American Exoticism and Valley City, North Dakota

My dad called as I pulled into a gas station just north of Turtle Lake, to check the map. "I got your text message about the calf!" he said. "That's the real miracle. Birth happens every day, but wow! I figured out how to open a text message!" My dad has never been deft with technology.
"I had to help with calving once, too," he told me.
"No way! You never told me that!"
"Eh, I know. I guess I just never thought of it."

My dad, the New York City-born son of a aeronautical engineer, had only ever wanted to be a farmer. He tried, before I was born, but not having familial ties to any land or any money of his own, he couldn't make it in the eighties, the Farm Aid days. Now he's a carpenter. Yet still, before he swung a hammer for a living, he was a farm hand, and a damn good one at that. I just never knew he had birthed a calf.
"Yeah," he continued. "That's pretty exciting stuff."

Wanting to get online to post the pictures of the calf, I meandered out of Wisconsin and quickly hopped on the interstate. I didn't want to, but I did want wi-fi, and the only place that was a sure shot was Minneapolis/ St. Paul, the Twin Cities.

I ended up at a coffee shop in what's called Dinkytown, the neighbohood of Minneapolis home to the University of Minnesota. The college crowd in their Golden Gophers gear were polite as I tried to orient myself to a table with an outlet, not unlike a bull in a china shop. Every coffee shop has its character and at this one the title belonged to a Persian man reading the Bible aloud, very excitedly, to no one.

An hour later, I was back on the road, and opted to break a cardinal rule -- I decided to take the interstate all the way through Minnesota. Now, I can hear your gasp and I assure you, I have already been through Minnesota once for this book, and saw many nice things, so I was ready to be moving toward new territory. That meant booking the interstate for North Dakota.

North Dakota. Even the words sound magical to an American-exotic like me. American-exotic is a shabby term I coined for people who think exoticism lives as much in their own backyard as it does in Europe or Asia or wherever you please. When I think of exotic, I think of any place I've never been before. North Dakota was one of these.

I was determined to make Fargo by nightfall, which I estimated to be between 7:30 and 8:00 at night. What I didn't realize is that North Dakota counts as very further north, to the point where the sun goes down at 10 pm and rises at 4 in the morning. I even found out that I missed the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, by one month. If that's not backyard exotic, I don't know what is.

I planned on hitting up the Flying J truck stop in Fargo and staying the night in the parking lot. However, the employees told me that overnight parking was not allowed, and I would have to sleep in the Wal-Mart parking lot one mile down 32nd Avenue. But I could, they informed me, come back and use the truck stop showers the next day. That sounded good enough for me, although there's nothing like talking on the phone with your boyfriend and answering the question, "Where are you staying tonight?" with those five little words: "In the Wal-Mart parking lot."
"There's no thirty-dollar motel in the whole city you could stay at?"
"What do you think I am, honey? Made of money?"
Seriously, though, I think that's a lot of what burned me last year -- pride. I thought I was too good to sleep in my car, so I blew money on cheap motels from Maine to Kentucky when I couldn't find a campground.

Not this time. I was going to hunker down in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Not only that, I was going to abuse the privilege -- I was going to sleep in the parking lot, and not buy one damn thing. Ha! I'll show you, Wal-Mart! I'm just using you is all, just like you use your employees! Headline: "Girl Uses Wal-Mart Like A Two-Dollar Hooker, Brings Corporate Headquarters To Its Knees". Well, a girl can dream.

Further proving that I am not made of money, I refused to buy dinner that night. I drove around the bland fecundity that is Fargo looking for a public park but there were none. I'm serious, there just aren't any. I even asked. People looked at me like, "Park? Huh?" Welcome to Fargo. I was so hungry that I was shaking and couldn't wait any longer. I pulled back into the truck stop and feasted on canned corn, cold from the can, and my strict ration of three wheat crackers. Yes, I am really doing this on the cheap this time

Before settling in, I waited out the eternity of a sunset in the local Barnes and Noble. Now, since we're on the subject of books and letters, I shall now conduct a lesson: F is for Fargo. F is also for Forgettable, which is a description of Fargo. F is also for Fuck Me, I'm Never Going Back To Fargo Ever Again!

It's one big mall! It's a mall spread out over three square miles! There is every place of business you can think of: Lowe's, Home Depot, Denny's, Iron Skillet, Wal-Mart, Target, Culver's, Bed Bath and Beyond, Starbucks, McDonalds, Big Boy, Albertson's, Quiznos, Kohls, everything! Now, a lot of cities have all of those things, even Laurel has all of those things, but this was the entire city. Just three square miles of chain stores. That's all there really was, besides the truck stop, a small zoo, and the usual police station and post office. There were also some houses on the outskirts of town, but mainly it was just chain stores. I think maybe Fargo decided to build all these stores because there are so few chain stores in the rest of the state -- the rest of the state is mainly mom-and-pop shops, which I prefer. Who knows, all I know is that I've seen less commercialism in Disney World.

The next morning, I went back to the truck stop and asked the lady behind the counter about showers. She stared at me sweetly through thick glasses and explained that a shower would be $11, and six of that was a deposit I'd get back once they checked the room and made sure I didn't spread feces on the wall, or anything like that. As she was talking, a young trucker behind me spoke up.
"You wanna shower, go ahead and shower. I got, like, six stored up. You can use one."
"Thank you!" I blushed. Flowers used to be the way to my heart but they've been replaced by bathing opportunities.

The lady handed me a slip of paper with numbers and letters on it and sent me on my way. "Where are they? Huh?" I asked.
Her patience was running thin. "Down the hall, around the corner, down the stairs, check the monitor."
"Um, okay." I'm such a rube.
After wandering the halls confused for a minute, punching numbers into various keypads, a crusty trucker took pity on me and showed me how to get into my assigned room, #7.

As soon as I was done, I jumped in the car and blew straight out of Fargo as fast as my tires would take me. Heading west on Rt. ________, that took me into verdant farmland and huge skies. Each little town I came to had these buildings: a gas station, a small mom and pop grocery, a service station, a motel, at least two taverns, and a barber shop. The larger ones also had a laundromat and a clothing store. I stopped in Valley City for a hot breakfast -- which I realized was my first hot meal since leaving David's awesome pasta in Chicago -- and an oil change. That town even had a bank.

The waitress was a grandmotherly woman with Tootsie-style glasses and a thick upper-Midwest accent. She served up coffee that was just water dressed in brown, as Ani would say, and I remembered that it's impossible to get a good cup of coffee anywhere west of Wisconsin. I put in half a creamer and it turned an immediate beige. I read Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", the copy I picked up at the used bookstore in Chicago, in Valley City, North Dakota and washed down my pancakes with weak Midwestern coffee. The young mother at the counter was explaining the merits of not picking one's nose in public to her four-year-old son. The waitress told the man coming in the door that his usual was on the way, since she put in the order when she saw him pull up in the parking lot. And I was in heaven, the furthest I've ever been from home.