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SPEAKER: Mayville is our hometown. I've been in town here about twenty-some years. It's true that by act, it's no use to try to find a better town, not just as good as any.

[HUMMING]

RADIO HOST: Our Home Town, Mayville, North Dakota, population 2,554, one in a series of sound portraits illustrating the values and character of life in small towns. The series is produced by Minnesota Public Radio station, KCCM Moorhead, with funds provided by the North Dakota Committee for the Humanities and Public Issues.

Mayville is a small, prosperous farming and college town, located along the Goose River in East Central North Dakota. The town was settled by Scandinavian immigrants and Americans who moved west to farm the rich, black soil of the Red River Valley. We begin this sound portrait as residents of Mayville tell us what they like about their town. Then we hear some thoughts about privacy and conformity, and in addition, we explore the importance of the arts in small towns. The interviewer is John Ydstie.

SPEAKER: It's a very, should I say, clean community, everything is well-kept. The people take pride in their homes and their business. People take pride in their premises, they keep them up, they keep them painted and that type of thing. And I think this is attractive to the ordinary person. And I know this is the only place I want to live.

SPEAKER: Well, I wouldn't say there's anything special, but you got to live someplace.

[LAUGHS]

SPEAKER: They accept people for what they are because there are so many different peoples coming and going, and in this being, it's a small college town.

SPEAKER: One nice thing about Mayville is that you can leave your keys in the car overnight. You don't have to lock it up. You leave your guns and your tools and stuff in the car, and it's always there in the morning. In larger cities, you can't do that.

SPEAKER: I like the cold winters, and I don't know, hot summers don't bother me. I could take them or leave them. And shoveling snow and getting cold, just about freezing in the winter, I like that, just gives you a good feeling.

SPEAKER: Happiness and love, those two ingredients right there have really made me plant my feet in this town. And when I'm older and away possibly someplace, I'll always consider Mayville my home because it's a nice place.

SPEAKER: Mayville has the best team in town.

JOHN YDSTIE: People who live in the city say, well, I couldn't live there because there's not enough privacy. How do you react to that statement?

SPEAKER: Well, I suppose that's true. You think of in a small town, everybody knows everybody's business and that, but I feel if you live your life accordingly, they're not going to talk so much about you. But I'll tell you one thing. After losing a father-in-law and a father, I never realized the multitude of friends that we had until we were in trouble and needed help.

The rural friends, the people in town, were so great to us. You just can't imagine. I had my dad's brother came in from California and he said, some of us could lay dead for days and nobody would ever care or worry or even check our home. He said, I didn't realize or I had forgotten how great the rural people can be. He said, surely, out there, nobody would ever hardly come to a funeral or come to your door and acknowledge.

SPEAKER: We had a cousin died just last Saturday night, and every day since then, we've had calls, people asking how-- telling us how they feel. They're sorry for us. And we've had people bringing food and things over. I mean, we can still cook and everything, but they just brought it over just to show that they cared. People just care around here, and it's a good deal. I really like that.

SPEAKER: People of the community, you see, have just rallied around us and have brought us things and have sent us cards and have just comforted us and taken care of us and would do anything in the world for us. Well, now I just don't think you can find that in a less personal place.

And if you object to the involvement of other people in your life to the point where they do know what you're doing, then you're going to have to give up this very comforting feeling that if you're really in a pickle, there are at least a dozen people you could call to bail you out.

And I think this is-- I think this would be very difficult for me right now to get along without knowing that I had just really, literally, dozens of people who would help me out if I really just asked them to do anything. I mean, that's a very comforting feeling.

[MAN HUMMING]

SPEAKER: Do you know what that is?

JOHN YDSTIE: What's that?

SPEAKER: That is-- the song? Don't Fence Me In.

JOHN YDSTIE: Of course, you sacrifice privacy when you have these very close relationships. There's little that you can do in a town like this without having other people knowing about it. I feel there's a pressure to conform and to be what people want you to be. Do you think that small communities demand this, especially with the youth?

SPEAKER: Oh, there's no question about that. Anyone who does not conform to the orthodox lifestyle as it is in a small town like this will stick out like a sore thumb and become a pariah in the community, depending upon how much he deviates.

SPEAKER: I don't mind people knowing what I'm doing. And if I'm ashamed in them knowing what I'm doing, I probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Privacy, to me, is non-existent. I mean, I don't see any need for it, really. I mean, a person can live his own life in the view of others.

And it's just I feel unnecessary to want to make restrictions on who is interested in your life and who's not because if they're interested, they're obviously a friend of yours, and if they're interested just in gossip, why, let them talk.

No one can make you conform. To me, living in a small town is the ultimate test of your individuality. If you can remain an individual while everybody else is conforming, why, to me, you've accomplished something. And to me, living in a small town affords you that opportunity to prove yourself as an individual rather than making you conform. I can't see how anyone could make a strong individual conform.

JOHN YDSTIE: Small towns sometimes don't accept different kinds of lifestyles. Do you feel that in Mayville?

