A selfie while riding four-wheeler in the mountains.
When we visit my wife’s parents in Montana, there’s nothing we like to do more than to load up her dad’s four-wheelers and head to the nearby mountains to do a little off-roading and motorized mountain climbing.
Growing up on a southwest North Dakota farm, I know a little something about isolation. But honestly, it doesn’t compare to being on a remote mountain, 25 miles from the nearest city and six miles from the nearest ranch — with the only way in or out being a rocky, five-foot wide trail — that gives one a true sense of seclusion.
This time, however, that seclusion nearly got the best of us. No, we didn’t have some sort of injury or major mishap. Just comical misfortune that delayed a wonderful day.
Jim and Betty Anton show a picture of the pool table they hid under during the tornado that destroyed much of their home on July 8, 2009.
Editor’s Note: There are literally hundreds of stories and different accounts of the night an EF-3 tornado struck the south side of Dickinson on July 8, 2009. Five years later, we take a look at three families — two of them next-door neighbors — and what they went through that day and in the tornado’s aftermath.
Jim and Betty Anton were sitting in their living room the night of July 8, 2009, when the sky turned dark seemingly in an instant.
Often, they had discussed where would be the best place to take cover in case the threat of a tornado ever turned real. Their house had a basement, but no place down there seemed perfect.
The Antons had ultimately decided they would either go underneath the staircase connecting the main floor and the basement or crawl beneath their pool table. That night, with only seconds to act, the Antons chose the pool table.
Jim Anton knew they had to move fast when he looked out their front window and saw trees flying by.
“He couldn’t finish the word basement’ fast enough, and we went down and got right under the pool table,” Betty Anton said.
“We slid under there like butter.”
As they laid face down under the pool table, the Antons heard what sounded like a train going through their house. Betty’s glasses flew off her face and hit the basement wall, followed by a crunching sound.
“And it was over with,” she said.
As quickly as the tornado came, it was gone. What meteorologists would later describe as an EF-3 “jumper,” moved east across Dickinson and continued out of town.
When all seemed quiet and safe again, Jim Anton pulled himself out from underneath the pool table and carefully walked upstairs. He didn’t linger there.
“He got right back downstairs, got under the pool table and said, ‘The living room is gone,’” Betty said.
Chad Glasser stands near one of Venture Homes’ construction sites in north Dickinson on Wednesday. Glasser, owner of Venture Homes (formerly Venture Building Co.), has eight homes in the works in and around Dickinson this summer.
Chad Glasser is as busy as a 28-year-old man can get.
During work hours, he’s the owner and general contractor of a growing home building company, as well as a real estate agent. He also makes sure the truck stop diner he and his wife, Brittni, own in east Dickinson runs smoothly. The rest of the time, he’s a husband and father of three children ages 4 and under — the youngest of whom is less than 2 weeks old.
“I try to prioritize the best I can,” Glasser said with a smile. “Obviously family comes first. When my wife is not telling me to come home, I’m typically working.”
As owner of Venture Homes in Dickinson, Glasser is one of the many working furiously to get new homes built in the city and ease the demand for permanent housing.
Venture is building eight homes in and around Dickinson this summer, he said. Five are under construction and three are well into the planning stages.
“Obviously the goal is to make the customer happy,” Glasser said. “That should be the goal in any business.”
Partnership and beyond
Venture Building Co. began in 2009 as a partnership between Glasser and his brotherin-law, Parker Pladson. The Trinity High School alumni had owned Dakota Diner together with Brittni since buying it from Parker and Brittni’s father, Bill Pladson, in 2007.
Glasser shakes his head and said the days before the oil boom, weren’t always the best for the now-bustling diner that specializes in North Dakota-style home cooking.
“We were just scraping by,” for about the first year, he said. “We worked out there. I ate a lot of meals out there. Breakfast, lunch, supper. When we started, there was a lot of hours out there.”
Eventually, business picked up, thanks in part to the boom. Glasser now keeps an eye on the diner, takes care of any major business there and does the bookkeeping from his Venture office in the basement of the Real Estate Co. His mom, Tammy, now manages the diner.
Glasser and Pladson formed the home building company shortly after Glasser got his real estate license. Though the business took some time to get up and running, they started building their first home in March 2011.
“It was a good time to build houses,” Glasser said.
So far, Venture has built 28 homes in Dickinson.
At the beginning of 2014, Glasser and Pladson split the business into two separate entities.
Pladson took Venture Building Co. to Bismarck and Glasser formed Venture Homes in Dickinson. They each use the same 20 customizable floor plans, share a website and Glasser uses a variation of the original company logo.
“The nice thing was, we ended on really good terms,” Pladson said. “We worked together for a long time. I’m glad that now we can just spend time together as a family instead of spending time working together. It’s been a great thing. I can’t speak for him, but it’s been one of the best decisions that we’ve made together.”
‘A beautiful home’
Glasser said the one thing he immediately noticed when he and Pladson began building homes were the “horror stories” customers would tell about poor builders and sketchy sub-contractors doing quick work with questionable materials.
Venture’s goal is to make sure no one says that about them. Both Glasser and Pladson use local sub-contractors, which Glasser said “adds consistency” to the homes and gets its materials from as many local businesses as it can because, he added, “they treat me fair.”
Brittni Glasser even gets involved, too — that is when she’s not taking care of 4-year-old Charlie, 2-year-old Riley and Aubrey, who was born June 26.
“I love picking stuff out and house design,” she said. “That’s one thing I’ve really enjoyed. I get to help out. Any design questions, I get to help Chad out. Or floor plan ideas. That’s where my interests are.
“It’s been really fun to watch them start out not knowing a whole lot, and now they can build a beautiful home.”
Scott Karsky, left, and Dave Bren, makers of Brenarsky’s seasoning sauce, hold both iterations of their product on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 in Dickinson, N.D. They sell about 14,000 bottles of the sauce throughout the country each year. (Dustin Monke/Dickinson Press)
Lazy summer weekends at Lake Sakakawea inspired two Dickinson businessmen to take a concoction of seasonings they’d long been made for themselves, and turn it into a product they could sell.
Five years later, Brenarsky’s seasoning sauce is a product known throughout North Dakota, and it is slowly gaining a following throughout the country as a secret ingredient in alcoholic beverages, a liquid seasoning for grilled meats and, as its label states, “whatever the heck else you’d like to put it on.”
Dave Bren and Scott Karsky became friends in the sixth grade and served in the Army National Guard together. Yet, it was at their neighboring lake cabins that they realized there might be a market for the sauce they had long been using to make their own bloody mary’s, caesars, clamdiggers and red beers.
Dustin Monke 