A peek into the future of my grandchildren’s world

I grew up with the internal combustion engine. When I learned to drive in high school, the price of a gallon of gasoline was 70 cents. Now that I’m nearing my 60^th birthday, the price is $2.10 a gallon. I’ve seen it as high as $4.00 a gallon but that was before horizontal drilling and the exploitation of the Bakken Shale in western North Dakota.

To say I’m satisfied with the status quo would be an understatement. I normally drive a 2006 Dodge Neon that has been described by my brother-in-law as “old fashioned.” It has power steering, a radio and an automatic transmission so it seems modern enough for me. Also, I really only drive it to work and back or the occasional trip to the grocery store.

So when I was told last Friday that I would be driving a 2018 all-electric Tesla Model X for a week, I felt a few jitters run up my spine, but then I thought, “Hey, you’ve driven an electric car before….yeah, a golf cart…many times.”

Well, the Tesla is a little more sophisticated – and bigger – than a golf cart. There’s a little fellow under the hood named “Otto.” His last name is “Pilot.” And he can drive the car all by himself on the interstate from Bismarck to Mandan.

He’s a little too “swervy” for my nerves. It puts me in mind of the way a sitting car on an Amtrak will sway when you are riding the rails. But I had to try it.

There are lots of things to try on the Tesla. I downloaded an app to my phone that allows me to warm up the interior of the car while I’m still inside the office working. The app also tells me how much juice the car is using while warming up the interior of the car. Since North Dakota is right now in the middle of a cold snap, I can’t decide what feature I like most…the one that warms up the car or the one that shows how much electricity is being consumed.

If this was spring or fall, the car could probably make it about 300 miles between charges, but since its winter, heating up the interior is certainly decreasing the miles it can travel.

Right now, the car is plugged into a charging station at work, so I’m not too worried about the electric load. If I were at home, I’d be a little more worried, but I still know that electricity is a good bargain in North Dakota – partly because about 70 percent of it comes from North Dakota-mined lignite coal. Lignite is an affordable fuel. That’s why we have seven lignite-based power plants that generate approximately 4,000 megawatts…or enough power for more than 2 million homes.

My employer, the Lignite Energy Council, is leasing the Tesla for the next three years and allowing its employees to try it out and see if personal ownership of an all-electric vehicle would be right for them.

Well, for me, the Tesla – or another brand of an all-electric car -- would be a perfect second car as I only use my Neon for short trips. The Tesla specifically worked great in the cold weather and handled well in the challenging road conditions. Of course, we northerners know that the secret to getting around in the winter is our tires, and the Tesla has new tires with plenty of tread. The Tesla also has lots of power and accelerates well.

Yesterday, we took the Tesla to church and as we were talking with another couple, the husband asked, “Who makes the Tesla?”

I replied that the car company is called Tesla. This was hard for him to comprehend because almost every car in the church parking lot is made by either Chevrolet or Ford. So driving an all-electric vehicle takes a little getting used to…but the for the people who like to try new things, I think the Tesla will be just fine.

In the future when our grandchildren are adults, who knows, maybe they’ll be wondering what a Chevrolet and a Ford were. People of my generation might be seeing the future before our eyes and we could be the last to recognize it.

GPS

We were at a rural Catholic church for Uncle Johnny’s funeral. As was the custom, several of the retired priests who had served the parish were invited back for the service. One of them was thumbing his way through a little prayer book. First he went to the right, then he went to the left…all the while my 90-year-old dad sitting beside me was losing his patience. After drumming his hands on the back of the pew, he blurted out, “He can’t find it, he can’t find it.”

Dad was just about to get up and leave the church when I grabbed him by his belt loop and pulled him back down. At last, the priest stopped and read something. Whatever it was, it was anticlimactic following dad’s pronouncement of the obvious. It would have meant more if the priest had closed the book and ad-libbed a prayer.

Over the years, I’ve lost plenty of things…gloves and hats mostly. I always make sure to have some spare items hanging around just in case. I doubt that anyone cares if I’m wearing a brown pair of gloves this morning, only to lose them at lunch and replace them with a black pair in the evening.

But the one thing that we never want to lose is our way. With GPS, it’s easier to find what we are looking for even in a strange town or country. The GPS on my phone works just as well in Brazil as it does in Minnesota. In both places, I can see lakes on my phone that I don’t even see from my car.

But how about when it comes to our career or our family life…a GPS won’t help us there. Or will it? Normally GPS stands for Global Positioning System…but what if it also stood for Glittering Precious Sapphires?

Let me explain. In the 1860s when the southerners and the northerners were engaged in a great Civil War, prospectors were finding gold in the Rocky Mountains of present day Montana. First came the discovery of gold near Bannack, then came gold around Virginia City. The third major find was near present day Helena, the Montana state capitol. The prospectors called it Last Chance Gulch…having already missed out on the two earlier bonanzas. Of course, not all the prospectors got rich at Last Chance Gulch. Some arrived too late, and so they began their journey back to civilization.

However, that didn’t mean they couldn’t continue to look for gold as they retreated out of the Rockies. That’s what happened to a group who traveled east near present-day Lewistown. They panned for gold in the creeks but didn’t find any flecks or nuggets. What they did find were blue pebbles, but they weren’t looking for blue pebbles. They were looking for gold. Then in the 1890s, a cattle rancher collected some pebbles thinking they might be sapphires and sent them to be assayed. Eventually, they made their way to Tiffany’s in New York City where they were proclaimed to be the most precious gem ever discovered in Montana. This is no small feat considering that Montana is known as the Treasure State and Butte is home to the richest hill on earth.

The mining of the precious Yogo sapphires ensued and jewelers considered anything less than a Yogo sapphire to be inferior.

As we journey through life looking for that one perfect nugget, or – in the case of the priest -- a favorite prayer that’s been recited at previous funerals, maybe we should broaden our vision and scope out other precious gems.

When I graduated from college, my goal in life was to be a sports reporter with my heart set on covering the New York Yankees, still my favorite baseball team. I was a sports reporter in high school. But after college, I found more value in using my talents as a communicator in public relations, first for a telephone cooperative in Glendive, Montana, and later for a regional utility in Bismarck, North Dakota. For the last 16 years, I’ve been promoting North Dakota’s lignite coal industry to a variety of audiences.

Had I stuck to my original dream, I might have been like the prospectors who walked away from a stream full of crystal blue sapphires. Instead, I’ve enjoyed a rich career. My hobby remains the New York Yankees. I’ve seen them play at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. But my vocation is to promote home-grown energy in North Dakota. My career in public relations has helped me purchase my house, feed my family, send my boys to college and support the occasional vacation to Brazil and Hawaii.

So don’t overlook the sapphires while searching for the gold. And for goodness sake, don’t fumble through the prayer book looking for something that would mean more if it came from the heart and not someone else’s pen. There are glittering precious sapphires…if we will only choose to look.