SPEAKER: Yeah, I think it restricts what you do and what you let people see you do. And what people think, whether you like it or not, in a small town, it does matter because you can think what you want, and you can do what you want. But I think that people are always watching you, and your business is everybody else's business.

And it's something you have to get used to. And some people don't care and some people do care. Myself, I think public opinion is important, but I still do what I like to do. It doesn't prohibit me from my ideas and what I want in life, but it does make a difference in a small town.

SPEAKER: In the past 10 years, there's been a different feeling upon people. In other words, there's been a philosophy of nonconformity, and I'm sure that it is difficult for many people to accept this. And in some instances, I know it's been difficult for me to accept this, but I know I've had to change. And sometimes I didn't like to change. Well, the method or mode of dress, for example, the length of hair, all this has been a change, and some people can't accept that.

SPEAKER: In the 22 years I've been here, I've seen a little more tolerance in some people who are different. That there are people now who are accepted who are quite different, who would not have been 20 years ago. And people's problems, for example, alcoholics, are accepted in the community. And the community is more concerned with them in a positive way than it would have been.

A generation ago, they pretty much just rejected them, and that isn't quite as true anyway. The person who has the fewest inhibitions probably suffers the most. As I said, they're more tolerant in some ways, but I think that there is still a certain-- they look askance at a person who is too different, more so than they would in the city.

For the most part, most of them are doing it not as an expression of how they feel, but to get some attention, they're so eager to have somebody give them some attention that they're willing to do these odd things in order to get that attention. Well, I don't think in a small town that they need to because they get attention from somebody. They've got some friends. They've got some group with whom they're accepted.

JOHN YDSTIE: Do you feel like the community is opening up more than it had in the past in terms of acceptance of people, acceptance of different ideas?

SPEAKER: Well, I've heard many people say Mayville is a very cliquey town. It's very difficult to be accepted socially in Mayville. And as I say, I don't know that for personal fact because I married into the community. I have heard younger people say that they find it very difficult in Mayville to get into a social group.

And what I like about Mayville is that there are many different kinds of groups. There's the group of friends that you have, for example, through your church, and then there's another group of friends that you have through your work, and then there's another group of friends that you've been friends through the years. I mean, you started as young, married couple, and all of your children are the same age and that sort of thing.

And then there are the professional groups that you belong to, and all of these groups offer different people. That is, they overlap, but not completely so so that you have opportunities to be in contact with many different kinds of people, and I think this is great. I shouldn't say many different kinds of people. There aren't many different kinds of people here, but I mean, different personality types, I guess that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER: There's a difference in the way couples socialize here. The men tend to get together a lot more and leave the women at home to do their thing, the housekeeping and childcare, which is their role in life. In a couple of years, I guess women's lib will hit Mayville and things are going to be different.

But this is the biggest adjustment I've had to make because I wasn't prepared for this at all because my husband remembers when, which was when he was back in college, and the way his parents did things, and they were always at home because they were farmers and didn't go out at night. But a lot of the socializing is done at night in beer joints and things like that.

SPEAKER: Some people say small towns are cliquey, and I would have to agree they are. And you find probably in younger groups, if you find a clique, well, then, it seems like everyone's the same in that clique. There are groups of people that went through high school together, and they've been out of high school for 10 years, and they're still together, which is OK, I guess. But they haven't really gotten out and found themselves and express themselves the way they possibly could have.

SPEAKER: A lot of people haven't been exposed to a lot of the troubles and stuff everywhere else, so they don't want to see it right here in a small community. And they don't accept a lot of the things that go on around here. And now we-- we just--

JOHN YDSTIE: And Mayville is a protected, sheltered community.

SPEAKER: Very much so.

SPEAKER: Many of the people that live here are North Dakota people. And North Dakota people want to be protected. I mean--

SPEAKER: They like the security.

SPEAKER: --the family, life, security. I suppose if we didn't have this type of protection, we'd have to find another form of it. If we lived in another place, we're probably all a bunch of chickens.

[LAUGHS]

I don't know so much about being protected, but oh, yeah, you do feel secure living here because you know people.

SPEAKER: Because of the security in their family and in their neighborhood. Everybody knows each other and can help each other out.

SPEAKER: Even like those-- well, I spent two days in Chicago, and I couldn't stand not trusting everybody. I mean, you forget your keys in the car for a week here, you know your car is going to be where you left it. I mean, it's just that type of security.

And I suppose it's security, too, that you're able to say hi and to greet anybody you meet on the street because you know, well, there's Ben Franklin person or there's [INAUDIBLE] person or something from one of the stores.

SPEAKER: In a smaller community, I think we're a little bit more prone to help our neighbor, that if the neighbor across the street gets sick or something or if he's gone on a vacation and his grass gets long, somebody will go over and mow it for him and things like that, or if somebody gets stuck, why, you pull him out, or if you see a guy walking down the street in the morning or somebody walking to school and you're going that way, you stop and give them a ride.

They're not afraid to take the ride. In the bigger city, you wouldn't stop, and neither would they get in. You walk down the street in the morning, you're going to cafe, everybody says good morning. And if the morning wasn't so good before long, it's a good morning.

