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Vern Tate
A native of Texas and a military aircraft mechanic,
Vern arrived at the base in Minot ND from his posting in Guam, where it
never got below 70 degrees. He didn't know what a block heater was; nor
had he ever worn thermal underwear. He adapted fast. When retirement time
drew near, Vern didn't want to take his two children back into the "meat
grinder" of the south. He said, "There's people out there that
are not very nice, people that will like to you and take advantage of
you. I've known people here that never carried a house key, never locked
their doors. I've mistakenly left my garage door open, come back, and
everyting is still there. If I did that down South, I would have an empty
garage the next morning." Vern likes the fact that people trust you
here, that there's no pollution and that there aren't all the break-ins
and shootings, but he also says that you have to prove yourself. That
as an outsider, it takes a while for North Dakotan's to warm up to you
and to realize that you're real and that you're going to stick around
and that you're serious about settling here. "Once you've proven
yourself, people bend over backward to help you."
Q: Tell us And your barbecues are... you don't use barbecue sauce?
Vernon: No. I'm from the old school in Texas where you don't put
barbecue on the meat until it's done and they serve it to you. Some restaurants
will just squirt a little bit on there or they give it to you and then
give you some sauce, and you can put as much as you want on it. But we
don't just mop it with sauce and bake it or cook it. It's slow cooking
over wood for four, six, eight hours until you get it tender, and that's
barbecue. When it's done and tender, that's barbecue. Sauce is just a
complement. It's something that goes on the side, and it would appear
that everything's dripping in sauce, and I couldn't get used to that.
And they thought I was crazy back in Minot because I would be out there
in November. You know how cold it gets in November trying to barbecue
a turkey, and my neighbors would stick their heads out the door and go,
"Hey crazy Texan" you know, but back home we always smoked a
turkey for Thanksgiving, and I kind of miss that so I got my little Weber
out, and I'm trying to cook this little turkey on this little Weber. And
I forgot when the temperature is -20 degrees, you may get smoke, but you're
not going to get any heat. So for hours later I had a nice smoked frozen
turkey so I had to take it in the oven...
Q: It froze.
Vernon: It froze. It smoked but it froze to because at -20 degrees
going in and the average fire of... fires like if you can get it lucky
to 220 something like that, it couldn't generate enough heat to do any
cooking.
Q: So part of this restaurant is just trying to recapture what you
missed from home?
Vernon: Exactly. And I finally went... I talked to my boss. I
had a class I had to go to in Louisiana, and I begged my boss instead
of letting me fly down to let me drive down. So I drove down to Louisiana,
finished my class, and then I came through Texas and bought this grill,
a wood-burning grill, and I drug it back up to Minot. And you should have
seen the looks I got, drivers on the highway, pulling this pit behind
me. I had one place I pulled into a rest stop, and a car pulled in behind
me, and they said "We've got a bet going on. What is that you're
pulling?" And I said "No, that's a pit." He said "Okay,
you owe me $5.00" you know because the farther I got north, the less
people knew what it was. Oklahoma City everybody knew what it was, no
big deal, but when I got past Oklahoma City, I mean past Oklahoma and
maybe through Arkansas, they know what it was.
Q: And what did the people in Arkansas and south think of that little
cord you have out of the front of your car? What did they think that was?
Vernon: Huh.
Q: Nobody commented?
Vernon: Nobody commented on that.
Q: That seems like the first thing people say, you know, do you have
an electric car or...
14:05
Vernon: Oh, when I got here... no, when I first got here, I didn't
know what a block heater was. They said "You got to put a block heater
in your car." I said "What's a block heater?" They said
"The thing you plug your car in." I go, I thought the guy was
you know drinking a little bit. Plug your car at night? I never, if you're
from Texas, you hardly ever see snow, at least in Dallas where (tape cut
out momentarily) you know you don't have to plug your car in, or frozen
lake, ice fishing. You know I've never seen it. (talks too fast to pick
up) to it but actually see a lake frozen from a guy from Texas? That's
unique. If you told me let's go ice fishing, I'd say what drugs are you
taking you know? After about a month of... after about three months of
cabin fever, I was out on the frozen lake fishing at a friend of mine's.
