Big Fish on Light Tackle! www. oahewalleyes. com
Memories of Home
The Times of
Your Life
by Jim Fuglie
I
I’ ll never get used to spending the night in a motel room in Hettinger, North Dakota. After all, it’ s my hometown. For more than 40 years there was a“ Fuglie House” in Hettinger, including one with a barn. That was the“ Johns House,” named for a pioneer doctor who had built it and later, after he had retired and moved away, rented it to my father. It’ s still there.
The doctor had purchased a big chunk of a block across from the court house, and there were four distinct lots: One for the house, one with a barn, one that served as the neighborhood softball diamond, and the great side yard, full of ancient American Elms, one large enough for the tree house that held most of the neighborhood boys-- no girls allowed-- when Kool-Aid time followed the softball game or the ante-over game around the barn.
The softball field was in back of our house, and home plate was right beside the driveway, just far enough from the house to keep errant foul balls from doing any damage. At the other end of the field, back behind second base, lived the Clements. Center field was actually the street separating our yards. Big kids weren’ t allowed to play in the ball games at our house because there was a real danger a home run would bust out the Clements’ front window. By the time I was old enough to barely hit it onto the street, still far short of the Clements’ front window, we moved. I think that was the end of the softball and ante games. Eventually the barn was torn down and, to our chagrin, one of the older Mattis boys built a house on the softball field.
But I’ m thinking back now to the late summer of 1992, when I found myself in Hettinger on business, and
there was no Fuglie house. It was my first trip back“ home” since my mother had sold her house and moved to Bismarck to be near her
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grandchildren. And I was staying in a motel. I actually felt a little nervous about that. And a little naughty.
It was a beautiful,
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Page 76, Dakota Country, September 2025 www. dakotacountrymagazine. com