On my travels to and from Lignite I pass by the Van Hook area and it always makes me think of my Grandpa Fritz. Grandpa has been gone now for over 20 years but it seems like it was just yesterday that I was enjoying one of my rides with him around Van Hook and New Town with him as my tour guide to the past, his past. He would point out various islands and sections of Lake Sakakawea and tell me what was there before they flooded it, and now I do the same with my children as we drive through.

My Grandpa Fritz was born into a farming family that planted, harvested, and lived on the fertile banks of the Missouri River where it meandered through northern North Dakota.

They and many like them farmed the land and raised their families along the river that had brought Lewis and Clark and many others through this country. Many more generations of Ellis’s more than likely would have been born into a life of farming enjoying the bounty of this ancient highway but in the 1950’s the Core of Engineers had a different idea. The kind of idea the Core of Engineers and many like them refer to as progress.

Progress for some always means changes for others. Progress has a way of setting people back sometimes. Not everyone, but some. You generally don’t notice or care unless those “some” are some people you know. I knew my Grandpa and I can’t help but feel that progress set him back or at least set him on a different path. It is quite possible that had they not been put on that path my mother and father never would have met, and I would be breaking stuff on a farm other than my Grandpa Ardell’s.

With the land you loved and labored over at the bottom of Lake Sakakawea you are forced to find a new way to make it in this world of progress. Progress meant trading the stability and security of a family farm with the uncertainty and constant movement of the oil field. Like the crops that grew so thick and lush on the land now at the bottom of a lake shifting in the sand, they too shifted, shifted about, working and living. I guess sometimes that’s all you can hope to do.

From what I’ve gathered much of my father’s early childhood was spent living wherever his father was working and his work was always moving. They lived in a trailer house and my Dad said that he new they weren’t going to be staying long if his Dad didn’t bother unhitching or putting blocks under the trailer.

A lot of saying goodbye to new old friends can’t be easy for a young boy. He had plenty of brothers and sisters to play with, but that’s never the same. Getting tired of them doesn’t do you much good, there not going anywhere, but you can always tell a friend to get lost until you’re ready to enjoy their company again.

They moved and moved until the town of Lignite North Dakota caused them to unhitch and block up the trailer. They may not have known it at the time but they were finally home. Lignite is where my dad met and married my mom. Lignite is where I was raised along with my sister and two brothers. Lignite is where my children love to be. Lignite is where my Grandpa Fritz lived and died.

Lignite is home, a good home.