Almost four centuries ago, John Donne wrote the poem “Good-Friday, 1613, Riding Westward.” The poem is written as an expression of faith, as the speaker of the poem is asking for God’s direction in life. Donne describes a person literally traveling westward, away from Jerusalem in the east, where Christ died. However, the poem is written with the hope of facing Christ, and turning towards the East with God’s help.
     John Donne never made it as far west as Ralph’s Corner Bar, located on Main Avenue of Moorhead. He never had the chance to see the realities of today. So, the task was up to Mark Vinz, a recognized poet of the Fargo-Moorhead area, to write his own take on Donne’s expression of faith, in a poem entitled “Good Friday, Just West of Here.” “[Donne’s poem] is a poem of religious faith,” explained Vinz. “My poem is a latter-day version, but there’s no religious faith expressed in the poem…it’s a strange poem.”

Vinz’s poem mentions Ralph’s, an old standby of Main Street life in the Fargo-Moorhead area as “the corner bar, where old campaigners from the beet plant pace the aisles with teenagers and juke box music loud as grief.” The poem mentions the Red River, which separates Fargo and Moorhead, and their two adjoining Main Avenues. In the poem, a “young man in the buckskin fringe says he’s going to walk across, as soon as he comes down.”       “It comes out of real experiences, as I remember it,” Vinz says. “John Donne was the great religious poet of English literature, and this particular poem was one I really admired in which he’s riding westward…he’s wrestling with his own doubts.      So, partly why I used that title was to say how much has changed in the 21st Century.

     Now, you get a bunch of stoners at Ralph’s, and a guy that says, ‘I’m gonna walk across the river!’ I just did that as an ironic contrast. John Donne is from an age of faith, and we’re living in an age that is probably the opposite, in a lot of ways.”
     “It comes out of real experiences, as I remember it,” Vinz says. “John Donne was the great religious poet of English literature, and this particular poem was one I really admired in which he’s riding westward…he’s wrestling with his own doubts. So, partly why I used that title was to say how much has changed in the 21st Century. Now, you get a bunch of stoners at Ralph’s, and a guy that says, ‘I’m gonna walk across the river!’ I just did that as an ironic contrast. John Donne is from an age of faith, and we’re living in an age that is probably the opposite, in a lot of ways.”
     It is fitting that Vinz set his poem, an expression of sin and faithlessness, at a spot located on Main Avenue of Moorhead, because this is the area of town that once earned Moorhead the nickname of “Beerhead,” and gave the Fargo-Moorhead area an unofficial title of “Sin City.” During the two towns’ formative years, around the end of the 19th Century, the area became well known across the Upper Middle West because of its associations with less-than-admired businesses, such as bars and brothels.
     As Fargo and Moorhead began to grow as towns in the mid-1800s, saloons emerged to draw in the business of the many farm and railroad laborers. However, when North Dakota was admitted into the Union as a state in 1889, it was admitted as a “dry state.” Therefore, all of the saloons closed down on the west side of the river.
     With the absence of liquor in Fargo, the saloon industry of Moorhead began to flourish, as everyone in Fargo seeking the sweet refuge of an alcoholic beverage was forced to travel across the bridge into Moorhead. By 1900, the number of saloons in Moorhead peaked at 45. Considering that the population of Moorhead at the time was close to 3,700, the ratio of saloons-to-person was 1:80. If that ratio had remained true to present day, Moorhead would have just over 400 bars!
     Clay County historian Mark Peihl confirms that this period of Moorhead’s history was both “positive and negative.” The explosion in saloons caused a lot of problems, including gambling, which was illegal at the time. Moreover, city government was troubled by corruption. Illegal activities were overlooked because, “[they] pumped in a lot of money to the community,” said Peihl.
     The seedy history of Main Avenue in Fargo also included a chapter when prostitution and brothels were commonplace. “Fargo did have a Red Light District,” said Peihl, “but most cities in the Upper Midwest had one. It was restricted to one area…where the Civic Auditorium’s parking lot is now. [This area] was called ‘the Hollow.’”
     The practice was allowed in just one area, so if people wanted to avoid it, they could. “Keep it out of sight, out of mind,” Peihl explained.
     This history of prostitution inspired a poem by prominent local poet Mary Pryor, “The Day They Tore Down,” that describes an imaginary scene. The Fargo-Moorhead community gathers to watch the destruction of an old brothel. The poem begins with the line, “The day they tore down the old whore house, the community flocked to the razing.”
     “I came up with the first line, and it took off,” said Pryor. “It’s a clash of the wild history and what Moorhead, and Fargo even more, has become on the surface…a very conservative community.”
     The mixture of rampant alcoholism and prostitution in our area has combined into some rather famous stories. One such story, attested to by Vinz and Peihl, involves saloon-owners who utilized trap doors in balconies and tunnels. These openings supposedly would deposit drunks directly into the river or to the riverbank.
     “I have heard the stories quite often,” said Peihl, “and I have looked specifically for instances [in the records].” The closest report Peihl has found in the history books are items about the famed Rothskeller, a large restaurant-bar once located in Moorhead. When the owner built the saloon, he brought in a house on wheels, and dropped it next to where he built the saloon. Then, underneath the two buildings, he ordered a tunnel built under the structures. The house had evolved into a brothel so bar patrons in need of a prostitute could slip discreetly through the tunnel and into the house of ill-repute.
     However, stories of actual trap doors and chutes leading to the river do not have any valid documentation. Yet, because of the frequency and number of anecdotes, Peihl comments: “There must be a grain of truth to them.”
     From these tales of Fargo-Moorhead’s sordid past come many poems and short stories. “There are all kinds of stories…whether they’re true or not, I can’t say,” said Vinz. However, starting from these legends, new poetic accounts are born. “It’s just a matter of telling a story in my head,” explains Pryor, “and then putting it to verse.”