A COLD WALK DOWNTOWN: Got up to 17º ( above!) so I took myself for a walk around downtown Williston and introduced myself to a the town’s three temporary agencies. Now I have stuff to say about the towns architecture and its women. What d’ya want first? OK –women. Lovely women! Tall strong farmer’s-daughters type women. Easy to imagine the blond decedents of Vikings who settled this part of the world. But they are not small women. Just the thing to keep a body warm on a long North Dakota winter’s night. But to be fair, the men are all well padded too. And everyone –men or women- wears hoodys. And drive pick-ups -comparatively new and universally filthy. Six of them lined up at one bank’s drive-thru. Stopped in one bank that I thought might have branches in Colorado to make sure they did and found 20 people (in hoodys) lined up –presumably to deposit paychecks –being as it was Friday. Now architecture is a more complicated issue. It occurs to me that the discerning eye might learn a lot about a town’s history and economy thru its architecture. I suggest that in a serious boom –like the one I’m in, the architecture consists of Butler buildings. If it’s possible for something to be uglier than a Butler building, rows and rows of double-wide trailers in a man-camp with their POW charm might just be it. During times of steady growth however, the people who hired architects were interested in building things that both showed off their good up-to-the-minute taste as well as brought business to -for example- their furniture store. Apparently such an economic period befell Williston during the ‘modern’ era. The words “Populux” and “Space-Age” come to mind as well. Not so much ugly, as whimsically out of date. Imagine white polyester bell-bottoms, a psychedelic shirt, (incompletely buttoned) and multiple gold necklaces -only older. Then there are some civic buildings and churches built by the steady conservative grandfathers of the pretty women I had been meeting this afternoon. I chose to think of what is plainly Northern European architecture as either Methodist or Episcopal. The signs on these churches would seen to bare out my views. Handsome and timeless buildings. I got out of town thru the residential neighborhood. A few beautiful old Victorians and a good number of what I call farm-house. I’d like to call it “Prairie” but Frank Lloyd Wright already claimed this sobriquet, and his designs are far too flamboyant for the conservative doctors, lawyers, and grain brokers that build their homes in the city back in the day. I got lost once –and only once is something of an achievement for me- and drove by the golf course up north of town. Passed one –and only one- show-off overwrought nuevo-riche house. You know the sort of house I’m talking about –huge, too many ins-&-outs and clevernesses on the exterior walls and pitiful little trees that were planted just a year or so back. The owners of these houses will have presumably gotten even richer and move to California before the trees will grow up enough to fit the house. My final stop was the local Walmart. Biggest damn building I’ve ever been in that was not part of an airport. I asked the head cashier, (You can do this sort of thing in North Dakota and they will do their dangdest to get you and answer.), who got on her little walky-talky and asked someone else. 208,000 square feet of people in hoodys. Prices were about the same as in Colorado though.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 18:51:26 +0000
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