Category: columns-culture

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Finding the Small Town in Sioux Falls

By John Andrews

I’m always surprised by what I find in Sioux Falls. It’s long been South Dakota’s largest city, at nearly 180,000 people and growing steadily. I’ve lived in South Dakota all of my life, and taken hundreds of trips to Sioux Falls, and still there are neighborhoods and business districts that I have yet to explore.

I spent several days in the big city earlier this year working on a story called”Off the Beaten Streets of Sioux Falls,” which appeared in our March/April 2019 issue. So many trips seem to be spent in stores and restaurants along the”main drags” (41st Street, Louise Avenue, Minnesota Avenue, to name a few). We hoped to highlight interesting places that visitors (and maybe even some residents) might not know about. Imagine my surprise when I walked into once such gem and was instantly transported from the epitome of urban South Dakota to my small-town childhood.

Rosie’s Cafe on Madison Street is a throwback to the Main Street diners that served as important gathering places in small towns across the state. I sat at the counter and ate a hot beef combination with a cup of coffee and a piece of cherry pie for dessert, and felt like I was sitting inside the Andrews Cafe on Main Street of Lake Norden.

My dad’s sisters ran our hometown cafe for nearly 60 years. It began as the Antonen Cafe in 1946. When my aunt, Irene Antonen, died in 1981, her sister, Vi Andrews, became the owner and operated it until her retirement in 1992. Another sister, Jane Espland, took over until the mid-2000s.

It’s the Andrews Cafe under Vi and Jane that I remember most. I’d go with Dad and sit at the cafe’s long counter and listen to the town’s elders talk about their crops and how we could use a little more (or a little less) rain. All of the Andrews cousins worked there at some point, starting out as dishwashers and working our way up to waiters and waitresses.

The cafe was a big part of all of our lives, and as it turned out, Rosie’s Cafe was a big part of Rosie Warner’s life, too. Rosie is semi-retired. Her daughter, Beckie Mettler, assumed day-to-day operations in 2015, but like most small business owners, Rosie still shows up and takes orders, refills coffee, cooks hamburgers and banters with the regulars.

Her parents owned the cafe in Oldham in the 1950s. Rosie took her mother’s tried-and-true recipes along when she moved to Sioux Falls in 1966 and opened her own cafe in 1984. The menu has hardly changed in 35 years.”We give you the comfort of home,” Mettler explained,”and you don’t find that very often anymore.”

I’ve been thinking about Rosie’s and our own family cafe quite a bit recently. My aunt Vi passed away in May at age 91, so when the family gathered it led to a lot of reminiscing. For several years, the South Dakota Old Time Fiddlers held a concert in Lake Norden as a fundraiser for the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. Vi often kept the cafe open late so that after the show, the fiddlers could come by for coffee and a bite to eat. She was also an excellent accordion player, and after-concert jam sessions sometimes happened right in the dining room.

At the funeral, the pastor mentioned that Vi would also open the cafe on Thanksgiving so the old bachelors in town who had no family could enjoy a holiday meal. That’s something you’d only find in a small town, I thought. But I bet you could find it in the biggest South Dakota cities, too — if you know where to look.

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The First Toilet of Spring

By Roger Holtzmann

We are just over a week into spring, that most glorious season when flora and fauna awake from their annual slumber and life renews itself. I am especially heartened by the sun this time of year. Each day it ascends a bit higher in the sky and stays a little longer in the evening. I absolutely love it! If I wasn’t a Christian I would probably worship Helios, the ancient Greek god who drove the fiery chariot of the sun across the heavens each day. On his feast day my fellow Heliots and I would drag flaming carts through the streets in his honor. It would be epic.

Everyone has their own way of deciding when spring is here. Some go strictly by the calendar. As for me, I don’t need no steenking calendar to tell me when the seasons have changed. Summer is here when kids get out of school. Fall begins on the night of the first high school football game, no matter how hot it is. Winter starts on the last day you can make a sandwich with the leftover Thanksgiving turkey. You can’t just stick a bunch of shredded turkey between two slices of bread and call it a sandwich, either. It has to incorporate big, man-sized chunks of meat.

