“I’m the oldest man in town,” says Ragnar Slaaen, 96. “That house used to belong to some people from Montana, been empty at least 50 years. They farmed a little bit. What happened to them? I suppose they got old and croaked. “I was born in 1911, twelve miles (20 kilometers) north of town on a homestead. My father came from Norway. He died when I was two. I can’t imagine where my mother found the food. I went eight grades to a country school. Nobody went to high school—we had to work. I worked for a neighbor at age eight picking up rocks all day. “I got my own farm in ’36. I plowed with horses. We didn’t have any rain at all. With the dusters, it was so dark you couldn’t see anything inside the house. Everything just blew away. You had to get used to breathing dirt. “Our first baby was a girl, stillborn. Do you know what stillborn means? We had two boys. “I’ve had a good life, a lovely wife. She died seven years ago. I’ve still got my hair. You know I sit here alone for six months at a time, nobody comes to see me. I’ve outlived them all. I’m the oldest man in town.”
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/emptied-north-dakota/richards-photography
Some fantastic photos of a North Dakota before fracking
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