In June, I took a road trip to my 40-year class reunion in the Red River Valley of North Dakota. My friend and classmate Brian paid for gas to get me to the middle of the country and back; another friend, Lisa, paid for my hotel. My friend Gayle organized the affair with remarkable artistry and goodwill, and bought me at least one drink. The four of us—and sometimes more homies—we sometimes called The Band, partying together in the summertimes over the past 12 years, often in July for Moondance Jam, the largest classic rock festival in North America, held on reservation land outside of Walker, Minnesota, my family seat. My sister always got us backstage passes.
The road trip was surreal, as it always is, especially during the final 200 miles from Seattle back to my hometown. I drove across the top of the state, from Minot going east on roads like none I’d known. For a piece it was mostly wetlands, grasses, maybe crops, flat but with curves—I rarely encountered another vehicle on that stretch. I’d hear later that this was a hunting destination. At once I came upon a flock of geese hanging out on the road, several adults and little posses of goslings. I was obliged to come to a stop, and those geese weren’t even scared of me. They seemed comedically put out. I had to honk my horn a bit to encourage them to clear the roadway. I wish I had taken their picture. Their apparent immunity to fear, at least fear of cars, made me feel small. Living in the city was a sucker’s game, I thought. It was early evening, one of the year’s longest days, blue sky, little fluffy clouds, eternal fields of green.
The valley of my native home is decidedly agricultural. I grew up in a farm township, the county seat. I’d heard say the topsoil was more than 50-feet deep, or some other magical acme, the richest farmland in the world. (I interviewed a farmer there, who is a contemporary of mine from high school, about the state of farming in those parts; he said the soil wasn’t as deep as that so maybe that was lore. I’ll tell you more when I publish that piece.)
I visited with the people I grew up with. It was remarkable how familiar it felt to be among my school peers. It was like the time I was bicycling in Vietnam and, halfway through my four-month travel, I mailed a very large box of items I’d acquired to Seattle. I forgot all about the box, which arrived about a year later. Imagine my thrill at finding these treasures, watercolor postcards I bought on the streets of Hanoi, intricately embroidered garments from the highlands’ tribal peoples, a silk skirt I had tailored in Hoi An. (Whatever I write will be how I remember it; I’m just guessing.)
It was as gold and silver and precious gems you’d buried under a big tree on your property before your family fled the regime. But this time, it was all still there when you returned home, and not pillaged as spoils of war. It was identical to hope, in my mind.
That’s what it was like to see my friends from the dazed and confused era, the rock and roll 70s, class of 83. We are Generation X. Both parents working. The man on the moon. Kiss or kill. Sesame Street. Being unsupervised. Title Nine. Space cruising. Birth control. Free love? Farrah Fawcett hair and a Matt Dillon crush. Such things were trending as our cohort came of age. Those days, the weed was mostly shake, it seems in hindsight—Columbian Gold was all the rage—but the LSD was better than it is now.
Think about it. Oral contraceptives were made available in 1960. Roe v Wade went into effect in 1972, when I and my fellows were around eight years old. We were unwitting agents during a massive transformation of society. The fault of civilization moved its fingers through the ground. Earth divided. Plates collided. What an awful sound. So goes Natalie Merchant’s “San Andreas Fault,” the great American songwriter born in 1963. I think we may have collapsed society, not on purpose. I’m not even sure that we went to the moon, or if anything I thought I knew is true. I keep thinking Generation X is going to save the world. I wait. It’s high time to mobilize.
We didn’t have earthquakes, however, in my hometown. We had blizzards in the winter, spring slush and sometimes floods, when the folks pitched in to line the streets with sandbags. In the summer, there were tornado warnings, and residents came out of their houses and stood outside listening to silence because the birds had stopped chirping and the bees ceased buzzing, and the air smelled of sulfur as, according to lore, does the devil. I’m glad I grew up there in the Red River Valley, and not somewhere else, so I could have that ground beneath my feet. It is the most solid ground I have known.
And so seeing my classmates was much the same as opening a treasure trunk. I was born there and graduated from high school there. As children, we walked barefoot on main street on the way home from the swimming pool, stopped at the creamery, the floor was cold as stainless steel, to get ice cream. As teens, we partied at places called The Ditch, Monson’s Grove, and Nowhere. I could not be prouder of growing up with these people, in the middle of plains of exceptional flatness, on the sediment of glacial Lake Agassiz, in legendary North Dakota, on grass and gravel roads, under the Milky Way of a night sky.
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Before I left, I drove around my hometown and took photos of my two childhood houses. Then I continued my road trip to go on to visit my family in Northern Minnesota for a few weeks and then some. I take great comfort in being around my family. My mom can cook anything; we eat like royalty—meat, scalloped potatoes, pies with crust that melts in your mouth. I don’t know how she does it, it seems like magic. Every day she seems to have at least three offerings of sustenance prepared by the time I wake up. See what I mean? Magic.
I hung out with my dad a lot, watching different shows like old westerns. We watched this great movie about two old geezers with a bunch of dogs who sat on the porch with shotguns to scare away any solicitors. An irresponsible relation drops off her young son at their house, and says she’ll be back to get him real soon. But she was gone a long time, and they end up raising the boy, who later inherited those uncles’ great wealth acquired during their daring and adventurous travels as young men. Redemption all around. Except the mother, I think she was fucked. I don’t remember the title, but it was my favorite thing we watched together during this visit.
