| Summary: | ' / Page 6 October 1, 1971 monson On firm, feiuuk-tfon grwnd-a^Coft-cop-cta. fidr cbtk stout, witk l a 5trert^aHd"faitkforcwr,C^ul u$ uAicrc tkosc W e trod, r imiiiiii £ •• lova and Vtope sur-rouwd-cd from.||od*$ al-wigkt~y kand, toil anAckicf ^H-cUav-or Have bttJU^Ut MS close to " ^ ' JK ^ ^ m PE ^ ^ ^ ^ S J J U sacr^ trutK,Covt-cor-<lia ill to " ~ " thou e'er faithful be, r^r rot we 5ivuj e 5ing c-tcr - nal - ly! Scandalous cities reform Excerpts from Cobber Chronicle BY ERLING ROLFSRUD Residents of present day Moorhead may well be shocked to learn that once their town was called "the wickedest city in the world." This reputation it earned shortly upon its establish-ment in 1871, and kept it—with good reason—for nearly three decades. Gamblers, desperadoes, and prostitutes came into the tent town of Moorhead with the Northern Pacific railway construction crews. Saloons and dance halls operated day and night, seven days a week. A pioneer resident of Moorhead interviewed by a St. Paul Dispatch reporter in July, 1926, said: "Almost every night there was a shooting. We who kept off the street at night would hear in the darkness the dance hall music suddenly stop. Revolvers would bark and women scream, and we would wonder what news the morning would bring of numbers killed." Most of the notorious characters who then in-fested Moorhead (Jack O'Neil, Dave Mullen, Ed Hayes, Pat Sullivan, and Andy Fallon) all event-ually died with their boots on. Blinky Jack, the horse rustler, set fire to the Moorhead jail when he was held there. After the railway gangs moved westward, some of this rough element remained. But a more stable citizenry also began moving in. The Hudson Bay Company brought the first thresher into the Val-ley to encourage the raising of wheat. A flour mill was established in Moorhead. Then in 1875 the bonanza farms started in the Red River Valley and soon were attracting international attention. In 1878, Henry A. Bruns and Henry G. Finkle built a huge grain elevator in Moorhead. Red River steamboats, transporting passengers, live-stock, and grain, tied up at Moorhead piers. Over $450,000 worth of new business blocks were built in Moorhead the year Bishop Whipple was dedicated. The town already boasted two banks, a farm machinery factory, and several brick yards. Moorhead residents took pride in a new city hall and a two-story public high school. *~. Railways in 1882 reduced immigrant travel rates as well as the price of their lands so as to encourage settlement. Thus a great influx of im-migrants from Europe surged through Moorhead. Women and children slept on the floors of railway stations and small hotels. They could not afford accommodations in the luxurious Grand Pacific Hotel, popularly known as "The Palace" and ad-vertised as the finest hotel west of Chicago. (A three-story building, it had 101 bedrooms each with bath, hot and cold water; for the elite travel-ers, it provided 19 elegantly-furnished suites.) The unpaved Moorhead streets of that time were deeply rutted in the spring, and horses' hooves raised the dust from them during the summer months. Only the business district boasted the luxury of board sidewalks. Sneak thieves and pickpockets prowled the unlighted streets at night, and when harvest hands with cash in their pockets came to town, they were often robbed, some slugged, others killed and their bodies tossed into the Red River. But in 1883 the Moorhead Daily News boasted, "Moorhead shall don her garments of light and shine forth as the sun . , . And there shall be no night there, neither shall the footpad or sand-bagger molest." With electricity furnished by a Fargo light plant, the first forty electric "lamps" were installed in Moorhead that year, ten of them around the Grand Pacific Hotel, eleven at business street intersections, the remainder at business houses. The residential areas were unlighted, and no respectable woman would go out at night without an escort. When North Dakota was admitted into the Union as a dry state in 1889, Fargo saloonkeepers promptly moved to Moorhead to cluster about the two drawbridges spanning the river. Liquor wholesale houses, breweries, and taverns in Moor-head now did a booming business. Divorce seekers (socialites, and nobility from Europe and the East) crowded into Fargo, then the divorce capital of the world, to reside the re-quired 90 days. Idle and bored, many found their way to the Moorhead "thirst quencheries." Saloon-keepers operated four-seated "jag" wagons to transport dry Fargo residents, free of charge, to Moorhead saloons . . . Hymn bridges 40 years Then one day a contest was announced at school, open to all the college family, the purpose of which was to select a song embodying the beliefs of Con-cordia. And so Miss Torvik, be-lieving then as she does now, that Concordia prospers because it is founded upon the Lord, sub-mitted to that contest her poetic composition. Some time later she was nam-ed first place winner in the con-test and her lines of poetry be-came the first stanza in "Hymn to Concordia.'