[DOOR CREAKING]

[CHATTERING]

MAN: Good morning.

WOMAN: Good morning. Do you care for anything else here?

MAN 1: Nothing.

MAN 2: Yeah, me, too.

WOMAN: OK, let's see. You had four coffees.

MAN 2: Oh, I think I had plenty enough.

WOMAN: Let's see. Man, you had a roll and a cookie. And you had a cookie. And did you have--

MAN 2: It's all gone. You never knew where it went.

WOMAN: There's the evidence. A little more coffee?

MAN 1: He was around and emptied the whole pot around here.

WOMAN: Oh, well, that's OK.

MAN 1: That's all good. Coming now.

MAN 2: I think you must have left our neighborhood.

WOMAN: Yeah, we left there, so more are coming in, in and out. There's some people from Bisbee, and he's going to school. And I don't know what she does. But anyway, it's her nephew, I think, that's going to go to school.

MAN 1: Oh, yeah.

MAN 2: There's a little fellow that had trouble with a skunk. Darn skunk. It crawled underneath his porch.

MAN 3: Oh, yeah.

MAN 2: He couldn't get rid of it, no matter what.

MAN 3: So he sent a Swede in there.

MAN 2: He couldn't get rid of it, either. He talked to him in Norwegian and English, but didn't help him. So one day, he met a friend of Tony. So he asked him. He had a solution to this problem to get rid of the skunk.

MAN 1: That was last night.

MAN 2: Well, he says to fix up a bowl of lutefisk, let it sit underneath the porch. And I'm sure that he might leave. So he did that, and about a day or so later, he met his friend again and the friend asked, how did you get along with the skunk? Did you get rid of him? Yeah, he says, the skunk left. But now he says, I got in trouble with the Norwegians.

JOHN YDSTIE: What is the value of provincialism?

SPEAKER: Well, I think maybe it makes one willing to appreciate small things, simple things, ordinary things, which, after all, are a very important part of our life, even though they may not be dramatic or significant. A lot of life isn't dramatic and significant, it's ordinary. And if you have some appreciation of the ordinary things and the little things, I think, then, life becomes more meaningful to you.

[INSECTS CHIRPING]

JOHN YDSTIE: Do you think a small town suffers from lack of culture and humanities programs?

SPEAKER: I don't think we suffer so much here because anybody who really wants to, they're not so far from Fargo, where there are three colleges putting on dramatic productions and musical productions and one thing and another, from Grand Forks with their Lyceum Circuit. Even if you want to go to the Guthrie, it's not that far, if you're so inclined.

I think those of us who have children of this high school age are too busy with their activities, really, to even worry about whether we're culturally deprived or not.

SPEAKER: There's a lot of people around here that paint. I don't know, they paint using oils or whatever, and nobody really cares. I mean, I don't care. I mean, don't they usually have to take things in a bigger towns for exhibits and stuff?

JOHN YDSTIE: How about a person in school who's artistically inclined, is he out of it?

SPEAKER: No. I mean, there's nothing really that he has any use for. But he's not out of it just because he can draw. It's just fine, if you want to succeed whenever you succeed, just as long as you're not getting weird while you're doing it. I mean, if you're out of it, as far as knowing what's going on and everything, it doesn't matter what you're succeeding in.

Nobody's going to accept you just because you-- if you're a jock or something, they're not going to accept you just because you're a jock. You have to be a little in.

SPEAKER: Take a hypothetical case of a kid who writes poetry, let's say.

SPEAKER: You know that nobody's going to accept a guy that writes poetry.

SPEAKER: Why not?

SPEAKER: That's loaded, Mother.

SPEAKER: Oh, here's a boo.

SPEAKER: It's one of the things that isn't accepted yet, I guess, so I don't know.

SPEAKER: Because we are not culturally mature.

SPEAKER: I don't really know because there isn't anybody that likes to write poetry that I know of.

SPEAKER: Well, I know, but I just took a "for instance." If somebody did write poetry and got it published in a magazine, would you say, oh, that's really neat, and go up and shake his hand?

SPEAKER: Yeah, probably, if I liked the guy. But the only guys and people I ever knew that wrote poetry are weird.

SPEAKER: That's just the same as saying all football players are stupid.

SPEAKER: I mean, if the guy is-- if the guy's all right and he wants to write poetry, fine. But I haven't met one yet, so I don't know.

SPEAKER: We do tend to stereotype. I think people who live in a community that is more diverse than ours so that they have an opportunity to observe more kinds of behavior than one are probably less likely to stereotype than we are.

SPEAKER: What are we supposed to get our-- what we think about people besides from what our experiences have been?

SPEAKER: Maybe the small town does you a disservice as a young person because we don't provide you in a small town with the diversity that perhaps you need to be a mature, open-minded kind of person.

[FOLK MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER: I had too much trouble getting them in there-- the notes in there.

