if i were somewhere away at the end of the earth and thinking of home as thing i remembered the winter the enormous frozen silence the snow cutting us off from the world like a wall the it might seem like a sort of desolate place to some but we're mostly norwegian up this way we've got an old immigrant prayer that goes should all things perish leading as a shooting star oh god  i've already put in an hour of chores at the farm by the time i turn up at the school a one room country schoolhouse  i remember how it all began so quietly a few solitary men climbing the hill crossing the fields edgy ologist searching for clues in the shape of a valley the composition of a stone a fossil in the least that was green at the time of the dinosaurs and then the seismograph crew coming in to map the underground drill hole and drop a dynamite charge the shockwave is going down to hit them very layers of stone bounce back to be recorded on sensitive instruments by then we only knew what they were doing the object of this search was the oil hard to imagine that somewhere a thousand miles across the continent men were adding years of scientific research checking reports approaching a decision that might open a new world on a doorstep from all of iraq's i remember the day last winter saturday morning it was i was working with my pa he's a tough stubborn old gent been out here  dakota raising wheat since the days when there was nothing but log cabins in a railroad depot friend of ours came by a local lawyer with a strange name of rowland turned out to be a man from the set of the oil company i remember we invited them inside for some of my wife's barber's good coffee and the usual talk about the weather in the wheat crop the reason i'm here is we like at least a mineral rights on your land we're offering ten cents an acre rentals you get the standard growth only one eighth of every barrel and every four or five years another company comes around buys a bunch of leases that must be half a dozen dry homes out there on the prairie to take our chances no sooner did the first visitor take us next one came rolling in another land a man from burns petroleum i remember within a week we had half a dozen offers we took our time deciding we worked hard for what we've got it took the sweat of generations to turn the prairie into wheat land and then came the thir i was only a kid but i never forget the dead look of the land burnt dry by the drums in the winter when everything went the debts piled up and down there was nothing a man could do but slam the door and walk away golden with green wheat is like a running river so now when the oil companies came in we took out time making about a mind man with a couple of phone silos and fifty head of cattle can afford to take  times finally we signed with saddam that was last year and since then not a word out of them maybe they've found out there isn't any oil maybe  the geologist showed us around and it was like watching the little town take shape well and others in roundabouts working in the stinging cold putting up the drilling platform digging the mud pit stacking pipes stringing power lines working with numbed feet and icy fingers getting things ready to sink the drilling bit into the frozen or m how much does it cost to drill a well like that well it depends first drilling in this weather is deep it will have to go probably cost about half a million it in the evenings after that i watched barbara i could see she had visions of an oil well in the middle of the week for you know what paper in the car and  college fund for the kids we hope to have someday