In the late 1980s I travelled to Bismarck with my my father Ernest Anders Erickson to visit the family. A few days after we arrived we took a drive out to Ghylin Township and specifically headed along the Missouri River to where my father was born, in Painted Woods, North Dakota.

Just as we approached a low rolling hillside my father pulled off the road and we got out and walked a bit to a rise on the plains. Our view overlooked farmland and it spread out for miles. Ernest pointed to an old farmhouse across the way and said, "There you go, that's where I was born in that very farmhouse." The way he said it I think he was surprised it was still there. We chatted about the 1920s and I took some photos and then we walked around the area. I can still recall that day we were there together so clearly.

The next time I visited Bismarck in the early 1990s I went out to Painted Woods and the farmhouse was gone. There was just that open farmland as far as one could see.