People who are in tune with nature have their own ways of deciding when springtime has arrived. Some think the season has turned when they hear the first robin sing, or see great Vs of geese heading north. Gardeners don’t feel it’s here until they plant something, or see a particular blossom. I remember a wizened old gardener saying she knew it was spring when the buds on a certain tree were the size of a mouse’s ear. Ever since then I’ve wondered: how big is a mouse’s ear? Pretty small, I assume, but I can’t say for certain because I only ever see them streaking across the kitchen floor.

Fortunately for me, my means of deciding the weighty matter of spring’s true arrival doesn’t depend on the calendar, birds, or my knowledge of rodent anatomy. I know it’s spring when I see a toilet sitting by the curb.

For 50 or so weeks out of every year you can drive around Yankton and our fair city is a reasonably tidy place. Then right around this time great mounds of refuse appear on every street. It’s the springtime ritual known as Citywide Cleanup. For two glorious weeks citizens can drag to the curb items at which the garbage man would normally turn up his nose and the city will haul them away. No charge. No limit. It’s as close to pure freedom as you can get in this day and age.

In addition to toilets and sinks and an occasional bathtub, there are boards and brush and basketball hoops. Twisted hunks of tin. Cabinets without drawers and drawers without cabinets. Shattered plastic objects, enjoying a few moments in the sun before an eternity in the landfill. Unspeakably ratty couches and chairs. I often wonder where they were before they arrived at the curb. Surely they weren’t sitting on that couch!

Some homes have naught but an old electric fan or a five-gallon bucket before them. If I’m in a good mood when I pass by I admire such people for being so well-ordered and neat that they have almost nothing to discard. If I’m mildly crabby such places are mildly irritating. What are they hiding? Are they trying to make the rest of us look bad?

You are probably wondering why I pay attention to such things in the first place. It is garbage, after all. Well, I’m either embarrassed or not embarrassed to admit that I am one of those people who cruise through unfamiliar neighborhoods during this time of year looking for treasures amidst the trash.

I can’t decide if I’m embarrassed or not because my attitude on this aspect of the Citywide Cleanup likewise varies with the day. Sometimes I feel like I’m Dumpster diving, as if I’ve crossed the line between me and the world of bums. Other days I think of myself as cutting edge. I was recycling — going green in today’s terms — long before it was fashionable. There is hardly a room in our home that doesn’t have a”rescued” item in it.

In case you’re wondering, however, there are some lines I’ve never crossed. This I swear by the great and powerful Helios: our toilet came with the house.

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the May/June 2012 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Some Things Never Change in S.D.

By Katie Hunhoff

South Dakotans have patiently awaited the joyful harbingers of spring: a tree beginning to bud, a flash of color from a tulip, grass slowly changing hue from brown to green. But the first sign of spring we received this year was not so welcome. March brought flooding to parts of East River, mixed with a statewide blizzard.

The mid-March storm was no surprise to most of us. We’ve endured our share of spring setbacks. In fact, our March/April issue — published just as the recent storms were gathering — includes a story on the awful historic winter and spring of 1952.

Our longtime writer Paul Higbee began the article with a line that could have made a headline this month:”It was a demon of a blizzard that melted into a monster of a flood.” The January storm of’52 especially hit the Rosebud region of south-central South Dakota. Mission, White River, Winner, Philip, Murdo, Gregory and Pierre were hammered the hardest but the storm swept over the entire state, delivering severe winds and snow from Rapid City to Watertown.

Snowmelt in the spring brought more disaster. High water along the Missouri River valley and its tributaries drove 7,748 people in 17 counties from their homes. Miraculously, there were no fatalities. But 45 houses were destroyed and 584 damaged.

The Rosebud disaster wasn’t the most tragic storm in state history, but it’s one that captured the state’s imagination in part thanks to Laura Hellmann of Millboro, a tiny ranching community in Tripp County. After the storm, she asked 66 writers to quickly submit their survival stories before memories were dulled by time or forgotten. The stories collectively show the tragedy, despair and helplessness that weather can inflict.

Hellmann eventually published the memories in a small book, which she titled Blizzard Strikes the Rosebud. The stories are captivating. A Gregory cafe became home to 32 people for two days; they played cards, listened to the radio and slept in booths. Mildred Benson kept her students at Eden School entertained by organizing a folk dance that went on for two days.

