From the Foreword:
This is my second book about what it was like for a boy to grow up in Fargo from 1953 to 1980. Make no mistake - the idea of writing these is Not so readers will come to know Me personally. My life isn't all that notable. I just tell stories. In this book, I am somewhat more reflective than narrative - it isn't so much What happened that's interesting, but what lessons could be derived.
That era - 1950-1980 - is too often overlooked down on the Personal level. Yeah - everyone has heard about the Big Historical Things, but few actually experienced most of those.
As one of my high school classmates (whose name is Very well-known in Fargo to this day) confided in a recent email, "I guess I assumed I was the only kid with an inner life."
She wasn't. We all had Inner Lives. We all experienced them in our own way, figuring that there was some sort of Unique thing going on that wasn't anything like the lives we saw publicized on television. We saw the Ozzie and Harriet fantasy, where Moms and Dads were always just 100% appropriate, Fine Upstanding People in their communities, with handsome children and No genuine problems other than those silly plotlines that went on for a half hour. With commercials.
Our families weren't like that, and we were led to believe that If they weren't, there was Something Wrong - with us!
The television shows were lying.
Real People - people we knew and saw every day - didn't live like that. Families were Not always close-knit and friendly. Real tragedies happened and left lifelong scars. The moments of genuine joy were so unusual that we often didn't recognize them when they happened.
Our reaction was predicated on how the television shows suggested we Should act, and not on how Real People actually experienced living and loving in a time of great social change.
So many old friends, and even folks I've never met before, have commented that after reading the Being Fargo, their own memories of their own lives somehow got freed from a lifelong set of inappropriate expectations. Several suggested that they had believed that somehow their lives were more Failure than Success, and that had stayed with them over the years.
We are a ridiculous and endlessly funny species - sometimes. We are also tragic and sad - sometimes. Both experiences play out, and each teaches us something. But we tend far too often forget or overlook the intensity of the Joy, and instead make a point of endlessly re-living the sadness.
There's no point in that.
There are many lives that really Were tragedies in many ways. Some of those early experiences colored our abilities to experience much else over the years, so some sort of internal balance is now in order. We would do well to remember the fun, the silliness, the funny parts and sometimes just the sheer Joy of being alive. And having survived to remember.
If these stories provide a context for seeing how Life was experienced at the time, how the central experience of learning to Love could come about, consider them my gift.
