The headlines in the papers are using the word “historic” to describe the fires burning in western North Dakota right now and over the past few days. Well, let me tell you a story about a historic fire from a few years back. Almost 50 years, in fact.

It’s a story worth telling. And retelling. Some of you have heard it before. From me. I hope I tell it the same way this time. Memory fades … but this is how I remember it today. If you remember it differently, let me know.

It was October 1976, and it was very, very dry in North Dakota. So dry that the governor’s office issued a fire danger alert, warning travelers and hunters to say on roads and be very, very careful when traveling in rural areas of the state.

And then, all of a sudden, southwest North Dakota was on fire. My wife, Lillian, was a high-schooler that fall, living on a farm north of Rhame. The fire didn’t threaten their farm, but they could see the smoke and the glow off in the distance. And she remembers riding home on the school bus after a basketball game in Dickinson and seeing the fire from the highway. Probably a Friday night.

The headquarters for the firefighters was a Quonset at the Davis Ranch between Rhame and Amidon, and she delivered food there prepared by her mother to feed the mostly volunteer firefighters.

I was a newspaper editor in Mandan in those days, and my fellow news junkie, Mike Jacobs — who was publishing a political journal called The Onlooker — and I decided we had to go see this fire. Joined by a third journalist (Mike and I aren’t sure who it was — we hung out with a lot of them in those days, but it might have been Randy Bradbury, a Bismarck Tribune reporter), on a Friday night, after we had finished work for the week, we piled sleeping bags, snacks and beer into my Dodge van. (I had been living in California after getting out of the Navy, and it was cool to drive a van in California in those days, so I bought one and drove it home.) And headed west to see the fire.

Mike said there was a two-track trail up the south side of massive Bullion Butte, one of the highest points in the Bad Lands. He said we might be able to see the fire from there. These were the days before President Bill Clinton set the butte aside into a roadless area, so you could still drive to the top.

We found the trail to the butte just before dark, and sure enough, about halfway up, we could see what looked like the whole of southwest North Dakota burning below us. As it got dark, it was spectacular.

We got out, spread out our sleeping bags, drank a beer or two, talked, watched the fire and finally drifted off to sleep.

Sometime in the night, we were awakened by raindrops. Just a few at first, and then pretty steady. As we piled into the van, the sky opened over Bullion Butte, and all of southwest North Dakota, and it just poured. And poured. All night.

We slept in the van until just before daylight, then crawled out and looked off to the south. The red glow was gone. The fire was out. And we had to slide the van down the two-track trail to get off the butte, to go home.

But as Paul Harvey used to say, let me tell you the rest of the story.

Sometime in mid-October, Gov. Art Link, who was involved in a tight battle for re-election, had closed the hunting season in southwest North Dakota, prime deer-hunting territory, and limited it to half days in the rest of the state, because of the fire danger. Which made him a very unpopular governor with tens of thousands of hunters.

I don’t remember there being any polls, but it was pretty general knowledge that the race was very close and Link was in danger of losing his office to Republican Public Service Commissioner Richard Elkin. There were probably enough angry deer hunters to throw the election Elkin’s way.

But the rain came that weekend in late October, and just before the polls opened the first Tuesday in November, Link announced that the fire danger had passed and hunting seasons were open. Hunters, who generally liked the cowboy governor from out west, went to the polls in a pretty good mood. Link was barely re-elected, with 51 per cent of the vote.

Talk around the state was that the rain saved Art Link. Jacobs called it “The Art Link Miracle Rain,” or something like that. It was generally conceded that a few thousand angry hunters could have swung the election to Elkin. Instead, they cast their votes for Link and then went hunting.

All’s well that ends well.

Meanwhile, coming back to the 21st century, another natural disaster is happening, and my friend, Darrell Dorgan, is up to his eyeballs (well figuratively, not literally, so far …) in it. Darrell’s gone to Florida to work on the Harris Presidential Campaign. Darrell’s got a condo down in Fort Meyers, where he and Kathy spent many winters together before her untimely death last spring.

Darrell’s worked on campaigns down there before and is hoping to organize veterans’ votes for the Harris/Walz team. And now comes Hurricane Milton, and Darrell’s right in the path.

The authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for his town Monday, but Darrell’s never been much good at listening to warnings, so he’s tucked into his second story condo, with tape over his windows and patio doors just in case, and he’s going to ride it out. It hits tonight. He thinks he’ll be safe. He’s parked his car in a Wal Mart parking lot up the hill from his place, and water from a storm surge shouldn’t reach his second story home. It’s the 100-plus miles per hour winds that are the biggest danger. “I can lay down in the bathtub if I have to,” he says. Like we were taught to if a tornado came blowing across the landscape out here on the North Dakota prairie.

I’ve been keeping an eye on his house here in Bismarck since dropping him off at the airport a couple of weeks ago. He’s got a cherry 1955 or 1956 Thunderbird convertible in the garage. I have the entry code to the garage. I asked him Monday, “If worse comes to worse, can I have the T-Bird?”

“Yep, it’s yours,” he replied.

Well, we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I can’t think of Art Link, one of our state’s greatest governors and statesmen, without remembering his famous speech to North Dakota’s rural electric cooperative members in 1973, and I never tire of sharing it.

When The Landscape Is Quiet Again          

            We do not want to halt progress.

            We do not plan to be selfish and say “North Dakota will not share its energy resources.”

            No .… we simply want to insure the most efficient and environmentally sound method of utilizing our precious coal and water resources for the benefit of the broadest number of people possible.

            And when we are through with that, and the landscape is quiet again,

            When the draglines, the blasting rigs, the power shovels and the huge gondolas cease to rip and roar

            And when the last bulldozer has pushed the last spoil pile into place

            And the last patch of barren earth has been seeded to grass or grain

            Let those who follow and repopulate the land be able to say

            “Our grandparents did their job well. This land is as good as, and, in some cases, better than, before.”

            Only if they can say this will we be worthy of the rich heritage of our land and its resources.