Issue 26
February 2000

Prairie Grains is the official publication of the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, North Dakota Grain Growers Association, South Dakota Wheat, Inc., and the Minnesota Barley Growers Association.

Copyright
Prairie Grains Magazine
February 2000

Prairie Ramblings

A Roundabout View of Europe and What To Call This Decade

By Tracy Sayler

I'm still trying to deal with some of the awkwardness of the new decade, like writing "00" on checks. And when you're out shopping for pickup trucks, numbers like "98" and "99" sure roll off the tongue easier than "00" and "01." Oh well.

At any rate, I recently had my first journalistic dilemma with the new millennium, which technically, won't occur until 1/1/2001 but we won't get into that argument and besides, I think we all don't care to go through the Y2K hype again. But back to the matter at hand: I was writing a story about how the trend of containerized grain shipments is projected to increase this decade.

My question is, how exactly do we refer to this decade? We have the 1990s, 1980s, the 70s and 60s and so on but what do we call this period between 2000 and 2010? The single digit decade? The 2010s, which could be confused with the period of 2010-19? The Ohs, since we'll have O-one, O-two, and so forth?   Maybe the Grammar Police who began calling a vase "väz" and harass "hare ess" will figure this one out.  If you got any ideas, let me know. 

Yeah, it isn't easy being a writer sometimes, especially an ag writer. Hot shots for Rolling Stone and Newsweek cover juicy stuff such as movie star scandals and philandering politicians—frequently all in the same story.  We ag writers get sexy topics like wild oat control, hoof rot and seed weevils. Sigh.

But I did get a pretty cool assignment recently in Europe, where I covered the Tour De France for Sports Illustrated and a "Girls of the Old Country" pictorial in Playboy.  (Yeah right).  Actually, it was to do some stories on sugarbeets and sunflower. Visited Holland, Belgium, and France.  First time, great experience.  We don't have the space or the time to get into any major dissertations on the subject, but here's some quick observations:

•  They drink lots of wine and don't go through near the catsup we do. 
•  There's no drinking water fountains there.  Only bottled water.
•  No pickups, SUVs, or big cars.  Not practical and too expensive there.
•  With so much information everywhere here, it was strange not being able to read newspapers or understand much of what's being said on the radio or TV over there.  Brought a notebook computer along and hoped to keep in touch via the Web, but their phone jacks and electric outlets are different than ours, so I was cyber-grounded. 
•  Lots of ornate, old buildings.  And not parked-in-the-shelterbelt old, but REALLY old; seems like anything there after the Middle Ages would be considered "new."
•  Europeans seem prideful of their traditions, and chief among those traditions is their different foods.  Their culinary culture runs deep, and right or wrong, it's a factor in the opposition to genetically-modified food that many Europeans hold.
• They have what they call "round-abouts," which is like our four-way traffic intersections except you drive into a circular area and follow it one-way in a clockwise direction until your turnoff.  Perhaps you remember it from "National Lampoon's European Vacation," where Chevy Chase drove into a roundabout and circled for hours.  I'm trying to picture the use of roundabouts here in the states, say the Twin Cities at rush hour in icy conditions.  Wouldn't be pretty.

Europeans seem to know more about Americans than we know about them.  Then again, so do the Canadians.  I imagine it's because the U.S. occupies such a large part of the world stage. In fact, they watch our presidential elections closely.  "Since the U.S has such a large influence on global politics, your president is in part our president," my Dutch guide said, who also found it humorous that the Clinton-Monica affair was such a big deal.  He pointed out that when the former French President Francois Mitterand died, his wife and mistress stood side by side at the funeral.  I told him that I couldn't see that happening here.

And it seems like everybody in France has their own castle.  You would think that all the Germans and Scandahoovians would have shown up the French and gone castle-happy when they settled the Northern Plains, given the abundance of basic materials needed to build one—rocks. 

Guess they were too busy turning prairie sod into fields of grain, with faith in that if they went to church on Sundays, worked hard and lived right, they'd build their castle eventually, if not a more majestic one in the clouds later.

Incidentally, church on Sunday was often a double-header for the prairie pioneers, as my dad recalls: Church Part I, followed by lunch, followed by Church Part II. (And you thought your preacher was long-winded). That prairie pioneer period is what arm-chair historians call "back then." I guess they didn't know what to call the early decades of the 1900s either.