The Big Move

  Today's world is small. Unless you live in North Korea (and even there if you know where to look), we all seem to have access to the latest thing thanks to the Internet, the 24-hour news cycle and the availability of world travel. But 45 years ago, California felt about as far from North Dakota as you could get. I moved from the West Coast to Bismarck in 1971, and it was a year of firsts for me.
   My father sold Olympia beer, and I still remember the day he came home and told my mother he had been transferred. He may as well have said we're moving to Timbuktu. We had to pull out a map. The one thing we keyed in on was the "north." We knew that it was a place both cold and remote. When we told friends where we were going, inevitably, they said, "Where's that?" followed by "Why on earth?" Still, it wasn't our first move, so onward and northward we went.
   We packed our lives into Bekins boxes and drove to the airport. I'd never been on a plane before, and we flew first class. There was nothing cardboard about it. Dinner was served on china dishes with real silverware and linen napkins. My brother and I were served Coca Cola, a rare treat for us back then, and my parents drank champagne from glass flutes. That was back in the days before there were doors on the cockpits, and I remember the captain calling my brother and me up to look at the controls before he pinned wings on us and made us honorary pilots.
 
A TOWN WITH ONE TAXI

 

   When we landed, we were driven in a cab to the motel that would be our home for weeks while my parents waited for our new house to be ready. A cab ride might not seem remarkable, but this one certainly was. It had jump seats; a lot of fun for kids. The motel we stayed in had a pool, also a huge deal. Those experiences eased the transition for me. That fall I started sixth grade in a public school, after my years in Catholic elementary. I traded in the school uniforms that had always made getting dressed in the morning easy and painless, for jumpers that made me stand out in a way I didn't appreciate. Most of the rest of the kids wore jeans, something that hadn't been allowed in my schools. I had experienced snow before, thanks to a couple of years spent in Spokane, but never the kind of snow and cold that North Dakota gets.
     I remember that first Christmas begging for ice skates, but then being unable to use them because I couldn't stand the cold that the other kids seemed to take in stride. Bismarck had its own culture, very different from the one I'd been surrounded by in California, with our big, noisy extended family. But culture, like the cold, is something kids adapt to.
     These days I'm right at home in the very middle of North America, and I wouldn't want to leave it behind for anyplace else. But there are those February days, like today, where I do a little California Dreamin'.