SPEAKER: Yeah, I have deep roots here, I guess. I don't know. First of all, I have trouble meeting new people and things because all my friends are here. I have friends in other towns and stuff, but I don't know, I think this is really a great town. And even when I just leave for a week or something, I come back to this town, it is really refreshing.

People that you just know they're outside, you can't really get into it with them. But your real friends back home, you're free, do whatever you want, and there's no really great pressures or anything.

SPEAKER: There are many families here, grandfathers and grandchildren, who are now perhaps getting into their own business and farming that, I would say, is a classic definition of having roots. A friend of our family, Clark Ewing family, south of town, is probably a good example. I don't think Clark would mind us, but his grandfather homesteaded this area in the late 1800s.

His father farmed. They had a very tough, struggling early existence. Now Clark does very prosperous farming south of town. They're in the original homestead house or at least slightly removed, but anyhow, it's been in the family for about close to a hundred years. So that's roots, I think.

SPEAKER: Mm-hmm, that's home. My grandfather built it in 1900. We've added to and improved it, and it would be hard to live anyplace else.

SPEAKER: The roots, and maybe I've been here six years, are starting to go down now. There's one thing interesting about the idea of roots. They're very important to people. The younger generation of today has been criticized for leaving the town as soon as they graduate from high school or graduate from college and going off to the big city or going off someplace else.

Well, I have a theory about that, and that is that this is typical of the youth. They want to get away and see something of the world and get away from the community in which they were brought up. Now, I've noticed another thing that after about 10 or 15 years, these people all start to come back. It is not all of them, but some of them. And it may be that the people that are coming back are fugitives from another community.

They won't go back to their home community, but they will go back to a similar community of the same size and the same kind of ethnicness that they experienced as young people, and this is what's happening here.

SPEAKER: My family has always been here, and I've feel loyal to the old home town. I'd like to go out and see the world and go to Los Angeles and all those big towns to see how everything is. But I'd like to come right back here and settle down. I'd like to put up a business here, and maybe if it fails, it fails. But you got to try something. You make maybe all your everything, and that'd be my life right there.

SPEAKER: We do have an awful lot of people who wish to come back here, and this surprises me, young people who have come through school here and whose parents live here and who are young, single people. And our town really does not have a whole lot to offer young, single people, that these young people come back.

They come back here and farm. They come back here and teach. They come back here and go into business, that sort of thing. So evidently, we're doing something right if it's desirable enough for them to want to return to it as young adults.

SPEAKER: In the past, I think it's been-- the city has been romanticized as being the place of adventure and intrigue and a place where you go to find yourself. Well, to me, I couldn't be able to find myself in a place as confusing. I need a more simple environment to find myself, and I think I've done it in Mayville.

SPEAKER: I must take some kind of satisfaction in the work that I am doing. I like to solve problems and more so, I like to solve complicated problems. And these type of problems don't present themselves in a small community like this. I need a little excitement, or I need a little stimulation, not just professionally, but socially and recreationally.

I'm not saying you don't get it here, but you get it-- it's a matter of kind. I mean, you just get a different kind of it in an urban area than you do here.

SPEAKER: And I got a couple of kids, but of course, they won't stay in North Dakota. So that leaves me all alone here. I spent some money on my kids to give them education, and then they up and leave.

[CHUCKLES]

Well, they can get more money somewhere else, so you can't hold them.

SPEAKER: Well, that's why all the small towns are going to pieces.

RADIO HOST: You're listening to Our Home Town, Mayville, North Dakota, one in a series of sound portraits, which explore the values, concerns, and character of life in small towns. We continue now with some ideas from Mayville residents about the value of growing up in a small town and an assessment of the role of sports. Residents also discussed the importance of the family in their lives and the role of farming in the town's economy.

JOHN YDSTIE: What do you recall from growing up in this area?

SPEAKER: For example, both my parents worked. And in a small town, a young boy or a young girl can grow up by himself without the external pressures that you have in a large city. I think that's the big thing. Like, in Portland, I remember we used to get 10 to 15 boys together, and we'd congregate at this one yard.

And we'd just take off into the woods. It was only about a half mile away, and we'd play whatever you play in the woods and be there for a couple hours in the afternoon and come on home, and that took up your day. And kids in the city miss this, I think. There's not enough open space in the city.

When you're growing up in a small town, you're surrounded by other people in the same boat, and no one comes in and tells you that you've been slighted. But I think that's a definite advantage. I think that's the advantage of small towns, is that there is always someone there.

And if, for example, your parents can't watch you all the time, and if you happen to do something that you'd need reassurance with or want to talk to somebody about, the communities are close enough that you can get that feedback or whatever it is from someone else. People that do mean well don't attempt those things in larger towns.

SPEAKER: I think people tolerate children. Children can be very annoying. And you say, get lost, kid. But here, people want to listen to what they have to say.

SPEAKER: You get to know a lot of people, and you're pretty well free to go anywhere you want. You don't have to worry about going out at night or anything like that. It's nice. A lot of the time is spent just running around with other kids your own age. Growing up was spent in the Dairy Queen or in the bowling alley or something. A lot of it is talking, and after games and stuff, just getting together, goofing around, walking, bike riding, things like that.

