Bismarck Tea Party

Republican candidate Berg takes advantage of the gathering

I went to a Tea Party rally at the capitol yesterday. If you’ve never been to one of these things, think of it as tent revival karaoke. Well-meaning amateurs saying whatever they can to get a rise from the audience. Nobody is ever quite as good at it as your own minister, but still,  they’re all very supportive of each other.

The president is an illegal alien. There is this train that’s moving too fast, and we have to slow it down, no we have to stop it, because the bridge…..is….OUT!!!!

Speaker's lectern with Ron Paul supporters in back.

I don’t know what that means either. But I was intrigued by the guys behind the lectern with the Ron Paul sign.

I thought Ron Paul and the tea party were disconnected. For starters, Ron Paul always opposed the Iraq War. That’s not a Tea Party value, judging by its candidates.

Del and Don

Del and Don agreed.  They even allowed that Ron Paul’s original Tea Party was  co-opted by Republicans, and if you could get Tea Partiers to commit to a position, it would probably not be the same as that of Ron Paul.

But that was their point.

“Are you baiting Tea Party patriots with your big Ron Paul sign?” I asked.

Don smiled and didn’t disagree. He told me about being boo’d at Tea Parties past.

Chris Stevens, Field Coordinator, John Birch Society

I also met Chris, the new state coordinator for the John Birch Society. He was staffing a table full of literature about States Rights.

We looked at the 10th amendment together, and I asked, “If California legalizes marijuana next month, will you support its right to do that? Because the Federal Government just said that it will NOT.”

Chris said, “Yes. California has the right to legalize marijuana.”

Both Chris and the Ron Paulers agreed that the Middle East wars were unconstitutional, too.

We had plenty to disagree about , don’t get me wrong. I’m finding that most people don’t really understand the history of social welfare and civil rights in this country, and why they exist in the form we have today. I don’t agree for a minute that the markets would have corrected racism or poor houses.

But what I applaud about the crazy fringe guys at the Tea Party (and I say that affectionately Don and Chris) was that they had a solid position and stood for it even when it put them at odds with the madding crowd.

It’s far easier to have a conversation with someone who lives by guiding principles than with someone who just wants to stop someone else’s train.

Gartner’s shoe hospital

I wish every business in the world was like Gartner’s Shoe Hospital.  In downtown Bismarck,  Gartner’s is  a 70-year-old business that’s so busy there are 2-3 guys behind the counter every time I’m there. They speak with a little bit of that North Dakota accent in their voices, and I find it comforting.

These are no hastily trained kids at the mall chain. I handed over my new pair of Danskos with the missing button, and one looks over and says,”These Dansko’s are good shoes, but this button has been falling off this model a lot.”

How would he know that? Is he psychic? Was it in the manual? Is he buttering me up? No. He just works with shoes a lot.

Then the old guy looks at my favorite hiking boots with the sole torn off and says, “I don’t know if I can fix this, but I’ll give it a try.”

Sure. We both know that he’s going to figure it out before I come back.

And when I return 3 days later and can’t find my ticket, they figure that out too. Then there’s no upsale. No lecture about my shoe ignorance or my cheap socks. No snake oil. Just a charge of $13.

God. I wish these guys were running Bank of America and Blue Cross.

Buying Skate Shoes in Bismarck, North Dakota

(My online friend, Paul, left for Lima, Peru, at about the same time I left for Bismarck, North Dakota. In some twisted way, I see parallels as we both leave behind life we know and abandon the job force in the middle of a recession to find what else there is. In a recent blog post, he wrote about finding a surfboard in Lima, Peru. This is my not-so-parallel universe response. )

We came to North Dakota, my son and I, with one bag each, a carry on, and whatever we could fit in the pockets of our jackets. Underwear and chapstick, mostly.

I thought it was modern Joad. Flying away from the old life, the house, the job that wasn’t going anywhere, and all those possessions that weigh us down and keep us from what’s real.*

But tell that to a 13-year-old with only second-hand snow boots to wear. As you might imagine, we were soon downtown, scouting Bismarck’s two skate shops for acceptable boy shoes. Maybe a pair with some free stickers in the box:

Discontent

On the web, Discontent looks the most promising of the local stores. It has an indoor skate park for these cold Bismarck winters. Surely the center of skate culture, if such a thing exists here.

And maybe it is, but it’s also a head shop. Burning incense, dusty skate shoes, Bob Marley silk screens, well-used ramps, and an 18+over back room.

Let’s talk about pot for a minute.  I don’t care how legal pot ought to be, little kids have a hard enough time of it and…okay, let’s not. But someday you’ll have a kid or even a kid sister, and you’ll get it. So, I’ll just say this:

Damn, you’d think shop owners would know who pays for those $60 skate shoes. It’s not the kids.

Savvy Sk8 and Sno

Even less promising was Savvy Sk8 and Sno. Its lame web presence is dated and incomplete. From the web site, I was sure I had missed it by maybe 3 months–out of business. I drove to the address anyway, in a hybrid residential/industrial neighborhood next to a public housing complex, and found a splintered sign on top of an aluminum barn.

If they went out of business, it surely wasn’t the rent that did them in.

But surprisingly, the lights were on. Then more surprisingly, inside I found a thriving skate and snowboard enterprise. Nicely lit, full of choices.

“Of course,” I thought. “An incomplete web site can mean dead. But it can also mean too-popular-to-get-to-the-online-thing.” And I think that might be the case for Savvy. It fairly teems with kids.

Could it be that the best businesses don’t need social networking to make it? That in a small town getting your name out there isn’t near as important as getting kids to want to come back?

Maybe it’s in fact a positive statement that Savvy didn’t sink money into rent or online marketing.

I’m guessing… rather, I’m hoping … that could be true about many more things in life.

*In truth, we’re only Joad-ing temporarily, in a few weeks we’ll go back to Colorado and get more of our crap to move back up here…but that doesn’t change my image of myself as a 21st century Henry Fonda, not even a little bit.