Scenic Highway #43, North Dakota

It was a quiet, sunny, Sunday afternoon.I decided to go for a drive, up and around, and through the Turtle Mountains for some alone time. I was about 18 years of age at the time, and probably nursing one of them self induced headaches.I was cruising up on a gravel road, near Highway #43 when I came across a group of fellows standing along the road.They were standing in bunches, visiting and looking into this road ditch where plumes of smoke were lazily raising into the late summer, clear afternoon sky.Recognizing and knowing some of these people, I stopped to find out what the commotion was all about.While visiting with these fellows, I gathered that this ditch had started on fire all by itself, and that they had saw the smoke from their farms and had came to put it out before it could get serious and burn up the whole country side.The farmers in the Turtle Mountains are forever watchful, as they know that if a fire ever got going up there, it would be hard to stop.You know, with all the fuel in the area, trees, grass, and brush, everything a fire needs to grow into a forest fire.

While visiting with a few of these guys I heard one fellow say that he thought the fire was started by Larry Hackman.My ears perked up right away and I thought why would this fellow be thinking this.I listened while this fellow explained that he had seen the butt of a tailor made cigarette, and an empty beer bottle lying in the ditch, where the fire had burned.I thought to myself, I wander who the hell they think I am?What would make any one think of me, because they happened to see a cigarette butt, and an empty beer bottle, lying in a ditch, where a fire had been burning?Not being born yesterday, I wasn’t about to jump up and down shouting, that I’m Larry Hackman.Yes, I had noticed the brush in the ditch still smoldering, and the smoke rising into the air.I also noticed that these fellows had worked up a sweat, and that their clothes were black, from fighting the fire.I recalled that one fellow stated that two fence posts of the adjacent fence had also burned.These farmers were in no mood for joking around.

Not wanting to be the guest of honor, at a neck tie party, and them apparently not knowing who I am, I wasn’t about to inform them, or try to correct their thinking.The one fellow stated that the ditch should have been cleared of brush a long time ago, and then the fire wouldn’t have burned to the extent that it did, or probably wouldn’t have started at all.Hearing this comment made me feel better, but I still wasn’t about to stand up, and say who I was.To this day, I wander who they thought I was.Maybe they knew exactly who I was, and were just trying to tell me, in a nice way, without hurting my feelings, to mend my ways.Naw, I can’t imagine them gruff old farmers being worried about my feelers, or my ways.I can’t imagine them thinking, that I was the fault of that fire either.I just happened along, on a Sunday afternoon, and hadn’t been in that area for weeks, maybe months, a long time.

I made a few comments to them farmers as I made my way to my vehicle, like, great job, looks like you fellows got it under control, and that I better be on my way.Then I drove off, not to fast, not until I was out of sight anyway, then I punched it.Leaving behind a situation I never expected to encounter, and a cloud of dust.

I must have an alias running around, somewhere up in them hills.I know a few other fellows, who use to circulate around them hills, and some did write some stories about Highway#43, some even named a band after Highway #43, and one did admit to throwing that paper air plane with the stick pin in the nose that stuck in my ear.That was an involuntary piercing.That same fellow claimed that he use to meet girls from Canada up on #43.I was never that lucky, eh.But, would any of these people go through all the trouble of planting a cigarette butt and an empty beer bottle in a ditch to implicate me in arson?Naw, I don’t think so, not intentionally anyway.Most of them young fellows would probably have choked, on the smoke of that cigarette, anyway.But it is hard to say what they would have done if they emptied enough of them long neck bottles?

I’m still wandering about them farmers?They didn’t know who I am?They didn’t ask who I was?Apparently, they didn’t care who I was?Maybe, that’s a good thing?

Keep on laughing and the world will laugh with you.

Larry

Gary

Since I’m a little bit over 50 and haven’t had no June berry pie yet this yea?

I’m also on to my last rhubarb pie.

The wife says she isn’t going to clean the oven again because of rhubarb pie.

At least not this year.

I double thought this story about Highway 43, and realized that

I’m probably not going to get a response from any them farmers.

I don’t think any of them are around any more.

Yes, they knew exactly who I was and had decided to have a little fun at my expense.

Kind of like that guy who threw that paper airplane from the class of 65 picking on a underclassman.

Well, you know what they say.

He who laughs last, Laughs best.

I’m still waiting my turn on a few of these subjects..

Larry

 

Yes Larry, having been born in about 1948, you are quite a bit over 50. Gary