SPEAKER: I liked school a lot, especially high school. I really had a good time. And in a small community, you can really be active. You can be in everything.

JOHN YDSTIE: What do you think you've gained from growing up in a small town that someone in a city wouldn't have?

SPEAKER: Oh, I think you appreciate the people around you, and especially the scenery in the land, like having a yard, having a lot of place to go, being able to just walk by yourself if you want to, not having to have somebody with you because you're afraid you're going to get hurt, being able to take off in a car and not worry about traffic, things like that.

I think you appreciate the things around you more. I couldn't live in a large city where it's just buildings. I can't stand it if there isn't grass. And I don't know, it's just it's being able to relax, too, even though you're really busy. You're very sheltered when you live in a small town. And we don't realize what's going on in the rest of the world, like smog and pollution and things like that.

Industrial development isn't as big around here. It's growing. But we don't realize what crime and things are like either, killing and mugging and things like that because it's just we don't have any part of it at all. And around here, it's peaceful, and you don't realize what it's like to be in a larger city.

JOHN YDSTIE: Would you rather live here than anywhere else?

SPEAKER: Yeah, I was born here.

SPEAKER: I wasn't born here, but I like to live here.

JOHN YDSTIE: What's so great about it?

SPEAKER: It's not too big, not too small, that sort of stuff.

JOHN YDSTIE: What do you guys do all day long?

SPEAKER: Play around. Just walk around town, like bums.

SPEAKER: Yeah.

JOHN YDSTIE: How would you like to live in Hillsborough?

BOTH: No way.

JOHN YDSTIE: What's so neat about Mayville?

SPEAKER: We're used to Mayville. We're not used to Hillsborough.

JOHN YDSTIE: What's the best thing that you can do in Mayville?

SPEAKER: Sports. Like, if you're in fifth or sixth grade, you can go for a whole bunch of sports.

SPEAKER: Peewee.

SPEAKER: Then when you're in sixth or seventh and eighth, football.

ANNOUNCER: The home team, Red River Valley All-Stars, Barry Hanson, center field, Paul Eisenbeis, second base, Scott Johnson, left field. Brian Akin, pitcher.

SPEAKER: Right now, we're out here watching a state Babe Ruth tournament. And I think this is very significant because there are some teams here. For example, the team from our area is known as the Red River Valley All-Stars, and they're made up of players from about five different towns, Hillsborough, Thompson, Mayville, Portland, Northwood, Hatton, about five or six towns. And here, these kids are out there playing together.

And I think they find out that kids from other towns aren't so bad as people would like to make them out. And I think this is important.

SPEAKER: For me, fun is sports. I'm really up on sports. I think that's physicalness and all that stuff. With sports, there gets to be rivalry between the towns. And during the season, you're almost afraid to go to the next-door town unless you have a gang along to take care of yourself. But I think if you could reduce the rivalry so you could get friendship between the towns, that would help a lot, too.

SPEAKER: Hillsborough is a rival town, you see, and a lot of people just hate Hillsborough because they're our rivals. Once you get to talking to those guys, they're really pretty guys. And I think a lot of us have found that out. Once you start talking to them, we're flexible enough to change our minds that we don't hate them. They're just as good as any other human being.

SPEAKER: I like this town. I really like it a lot, but I think it has its faults, too. For instance, probably the biggest one that means the most to me right now is I'm a football captain this year, and I think our town's reputation very greatly rides on the success of our high school athletics. And it's a game, it's not a business. It seems like our town has gotten its name and everything through athletics, at least that's the way it seems to me.

JOHN YDSTIE: Do you feel pressure?

SPEAKER: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's win or just don't do it at all. It's either win or nothing. And I like to play football and everything, or I wouldn't do it, but I like to play it as a game, not as a business. I don't want to go out there and kill myself, but I'm going to give it everything I got. But I'm going to enjoy it, too.

SPEAKER: The reputation of the town does ride too much on the sports. We've always had a great team going to state and music and things. And we've got a debate state champion and everything, and you never hear about them, really. You always hear about how great we are in sports, but we also got a lot of other things. And like in our school, a lot of other departments are very lacking because of our athletic program has all the latest equipment.

SPEAKER: The coaches, I'm sure, they want to have a good reputation. That's their own personal doing. They want to have a good record and everything. But then the townspeople, I think, put a little too much pressure on them, too.

SPEAKER: That's true.

SPEAKER: I think that it's really too important in this town, if you're a good athlete, well, then, you've got it made. You can almost be flunking out, it doesn't matter. I don't think that's right.

SPEAKER: If somebody's a starter on the basketball team or something, if he'd missed practice or something, everybody in town that would hear about it would just gasp and think, man, he's really letting down the town. And I think that's carrying it a little bit too far. And another thing, it seems like our teaching staff is more centered around athletics than around teaching.

I mean, you never hear somebody say, who's going to be the English teacher next year? You just hear him say, who's going to be the basketball coach or who's going to be the football coach?

