“I’ve been watching the legislature meeting in Bismarck…” started Little Jimmy when interrupted by Dorsey Crank.

“Somebody needs to be watching them,” Crank barked. “They need their mothers with them.”

“Well, the legislature is thinking…” Little Jimmy started again when Crank snorted, “‘Thinking’ is a new verb around Bismarck.”

The interruptions irked Little Jimmy. He didn’t have to put up with this. He was named the 2022 Outstanding Graduate of the Year at Omega University in northern Texas somewhere.

“Dorsey, I have an important issue so quit interrupting,” Little Jimmy snapped.

“The legislature has a bill to require people to prove their United States citizenship when they come to vote,” Jimmy explained. “But the legislature doesn’t have the guts to pass it so I propose that we adopt the idea for our elections. I herewith submit a resolution for your consideration.”

“Well, I got wind of this plot so I invited my friend George Hail-in-the Flowers to come and tell you that this idea would really be hard on our Native Americans,” Dorff Warndt reported. “Stand up, George, so they know who you are.”

You can bet that he was already knew who he was.

George stood up and was greeted by the unanimous applause of the 12 electors in attendance.

“Okay, George, you tell ’em,” Dorff urged him.

George stood up.

“It is crazy that Native Americans must prove citizenship in land they already own,” George wondered. “I am Chippewa and we lived on this land long before white man started electing. Our people ought to decide who is citizen. We don’t need records – we know American Natives when we see them.”

“You tell ’em, George,” inserted Old Sievert from his corner in the frigid community hall. His face was not visible peering out from his buffalo robe.

“Why is this issue here?” Security Officer Garvey Erfald asked.

“I know what the game is,” the retired Soo Line-Great Northern depot agent Orville Jordan snapped testily. “It’s about giving Dawg a good Christian name.”

The names “Fido” and “Rover” had been on the ballot six times and always ended in a tie. So the 5-year-old dog was still called Dawg.

“Little Jimmy hopes that proof of citizen will weed out some voters and Daug will get a name,” Orville accused Jimmy. Orville was a Rover man down to the last ballot.

“Who brought proof of citizenship today?” asked Holger Danske who practically had his feet in the potbellied stove.

“I couldn’t find mine so I brought my dad’s 1917 NPL membership card,” Einar Stampstead offered.

“My birth certificate burned with the house in 1934 two days after Langer went to jail,” Percy Progg announced. So he brought a photo of Bill Langer.

“My wife told me that the Bible said that as man and women we were one so I brought hers for the both of us,” Danske admitted.

“Just one minute!” stormed Chairman Ork Dorken as he rapped a chipped Coke bottle on his hollow-core door converted into a table. “Don’t any of you have a birth certificate?”

Ork gawked around the room, hoping to see a few people with birth certificates so that the discussion could continue. The silence was deafening.

With his breath fogging the words, Old Sievert chuckled.

“Apparently, everybody in the world is going to know who we are from this day forward,” he observed. “Just a bunch of old b—–ds with no birth certificates who can’t shoot straight.”

Little Jimmy started trying to get the electors to chant: “We want Fido! We want Fido.” But none were in the mood for cheering and ran for the door as the embers in the pot-bellied stove died an ignoble death.

By the time Ork rapped the table, everyone was gone.