I said "If I told my brother I was out here on a frozen lake fishing"
he would have said, "Vern, it's time for you to come home."
Q: So what brought you to North Dakota?
Vernon: Mainly the military. I was stationed in Guam in the South
Pacific where it never got below 70 degrees. If it got below 70 degrees,
people put on sweaters. And they sent me from there to Minot. And I got
there two weeks... I just moved into the base house, and we had a blizzard
for three days. They told us to not even leave our houses for three days
so they could get things cleared up and all that. I had never been so
cold in my life. My blood was always thinned out. I was used to my shorts
and my cut off T-shirts, and I'm trying to find some long pants and some
thermal underwear so I could go outside and shovel off my driveway. I
had to buy a shovel. I didn't have a shovel even to dig out my house.
And I said "What have I got myself into." And then they gave
me all this thermal underwear. I said "I don't need no thermal underwear."
I never wore this stuff before. I threw it in the house somewhere. I went
to work. It was about 50, 60 degrees, not too cold. Wore a jacket and
some light pants. It was 10 degrees when I left with a 40-mile an hour
wind. The temperature had changed that much in four hours. It just whew.
I got so cold. I had to take a bath when I got home I was so cold. The
next day I was trying... "Honey, where did I put that stuff?"
I'm digging up the thermal underwear and the pants and the thermal socks
and the heavy duty jacket and the hat. I never had been exposed to that
kind of cold, but as time went along, I got used to it, and I was all
right, but that first six months was a shocker. But once I got to know
the people, I was getting close to retirement, and it was time to figure
out what am I going to do? Am I going stay aircraft mechanic, work on
airplanes or am I going to do something different? And I spent 20 some
years you know working on airplanes, getting drenched in fuel, hydraulic
fluid, and jet blasts and everything else. I said I think I've had enough
of this. I've always enjoyed cooking, and I said I want to know if I can
make a living doing it. So I drug the grill back up here, and I talked
to my church (rapid, difficult to understand) every church had every fourth
Sunday they have this fellowship. Everybody gets together to have dinner
and so forth. Well my chaplain always had a problem getting somebody to
do the dinner. "I need volunteers for dinner," I go hmmmmmm,
you know, nobody wanted to do it. So when I said "If you buy the
meat, I want to smoke it and I want to barbecue it. If you buy the meat,
I'll do it."
He said "Okay." And I started cooking the monthly Sunday meal.
The first ones were a little rough. I over smoked a little bit. I was
using wood. I usually use wood and charcoal, but I wanted to learn how
to cook with wood. So I started cooking the fellowship for the whole congregation,
and I started getting pretty good at it, and now I was asked "Well,
can you do this for the... we have the wives of the chapel. You know the
different church organizations, you know the different groups, and they
started asking me "Can you cook a little bit for our lunch in here
or can you do a promotion party for someone, so and so's retiring or getting
promoted, can you cater that?" And all of a sudden I was doing catering
all-around town.
Q: While still working for the military?
Vernon: Still working for the military. And I said "Well,
I'm going to retire. Maybe I could open my own restaurant. I was looking
to do it in Minot, but the problem was the base closures. They keep threatening
we're going to close Grand Forks, we're going to close Minot, we're going
to close (tape cutout). I said "Now I can't open a brand new business
and then have the base up and move." It takes time for a town to
recover from all that revenue. People don't realize how much business
a base generates. You don't make selling gas. You don't make it selling
bread. You don't make it selling clothes. Utilities, phones, all that
stuff comes from off base and goes to the base. So if a base just up and
go, the town has to regroup and generate new income, and it takes normally
four to five years for them to recover from what they lost. And I said
"If I sign a five-year lease on a new business and the base up and
moves, how am I going to survive?" So we looked at... where else
can we go in North Dakota? The reason why I stayed in North Dakota is
mainly... one thing was the schooling. I had two young kids, two kids.
