I spend a couple of days in Bemidji every month. About 2 hours from here. Most backwater place for me would be hard to pin down, in a lifetime of intentionally going to such places.
One that stands out is Ruso, ND. Population, 4. Had a bar there, the Goose Nest as I recall. The owner, an old, fat, ugly, mean lady happened to be a state legislator from the area. I was in there once, cooling down from hunting sharptailed grouse and hungarian partridge.
She was quite intoxicated, and decided to give me bunches of crap. Strange, as the guy I was hunting with and I were the only two in the place except for her. In a town of four, just about everybody who comes in such an establishment is from out of town, so the fact that we were strangers should not have raised her ire. I had a very strong impulse to smack her ill-fitting dentures out of her mouth on the way out, but decided that discretion would indeed be the better part of valor in that instance.