SPEAKER: And three years ago when we won class B basketball in the state, we got back and a great big car lineup waiting for us way out by Cooperstown or Findlay. And we had banquets. Everybody wanted us over for a meal or something. And then these past two years when we didn't do as well, there's nothing. So it's like they have more fire than some of the kids do.

SPEAKER: If I were coaching in Mayville and Portland started beating us, I'd say, well, if we had new basketballs for practice, we could beat that team. Well, then, the people in town buy new basketballs, and then they expect you to beat them. So all the pressure that's on there, I think coaches have brought on themselves. Sports should be fun.

SPEAKER: But it is prestigious to be an athlete. It is not prestigious in our school to be a student. Why is that?

SPEAKER: How am I supposed to know?

SPEAKER: Because you are a student and you are an athlete also. And it is far more self satisfying to you in terms of prestige and status, the athletic part of it, whether you get a 4-point average every time or not--

SPEAKER: That doesn't bother me too much if I get 4 points because I don't really have to work at it that hard. But to get something in athletics, you really-- that's a lot of work. I mean, you appreciate it when you get it.

SPEAKER: No, but do you feel that there's too much emphasis on sports to the exclusion of something that you feel might be more important?

SPEAKER: I don't know if it's really hurting anything else, but there's a lot of emphasis on sports that we shouldn't really have. But we should be able to have a little fun in sports all the time, instead of always having to worry about how we're going to be rated and everything.

SPEAKER: Do you think it's important to the school community, that is, to your contemporaries, or do you think the pressure comes from the adults as fans or from the students as fans?

SPEAKER: Both. You don't hear it from the adults as much, but there's some people high up, like on the school board, that are really-- I don't know, really after something.

SPEAKER: Do you suppose that it's not the fault necessarily of our community, but rather of our system, where this is about the only way that a school achieves fame, notoriety because this puts the whole town on the map? When you are number one in basketball, or you are number one in whatever, people will say-- if you say, oh, well, I'm from Mayville. Oh, you have that really good such-and-so football team or basketball team or whatever. It's a sense of pride that comes with this.

[CHILDREN LAUGHING]

SPEAKER: Where's Bob? Hey, Bob.

SPEAKER: You go out. You go out.

SPEAKER: He's going out.

SPEAKER: One other guy. Who's good?

SPEAKER: I'm in.

SPEAKER: Chase, you're blocking.

SPEAKER: I'll block.

SPEAKER: Yeah, you block here. Ready?

SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE]

SPEAKER: Yeah!

SPEAKER: Callahan!

SPEAKER: Yeah! Good!

SPEAKER: Yeah, he did.

SPEAKER: He got it.

SPEAKER: Touchdown! Whoa!

SPEAKER: Boo!

SPEAKER: Family's been very much an important part in this community. And if you notice that when you go out in an evening to a basketball game or a football game or something at the college, the biggest percent of the time, it's family. They do a lot of things together, and they try to keep their youngsters with them.

I think of our son being 17 or 18 years old and still was very willing to go along with mom and dad. It's one of the little rural assets as far as I'm concerned. I think of our kiddies saying that I don't know what we'd have done without you and dad. All that you have taught us already. And I think that's pretty great when your children will come up and tell you that at the age they're at, sometimes they have to be in their late 20s or early 30s before they'll say, thanks, Mom and Dad.

My family, my dad and mom set very high standards and ideals. And like my folks said, all I can give you is a proper bringing up. And this is what we have tried to do to our children. And the farm has been a great asset for us with our son, that he could go out and be with his father and work with him. But many children don't have that opportunity. And I just feel they need responsibility. They need to be needed.

SPEAKER: I don't think there's really a generation gap in Mayville. There's a few people that don't see eye to eye in the family, but usually, it's brought together in some way or other. They either go to their church and have their pastor help them out or something. So I think that it's not the big struggle that they have in the cities. They're closer. And it helps a lot, I think, to keep a family unit, and you're not separated.

SPEAKER: As I see it, the family unit is really the basis of life here because-- well, there's not much to do at night other than be home. Well, like, parents are home a lot more, I think, here than-- I go to other towns and I think you're going to see a lot more adults out late at night in other towns than you do here. I think that just shows that they spend more time at home together as a family.

SPEAKER: When you work with your family all day long, I mean, you get to know them. It's not like in a bigger city or something. They take off for the office, you see them at 8 o'clock and then back at 5:00. And you may not really get to know what they're like. But here, folks are right up top. They're working, go in there. And a lot of people, it's family-owned stores, and the kids work right along with the parents.

SPEAKER: My family is a sports-minded family, and they really did-- because my older brothers were always good in sports. And that's why I'm having trouble getting out of sports because everybody thinks, well, are you going out for football? And I say, no, and they say, oh, why is that? It's just a problem. Your family is-- if your family-- if you have a brother that did really something good for somebody else, they say, oh, that family must really be a nice family.

And if he does something bad, like he smokes pot or something, the whole family is affected by it. But the families are real close here.

JOHN YDSTIE: What things do you value most in your life?

