I’ve been sharing good news on North Dakota Nice for almost seven years and sharing good people on North Dakota Today for almost three and so I feel confident stating for an absolute fact that North Dakotans are THE WORST at bragging.  The worst.  If I had a serving of fleich keichla (Remember that?  Click here) for every time someone has said to me, “Oh, I didn’t do anything special, everyone does [a super-duper thoughtful thing], talk about someone nicer,” I’d have enough fleich keichla to have a party and put the whole of North Dakota in a room and say, “IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU’RE ONE-OF-A-KIND OR ONE OF MANY, THERE IS NOT AN ORDINAL SCALE OF KINDNESS.”  Good golly.

I talked about one of these commonplace “Aww, shucks, it’s no big deal” kindnesses on TV this week because nothing brings out the North Dakota Niceness like weather.  Without fail, the moment the flakes start to fall a substantial percentage of North Dakotans throw their shovels in the backs of their trucks and drive around looking to push and dig people out of the snow.  Last year, I was on my way home from work when I watched a car spin out into the median and so many helpers stopped to help that one of the helpers had to put down his shovel and determine which helpers would stay and help and which helpers could leave and go help someone else.  My husband and his friends are those types of helpers; if I had a brunkake (Remember that?  Click here) for every time I’ve gotten a text from Kyle that read, “Be a little late, shoveling,” everyone at my party could have a brunkake with their fleich keichla.  This is turning out to be a great party.

I’ve written about my husband and his friends before because those dumb-dumbs are super-duper thoughtful and I am the only North Dakotan who is good at bragging.  Even though Kyle travels quite a bit for work, I’ve only picked up a shovel maybe three or four times in my whole life because someone has always shown up with their snowblower or snow blades before I can finish saying, “It’s really cold outside and I really do not want to do any kind of manual labor.”  When we lived in the country my neighbor once spent HOURS on a Saturday digging my car out of the ditch after I slid into it trying to take my then-five-year-old to hockey.  We didn’t make it to hockey, and my neighbor didn’t make it to anything he had planned to do that day, but he did dig out a place in my heart forever.

The latest…trend?  passion?  dad thing?…for Kyle and his friends is to one-up each other with their snow removal.  I was a fly on the wall to a conversation with Kyle and a few of the dads after our last Grand Forks blizzard; here is the transcript:

KYLE: Ohh, I’m pretty sore from lifting my snowblower into my truck so I could go over to Friend 1’s house and clear his driveway while they are out of town. 

[An aside: Kyle woke up early in order to clear off Friend 1’s driveway before Friend 2 could wake up and do the same, because Friend 1 has driven his own snowblower over to our neighborhood and cleared both our driveway and Friend 2’s driveway multiple times this winter.]

[Also an aside: I’m realizing there will be too many people in this conversation to use numbers.  I am going to give them the names of the characters in the 1986 hockey film Youngblood in lieu of using their real names.  Let’s try this again:]

KYLE: Ohh, I’m pretty sore from lifting my snowblower into my truck so I could go over to Dean’s house and clear his driveway while they are out of town. 

[An aside: Kyle woke up early in order to clear off Dean’s driveway before Derek could wake up and do the same, because Dean has driven his own snowblower over to our neighborhood and cleared both our driveway and Derek’s driveway multiple times this winter.]

HEAVER: That’s a pretty big driveway.

KYLE: Yeah, it was pretty big, and I had already cleared off my driveway and Derek’s driveway, too, because he was out of town.  So, I’m pretty sore.

HEAVER: You should stretch before you snowblow like I do.  I stretched before I blew out our driveway and our neighbor’s driveway, because they are also out of town, and then I did the neighbor’s on the other side of that since I was on a roll.

KYLE: That’s a lot, and it was pretty heavy snow, too.

HEAVER: Not too bad, though.  Then I went across the street and blew out my neighbor Murray’s driveway because that guy has cleared our driveway more times than you can count.  He’s retired now, so he gets on his rider and does everyone on our street and everyone on the streets behind us and in front of us.

KYLE: Wow, that’s awesome.

BLANE: Yeah, that’s awesome.  I wasn’t able to snowblow because I was working, so I had my 14-year-old son, Carl, do our driveway.  I also had him do the McGill’s driveway, and the Rossini’s driveway, and the Racki’s driveway, and the driveways of all of the Mustangs.

HEAVER: I think it’s time I taught my 14-year-old son to use the snowblower, although I’m not sure I’m going to like the way he does it.

KYLE: I had my 14-year-old son how to use the snowblower but I didn’t like the way he did it so I took the job back.

BLANE: Well, lots of snow, lots of time. [He laughs.]

KYLE AND HEAVER: Yep, lots of snow, lots of time. [They laugh.]

Fin.  Thanks, fellas.

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Have I posted a photo for our ODR yet this year? I can’t remember. I did write a Herald column about it. Regardless, a photo is above.

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This week on North Dakota Today, we talked about a team of people lending a helping hand to a new South Dakota transplant, as well as a way to help bellies stay full over the weekend through the end of the school year. (Valley News Live)

Here’s a paragraph from my recent Herald column about how Justin Auch has brought his daughters into the family business:

“Each morning, I walk in, grab a cup of coffee, and greet the staff with a cheerful, ‘Good morning. What’s broken today?’” Justin said. “Then I go fix it. If you come in on a lucky day, I’ll be working the till. I’m an awful barista, but likely the best guest greeter in the tri-state!”

(Grand Forks Herald)

Fargo’s Crystal Dueker gifted $4k in donated gas gift cards to show appreciation to the TSA workers and help them get to work. (Fargo Forum)

I took Ten to get a Shamrock Shake the other day and it was delicious.  If you live in Bismarck, your Shamrock Shake will not only be delicious, it will also help the Ronald McDonald House. (KFYR)

It’s Spelling Bee time!  Good luck to all of our spellers. (Fargo Forum)

The dudes of the Dickinson Fire Department went viral. (Facebook)

North Dakota’s suicide prevention services have improved over the past few year. (Fargo Forum, found via Oops Only Good News)

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