The Day the Feds Came | Noah’s Story, Part 6.5

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Hey guys,

Noah here, back again. Hope you are all having a nice weekend. We’re going to rewind back here for a minute from my previous why post. And that’s because my sister here isn’t the best at putting my posts in order, haha, I guess I’m bombarding her with a few too many. So we may take this two posts per week thing up a notch. We’ll see…

Anyways, in my last post I’m talking about leaving Grand Forks and moving to Roseau. And how moving home, felt right.

And funny because I called my sister yesterday, by accident actually…I was meaning to call my mom. But Morgan was at home in Roseau and playing cards with my grandma and aunts, and just so happened to be talking about me. They put me on speaker phone, and I almost felt like for a few minutes, that I was sitting there playing cards and chatting with them.

I also have a post coming soon about what life was like living in Roseau during pre-trial (which is where I left off with my last why post), and in which Morgan wanted to share this week, but we also don’t want to skip ahead and confuse you even more on the storylines.

I always loved the Roseau fair time, and it’s a time that I cherished up until the day I got incarcerated. Morgan is going to show you one of the last photos of me at the fair before I was incarcerated. It was Jamie, myself, my awesome Grandma, and my cousin Rob (who was from Virginia, back where my Grandparents lived).

This was my first year back at home but little did I know, it would be another ten months before the news came out and 14 months before I had to turn myself into prison.

So for this post, let’s rewind before the news called me out while at work, this next story I’m about to say is before my part 7 story…when I had recently transitioned from Minneapolis to Grand Forks to get clean…

One of the best times of my life was getting clean and then one of the worst so, here we go…

Adjusting to a normal life from the life I was living for the previous two and a half years was not easy.

I was used to luxury living in a high rise apartment in downtown Minneapolis, cash and resources at my disposal, nice cars, electronics, and home furnishings, and the attention of course.

Once I was in Grand Forks, I had to downgrade my lifestyle in regards to material things. I bought a 1990s Buick regal, a flip phone, and I had to cut all the unnecessary spending because my paycheck every other week didn’t come close to matching a single drug run.

Regardless, it was easier to make that paycheck stretch further than any amount of drug money I possessed.

Also, when you quit selling drugs, you have a lot less friends, which also means a lot fewer headaches.

My time in Grand Forks was still a little chaotic mentally because I really didn’t know how much of a future I had because I always had that feeling that it was just a matter of time.

I was hoping that if I cleaned up my past would go away, but eventually, I found out that wasn’t the case. Things that were going good was that I was catching up on child support. I was so behind because I didn’t make a single payment until I moved up to Grand Forks. But after a few months, I was caught up on it.

My drug use slowed down extremely. And I wish I could say I stopped cold turkey. But like most recoveries, there were a few setbacks. Also, the drinking stayed pretty consistent up until my incarceration. I wasn’t drinking every day but there were periods both in Grand Forks and in Roseau closer to my incarceration date that it became unhealthy, which I will talk about in the near future.

Something else I am so thankful for is that I got to witness Melrose’s first steps. I remember it like it was yesterday. My daughter’s mother was sitting on the ledge of the fireplace in her dad’s (Melrose’s grandpa)  living room, and I was a few feet away near the ottoman. And after a few test runs, she makes her first successful run from Dacotah to myself.

I can say I was at least happy at this point in my life, and regardless of what was looming around the corner, I didn’t miss the drug game or the constant drug use.

Sometime around February or March of 2012 Melrose and I were hanging out at her grandpa’s and I heard the dogs starting to get restless and soon they were chasing a black SUV down the driveway.

My stomach started to turn as I could only guess who could be driving such a vehicle.

Two gentlemen in street clothes jumped out and approached the house. I walked out on the porch, and as they walked up, they greeted me with, “Mr. Bergland.”

I said, “yes,” and asked them, “How, can I help you?”

They introduced themselves and showed me their credentials, and it was who I assumed it to be.

They told me about the investigation and said they would like to call the district attorney if I was interested in cooperating.

At this time, I had been thinking about that call the summer before and was wondering how I could get myself out of the mess, by cooperating, but I just never acted on it.

They told me they were very close to presenting “Operation Noah’s Arc” to the DA, and if I helped them out before they presented the information, it would help me significantly.

They ended the conversation with, “Mr. Bergland, it’s not a question of if we are going to indict you; it’s a question of when we are going to indict you.”

I asked them as they were leaving…”How long do I have?” And they said it could be a matter of weeks, a few months or even a year…but one day it will happen.

I am not going to say I felt a sense of relief, but that is the only thing I could compare it to. Because I finally knew what was going to happen to me. I was going to go to prison. And I could at least start to prepare for something.

After that, I started to prepare mentally first to do a significant amount of time in what I knew prison to be, (like my sister) from what I had seen on TV shows, movies, and conversations with others.

Another thing I knew I had to do was tell my family, starting with my mom.

That conversation also happened to be in my daughter’s grandpa’s living room when she was coming to visit with Melrose one weekend.

I’ll never forget it.

I was sitting on the couch, and she was sitting on a chair in the corner and I brought up the phone call that she had had with the gentlemen the year prior and then proceeded to tell her about the visit I recently got from the federal agents while living there on the farm.

I told my Mom that I am for sure going to go to prison, and then I just broke down crying. Which is something I didn’t do enough of when I was on the street.

I had all these backed up emotions that just came pouring out.

She asked me what I was going to do?

And I told her that I would cooperate and do what I can to get a reduction.

The problem is, because I never made that call, and it came back to bite me in the ass later…

And here I am with a 10 year prison sentence.

From the inside,
Noah