SPEAKER: Oh, family. To see your children grow and learn, why, this is the most gratifying, as far as values are concerned. And I take a lot of pride in being able to provide for them, anything they need. A man gets a lot of satisfaction out of that. I have four young children, and I guess that's what it's all about. That's what we're working so hard that they'll be able to learn and grow. And I would hope, enjoy some kind of successes, like we're enjoying now.

SPEAKER: I see parents who I think may be are sacrificing too much for things that aren't that important in the lives of their children. And maybe the children appreciate it, maybe they don't. I think, too, of the fact that this is a small college town makes the people of the community more aware of some of the youth problems. I don't know that they do more about them, but they think more about them, I think.

SPEAKER: I don't feel that I've sacrificed anything. And if you're going to call it sacrifice, so you have to remember that the past generation sacrificed for us, if you want to call it sacrifice. In fact, they've sacrificed a great deal more. Perhaps not in dollars and cents, but then when you think of how much money they had, certainly percentage-wise, they sacrificed a great deal more than we do today. And our young people are certainly worth every bit of it.

[MAN HUMMING "MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA"]

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

MAN (SINGING): Hurrah! Hurrah!

[HUMMING]

Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free

So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea

While we were marching through Georgia

SPEAKER: I think as an economist, I'd have to say it's atypical economically because of its 3,000 population, one would normally think that would not be a center of agriculture. But due to the very prosperous land and the agriculture supporting, this county is really one of the most wealthiest in the state as far as per capita income. It is one of the oldest by age. Many people retire here. The number of persons 55 and over is very high, one of the highest percentages in the state and in the country.

So there's something attracting retired people back to the area as well as keeping young families here economically. And I think if you look at it economically, it's very prosperous compared to the average town of 3,000 between North Dakota and Texas. If you look at many of them, they're dilapidated. Some of them lost their attraction to the young people, but this town hasn't. And that's quite an exciting place to live.

And this is evidenced by the fact that we have really a Main Street business, which is owned, in many cases, by young men and women in their early 30s, rather than a grandfather operations. They're changing. It's a young town, in a sense. And this is quite attractive, one reason my wife and I were impressed moving here a year ago.

But I think Mayville's future and other small towns is probably a little brighter because of the not so much economic problems of the city, but the social problems, political problems, crime, kids can't play on the street. That'll force more people back to middle-sized towns than anything. Economically, I can't think it's too much different than the rest of the nation. Although, as I say, agrarian areas like this are prospering and will prosper as long as food demand and worldwide protein shortage persists.

SPEAKER: The big farmers and stuff like that, they've got lots of land. And the good thing about a community, this community, is that they earn their money here and they spend their money here. And that is very important. If there's farmers that there's got to be-- if not a lot of money, then there's money invested in land and that sort of thing. So you should be able to make a fair living in a small town like this.

SPEAKER: I feel in my particular business, I know almost all of the customers that come into my store. I am in a small town. I need to depend on repeat business, so therefore, I must treat my customers as if they are the most important people in the world in which they are really to me. Honesty is very, very important in a small town business, I don't care what you are in or what you are doing. Honesty is very, very important.

For example, you get to know everyone over the years, and consequently, everyone gets to know you. And believe me, if you ever cross someone in a small town, it spreads very, very rapidly. And when you need to depend on people coming back to you, it is very, very important that you are honest and treat everyone fairly.

SPEAKER: There's an old saying that the advantage of living in a small community is that you know whose check is good and whose check isn't, and whose wife or whose husband isn't either. And actually, those values are about the same today that in a big city, your advertising budget will have to be much higher than it would be in a smaller city because I can go up here and have coffee in the wintertime and run into three or four farmers and do some business up in the cafe.

But in a large city, that can't be done. First place is you wouldn't even know they were potential customers. Second thing is that you have to spend advertising money to try and get them into your place, and everybody does the same thing. In the larger city, you don't have to give the service that you do in a small community. That small community, your clientele or customers is based considerably more on service and friendship and possibly credit.

Credit in the business in the big Cities is zero. The smaller city, I suppose, is that 60% of our sales are marked charge.

SPEAKER: Pay scales are low if you were an employed worker. I think for the people who own their own businesses, there isn't much of a sacrifice because the volume is here. It's very dependent upon the farmer and what's happening in the fields. And all the businessmen are dependent upon that. But the workers get phenomenally low wages. A family man can have a take-home pay of $78 a week. And with food going up as it is, there's no way.

SPEAKER: Remember this town some years ago? All the people around here, you know you had four hotels and everything, two pool halls, four restaurants. Now, they've got up there on Main Street, nothing, two restaurants, not even a pool hall anymore, and full of people around all the time.

SPEAKER: Well, they was open Saturday night, you couldn't hardly walk in here.

SPEAKER: You couldn't walk on the street Saturday night?

SPEAKER: Just like Fargo, Grand Forks.

SPEAKER: Working people, of course-- it was horses in them days. And every farmer had to have about four guys. Now they farm three times more land and do it all themselves. It makes a difference.