Thor Fosheim, a 75-year-old rancher, rode off on horseback to save his cattle and never returned. Murdo rancher Noel”Pete” Judd went with his nephew to bring his daughters home from school. When their Jeep stalled, the four started walking. Funeral services for all four were held eight days later in Winner.

Most farmers and ranchers didn’t drive four-wheel-drive pickups in the early 1950s, and they didn’t have 100-horsepower tractors with heated cabs and snow blowers. Some of the rescue work was accomplished by foot and on horseback.

However, one thing has remained constant from 1952 to 2019. When times get tough, neighbors and even strangers band together to help one another. Much has changed in South Dakota since 1952. Roads and bridges are better. Dams and levees have been constructed to control flooding. Equipment is better and safer.

But good neighbors are still the greatest blessing when the snow is blowing and the water is rising. It was true in’52 and true in’19.

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The One That Got Away … Briefly

By Michael Zimny

A unique sculpture in Spearfish reminds us of a time when a national public art program was possible.

Fish Story — a tri-part set of sculptures — was created by artist Marion Overby for the old Spearfish post office. The New Deal’s rural post office murals brought art that dignified rural life to accessible settings.

An alumnus of the influential Cranbrook Academy of Art who later worked alongside designers Charles and Ray Eames, Overby received commissions from at least two small town post offices during the New Deal era. Her terra-cotta relief mural Early Postman is still on display at the post office in Mason, Michigan.

The old Spearfish Post Office was built in 1940, as part of an accelerated federal building program. The simple style and brick facade are typical of “Class C” post offices built in small towns during the era. The sculpture was commissioned in 1943. Overby wrote that she named the piece Fish Story because, “I am sure the country around Spearfish is full of tall tales of fishing and record-breaking catches.”

Carved from California walnut, the sculpture depicts a Native American fisherman with a spear and a non-Native fisherman in waders with rod-and-reel. Despite their differences in hairstyle and dress, both men look nearly identical. A fish trio swims between them.

“When this building was abandoned by the post office in 1996, the Smithsonian came and took it to D.C.,” says Kathy Standen, a personal banker at Great Western Bank, which occupies the old post office building today. “When the bank reopened in 1999, our bank president went to Senator Daschle and asked him if we could have that artwork back. Senator Daschle made it available for us and then they brought it back and put it back up on the wall.”

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Local Experts’ Dining Tips

By Katie Hunhoff

Our readers seem to think that all of us at South Dakota Magazine are experts on every nook and cranny of our state. The truth is, we’re not. But we have friends and readers in every town and city, so we know who to ask about the best place to eat, hike, sightsee or learn about a place’s culture and history.

There’s nothing like a local’s perspective. That’s why we started a special department in every issue that we call”Seven Things I Love About South Dakota.” We ask South Dakotans to share some of their favorite haunts, and we’re always surprised at their suggestions. (See, I told you we aren’t experts!)

Our featured South Dakotans always have a favorite restaurant. Usually it is a little-known mom-and-pop place with a menu special that keeps people coming back. Here are a few favorites that I’m anxious to visit in our 2019 travels.

Veteran journalist Kevin Woster recalled good times at Al’s Oasis when he shared his favorite things about South Dakota.”Whatever leads up to the strawberry pie at Al’s Oasis in Oacoma is good. But it’s the faces and the memories that really fill me up. Al is gone, but I can see him at a table in his red cardigan, chatting with my now-departed mom as she adds half & half to make her coffee golden brown.” Woster grew up on a Lyman County farm and spent several years as a reporter for our state’s largest newspapers.

Architect Tom Hurlbert told us in 2017 about his favorite ice cream stop.”I worked for the Twist Cone in Aberdeen in eighth grade. I didn’t work at the main store, but instead they relegated me to Noah’s Ark, the old concessions building at Storybook Land. I put away about 6 feet of footlongs a week and ate my weight in ice cream. I still enjoy an Italian ice from the Twist Cone, but I lay off the footlongs now.” Hurlbert, co-owner and founder of CO-OP Architecture, lives in Sioux Falls now but he enjoys Twist Cone on summer visits back to Aberdeen.

Black Hills State University history instructor Kelly Kirk grew up in North Dakota, but fell in love with the Black Hills during family vacations. She likes to take friends to breakfast at Cheyenne Crossing in Spearfish Canyon.”The pancakes are fluffy, the skillets are filling and delicious, and the coffee continuously flows. And if you are going to truly enjoy the experience, a side of the frybread or wojapi is a must.”

