The astounding greens of young wheat and birch leaves offset a primarily brilliant crescent of yellow moon rising into the hemisphere of lake blue skies. A red rubber sun sets over Fargo.

These colors are fading, unnoticed by some 600 joyously distracted jugglers whose eyes only reach as far as the multicolored cloud of clubs, rings and balls. There are red, yellow and blue Crescents from England, white and orange lacrosse and bouncy black racquet balls. Not to mention bean bags in every shape and shade. Oddballs are tossing plates, knives, sickles, short-handled sink plungers, tennis rackets and a market full of vegetables overhead.

When the last ball is caught and the six-foot pogo sticks are packed away, the picture outside has changed to a rayon black and star-studded white praire summer night. The air at moonset is quiet and warm. House lights are darkened except for a few attic and basement lights keeping company with the pre-dawn crazies common to all towns. Recently renovated Moorhead, across the northward flowing Red River, holds more surrealism in its architectonic solitude than any of Salvidor Dali's painted dreams. Three schools of students have departed for exotic ad­ventures in "foreign" towns in the nearby lakes region of mid-Minnesota - Detroit Lakes, New York Mills, Alexandra, Pequot Lakes, Elrosa!

By morning, grey thunderheads appear on the horizon to prolong sunrise. At this more civilized hour, trumpeting yellow­headed blackbirds and woodwinds of mourning doves and meadow­larks on every fencepost announce a biblical-looking dawn.

At North Dakota State University's food service building, breakfast eggs are cracking and grain-belt toast is popping. Down Broadway, halfway down town, dueling steeples of St. Mary's Cathedral and the First Luthern Church clang abruptly, interrupt­ing power lines-full of chattering barn swallows. They chime "Sunday Morning Again" again and again. The swallows cry to each other of the astounding array of aerial instruments seen

in the "Parade of Fools" the morning before.

"Who would ever believe we would see such sights in Fargo! I came here thinking this was a quiet town in summer!" "I hear they migrate to a different city every year." "Who do they think they are sitting up on those single-wheeled flag poles littering our flyways! "

"I hear they call themselves jugger­nauts... no, it's juxtapositioners. Maybe?"

"I know what it is''' twitters one.

"I heard it outside the tower of windows where they nest. JUGGLERS! That's it... JUGGLERS!!"

"Those wingless bipeds must have had six fingers!"

"Well, at least they cleared the air after themselves."

"And those bands! Why, I could barely feel my own instincts for all that ruckus. "

"Ha, ha!" Twitter, twitter.

"Well, I found them delightful, fascinating. "

"Tweet! Tweet! Tee-hee'"

Those fascinating and delightful Fargo jugglers!

Sunday morning crawls on to noon­day and the much talked-of jugglers slide out from underneath the sheets for one final day of workshops and fare-the-wells. By evening, the swallows, blackbirds and meadowlarks will have seen the jugglers flocking to Hector Airport, the Amtrak, Jack Rabbit and Greyhound depots. Or streaming toward Interstates 94 and 29 in the bizarrest of autos, vans and trucks as they disperse for another year--headed Everywhere, USA and beyond... They have seen it all and it won't be long be­fore they begin to feel the urge to do it again!

by Luella Gruchalla Moorhead, MN

<---Previous Page

Return to Index