They don't think they're young, but they're two kids. And I didn't want
to take them back down South to the meat grinder. One mistake about traveling
around the world and being up north is they lost their street savvy, you
know. When trouble starts, it's time to go, and a situation gets dangerous,
it's time to move. You know, don't go this way because it's more dangerous
to go this way. They lost their street savvy, and I didn't want to take
them back into a meat grinder, and I said "They're used to being
up here. The schools are good. Let's find something here." And we
looked at Bismarck, Grand Forks, Fargo and staying in Minot. It came up
between Bismarck and Fargo, and we looked at demographics, and Fargo had
more going for it than Bismarck, at least for opening a new business.
And that was the decision we made, and when I retired, we packed up and
came to Fargo.
Q: So you passed on Bismarck, that's too bad for Bismarck.
Vernon: It was a toss up between Bismarck and Fargo. But I got
here. I told them what I wanted to do. I'm going to open a business. I
did my business plan. I even worked with the V.A. and got some grants
___________ support and put the package together. And then the banker
asked me questions like "Do you have any experience?" I said
"I've been cooking since I was 12 years old, and I've been catering
for four years in Minot and _________." And he said "Well, do
you have any professional experience?" I said the same again. "I've
been cooking. I've been catering." They wanted me to have some credentials
so NW Tech had a chef training school so I went to NW Tech, started a
chef program. Also I started working at a restaurant, a local restaurant
here to get some practical experience in a restaurant cooking and handling
and managing things there. So when I opened my business... when I presented
my business plan to the banker I said "Yes, I have so much experience.
I have a degree in cooking. Also I have this much experience working at
a restaurant" to kind of giving him a more rounded background in
the field. And actually it was hard, but it actually helped. It did give
me a little bit more of an idea of what I was getting myself into.
Q: So it was time well spent?
Vernon: Time well spent.
Q: So you talked about not wanting to take your kids back in the meat
grinder. What are the things that people who been born here don't appreciate
because they haven't experienced life in an urban area, although Fargo
now I guess is technically urban?
21:42
Vernon: Well mainly there's people out there that are not very nice,
people that will lie to you and take advantage of you. Mainly there's
a lot of people that will take advantage of you. There's people out there
that are not honest. I've known people here that never carried a house
key, never locked their doors. I've mistakenly my left my garage door
open, come back, and everything is still there. If I did it down South,
I would have an empty garage the next morning. Everything would be moved
out. Somebody would back a truck up there and just load up. I left my
shed open one day, open to the street, and everything I just forgot to
lock the thing up. Everything was still there. That doesn't happen down
South. I'm sorry it doesn't happen. When I first came here, we want to
cash a check... especially on base or military you had an understanding
that you write a hot check, the base would make sure you covered it. And
I went to, was it Target or Kmart. I was going to write a check for what
we bought, and I was whipping out my ID, my credit card, and all that
for identification, she said "Don't worry about it. You're military?
Yeah okay." And that was it, and I'm going "That's all? What
happened here?" Normally you got to give the address, two forms of
ID and a credit card, in your kid's first name you know before you can
catch a check, and then they might not cash it. So you have some good
things up here. You got a wholesome way of life. You don't have the pollution.
Another thing they don't realize here, that you need to take care of,
is they don't have the pollution they have down South. I went back home
to Texas, and I thought it was foggy because when I was there I remember
days it wasn't polluted there. And I said "Oh, it's foggy this morning."
And I got up and I started taking care of business doing my traveling.
I looked at 1:00, and it was still foggy. It's 80 degrees, and it's still
foggy. Now if I had realized that was smog. It wasn't fog, it was smog,
and you don't have that problem here. You don't have smog alerts. You
don't have all the break-ins and shootings. You don't have people getting
run off the roads. You don't have all the crazy actions. You have these
rollovers now and then, but you don't have 10 people or 20 people getting
killed in car accidents or these chain reactions where 20, 30 cars you
know get banged up.
Q: If something happens here, it's on the front page.
24:18
Vernon: Yeah. You have a lot of good things going here that you really
don't realize. And I think if you market it better, you'd get more recognition.
Q: Did your family ever say "Dad, we want to go back by family
and be where Grandma and Grandpa are? Do they object to being here?
Vernon: They had their pros and cons on that. The only thing, the one
thing I kind of regret on that is the kids is the kids not getting exposed
to their heritage as much and their grandparents and aunts and uncles.
