Oysters, Western Style

I retired from the United States Air Force in 1989 after nearly 28 years of active duty with two tours in North Dakota. My first assignment there was at Fortuna in Divide County after a year in Vietnam. At the time I got the assignment, I'd never heard of Fortuna AFS, but others in my unit had and always seemed to chuckle when they'd hear where I was going. It was a cool, late August day in 1968 when my wife and I and two children drove north out of Williston on the last leg of our journey to Fortuna. At some point along that stretch of extraordinarily straight road, the immense rotating search radar antenna became visible and I pointed it out to my wife. Moments later, a muffled sob emanated from her side of our two door Ford and I looked over to see that cute little blonde with tears running down her cheeks asking, "Where are you taking me?"

Almost exactly a year later, our marriage had dissolved and I was living in the barracks. In another year, I was gone from the high plains and stationed in the very northern part of Maine. Fast forward to 1972 - my controlled tour in Maine was nearing its end and I was given the opportunity to tell the Air Force where I'd like to go next. By then I was involved in earning a college degree, so I determined that the Minot AFS near Max in McLean County, North Dakota would give me an opportunity to continue. Certainly there were others that had nearby colleges, but I wanted to make certain I got the one I wanted rather than one in the neighborhood. I called a friend in the assignments section at higher headquarters and he laughed, saying if I'd asked for Minot, I'd get it. He was right.

The radar base at Max was sort of an open base, meaning that anyone who drove up to the gate was usually waved on in. The little NCO Club served as a drinking establishment at which we'd wet our whistles, a night club often with live music on Sundays, and a place that harbored a civilian clientele made up of a group of local farmers and ranchers who called themselves, perhaps only somewhat facetiously, the South Prairie Gentlemen's Association.

One Saturday evening, the defacto spokesman for that group, one Larry Erickson, stopped in for a beer or two and some companionship. He and I were sitting at the bar by ourselves when he turned to me a said something to the effect, "Mac, they're having a nut fry over in Makoti. Wanna go?"

Perhaps a bit more information needs to be injected here. I'm originally from a small town in rural New Hampshire where cows are milked and bulls are raised to help increase the size of the milking herd. I guess I'd heard of Rocky Mountain oysters at some point, but I guess I never took the idea seriously, and I certainly never considered eating them, and I told him so. Larry laughed at my ignorance and explained the process, then repeated his initial question, "Wanna Go?"

My "Hell, no, I ain't eating bull's [here, dear reader, I leave it up to you to supply whichever word you think appropriate]." brought more laughter and Larry ordered us another beer. A couple of beers later he asked again and again I told I wasn't interested. More beer, asked again, same response, perhaps with a little less conviction. After a number of Erickson-provided beers and some taunting about being timid,  [I think he actually called me a candy-ass], I finally relented, and we went out into the night, climbed into his big Mercury sedan and rode off to Makoti.

The result of the evening was that in a small, smoky, loud country bar in Makoti, North Dakota, I discovered a delicacy, sliced, pan fried in butter, and served on white loaf bread. To this day, I remember my first taste.  (Note:  I've recently had a conversation with folks who run a bar named K-Bar in Makoti and we've determined it was probably the place I first had that plains delicacy.)

Every fall, Larry and several other local ranchers would do an old fashioned roundup, cutting the young bulls and tossing the cuttings in a bucket. At the end of each day, they'd go to the Air Force NCO club, drink beer and clean them before storing them in the club's freezer. After the roundup process was all done, and hunting season had come and gone, the ranchers and a bunch of us GI's would put on a game feed with donated venison and duck, smoked fish, and of course, Rocky Mountain Oysters. The last winter I was in North Dakota, I took a young lady I'd been dating out to the club for the game feed, but when they brought around a tray of oysters, I didn't explain the origin of the meat. She liked them until someone else asked her what she thought of them and gave them a name.

Women don't like being tricked, something I learned that very evening.