SPEAKER: Being a farmer, you really get to-- I mean, the land is your life. You have to care for it, and weather has a lot to do with it. There isn't anything you can do about the weather, but the rains usually come and all this. And without the land, where would you be?

SPEAKER: It's so flat and everything here. A lot of people I know, if they come out from east or west, where it's rolling and everything is a little different, where do we go? Then they'd probably think, oh, what a bore it would be to live here. But it's really great. You look out over the highway and stuff and you see all these fields and riding on the tractors and stuff. I really like the mountains and everything, but I don't know, right here, you can see all around you. You know everything that's going on.

SPEAKER: Well, I think the fertility, the ability to grow good crops, big crops year after year, the thing that intrigues me. And the longer you farm it, the longer you till it, you're more aware of the capabilities, and hopefully you continue to add to its productivity. You're bound to be attached to the earth. Your livelihood depends upon it. Your ability to take care of your family needs depends upon it.

I think as we see other areas despoiled and abused, why, I think there's much more of an awareness of what we have to do to preserve this earth, to preserve the productivity. I think we're more and more aware of this every day.

JOHN YDSTIE: When you go out in the spring and sink a plow or whatever into the ground, could you give me the feeling that you think of?

SPEAKER: Well, I think you think about what it's going to grow, hopefully what you can achieve. And of course, it's translated into money, into what kind of returns you can get from this effort. It's a lot of-- or it's a huge expenditure nowadays, money and labor. And naturally, you're thinking in terms of returns, but I think it goes deeper than that, too. There, you want to preserve it and enhance it.

SPEAKER: Watch the time.

SPEAKER: Yeah, but if you wait too long, so much of the best stuff goes down and then you don't get it. You lose that. Might as well take a little on the green side.

SPEAKER: I wouldn't let mine get dead ripe.

SPEAKER: You wouldn't, huh? Then I'm going to get a section outfit and suck up the heads after they fall to the ground. How about getting that? I get those free, don't I?

SPEAKER: Yeah, we got stiff straw grain. No, we haven't got any of that weak straw stuff.

SPEAKER: Oh, haven't you?

[LAUGHING]

SPEAKER: We put in very long hours seeding and harvest, and then, of course, we have periods when employment is slack. And we have a long period in the winter. It rises and falls. We put in a lot of 16 and 18-hour days harvesting beets as an example. Grain harvest is a long drag.

JOHN YDSTIE: What do you do in your leisure time? How do you spend that?

SPEAKER: Well, we ski in the wintertime, go to Minnesota and then to Colorado, and well, we're riding horses now and things like that.

SPEAKER: I think this is simply the Puritan work ethic, that work is good of itself. And I feel this way very much. It upsets me to see big teenage kids sitting for an eight-hour day in front of the television set.

SPEAKER: There's a lot of leisure time that people-- they take the time, and I think that's good. I cannot see people just working themselves to death because it doesn't seem like, what is the use? If you work 14 hours a day, and then you go right back to sleep and then get up and work another 14, I don't see any point in that.

Well, people around here aren't like that. They've got the opportunity to do things. There's enough things to do here in which people can do take leisure time, and they make use of it.

SPEAKER: Scandinavians are notably reticent, reserved, quite dependable, I think. The older generation, many of them, when they retire from their work, they're at a loss. They don't know what to do because the only thing they've done is work. Many of them are interested enough in their work, so that was the only thing they really cared to do.

But then when they retire, that thing which may be sustained them in doing good work becomes almost a handicap because they don't know what to do now. They walk up and down the street like lost souls. They do.

JOHN YDSTIE: What did you do as a boy growing up out in this area? When you were a young boy, how did you keep busy?

SPEAKER: Working all the time, trying to make a living. I bought a team and done some hauling, driving, something like trucking now. I hauled water for the steam engines in the fall, but my team had $7 a day. We thought that was pretty good wages. Always working, trying to make a living.

JOHN YDSTIE: What did you do for fun? Did you have fun?

SPEAKER: Not very much. We was uptown and stood on a corner and talked to people. Never had any problem. In them old days, everybody stayed at home and took interest in their home more. Now they go out in the evenings and don't come home until 12, 1 o'clock.

Them days, you had to get home before it got dark. I think the olden days was better than it is now. You had to stay home and work more. Now they haven't got any horses or cattle or nothing, just the tractors, and no chores in the morning and the evening.

Then they come home from the field, now they step off the tractor and go in and have supper and wash up. And then they take the car and go out to town and any place. But then you had to stay home in the olden days. I think that was just as good.

JOHN YDSTIE: Do you think that people around Mayville have changed?

SPEAKER: Well, I think so. They're more up and coming now. They got a lot of money.

RADIO HOST: Our Home Town, Mayville, North Dakota, one in a series of sound portraits that explores the values, concerns, and character of life in small towns. The series was produced by John Ydstie, Dennis Hamilton, and Bill Siemering of Minnesota Public Radio Station, KCCM Moorhead. Funds for this series were provided by the North Dakota Committee for the Humanities and Public Issues.