And those are the ones that kind of pass on the wisdom. Those are the
ones that been through it. They've got the time, and they can sit there
and talk to the kids, and they'll listen. I'm just dad. I don't know nothing
you know. You just want to tell them what to do, and that's it. You don't
want to listen to them you know, where Grandma, Grandpa, or aunt will
sit back and ask you to listen, and they communicate back and forth. ______________________
your dad is right cause of this or yeah, when you get older, you'll be
able to do this, this, and this. The aunts and uncles will relate that
to the younger kids where dad is just trying to be an authority figure
and so forth, and what he says is what he wants me to hear. Where if Grandma
or aunt and uncle tell them, hey maybe there's something to this. That
part I miss. And to get to meet my uncles and aunts before they pass away.
They're not getting any younger, and I want them to get that experience
before they pass on.
Q: Do you send them home much?
Vernon: I try to send them home. I send them home for reunions,
and I try to get them home when I can for the summer. With opening a business,
it hasn't been much time for that so they been helping here.
Q: Tell me about that. You've got your family working here and all?
Vernon: Yes. My wife comes home on weekends. She works here. Then
my two daughters -- one is Jennifer, the other one Jessie. They work here
on the off time. When they have free time, they work here.
Q: Did you feel like an outsider, like it's awfully white here, and
is that a problem at all?
Vernon: In some respects it is. The hard part is that you have
to prove yourself. North Dakotans are good people, but they have to warm
up to you. You just don't jump in the pool and start swimming. You gotta
stick your toe in there and feel the water and let things warm up. Then
you can get in there and start swimming a little bit, but you're not just
going to jump in the pool. I found that out the hard way. You have to
prove yourself. Even my kids found that out or "Daddy, why do I have
to take this course when I know I can do it?" And she had to prove
herself, and that's the one downside to annoy us is that if you're a minority,
you have to prove yourself before you start getting accepted.
Q: So you have to be a little more clever, little more?
Vernon: You have to be a little bit more to get a little bit,
and if you don't, you're not going to get it. Once they realize you for
real and that you gonna stick around and that you're serious about this,
I've seen some of them just really jump over backwards to help me, but
you got to prove that you're serious. Even the bankers... I've had bankers
talk to me and send me away and see if I come back, just see if I come
back. I come back, they send me away again... is he going to come back.
And after the fourth or fifth time, well he keeps coming back, maybe I'll
sit down and talk to him, but he kicked me out the door two or three times
before he would really seriously... now I'm not going away so you might
as well face up to it. Let's talk, and he said "Oh, okay" you
know, but I had to go through the gauntlet before I could get the point
where let's get serious about this. And that's the only hard part. You're
not taken for granted. You have to prove yourself.
Q: You've lived her how long now?
Vernon: Since '94.
Q: Since '94 so you've made friends here and there are families that
you've gotten to know? And what are the people like now to you?
28:28
Vernon: Actually pretty good. I've met some that they're so nice that
I say I can't take advantage of... ______________________ my car's broke
down. Now when we moved into our new home, it wasn't ready on time, but
we had already signed to get out of our apartment so we had no place to
go so we had to stay in an apartment, and he said "No, no, no, no.
I got a downstairs. Your family can move in downstairs and stay with us
until your apartment's ready. I said "I can't do that, but I would
send my kids over there during the daytime for I work and my wife works.
They can watch TV over there and relax, and that would be fine. Wash clothes,
but I can't move into your house. That's not nice." But you know,
that takes a pretty big heart. And he also said "Here's my key to
my car. Here, just take the car, and you can use it. When you get done
with it, bring it back." I said "I can't take your car."
You know, that's exceptional, and I've met people like that. And I've
also met people that wouldn't shake my hand. I had this one guy. He ran
an air conditioning company, and I was asking him about our air conditioner
and what type I needed. _________________ shake his hand, and he refused
to shake my hand.
Q: Weird.
Vernon: So it runs both ways, but I'll say overall, once they
get to know you, and they know you're serious and you're a good person
I guess, they'll bend over backwards to help you. So that's the good part.
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