MONTANA (NOBODY CAN SAY WHY) FINDS NORTH DAKOTA HILARIOUS
By William E. Schmidt, Special To the New York Times
Oct. 27, 1981
''Do you know what the official tree of North Dakota is?'' a man asked recently, sidling up to an unsuspecting visitor in a local tavern. ''No? It's a telephone pole.''
''What about this one?'' another man said, eager to join in. ''Here's a North Dakota state highway sign: 'Drive Carefully. No hospital for 350 miles in any direction.' ''
In Montana, which borders North Dakota on the west, jokes like these are told everywhere. It seems that poking fun at North Dakota is a statewide pastime.
''I don't know why people here pick on them,'' said Mike Dalton, a disk jockey for radio station KQDI in Great Falls, Mont. Mr. Dalton has assembled what he says is the world's largest collection of North Dakota jokes in five paperback books called, appropriately, ''Mike Dalton's North Dakota Joke Books.''
''North Dakota is just a funny place,'' he said. ''There's nothing there.'' Joke Books Have Sold 25,000 Copies
Mr. Dalton says that he has sold 25,000 copies of his books, at $2.25 apiece, with proceeds going to charity. Surprisingly, North Dakotans take all this with something more approaching resignation than indignation. They have heard it all before.
''It's really nothing new, you know,'' says Wynona H. Wilkins, a professor of French at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks. ''People have been poking fun at North Dakota for years. Fact is, we've become sort of a national synonym for Nowheresville, a place so remote that it's comic.''
In 1971, Mrs. Wilkins wrote an academic paper, ''The Idea of North Dakota.'' In it, she concluded, among other things, that ''everyone needs to feel superior to someone else, and almost everybody can feel superior to North Dakota, because it is so far away and so seemingly unimportant.'' The state is large, with an area as equal to New England and New Jersey combined, but its population, at 643,000, is less than that of metropolitan Syracuse. Hoople, Gackle and Zap Don't Help Image
''I confess it is difficult,'' Mrs. Wilkins said in a recent telephone interview, ''to take seriously a state where towns are actually named Hoople, Gackle and Zap.''
And except for its reputation for cold, wintery, miserable weather, Mrs. Wilkins says the state has virtually no national profile. Which reminded her of a joke:
''Did you hear about the tornados that devastated the town of Fair Weather, North Dakota? Afterwards, the city fathers decided to change the name of the town. They now call it Fair Weather, South Dakota.''
''You just get used to the jokes after awhile,'' said Robert J. Kallberg, press secretary to Gov. Allen I. Olson. Mr. Kallberg cited an example involving the Governor as proof that North Dakotans tend to take all the spoofing in good humor. Tennessean Questions State's Existence
Last summer a woman named Deborah Hollingsworth, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., wrote to Governor Olson, contending that since she had never met anyone from North Dakota, nor had she ever even seen a North Dakota license plate, she seriously doubted that the state even existed. She asked Governor Olson - if indeed there was a Governor Olson - to offer proof.
The Governor invited Miss Hollingsworth to Bismarck, the state capital, to see for herself. She was given an official tour of the town, feted at a reception with the Governor and, as final proof, presented with a satellite picture of the state to take home. ''I think that satisfied her,'' said Mr. Kallberg.
There is one other reason North Dakotans can brush off Montana's ill humor. They have their own victims to pick on. ''Most of the jokes they tell in Montana about us, we tell here about Norwegians,'' said Mrs. Wilkins. Many North Dakotans are of Scandinavian heritage.
In fact, Mrs. Wilkins asserted in her article, some Norwegians in North Dakota were so angry about being the butt of ethnic jokes that they decided to march to Washington to protest.
''When last heard from,'' Mrs. Wilkins added, ''they were more than halfway to Seattle.''