If you come to North Dakota...
Got this as a forward, but thought it was so appropriate that I would post it. Living on the border of MN/ND, it certainly still applies! After all, my Dave is a North Dakota farm boy at heart.

ENTERING NORTH DAKOTA

*List of Rules *The following list of rules applies to each person as they enter North Dakota:

1. Pull your droopy pants up. You look like an idiot.

2. Let's get this straight; it's called a "gravel road." I drive a pickup truck because I need to. (hell yeah!!!) No matter how slow you drive, you're going to get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.

3. There are pigs, cattle & oil wells. That's what they smell like to you. They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don't like it? I-94 goes east and west, I-29 goes north and south. Pick one. (having spent summers on a dairy farm in the lakes area of MN, I can agree with this - they stink!)

4. So you have an $80,000 dollar car. We're impressed. We have quarter-million dollar air conditioned tractors. We drive them 3 weeks a year.

5. So every person in every pickup waves. It's called being friendly. Try to understand the concept.

6. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of ducks are coming in, we WILL shoot it out of your hand. You had better hope you don't have it up to your ear at the time. (Going to college in a smallish ND town, this is true. My boyfriend senior year was a hunter and would not miss hunting weekends for ANYTHING including a super servere hangover.)

7. Yeah, we eat catfish & calf-fries. You really want sushi & caviar? It's available at the corner bait shop. (I don't eat these things no matter what. Ew.)

8. The "Opener" refers to the first day of deer season. It's a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November. (Again, the college boyfriend. I understand he used to eat a lot of snow on hangover mornings.)

9. We open doors for women. That is applied to everyone, regardless of age.

10. No, there's no "vegetarian special" on the menu. Order steak. Or you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham & turkey.

11. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats,
vegetables, and breads. We use three spices: salt, pepper, and Pace Picante Sauce. (If you're a Norski like us, please include jell-o salad, preferably green with pears or red with banannas. Ham and scalloped potatoes is big, too. Oh, and we love worchestershire sauce!)

12. If you're bringing "coke" into my house, it better be brown, wet, and served over ice. You bring "Mary Jane" into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair. (This applies to us extra as we've got partial custody of a 12 year old girl!)

13. High School Football is as important here as the Lakers and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.

14. Yeah, we have golf courses. Don't hit the water hazards - it spooks the fish.

15. Colleges? Try NDSU or UND. They come outta there with an education, a love for God, country, and they still wave at passing pickups when they come home for the holidays.

16. We send a larger percentage of our populationto the Navy, Army, Marines, & Air Force than any other state. "Don't Mess with North Dakota." If you do, it will get your butt kicked by the best. (This also applies as if ND were to secede from the USA, we would be the third largest nuclear power in the world. At least this used to be true...I'm not sure if it is anymore. You drive down highways in rural ND and there's missile silo after missile silo...and then the antennas that connect Pacific and Atlantic ship communication up by Neche, and some sort of big pyramid tower thingy that nobody seems to know what it is. The missile silos - you would never know that that's what they are unless you're a "local.")

17. When folks in North Dakota talk about having a PhD they're talking about their Post Hole Digger. (well, some of them anyhow.)

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