The Iron Range at the top of Minnesota is so far north that it is practically Canada.
In fact, when folks up there need a taste of the big city, or a WalMart, it's a toss-up between the drive to Minneapolis and Winnipeg.
Which is not to say that the Iron Range does not have it's own favorite, and famous, American sons.
One of those is Robert Zimmerman who grew up in the mining town of Hibbing. As soon as he was able the young Bob appropriated his favorite poet's first name for his last, hit the road, and never looked back.
The story of Archie Graham turned out differently. Graham moved to the nearby town of Chisholm as a young man and always looked forward.
Before he even got to Chisholm Graham earned himself the moniker Moonlight , a single line entry in the annals of the Baseball Encyclopedia, and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. He then spent the rest of his life as the quintessential country doctor, doing everything he could to help keep a small town together through most of the first half of the twentieth century.
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These days there are no terrorists in Chisholm Minnesota but there are plenty of explosions.
And those explosions mean business, and jobs, as usual.
Because every working day huge caches of dynamite are used to throw up thousands of tons of minerals rich in iron ore at the nearby Cleveland Cliffs mine.
Earlier this summer the daily big bangs almost stopped after collective bargaining talks stalled.
Which is not all that unusual because the Iron Range has long been one of the standard bearers for the North American labor movement. Thus, the people of Chisholm have lived through all manner of strikes, including those where workers where killed by company goons, organizing campaigns that go all the way back to the days of the Industrial Workers of the World, and, more recently, the signing of contracts that allowed them to rise up into the middle class.
What was unusual about the most recent dispute, however, was the fact that the employer decided to make like the iron lady herself, Margaret Thatcher.
In other words, Cleveland-Cliffs Mining placed ads in local papers looking for replacement workers and then they started setting up trailer parks in the parking lot to house them behind bales of razor wire. It was something that hadn't happened in Chisholm in decades and many predicted the company was out to bust the Union for good.
But then a funny happened on the way to Scabville.
Folks from miles around, including Hibbing, rallied around the workers. As a result nobody showed up - there were no replacements. At the same time iron prices kept rising in response to the expanding Chinese economy's appetite for steel.
As a result, with the Aug 1st strike deadline looming, the company suddenly saw the light and began bargaining in good faith.
A new contract was signed on July 29th that was hailed as a victory for the union.
But don't shed any tears, crocodile or otherwise, for Cleveland-Cliffs because the very next day they announced record quarterly profits of $33 million.
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A few years after his death, a farmer from Iowa named Ray Kinsella came to Chisholm to unearth the 'real' story of Moonlight Graham. Kinsella, who bears a striking resemblance to a young Kevin Costner, discovered that in addition to practicing medicine Doc Graham also practiced philanthropy with an invisible hand. Whenever one of the families under his care was having trouble making ends meet things like eyeglasses, drygoods, winter clothes, or schoolbooks would suddenly appear out of nowhere.
So, is it any wonder then that a lot of the old timers who sit around playing chequers while shooting the breeze in front of Chisholm's Northern Minnesota Mining Museum figure that Cleveland-Cliff's recent decision to do the right thing had just as much to do with the invisible hand of Moonlight Graham as that of Adam Smith?
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