Concerning TRF

I have occasionally written about Thief River Falls. But I need to say a little more about my new hometown.

Thief River Falls is a town of about 8,500 that the Red River runs through and exists somewhere between Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon and the Cohen Brothers’ Fargo. Life is quite different up here in the Frozen Tundra.

I mentioned before that you could leave your car running while you were shopping, and walk through TRF any time, day or night with no worries. People leave their cars with their keys in them and their doors unlocked.

Marge Gunderson has been cloned many, many times and lives happily in TRF. You don’t have to go very far to hear UFFDA, or Ya betcha, or Don’t ya know. A typical conversation runs something like this: “We were at the Legion don’t ya know and UFFDA they were serving the best tater tot hotdish, ya betcha."

Thief River Falls has a Sears, a J C Penny’s, a hardware store, a few gas stations, two Chinese restaurants and a few fast food places. There is Dee’s Diner and the Lantern, a few bars, three banks, a couple of really good grocery stores, and five or six gas stations. The residents were sure that “it was on the map” when Walmart put in a store with a grocery deprtment.

Walmart shopping in TRF is a very different experience for me. There are little clusters of people who have “parked” their grocery carts and are engaged in conversations about church and school, kids and grandkids, and in-laws and outlaws. It is a place where a perfect stranger walks up to me and says: “UFFDA, those are some nice whiskers”, or “I didn’t get everything on my Christmas list last year, don’t ya know,” or “Ya, you betcha, I knew that this was the Frozen Tundra, and seeing you I am sure of it.”

Typical conversations at Dee’s Diner run something like this: the weather, sugar beets, the weather, soybeans, the weather, those damn Vikings, the weather, that damn Gopher football team, the weather, “sledding” (snowmobiling to the uninitiated), the weather, combines, the weather, guns and ammo, the weather, who hit a deer or got hit by a deer, and the weather. There is usually a table with a Sherriff’s Deputy and a few city policemen sitting at it, and sometimes they join the conversation, but most of the time the talk amongst themselves about chasing speeders and DWI arrests, oh, and guns and ammo, and the weather.

Now it may sound like I am poking fun at these people…I’m not they are the most honest, genuine people I have met, and it is the place where if you need help someone is always there, and you can still make any deal with a handshake.

That’s all for now…see you next time!