What started as a joke for two Minot men has become a crusade - one both can't wait to end.
When the Souris River flood hit Minot this past summer, insurance agents Doug Rued and Jim Montgomery of Bremer Insurance were among the many who had to evacuate their businesses before the surging river waters washed over them.
Rued and Montgomery had been telling their clients to seriously consider buying flood insurance, and thankfully they followed their own advice for Bremer Insurance. That was small consolation considering how much they lost, however.
"And like the homeowners, we had to leave stuff behind," Montgomery said. "We had to leave all our furniture behind because we didn't have the manpower or the womanpower to move the furniture."
"And we got our main files out of here, but being Minot's largest agency we had a considerable amount of files from many years of insurance," Rued added. "We took out the most pertinent, but the sirens went off and we didn't get it all out."
Rued went on to say that during the 1969 flood, the street wasn't even flooded, much less the building, which sits at the corner of 16th Street Northwest and 4th Avenue Northwest, right next to Oak Park. Rued and Montgomery figured from what they had heard about the river flows that there would be a couple feet of water in the building.
"But when it got backed up into this part of town, basically, we didn't consider 6 1/2 feet of water," Rued said. "So we had put a lot of stuff up on top of our files. Well, that all washed away."
The did, however, manage to get their computers out along with the main paper files.
Both agreed that as bad as the 1969 flood was, this was far worse.
Montgomery said one thing they are very proud of was remaining open for business throughout the flood. Their office was moved to the main Bremer Bank location across from I. Keating on South Broadway, although "office" might be too strong of a word to use. Montgomery ended up in a cubbyhole with no windows he calls the broom closet on the main floor while Rued was banished to the basement "catacombs" in the safety deposit box check-in area.
"Our phone system was not shut down for one minute, because we waited down here while they got set up uptown, and we gave it the changeover, and it shut off here and started ringing up there," Rued said, noting there are 15 Bremer Insurance employees spread all over the bank.
Rued mentioned they even had some of their customers offer space for them to work, which he found to be an incredibly nice gesture.
Around October, Rued and Montgomery started joking about not shaving, which led to "No-Shave November."
"I work outside during Hstfest in the parking lot, and I never shave during that," Montgomery said.
"We just kicked it into high gear and said 'Hey, we're not going to shave until we get back in the office,'" Rued added. "And some of us, such as myself, have never done this. And probably most likely will never do it again. This is very challenging."
They haven't even trimmed the beards to keep their appearance neat, although Rued admitted to trimming the hair below his upper lip so he wouldn't keep getting it in his mouth. When asked if he thought the thick, untamed beard made him look more distinguished, Rued said it most assuredly did not. That thought actually led Rued to talk about the biggest unintended consequence of his new beard.
"I can be sitting in a place, and people that I've known since I was that high," Rued said, lowering his hand a few feet above the ground, "will walk right by me. I was getting my glasses checked and there's a person that I have known for many years (walking by), and I said a greeting to the person. She walked about 10 feet, and without even turning around, she goes, 'Doug? I thought I recognized that voice. Oh, it's you.' It's really something."
Rued has had the same phenomenon happen just about everywhere he goes, including at a funeral. Although he has grown a much smaller beard in the past during Hostfest, Montgomery has gone through much the same thing now that his beard has filled out.
"At the MADC annual meeting, Matt Klein sits down next to me and introduces himself to me," Montgomery said. "And I've known him for years."
Along with being unrecognized by some of their closest friends, both men have also taken a lot of grief over their new look. It's all in good fun, though, and they've been good sports about it.
"It's kind of the reason we did it," Montgomery said. "You've got to have some humor."
"There's so much tragedy, we can overload ourselves with the tragedy that's gone on in this community," Rued said. "And it's not to make fun of what happened, for certain. Because many people's lives have been ruined and turned upside down and inside out. We just thought, well, we can have a little fun with this, because it's so out of the normal for us. We've never done anything like this before."
"It gives people a chance to smile and laugh," Montgomery added.
As for exactly when the blessed day arrives when Rued, Montgomery and the rest of the employees can get back into the building they all think of as home, it can't come soon enough. It was originally supposed to be the end of January, but some delays have pushed it back to Feb. 28.
When the big day finally does arrive, Rued said they will probably make a big production out of the first shave either man will have had in months to give the employees one final laugh before things start getting back to normal.
Construction is going well despite the month-long delay, and both men like the way their "new" building is turning out. The women in the office took charge of decorating and choosing the color schemes, and the office will have a much warmer look with earth tones on the walls and floor, as opposed to the plain white coloring Montgomery said it used to have.
New furniture has been ordered, although that is bittersweet for both men. They each lost their desk in the flood, which is the desk each of their fathers also used when they were in the insurance business.
The single biggest update to the building is probably the brand new heating and cooling system, which is much more energy efficient than the old one and will give each individual workspace its own climate control.
Thankfully for Rued, Montgomery, and pretty much all of Minot, the legendary Volkswagen Beetle adorning the roof of Bremer Insurance made it through the city's worst-ever flood unscathed. That Beetle was put up there by Rued's father in 1971 when the business was known as Rued Insurance, and has become an icon of the Minot cityscape.
It was a small victory for the business, but perhaps a much larger one for the city as a whole.
"We've taken it down a couple of times to refurbish it, and we get letters from people. 'Well, you can't take the Volkswagen down, my kids are all upset that there's no slug bug,'" Rued said with a giant laugh.
