North Dakota Agrees to Take In Desperate Angelenos

My low-key campaign to interest Angelenos in moving to North Dakota has been rather amiably received in that Midwestern paradise.

Unlike California and other Western states, North Dakota is experiencing a decline in population. Evidently they would welcome even Angelenos, despite our reputation as “unreal people . . . choking in their own despair and desperation” (in the words of a Seattle columnist).

Jack Bone, a columnist for the Minot (N.D.) Daily News, sends me one of his pieces under the headline: “Get ready: That other Jack may send some Angelenos.”

In a note to me he admits that he and his wife have spent 12 winters in San Clemente, though they couldn’t make it this year because they were down with flu. It seems to me that a North Dakotan who winters in Southern California is not a true North Dakotan.

But Bone accepts my challenge: “We do realize that reconstructing Angelenos into peaceful, rational, loving people who don’t rob, steal or shoot people driving automobiles will not be an easy assignment. But if you don’t send too many at once we’ll have time to give them the psychological treatment that seems to work wonders in converting strangers to our lifestyle of ‘live and let live.’ Somehow we’ll convert our influxes of people to the concept that each of us is our neighbor’s keeper.”

Bone quotes from an editorial by Bob Denison, publisher of the Towner County Record Herald, about the natural beauty of the state, despite the recent droughts, as seen from an airplane at 3,000 feet.

“What is most evident, however, are the marvelous trees--shelter belts everywhere--to protect the precious topsoil from the ravages of the plains’ winds. When I hear of the growth and deterioration of our cities, savaged by crime, pollution, disease and large masses of people struggling to survive in the concrete jungle, I am always appreciative of the good life out here on the plains.”

Mark Conlon, publisher of the Valley City (N.D.) Times-Record, also takes note of my campaign in his column, “Across My Desk.” Conlon deplores my suggestion that prairie youngsters are lured to Los Angeles by television. (“They see hundreds of cop thrillers dramatizing the excitement on the streets of Los Angeles--the drug busts, the hookers, the car chases, the rock clubs, the street life--and will drop out of school and run away to L.A. to get in on the fun.”

“That’s fun?” Conlon asks. “Drug busts, hookers, car chases, street life--including living on the street--is fun? If it is, then I’d like to say ‘No thank you, very much.’ ”

But Conlon concedes that I do have a point. North Dakota cities are not immune to big-city problems, he says, but they don’t have them on such a grand scale. In the end, he endorses my proposition.

“Let’s hope this trend, as Smith sees it (the overcrowding of Los Angeles), reverses itself. It will help the big cities ‘stave off collapse’ and it will also be beneficial in rural areas where populations are declining and where an economic boost is needed.”

I have also received a Times-Record column by Nancy Carnes, staff writer, who lived 20 years in Los Angeles and worked in City Hall. She recalls the 1987 Whittier earthquake. “It isn’t surprising,” she wrote, “that folks actually pack up and leave California after an experience like that.”

Evidently that is just what Carnes and her husband did. “Living in Valley City (I am) pretty confident that I won’t be jolted out of bed by an unexpected temblor, plates won’t be falling off shelves and pictures off the wall.”

However, she notes that the most powerful earthquake in North America occurred in New Madrid, Mo., in the winter of 1811-12. And, 22 states in the Midwest shook during a 5.5 quake in 1968.

On the other hand, however, I have a letter from Laurie Stirone, a native Angeleno who has lived for a year in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. (Her husband was transferred.)

“I miss so much about Los Angeles. I miss the weather--yes, even with the smog. I miss the shopping--nowhere but in Los Angeles can you shop for food or sneakers at any time of the day or night. I miss the variety of people to choose as friends. Ohio is very WASPY. I miss the evolving, growing and upbeat attitudes of most of the citizens.

“Sure, we have smog, we have gangs, we have traffic, but we also have the best roads in the country, the best coastline, the best people, the best of most everything--that’s why we continue to be crowded.

“OK. So it’s not the orange groves I grew up with or the clearest sky in the world. But if you balance what is good with what’s going wrong, Californians will do what we’ve always done--find the answers and fix what’s wrong. I only hope I can get back there to help.”

What a classic irony--for a woman who loves Los Angeles to move to a place called Chagrin Falls.

I’ll bet nobody sleeps on the sidewalks there.