Biding my time in Binford

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/03/2011 (5563 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BINFORD, N.D. — Hidden away off Highway 1, roughly halfway between the dammed-up Bald Hill Creek and the soon-to-be-swollen Sheyenne River, you’ll find the friendliest bar in North Dakota.

Or perhaps I should say North Dakota’s friendliest town.

On any given Friday night, a significant percentage of the 169 people who live in Binford — the second-largest town in sparsely populated Griggs County — wander into Sit-N-Bull to sit and … well, bull over a bucket of Bud Lites, some Crown Royal ‘n’ Cokes and maybe a shot or 17.

From the outside, Sit-N-Bull looks like any other aging building on the main drag of any of the slowly depopulating small towns that are strung across the prairies.

The wooden exterior is fading. The front door gets sucked open whenever the wind blows too hard. A line of pickup trucks — some of them left running — are parked at an angle out front.

But inside, Sit-N-Bull is the sort of watering hole city dwellers imagine when they envision a small-town bar.

It’s long and narrow, with real wood on top of the bar, a pool table in the back and a pair of counter-top pizza ovens to heat up vacuum-sealed slabs of Pizza Corner Pizza, a Valley City, N.D., product dubbed “the finest frozen pizza anywhere.”

The clientele is comprised of construction workers, farmers, local business owners and moms out for a night on the town. Shortly after the onset of a March blizzard, they immediately understand why an outsider has wandered into their midst.

But they’re still curious to know why a Canadian newspaper reporter was crawling along lonely Highway 1 in the first place.

“I was on my way to Devils Lake,” I explained self-consciously. Mentioning an intergovernmental spat probably isn’t the best possible icebreaker in a bar an hour from the source of the spat.

This winter, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cutting a second channel between Devils Lake and the Sheyenne River in an effort to reduce water levels this summer. Without the channel, the lake may spill into the Sheyenne on its own, sending 16,000 cubic feet per second of lake water — roughly half the flow of a flood-stage Red River at Fargo — downstream in an uncontrolled surge.

Some of the Binford folks believe Devils Lake will burst this year. State officials predict that’s more likely to happen next year, at least without a second channel.

But the folks at Sit-N-Bull are far more concerned with another controversy: the move to strip the Fighting Sioux nickname from the University of North Dakota’s beloved hockey team.

The NCAA wants the university to change the name. But North Dakota’s two major Sioux tribes — Standing Rock and Spirit Lake — are over the issue. And the state legislature is in the midst of approving a bill that would force UND to keep the name.

“There’s going to be a fight with the NCAA,” said Sit-N-Bull bartender Eric Kuklok, who sports both a Fighting Sioux T-shirt and a Sioux tattoo on his left arm. On the TV above the bar, the Fighting Sioux were well on their way to blowing out Michigan Tech 8-0 in the first game of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association playoffs.

In much of North Dakota, changing the Fighting Sioux name is derided as political correctness. The crowd inside the Sit-N-Bull is no different. In a bar cheekily named after the greatest Lakota chief in history, self-deprecation, not reverence, is the norm.

“What happens in Binford, stays in Binford,” is the slogan on the T-shirts for sale at Sit-N-Bull, which is located — no word of a lie — on Whinery Street.

“We like to work and we like to drink,” explained Bobby, a resident of the neighbouring town of Hannaford, who led me to the town.

“We also like to smoke,” added Dewey, Bobby’s friend and my gracious, impromptu host for the night.

Yes, these guys do drink and smoke. But there is more to Binford, culturally.

Professional Bull Riders, a circuit that attracts more than 100 million TV viewers a year, holds an competition every summer in Binford, several of the folks in Sit-N-Bull proudly noted.

A farmer proudly spoke of the superior quality of his grass-fed, hormone-free beef cattle. The owner of the local gas station thoughtfully made sure to tell me many of the best players on the Fighting Sioux are Canadians.

To be honest, I would have put up with a crotchety town on Friday night, when I could have been forced to wait out the blizzard in a ditch off Highway 1.

But I was thrilled to be in Binford. So to Bobby, Dewey, Eric and everybody else who saved my butt — thanks for being kind to a stranger.

I could certainly do without this hangover, but when in Binford, do as the Binfordians do.