I was perched in one of Russ Hanson’s swiveling chairs years ago at the Deluxe Barber Shop in Moorhead when, to no one’s surprise, the subject turned to weather. In fact, talk went back to weather every time a new patron walked in.
“They can say what they want about the cold and the wind and the storms,” said an impassive old Norwegian with watery, pale blue eyes, “but I’ll tell you one thing good: It keeps the riffraff out.”
There it was. The charmingly smug little tidbit I would hear a thousand times more, in crowded smelt fries, at wedding events where people wore hunting clothes… everywhere folks huddled together in common denial of frosty suffering. The sentiment that Siberian frigidity keeps less hearty – even less worthy – folks at bay is as old as an antique threshing machine. Sometimes the words have an intended sting. Sometimes not.
‘Riffraff’ is variously defined as a murky group of motley rabble, or even miscellaneous rubbish amid the teeming populations that swarm outside of this or that region. The use of this term to describe the Other, the person or persons unfit to face the rigors of old-fashioned pioneer life, dates back to the shared values of more cohesive, homogeneous days. Minnesota nice – all the same color.
Remember the ways our forebears described the big blizzards, one-room school houses and bone-numbing drudgery of their youth? “Why, yasser, I’ll never forget the night Pa tied a rope to the barn so he could find the way out to milk the cows. Well, the wind whipped up so bad it blew his hat clear off, and bein’ the stubborn type, he wouldn’t go without his hat. So he wandered out into the windbreak looking for it and got lost in the trees for a whole night. Good thing he had his flask, or he’d been a goner. That night men straggled in from less than a quarter mile away, frostbit and half crazy. The snow was so thick you couldn’t see the buggy whip in your hand!”
Improved home insulation, along with auto-start, skyways, domed football and seat warmers – all of these things have allowed the dreaded riffraff to stealthily infiltrate our rugged settlements. With the passing of years and the adding of these “un–North Dakotan” amenities, cold weather took a back seat to another cultural hurdle we like to hold high: the proven work ethic we nurture so much in the North Country. This is the land of snow fences, not hammocks, and lazy surfer bums with white sunscreen on their noses need not apply.
We shouldn’t dwell on mean-spirited prejudice, though, when we recall “cold weather keeps the riffraff out.” I think the phrase has mostly served as a good-natured pat on one’s own back, and not a slur. Folks in the Red River Valley generally obey the law, keep their property swept clean and tend to value teamwork. Cold weather is supposed to be the Kryptonite that shields us from the mildly degenerate.
Anyhow, I looked in the mirror, as if unsure about which side of the coin I fell on, and went to look for card-carrying riffraff. A glance up and down Broadway revealed no Kardashians. So far, so good. A quick look at the community calendar revealed that nobody had booked an annual sociopaths’ convention. Another good sign. I quickly realized that nowadays, everyone in the Red River Valley dresses pretty much the same, and our community is made up of long-term residents of just about every ethnic and cultural description. What’s more, three-card monte games, moonshine stills, snake-charming gaggles and automotive chop shops don’t seem to be cropping up.
I soon gave up trying to spot low-lifers by way of stereotyping. After all, how do you know if a smiling guy walking out of a pawn shop just hocked his daughter’s violin for a set of Monster Jam tickets? You may wonder, but you’ll never know.
I decided to poll some downtown people I see from day to day, promising to leave their names out. What was I supposed to do? Ask them, “Hey, you have a sort of a riffraff look going on; what’s your name? Do you feel wanted around here?”
For starters, I tried being terse and sort of nonchalant. The temperature was -21.
“Pretty rough weather, huh?” I muttered to a man in an elevator.
“Yeah, I guess so,” answered the fellow, who wore a black cashmere coat.
“You from around here?”
“Witness protection program,” he said under his breath. He fluttered his hands in his coat pockets and stared google-eyed for a split second. I guess I had that one coming.
One guy at a galleria said he was from California.
“Look,” he yawned, “I can take the weather and the tight-lipped small talk. People leave you alone around here. I booked out of L.A. to get away from car-jackings, smog, mudslides and Lindsay Lohan.” He said he was a financial broker. But he was wearing basketball shorts and a ski parka.
“I drove cab around here for 15 years,” a drawling southerner (and solid local resident) told me. “It used to get pretty old hearing the riffraff stuff all the time. But if it’s supposed to refer to me, hey, I’m still here. In fact, maybe that means I’m not riffraff anymore.”
An old-time local on Roberts Street in Fargo kept to the old party line. “Does the cold keep the riffraff out? Sometimes it doesn’t get cold enough.”
“People don’t know how to drive in snowstorms down in Texas,” said an elderly woman. She was the epitome of a reassuring, old-fashioned church lady – the type that would alphabetize her spice rack. “People up here know how to keep life going after a storm. Did you see the mess in New York and Chicago? How can you run a street plow when you’re swigging out of a half-pint?”
Well, that seemed a little harsh.
Since I have left this community many times only to return as certifiable riffraff, I wondered if the flood gates were flung so far open these days that riffraff might be kind of a silent majority. What if we were to all turn out in the streets one night, like they did in Egypt? Would the air be filled with loudspeaker strains of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” or “We are the world… We are the riffraff”? What would we look like? Would we all wear extra layers and polar earmuffs and “Uff Da” caps to compensate for our namby-pamby inner selves? I don’t think so. I suspect there would be brisk business selling gaudy buttons that read “Cold weather is great – it keeps out the New Riffraff!”