blissful

We lived in a small town in North Dakota – Blissful. It was named by a Lutheran minister named Hugo Hustenburgh who founded it with his wife and three children, when they put in for a few weeks on their way to the Cascades and Seattle. For some unknown reason, they never left. The minister died three years later. Rattlesnake bite. His wife went mad four years after that. Prairie craze, they called it back then. The constant whistle of the wind. Drove more than a few pioneers crazy. She put a gun to her head. The kids were teens, by then. They all up and left for northern Minnesota and mining country and within a year all ended up in jail, or worse. Back in the late ‘40s, when “Life” magazine was making a habit of naming places “all-American” cities and towns, a rumor swept through Blissful that our town was next in line. Mother, who knew how things went about in town, said that the city fathers burned more than a bit of midnight oil rewriting the city history. Never happened, though, the selection, so our history was never redone. Blissful wasn’t a happy place. It was more workmanlike. Stolid, but to a fault. The happiest person in town was Mazie Wilkes. She was the grade school teacher. She saved my life.