out here that I know of that work like at Case. It’s not uncommon for people to be as far out and still commute into Fargo. You find vehicles on #4 going by the farm. You’ll see vehicles on the west side of 18 there where they sit all day long, and it’s people that are commuting. It’s not uncommon. There are a lot of people that do.

Prairie Public
You feel like you get the best of both worlds then?

Tamie
Definitely. We’re close enough that you know it’s still convenient to go to town, but far enough away that you get the benefits of being in a small community and knowing all your neighbors.

Shawn
Thirty-five, 40-minute drive into Fargo, and that’s really not that bad to go in. It’s not all that far after you’ve lived here for a while. When we first moved out here, it seemed like it was forever, but it’s not. It’s nice. It’s really nice to be away from the big town. Really good people live out in the smaller communities.

I think it’s a lot better overall for the girls here ‘cause we’re not probably so apt to want to keep a real close eye on ‘em so they can go a little more freely, and everybody seems to just more relaxed.

Funding for Life Support is provided by a grant from USDA Rural Development