Helpful folks in Beach turned a Saab story into one with a happy ending for two young women who got stranded in town recently.

Bridget Shimon and Sue DeBuhr of Wisconsin were traveling the good ol' USA in their Saab, when they had car trouble at Beach, ending any hope of further travel until they could get repairs.

The car's air conditioning quit, the battery light came on, the power steering quit and the heat gauge jumped around.

They looked under the hood and found a loose belt that had been connected to all of the above.

The breakdown occurred on a late Saturday evening, but by Sunday, word of the girls' plight had spread and guys from the local NAPA store checked out the vehicle. The outcome was that the parts would have to be specially ordered and the girls would be stuck in town for a while.

In the meantime, locals jumped in to give them tours of the nearby countryside, including Sentinel Butte, Medora, Theodore Roosevelt National Park and points of interest around Beach. One local even offered use of her own car to the young women, who'd been all over the West, including stopping to work at a camp in Idaho for reunited foster families before heading back home to Wisconsin via Beach.

Other kindness included being treated to lunch, and given T-shirts and ice cream, and when the parts finally came in the following Wednesday, three men at a repair shop worked on the Saab for three hours before agreeing it was safe and good to go.

"Everyone is just so nice and considerate," DeBuhr said.

Shimon added, "It's just like being in a book or movie. Everyone waves to us as they pass."

- Billings County Pioneer

Barking mayor

Zeeland Mayor Bob Schumacher will have to prove in court that his "bark" is worse than his bite.

The mayor entered a not guilty plea to disorderly conduct a week back, after being charged with harassing his female neighbor in a dispute over her dog.

The charge is a Class B misdemeanor and the mayor had to appear in South Central District Court.

His neighbor, Mary Jones, said the mayor became verbally abusive during a confrontation on her property. Allegedly, the mayor wasn't happy about her barking dog so he resorted to some "barking" language himself.

Jones also has been granted a restraining order preventing Schumacher from further bothering her.

The matter goes to a pre-trial conference later this month.

Schumacher has been mayor since January 2008. He got the position after pushing for the resignation of the former mayor, who'd been arrested for driving under the influence.

- Ashley Tribune

Gas attack

Vandals are never up to any good, but this one got a little carried away in Watford City during the town's summer celebration last week.

Besides breaking windows out of a truck and a stock trailer parked behind the City Bar, vandals also broke a natural gas service pipe that runs into the bar.

The breakage caused a gas leak between the City Bar and the American Legion that was noticed at about 10:30 p.m. during a street dance going on out front of the bars.

City police officer Ron McCloud said that since the pipe was broken off below the shut off valve, employees from Montana-Dakota Utilities in Watford City, Williston and Dickinson were called in.

Both bars were shut down and the street dance was moved further away to keep everyone out of potential harm's way.

Crews were able to stop the gas flow and meanwhile the dance went on without incident.

"With this type of gas leak, things could have been a lot worse," said McCloud.

He said the vandalism is still under investigation and charges are pending.

- McKenzie County Farmer

Hills knocked down

What's known locally as "the mine hills" between Beulah and Hazen is undergoing some work intended to make the area safer and more user-friendly.

It's an 1,860-acre area that was mined for coal at a time before reclamation was required and taken over by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department as a Wildlife Management Area.

The area is on both sides of Highway 200 and the North Dakota Public Service Commission is using Abandoned Mine Lands money to knock down some of the dangerous high walls out there.

The high walls are the high piles of dirt left at the edge of strip mining operations and some have drops of from 30 to 60 feet.

"They are basically cliffs," said WMA resource manager Dan Halstead.

He said one high wall area is close enough to the highway ditch that there's been a longstanding concern that someone could go off the roadway and take a long, long drop.

Work started in May and is expected to last until September.

The operation will remove more than 500,000 cubic yards of soil on 45 acres, enough dirt to cover half a square mile one foot deep.

The knocked down high walls will be reshaped and seeded and Halstead said the end result will be more grass production in some areas.

Small ponds tucked into the base of the mine hills will be made more accessible and the plan, if there's enough funding, is to use some rock to create shelving to improve shore fishing.

"It is going to be a several-month project, so people will have to have patience. … the work is being done off the road and in an area where people don't normally drive. It shouldn't be too big a deal," he said.

- Beulah Beacon