I also turned my dad onto “The Big Bang Theory” (which my sister had turned me onto) and I made him watch Louis CK specials including 2021, 2022, and 2023. I got to spend time with their long-haired chihuahua named 6; she reached amazing speeds on our walks circling the fringe of the property, during which my dad and I talked about the weather plus important stuff that I could hope to understand.
I went shopping with my niece, and let her drive my Scion xA, because she’s going to get her driver’s license. There was a huge sale at Bath and Body Works, like 60 percent off, and I joined my niece in a candle and toiletry binge. We also went to Target, where I waited behind about 15 other drinks for an iced doppio with half and half at Starbucks. I loved hearing my niece tell me stories about her life in her dulcet voice. She did a pretty good job driving, too.
My dad and I went to the Fourth of July parade in town, which included my brother, who is employed by the Corps, so he wore a uniform and spun out frisbees to the crowd, with a smile and a joke; he’s really good with people. He also bought a vintage red motorboat around the time I was there. I helped him adhere the black license letters and numbers on the sides of the hull.
My folks had a few parties at their house, the property encompassing a broad slope of gardens framed by the drive and woods. They had all manner of flowers, a microcosmic meadow, herbs, tomatoes; all manner of birds and places for them to perch, drink, and feed. My dad is a great birdwatcher, a nature photographer, and a humble man of great nobility. He sees everything—a squirrel climbing a tree, a turtle on the road, an eagle in the blue. He tries to show me how to look—how to see—and I try to see as he can see. It’s the least I can do. Try.
My road trip also included stops—there and back—at my aunt and uncle’s house in the country outside of Bozeman, Montana. I had a great conversation with my uncle about the different times in his life and his connection to my dad, his brother. My aunt and I spent hours together going over her one-of-a-kind handmade card collection. She taught me a lot about the meaning of handwritten notes, and I bought 44 of her creations in different categories—thank you, thinking of you, with sympathy, congratulations, get well soon, you’re so special, happy holidays. My uncle made me breakfast; all the Andersons can cook.
There, on the way back, I also saw my cousin who I hadn’t seen in more than a few decades and it was like a reunion too. The family—including my second cousin, my cousin’s daughter—watched a livestream where his other daughter performed on electric violin in an orchestra at some rockstar summer music camp in the Midwest.
My other stop—there and back—was at the home of a family friend outside of Sidney, Montana, near the border of North Dakota. He lives in some sort of oil rig dwelling, kind of like a prefabricated home, right next to the river. It’s sited on his father’s land. You have to drive on gravel a good distance and cross several cattle guards to get there, and pass alongside so many lambs grazing. A large dog greets you, a black Tom cat and a blind girl cat, the latter our friend’s familiar. It’s awesome when the sun sets across from the river. I brought my amp and mic, and our family friend is a singer and musician. I stayed an extra day on my return route because he said I could stay as long as I wanted, and I really did need a piece of rest. Those evenings, he and I drank whiskey (and various concoctions) and took turns singing songs, doing living room karaoke with YouTube, one of my favorite activities. On the return route, we also ate blueberry pie that my mother baked with crust I’d mixed together under her instructions; for so long I’d wanted to learned to make pie crust.
The final leg—from Bozeman to Seattle—to my apartment on the hilltop, I accomplished in twelve hours. One friend said I wouldn’t make it, that that was too long for one day. I said, I’ve already done it three times before. I think road trips are dangerous, which makes me feel alive. It doesn’t matter anyway because I’m under the protection of God. And no matter how hard you try, the time for living is going to fly by.
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Back in Seattle, I cleaned my large office closet—that took more than a week because it was in chaos; I sorted every artifact, every tool, every supply item, every piece of paper, even letters from friends dating back to the 1980s.
After that, a very large cloud provider wanted to interview me for an executive writer position. I put in about 60 hours preparing. My friend J came over the Sunday before the video interview, she was an HR director, and asked me interview questions for more than three hours. I had developed 24 narratives describing my career accomplishments: situations, actions, and results. After she left, I distilled each narrative down to bullet points on three-by-five index cards. I enjoyed the interview but I blew it. My therapist said not to beat myself up about that, that the fact that they looked at me for a job writing speeches for the CEO was an honor, and she’s right on both counts.
Also, earlier this summer, I applied to get into graduate school in communication leadership at the University of Washington. I found out in late July that I did not get in. Then I joined my teacher’s five-week summer fiction class. This past week, I wrote a new Nasha Hester chapter, which the class workshops on Tuesday. It’s super fucked up. I went in for the kill. I don’t know if I can publish it. I wish I had an editor. I probably will publish it.
So United States of Anderson has been dark most of the summer. It’s been a month since I published “Angel of Thoughtcrime” but that was just me ripping off memes. At that moment, Substack inaccurately reported that several hundred people viewed the post, but now it’s been corrected to 153. I am not yet to 100 subscribers but I might be by the end of the year. I gave away several lifetime comp subscriptions. The few paid subscribers include family and friends—no strangers; these are known as “charity subscriptions,” so I hear. I do feel a sense of accomplishment for this property that I started a year ago. I’m really proud of the content, and proud of myself. I try.
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©2023 Anderson
Wow, Molly. Super well done and so interesting. You done good!
I enjoyed this Molly. It's fun to learn more about you and your family. You are fortunate to have so much family who wants to see you and love on you. Work will happen. I'm glad you keep putting yourself out there. As they say in Italy, piano, piano. Little by little.