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1/23/2006: January 23rd, 2002 was Dave Barry Day in Grand Forks—the middle link in a chain of events and series of columns and news reports that used barrels of ink and provided barrels of laughs at North Dakota’s expense. Much needed laughs at that…it was just four years since the devastating flood of ’97, and just four months after 9/11.

1/26/2006: Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier in World War II, and his highest award, the Medal of Honor, was directly linked to a North Dakotan. 1st Lt. Walt Weispfenning grew up in Fredonia, in Logan County, and enlisted in the Army in 1941. He rose through the ranks to become a commissioned officer, a singular achievement, even in wartime.

1/29/2006: In the early morning hours of this day in 1931, a well-organized masked mob of about 75 people broke into the jail at Shafer, ND, removed one of the prisoners, and hung him by the neck from the bridge over Cherry Creek, one-half mile east of the jail.

1/30/2006: January is a crucial month for a gardener. Like a blank canvas to a painter, a gardener’s imagination allows the frosty white rectangle beyond the window to explode with green growth and bright colors. By the end of the month, seed catalogs are dog-eared, orders are penciled in, and colorful dreams and schemes begin to solidify into a plan.

1/31/2006: At the end of January 1872, two distinct and quite incompatible encampments existed on the west side of the Red River where the Northern Pacific Railroad would soon cross from Minnesota to what would become Fargo, Dakota Territory. The little communities had sprung up in the fall of 1871, a few hundred yards from each other. The residents of both were settled in for Fargo’s first winter, but only one would remain when spring arrived.

2/2/2006: On this day in 1869, the U.S. Patent office issued a patent that likely contributed to the speed and efficiency of the late nineteenth century “turning over” of the Dakota prairies from a vast buffalo pasture tended by native people, to a great green quilted landscape of farms tilled by newcomers.

2/8/2006: A rare and tragic accident occurred this week in 1915, on Rainy Butte, eight miles southwest of New England, in southwestern North Dakota. Details of the sad story were published on the front page of the Hettinger County Herald, on Thursday the 11th.

2/10/2006: Today is the birthday of the late Mel Rieman (REE-man), a former Dam Tender and Park Manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Bald Hill Dam on Lake Ashtabula Reservoir. If you’ve ever been to Lake Ashtabula, which is north of Valley City in the Sheyenne River Valley, you may have visited the Mel Rieman Recreation Area, and perhaps wondered, “Who’s Mel Rieman?”

2/11/2006: This day in 1907 was the busiest yet for the crime-fighting team of Judge Goss, States Attorney McGee, Sheriff Lee, and Deputy Kelley of Ward County. The Minot jail was “filled to the very brim,” so the court tried, convicted and sentenced eighteen outlaws, and prepared to ship them to the penitentiary at Bismarck.

2/12/2006: Casper Oimoen was born in Norway in 1906, and immigrated to Minot at 17. He learned to ski in his homeland, and took up ski jumping after coming to North Dakota.