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P By Wynne Paasch, Mandan My dad built a dam one summer on our farm south of Wimbledon. It was a beautiful idea, one of many he and my mom had. They had a flair for building grand things: a castle -like house on a hill, a winding tree -lined drive, a basketball court for us boys in the hay mow of one of our big red barns. And now there would be a lake as well, a lake named "Gitchee Gurnee - Shining Big -Sea Water" after Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha." My parents read poetry and were nothing if not romantic - minded. The dam site was a draw between two steep hillsides on a rocky, rugged quarter- section south of our house. It seemed like the perfect spot; runoff from a large area funneled through this draw into a huge permanent slough, and Dad had had the bed tested to make sure it wasn't gravelly. After signing the requisite papers he zestfully set to work. I remember how enthusiastic he was about that dam. In the evenings and on Sunday afternoons he'd unhook the Versatile from whatever field implement he'd been pulling, hitch it onto the big yellow scraper, and commence moving clay 11 yards at a time. Around and around he'd go, first scooping a scraper - ful, then driving across the draw, dumping the dirt as he went. I liked to watch the scraper disgorge its load; it had a hydraulically- controlled wall that moved for- ward from the back of the box, forcing the dirt gradu- ally out the front and distributing it so evenly. Thus Dad laid down layer after thin layer of clay, stacking it like sheets of phyllo dough. Eventually the dam grew 20 feet high. When it was finished he sprinkled it with grass seed, hauled in some sand for a beach, and even built a wooden dock with 55- gallon plastic drums for floats. To top it off, he had a sign made: "Gitchee Gurnee - Shining Big -Sea Water." Water, indeed, was all we needed now. The next spring, snowmelt and rain filled Gitchee Gurnee full. Wavelets lapped against the top of the good earth dam Dad had made. We have a picture of him from that time standing next to the sign, beam- ing buoyantly and gesturing grandly out toward our new one -and -a -half acre lake. Soon we'd stock it with fish. I'd been looking at fish books, and I liked saying the names of the different breeds that might soon swim in our pond: black crappies, blue - gills, yellow perch, rainbow trout, Coho salmon. I envisioned myself strolling out to Gitchee Gurnee after an evening of catching a mess of fish and bringing them home for Mom to roll in cornmeal and fry in shortening. In the meantime we had a dandy swimming hole. Then Gitchee Gurnee began to shrink — steadily, steadily, as though someone had pulled a stopper out of the bottom. By the end of the second summer only a few feet of water were left. It swelled a bit every spring, but it never filled full like that first year. Dad puts it down to faulty workmanship — he says he should have driven over each layer of clay once to pack it down before adding the next one — but we're not sure. Whatever the cause of its leakiness, we soon gave up on it as a fishpond. My brothers and I continued to swim there, but we took to calling it "Gets Ya' Gummy" because of its mucky shores and stagnant water. The last thing I recall doing in Gitchee Gurnee was setting a bunch of tin cans afloat in what was left of the water and sinking them with a BB gun. The dam still stands, of course, and we're con- noisseurs of irony enough to have left the sign up, too. We have a good laugh at ourselves whenever we ride by it on horseback. It didn't hold water, but it was still a beautiful idea. North Dakota Water ■ May 2005 Wynne Paasch is the assistant editor of North Dako- ta History: Journal of the Northern Plains, published by the North Dakota Historical Society. He often returns to his family's farm near Wimbledon, where he enjoys horseback riding and playing basketball in the barn.