My Town --- Part 1

My town is New Leipzig, North Dakota.

It's not a very big town. In fact, the population of New Leipzig has gone from about 350 people when I left way back in 1967 upon graduation from high school down to 274 hearty souls that live there now. Some people like to joke that includes dogs, cats, and chickens.

New Leipzig is located almost at the intersection of Highways 21 and 49 in southwestern North Dakota. The reason it's located where it is is because of the railroad.

There's really nothing too special about my town to most people simply because they haven't ever been there, nor have they ever heard of it. There are even people who live in North Dakota who've never heard of New Leipzig.

The history of New Leipzig is relatively short given that many towns all over the country were founded a LOT sooner than 1910. But it's MY history, too. That's what makes it special to me.

All of us have towns we come from. It doesn't matter if we lived at one time on a farm, a ranch, in an urban or suburban area, or even if we still do. We have a town we associate our formative lives with. Farmers and ranchers within a certain area associate with New Leipzig. Other farmers and ranchers associate themselves with Elgin, others still with Mott, Carson, Flasher, and a whole lot of others where I hail from. But everyone has their own town.

That's what this blog is going to be about...my town...your town...and, ultimately, our town. I'll share my stories, my memories. I hope you'll share yours. It doesn't matter where you come from. It doesn't matter if we've never heard of each other before. Our histories are unique, special.

Awhile back, I decided to write a book on the history of my Father's generation. Here's the cover:

Writing this book was a treasure for me. It included an interview with my Dad that I'll never forget. At some point, after it's been digitized, I may just share it in this blog.

The point? It got me thinking that unless we tell our own stories, they'll be lost to the next generation. If it's as hard for some as it was for me to get my Dad to sit down and talk about his own past, this becomes even more important. His generation, beset by hardships even my generation has no comprehension of, didn't think of themselves as having anything to say that might be "worth it" to anyone. They couldn't have been more mistaken. The stories they told were, and still are, fascinating!

Our stories are, too. We just don't know it yet. I'm not sure if we get more nostalgic the older we get, but I'm sure starting to reminisce a lot and to think about experiences I haven't thought about pretty much since they happened.

So, if you'd like to share your stories, you can do it one of two ways. You can email me your text, and I'll post it in the blog as your story - your town. Or, you can post in the comments, but you'll need to register if you haven't already set up a Google account.

My email for this blog is zhawke2002@gmail.com.