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Elroy Lindass, up Mayville way, was kind enough to send
me his schedule of barn dances for this summer. It reminded me of the
passing of an old friend, a patron of the dances, about whom I once wrote
with affection, and who is fondly remembered now by many. There’s
what I wrote.
Elmer lives for the Butterfly. He’s not much for the skip-kick steps
of the verses, but when it comes time to figure-eight two women through
the chorus, the years fall away, and he skims the polished plywood dance
floor like a hovercraft.
I suppose the day will come when, like Elmer, I won’t be able to
walk ten miles across the Coteau after sharptails, or snowshoe the cattail
marshes of winter, or even dig my own spuds, but now I know I’ll
still be able to hitch a ride to the Lindaas Barn Dance for some low-impact
polkas and maybe even a Butterfly.
That will be important as life, because unlike most Lutherans (St. Paul
has a lot to answer for) and most writers (so does Kathleen Norris), I
never have considered life on the plains to be an ascetic denial of sensuality.
The plains are a place for full play of the senses.
So now, in high summer on the northern plains, open up. Riding in an open
vehicle helps, which is what we did one night en route to the old Ladbury
Church west of Sibley. This is the church a bunch of us saved from collapse
and restored as a community center. George Amann, from over Dazey way,
bless his heart, suggested we might run a little lecture series in the
church, and it went well.
I particularly enjoyed the heat in the church, and then the dry west breeze
as we stepped back outside. That was when I thought about the sublime
smells of haying that had washed over me all the way there. I thought,
too, of the spidery lavender bergamot blooming up the slopes of the coulees
of the Sheyenne, and imagined that its minty scent also had touched me
on the road. I know the aroma of white and yellow sweet clover was downright
close.
Departing Sibley, and after a quick beverage at Rock’n Rodney’s
of Luverne, we drove toward Mayville, where I knew Elroy Lindaas already
was fronting the band up in his loft. The breeze stilled, and the slough-smell
of decay hung heavy. However rotten this smell may be in July, it is not
the smell of death, it is the smell of life. Cycles of life spin swiftly
during these long days.
So swiftly, and so much is humankind a part of the pace of summer here,
that there is just too much life to apprehend it all. I’ve already
missed the Buffalo Shuffle, I realized,and I don’t see how I can
make it to the Luverne Picnic or to Dazey Days.
We got to the Lindaas Barn Dance and noticed the crowd was a little less
than usual, but then found out that was because there were dances the
same night in both Mayville and Portland. I tell you, the pace of summer
around here is killing me. Throw me into the slough.
All creatures great and small, we are part of this lively tempo of northern
summer. Our festivals and frolics and fairs in our little country towns,
pell-mell one upon another, are renewals of community and humanity just
as surely as the rotting of sloughs and the raising of broods and the
nurture of crops are renewals of nature and the land. There is much to
be done in short time. After that we fatten up for winter. Fall supper
season, you know.
The last Lindass Barn Dance of Indian summer marks a change in pace. Winter
nears. Deep in hibernation, Elmer and I will dream of the Butterfly.
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