5 things to know today: WF Resignation, Beer & Bison, Millionaire's Point, Kindred singer, 'Tankhouse' police

By InForum and Eric Bolin

September 21, 2019 at 6:05 AM

1. WF Public works director resigns

West Fargo Public Works Director Chris Brungardt resigned late Thursday, Sept. 19, just days after the department's assistant director was fired.

"After careful thought, duress, and coercion I have decided to tender my resignation effective Dec. 31, 2019," Brungardt wrote in his letter of resignation. "This resignation has brought great sadness and emptiness to my soul. However it is best for my family and myself."

In a phone interview, Brungardt told The Forum he had just decided it was time for a change.

"Being in that position (as director) is a tough position," he said. "It is a lot of pressure and a lot of stress. I just didn't like who I was becoming. I just needed to change things up and become a better person, a better father and spend more time with my family."

More from The Forum's Wendy Reuer

2. McFeely: Beer at Bison games not a priority

College football fans at the Fargodome, like those shown during the 2015 game between North Dakota State and North Dakota, will likely have to wait a couple of years until being able to buy a beer inside the building during a game. Forum file photo

North Dakota State University football fans who traveled to the East Coast to see the Bison defeat Delaware last weekend happily took advantage of the beer being sold at the concession stands of Delaware Stadium, if the eyeball test of one Fargo columnist can be trusted. The ability to do the horns-up sign was sacrificed in favor of two-fisting plastic keg cups in some cases.

Alcohol sales at college football and basketball games is becoming more common, even at the Football Championship Subdivision level at which the Bison compete. Just this year, schools familiar to NDSU backers have jumped into the beer-selling fray at their games. James Madison, Illinois State and Northern Iowa are slinging suds at their football games to anybody of legal age who wants it. North Dakota and Youngstown State also sell beer at their football games. Other Bison opponents like South Dakota and Indiana State make beer available in restricted areas of their stadiums.

3. Auction at Millionaire's Point

Keyframe - Auction.jpg — Andrew Nelson / WDAY

At noon Saturday in the small town of Melby, a big piece of our region's duck hunting history will be on the auction block, in what some are calling the end of a romantic era.

Lake Christina, near Ashby in Grant County, has long been known across America as the "Midwest Duck Factory," where canvasback ducks who loved the plant life offered in the lake flock to feed.

Movie stars, along with railroad and land barons, baseball stars and the Mayo brothers all came to hunt on the lake over the years.

On Saturday, Sept. 21 — the Minnesota duck season opener — an auction marks the final chapter for some classic state hunting lore.

Watch the story from WDAY's Kevin Wallevand

4. Kindred teen to sing at Twins game

Keyframe - Singer.jpg — Kensey Knight of Kindred, N.D., has been invited to sing during the seventh-inning stretch of a Twins baseball game. WDAY photo

A Kindred teen is set to provide a musical interlude during this Sunday's Minnesota Twins game in Minneapolis.

Kensey Knight, 13, an eighth-grader at Kindred High School and daughter of Amy Parker and David Knight, submitted a recorded audition last fall to the Twins organization, letting the team know she was ready and willing to sing during a Twins baseball game this season, according to her mother.

The family received a thank-you from the Twins, and the organization said they would let Kensey know if they needed her to sing, Parker said.

Then things were quiet.

5. Fargo police play role in 'Tankhouse'

TankhousePolice1 — The director of "Tankhouse," Noah Tomaschoff, stages a scene with Fargo Police Officer Dean Jordheim. Raju Chaduvula / The Forum

For several hours on Friday afternoon, Sept. 20, The Forum building doubled as a police station for an important scene in a feature film being filmed here.

The cast and crew for "Tankhouse" set up equipment in the front entrance to The Forum, 101 Fifth St. N., for "one of the most pivotal transition scenes" in the movie, as producer Matt Cooper said. "Tankhouse" is a film about a couple exiled from the New York City theater industry who decide to come to Fargo and begin a "theatrical revolution."

The building was standing in for the police station and the scene involved the protagonists of the movie being released from jail after a run-in with law enforcement, Cooper said.

To play the role of police officers in this makeshift police station, the film recruited two actual Fargo police officers to be in the movie.