Many years ago the very concept of a “west” Fargo was amusing to droll, big-city types – surely “Fargo” itself was puny and western. Why would anyone need a West Fargo? To escape from all the big-city pressures and breath free again?

I wasn’t immune from this; as a young Fargoan, I looked down on West Fargo. It held the stockyards, and it stank. Nevertheless, it had its own bank, and I recall a brief pang of resentment: you think you’re so big, West Fargo, with your own bank, like you don’t need Fargo. Well you do and you smell.

Before the freeways came, Dad always turned south at this building to get to his work. I remember the building from trips to his station.

It’s now one of the most modern and fast-growing parts of the Fargo area, incidentally. The stockyards were torn down years ago, and several years after that, the smell finally lifted.