* Along with music written by a former Concordia music instructor, Hermann Mon-son, and words (stanza 2) writ-ten by faculty wife, Mrs. Paul Rasmussen, an anthem was born. As homecoming and all its ceremonies approach, there will undoubtedly be an opportunity for students, alumni, faculty, ad-ministration, and friends of the college to join in the melody of the hymn. While you sing, let your mind wander back to muse upon the first rendition of "Hymn to Concordia." JAN STONE " 'Till 'Sol Deo Gloria1 we sing eternally!" Thus ends the open-ing convocation of each year and a new class of freshmen have been introduced to the "Hymn to Concordia." Throughout the next four years this tune rings out from many important meetings of the Concordia family, until one day each student sings it for the last time before mounting the stage to accept his degree. And yet, even there the melody does not stop, for Homecoming brings these alumni back to confirm with uplifted voices that, in-deed : "Concordia fair doth stand." It is interesting to note that one of the persons responsible for the song is right here at Concordia now, appropriately as an instructor in the music de-partment. As a freshman at Con-cordia, Miss Borgheld Torvik was given an assignment in her English class to write a piece of poetry. So she did the assign-ment and put it aside for a couple of years. Carrels fail RON McDANlEL Study carrel, while here I toil, my undisciplined mind begins to wander, and becomes enraptured with various aspects of your nature and your station in this monumental library. By way of classification, a study desk you are and a study desk most likely you will always be. But dare I not conclude the obvious whn my investment in the liberal arts has enabled me to forward a consideration more precarious. How silly indeed to conclude that a desk is a desk without in-quiring into the nature of a desk. But ah! You crafty study carrel, you can't trap me in this snare. Lucky for I've had philosophy; and luckier still, quite well I remember the words of that wise sage and philosopher, Brother Christenson, who argued emphatically and convincingly (through the use of logic, syllogismns, etc.) that a desk cannot be defined, and insisted even more profundly that a desk cannot exist. Obvious it is now that you cannot be defined, and quite likely also is the probability you do not exist. Yet here you rest before my very eyes, your physical existence no less present with or without metaphysical consent. A physical anatomy you would appear to have—perhaps therein lies a clue to your nature fundamental. But in terms of workmanship and method of assembly, in you there is nothing uniquely significant. The pews at Tracy Methodist, for instance, while of a different species, boast vital organs (pre-fab parts and woodscrews to name but a few) of similar beauty and utility. Though of Lutheran vintage, what distinguishes you in com-position, excluding form, from, say, a Methodist? O study carrel, with all your glossy charms, you somehow fail to move my soul—your expression is too blank and void of warmth. Perhaps in time to come you will wear the "desecration" of warm ancestral graffiti etching left by mysterious Cobbers of yesteryear. What little comfort you, sterile patented box, afford in con-trast to the human effect of an Academy Hall classroom table carry-ing the prophetic message: "Jesus is alive and selling Bibles at C-400." If only yourself you could view from the lofty realm of the balcony above. What a contemptuous little variation you add to the larger more intricate ticky-tack maze on the library floor. Pity it is that you in your short-lived history have experienced but the monotonous hum of an even-tempered ventilation system, destined never to know the unpredictable delight or anger of a gurgling, unnerving Old Main heating pipe. O monstrous little cubicle! You have squelched and rent asunder the community of spirit that once endowed this study room! Once was a time when one could gaze into the unobstructed distance of this study room and focus on one's neighbor, friend, or favorite lass, and enter into mirthful meditation (or even out-right conversation). Now time and you, you angular culprit, have undermined the harmony of closeknit humanity. How subtly and effectively you have conditioned us to traverse the maze in search of an open box, which, when found, grants the reward of false seclusion. Grave doubts I have regarding your worth. A Cobber is by nature creative and independent—dangerous consequences may re-sult from the example of your collective uniformity. Aside from stifling individual originality, your example hardly jibes with the spirt of democracy, but carries a taint of idealogies farther East known to languor in unwholesome mediocrity. Unwanted study carrel, much I suspected the wisdom, yes the integrity, of the forethought and reasoning to which you owe your present being: Pard'ning my poetic futility, One haunting question there appears to me: Regarding intent of "Powers That Be," Of essence good are you, O new device, Or merely reaction to playful vice?
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