My regular readers know that I am working in Watford City, North Dakota.  I was just getting ready to write another post about bad things in Watford City, a follow up to my previous post.  Last night a very upset woman in her thirties was asking me if I knew where her aunt was, (her aunt is a co-worker of mine), her truck is here, she’s not here, she’s not answering her phone, “I think something has happened to her.”  See, see, I told you!  All the women in Watford City don’t expect to last long, it’s not a matter of “if”, but “when”, they will get abducted by the oil field workers.  I’m just mad that they don’t have pavement markings, street signs, street lights, road shoulders, very primitive conditions here.  Anyway, her aunt had gone to the movies in Dickinson, and had turned her phone off, she wasn’t kidnapped, yet.

I drove my truck as close as I could get, to a building with a wireless router in order to connect to the internet.  I can’t get out of my truck because of a bunch of fanged monkeys, another problem with Watford City, and I am listening to KMHA 91.3 FM, broadcast from Four Bears, a.k.a. Newtown, North Dakota.  This is absolutely the best radio station that I have heard in my life.  I have been listening to it for more than a week now.

This radio station is so good, because they play anything they want, Anything.  It’s like the radio station is run by a bunch of wild Indians, because, it is.  It is “The Voice for the Mandan, Hidasta, and Arikara Nation”.  I am thinking about becoming a member of their tribe.

On KMHA 91.3 FM, this morning they played the First Baptist Church of Watford City service with the Reverend John Lane, a 60 year old Tennessean. Then some spiritual music by Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Patsy Kline, and Elvis.  Later today, KMHA will broadcast some Catholic crap, that some tribal members got roped into a long time ago.  Later, after the Catholic service, they play two hours of Pow Wow.  The Pow Wow is good, some of it is in English.  I like to sing and chant with the Pow Wow.  Hey, ey, ey, ey, Hey, ey, ey, ey, Hey, ey, ey, ey, Heyyyy Wup!

Nobody is mandating that KMHA be diverse, or provide equal time, though they are, and they do.  It seems like these Native Americans understand that spirituality might mean something different, and be expressed differently, by different people.  They are not trying to be diverse, they just are, like,”Why wouldn’t we want to have a wide range, why wouldn’t we want to be able to play anything we want, as long as it doesn’t suck?”

KMHA does not go looking for obscure music to impress people, somehow, maybe through oral tribal history that is passed on, they know all music from radio, cassette tapes, eight-track tapes, and records, from the past one hundred years.  “Hey, have you ever heard that song… Play that funky music white boy, play that funky music right…?”.  “Oh yeah, that’s got to be forty years ago now… I had a Dodge Charger, I hit this van that was parked on the side of the road so hard, it sent the van into a tree, that van is still sitting there in that same yard to this day, I see it when I drive by there.”

I was so excited about this radio station, it’s amazing, it’s incredible, I never ever heard anything like it before.  I looked it up on the internet, Oh man!, this can’t be, the people around here don’t even know there is anything unusual about it!  Oh my God, I think that the people around here must think that this local station can’t afford to play what all the other stations in Bismarck play.  There is not one review on Yelp, no one has reviewed KMHA yet.  Even on websites associated with KMHA, no one is making any positive comments whatsoever.

To me, KMHA is like a barn find, like when you find a 1967 911s, in an old barn in Watford City, and they just want it hauled away, nobody knows what it is. In bad, bad, condition there are at least one hundred Porsche restorers that would overnight you a cashiers check for $40,000, for that piece of shit car no one in Watford City would give you $100 for.