Illustration by Doug Davis

My Town: Grand Forks


Illustration by Doug Davis

Editor: This is the fifth in an eight-part series of “My Town” personal essays by New Mobility readers and freelancers.

Home is where Serena Rose, my cat, lives. Home is where the ramp reaches the deck at the back door and my scooter just barely makes it through the tiny back entry and turns at a right angle to squeeze through the kitchen door. Home is Grand Forks, N.D., where I have lived more than 30 years. Where you know you’re tough because you survived the winter and the 1997 flood that drove all of us and the citizens of our twin city, East Grand Forks, Minn., out of our homes. Where you know it’s ‘really’ cold because your car seat doesn’t give under you when you get in. It’s where no mountains impede my view of the sky.

“Why the hell don’t you go somewhere else,” I am asked by those whose homes are in more temperate climates, more populated regions  a reasonable question. We often ask it ourselves. I did go somewhere else. I went to college in Columbia, Mo. I lived in Madison, Wisc. I have visited California, Montana, Washington, Hawaii, Washington, D.C., Missouri, South Dakota and Texas, among other places. I came home. And I did move to a warmer, more populated region than where I grew up. Twenty-four others graduated with me from high school in Dunseith, N.D.  a town of about 200 located only 13 miles from Canada. Winter there was much colder than here in Grand Forks, 90 miles south of that border.

My town is North Dakota’s third-largest city with its population of 50,000. East Grand Forks, across the Red River from us, adds another 7,000 or so. Compared to where I lived as a kid, this is pretty darn urban. We have the same aspects of life as any city, but on a smaller scale. Our state’s University of North Dakota is here. Each year they sponsor a writers conference that draws well-known authors and is free and open to the public. Salman Rushdie was this year’s biggest name. We have music, plays and movies at the Chester Fritz Auditorium and the Empire Arts Center. The Alerus Center and Ralph Engelstad Arena host athletic events, large concerts and conferences. You can eat at Burger King, McDonald’s  the usual array of fast food joints. You can also reserve a table at the locally owned Sanders 1997 or Toasted Frog.

Alexander Griggs, a steamboat captain, is credited as the Father of Grand Forks. In the 1800s the Red River and Red Lake River were used to transport furs. In the autumn of 1870, Griggs and his crew discovered their boat had frozen in place. They were stuck here and built a cabin to wait out the winter. Having spent the winter, they decided the confluence of our two rivers was a good place for a town. In 1875, it became official.

Griggs stayed, initially, because the river forced him to stay. Since he founded the city and remained here, I’m guessing he saw opportunities. Today, families that are stationed at the Grand Forks Air Force Base may arrive because the Air Force assigns them here. Some stay because they see this place holds opportunity to raise and educate their children in a safe and healthy environment. I returned to Grand Forks after my college graduation because, at that time, it was home to the state’s only physical rehabilitation center and I needed help. Even though I planned to leave and find a fabulous job in a large city, I stayed because it became familiar and safe. It felt like home.

Our winters are cold and snowy. Summers are green and warm with lots of mosquitoes. Living as we do in the Red River Valley, the flat bottom of ancient Lake Agassiz, the wind blows almost constantly  some say relentlessly, but that’s too negative. Having grown up in North Dakota, I expect to be fanned by breezes. In summer they cool me. In winter, I plan my activities to minimize exposure to the double-digit below zero temperatures with wind chills that enhance their life-threatening properties.

My arthritis slows me down and my scooter tends to high-center itself or spin in place in the snow. Especially in the winter, I calculate my risks carefully. Some days I fantasize seeing myself, like the biblical Lot’s wife, frozen, but as a pillar of ice rather than salt. One doesn’t actually have to be on the river to freeze in place like Griggs and his crew. Last winter I received a neon coral-colored sweatshirt from my sister. I decided to wear it so it’s easy to spot me when I fall in the snow or freeze next to my van in the parking lot.

My tiny entry and squinchy right angle scooter turn are small inconveniences. It’s not easy to find accessible housing I can afford in Grand Forks. I appreciate having a rental house I can get into at all. Since the 1997 flood, homes were built to replace those lost to the river, but many of them are split-level and cost more than most people with disabilities can afford. In recent years, housing of the segregated, gimp ghetto variety has been built  not a popular choice for me or my friends with disabilities.

Getting around town if you can’t drive yourself can be a pain. We have lift-equipped city buses, taxi service and paratransit. Winter snow and cold make it impossible for most wheelchair users to wheel to a bus stop, so the bus is not always a realistic option. If you want to attend evening or weekend events, depending on paratransit can be annoying. While the hours of service include weekdays and Saturdays until 10 p.m., that means you have to be at your destination by 10 p.m. So, you could go to an evening event, but you probably would have to leave early an option that worked well for Cinderella, but wouldn’t enhance my social life. City buses don’t run Sundays and paratransit doesn’t either, so attending church is out unless you have big bucks to pay full taxi fare.

In summer it takes 10 minutes to scooter myself downtown for events. I may go to the Grand Cities Art Fest, Farmers Market, a roll on the Greenway bike path by the river, out for lunch or to shop at our whole foods store, Amazing Grains. My 14-year-old nephew, Ben, may go with me to see my art at the Empire Art Center with other River Forks Watercolor Society members’ paintings. He likes to run my scooter lift and I like to let him, so maybe I’ll drive downtown.

Grand Forks is large enough that I don’t know everyone who lives here, but most of the time when I go off on a summertime roll-about, I’ll bump into someone I know. It’s nice. Then I may have a cup of coffee at Dakota Harvest Bakery or a glass of beer at Whitey’s, across the Sorlie Bridge in East Grand Forks, before I move on. My dog Ugi, a 10-pound Bichon Frisse, loves to ride along on my lap for the adventure. If something goes wrong while I’m adventuring, I feel safe enough to ask for help of almost anyone I see on the streets. If they are able to help, they usually will.

My life has ebbed and flowed with our rivers. My community has offered me a place to grow into myself. It has offered companionship and safety. I’ve experienced the human flow of our rivers when friends moved on to other communities, but I learned that even those of us who stay in Grand Forks/East Grand Forks move on. We marry and divorce. We change jobs and hobbies. We watch children grow and elderly parents and friends die. The flow of lives sometimes brings old friends back to Grand Forks after they retire from their jobs and their children leave home. We live our lives as individuals, but we live in a time and a place of community.

Grand Forks is not a place people come and stay for the exciting nightlife, the array of fine dining, prestigious art and theater, famous history, high-pay, cutting edge employment or balmy weather. We stay for the most basic of reasons  most of them having to do with relationships and opportunities.
There may be warmer, more exciting places to live, but does Serena Rose, the little black cat, live there? No. She lives here in Grand Forks. It’s home.

Pat Danielson stays busy in summer slapping skeets and hoping to win an award or sell a painting in an area-wide art exhibit in Pekin — located 60 miles northwest of Grand Forks.


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