Fargo Nd

By the summer of 2005, the murder rate in this rough refinery town across the bay from San Francisco had reached the point where the City Council debated declaring a state of emergency. Richmond's undermanned Police Department had trouble just getting witnesses to come forward, particularly in the tough Iron Triangle neighborhood, where many of the killings took place. In 2005, police made arrests in only 13% of the homicide cases they investigated.

The gift shop at the four-gate airport here sells the obligatory coffee mugs emblazoned with "Yah, you betcha." It also sells posters with moody black-and-white photos of great cities of the world: Moscow. London. Paris. Fargo. It's no joke. Or at least, not much of one. The Coen brothers' grisly comedy "Fargo" cursed this city with a dreary reputation. Just one scene in the 1996 film takes place here.

The swollen Red River reached its highest point this century Saturday, a slow-moving potential disaster edging north toward a dozen more communities waiting behind sandbag fortresses. After two weeks of creeping toward an anticipated record high, the river crested at 37.58 feet--20 feet above flood stage but short of the record of 39.1 feet set in 1897. Most of the city of 74,000 was dry behind its flood walls.

If the grizzled sandbaggers of Terrace Avenue have learned anything over the last two weeks, they now know enough not to declare victory over a river that rolls over the landscape at its own baleful will. Twice now, Fargo's public officials and weather forecasters have announced that the Red River, gorged with melted runoff from a winter of record snowstorms, had reached its crest. Twice, the river has proved them wrong.

Grilling burgers in the parking lot behind the high school once attended by the most famous athlete to walk these plains, old men pray. "'I don't know," Orv Kelly says. "Maybe Mark McGwire will slide into second base and twist an ankle." "Or maybe," Wayne Blanchard says, "he'll get hit with a pitch, break a finger." "Not that we want him to get hurt," Kelly says. "Nah, nah, of course not," Blanchard says. "We just wouldn't be up all night crying if it happened, know what I mean?" Kelly says.