Ashley Hanson grew up on a farm along Ponca Creek and returned home after attending technical school in Rapid City. She recommended a stop at Stella’s in Burke.”Stella’s has a great, juicy sirloin steak and delicious fried pickles with a little kick. There’s also a patio where live bands play throughout the summer.”

Darla Drew Lerdal, of the Black Hills Playhouse, thinks breakfast at Talley’s Silver Spoon in downtown Rapid City is the best — especially the eggs benedict with salmon.

Sean Dempsey of Dempsey’s Brewery in Watertown is an international pizza competitor, so you may be especially interested in his favorite dining spot. It’s Mama’s Ladas in Sioux Falls.”I love the beautiful simplicity,” he says,”a few choices of enchiladas, red or white sangria and seating for 15 to 25 people.”

We could go on forever, but this should be enough to tempt your palate and your sense of curiosity as you plan your road trips for the new year ahead.

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Kicking Tires in Pierre

By Roger Holtzmann

Nobody thinks South Dakota is perfect, but most of us would agree it seems to get along pretty well from day to day. Which makes me wonder what our legislators do in Pierre. Each year, 105 of our best and brightest gather for the session. Most of them are conscientious sorts so they work at least 10 hours a day, if you count the after-hours schmoozing. That’s 42,000 woman/man hours doing what? Is our system of laws really so dilapidated it needs that much tweaking? If South Dakota was a car and required almost two months in the shop every year, we’d surely trade it off.

Be that as it may, our lawgivers can surely spare a few hours to consider these suggestions.

AN ACT TO ENSURE THE HAPPINESS OF FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE VEHICLES

I was noodling through the mall parking lot one day when I happened upon an entire row of big, square, ugly vehicles. You know the breed: ponderous sport utilities and crew cab pickups you need a stepladder to enter, all with beefy tires and four-wheel drive. I was struck by the fact that there wasn’t a speck of mud or dust on any of them. They were all dripping chrome and showroom shiny. I suspect the closest they ever got to rugged terrain was the speed bumps at HyVee.

Not long afterward I saw a picture in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader of one such vehicle up to its door handles in the waters of Skunk Creek. It was found early in the morning, abandoned, and it’s not hard to imagine how it got there. At least two guys. Late. Testosterone and alcohol-fueled bravado/stupidity. Wee-haw. Vroom vroom. I’ve got four-wheel drive. Bet I can make it across. Vroom vroom. Rrrrrr. Clunk. Click. Click. Let’s get out of here before somebody administers a Breathalyzer test.

We can all agree these guys are most likely morons, but think of the favor they did for their vehicle. Most 4X4s these days are forced to live out their lives looking like Tarzan and driving like Jane, never busting through snowdrifts or exploring forests primeval like they were promised when they rolled off the assembly line. This act would require every SUV and vanity truck owner to produce evidence showing they at least drove through a mud puddle in the past year before their vehicle’s license could be renewed. We must end the abuse of these machines before they turn on us and crush us like an old car at a monster truck rally.

AN ACT TO REQUIRE THE MANUAL OPENING OF CERTAIN DOORS

While waiting outside my town’s wellness center one afternoon, I saw quite a few people enter the building. I was astonished by the number of them, able-bodied one and all, most wearing athletic gear and presumably there to exercise, who pressed the button meant to open the door for handicapped people. Young. Old. Male. Female. All made use of the button. Pushing a door open is just too exhausting, apparently.

Such behavior should be discouraged. By this act, all able-bodied individuals will be required to open their own doors. Those who don’t will get a temporary tattoo on the forehead that reads, “Lazy.” A week of being so branded seems about right.

If this law works out, follow-up legislation may mandate a “Selfish” tattoo for people who use two parking spaces for one car, and “Pigheaded” for those who get in the express checkout line with more than 10 items and refuse to move, knowing the clerk will give in to get the line moving. Citizens will be encouraged to submit their own ideas; soon there will be a dozen, a hundred, a thousand ways to get tattooed. No longer will we have to suffer in silence. Each of our pet peeves will be elevated to the status of law. Between that and everyone continuously informing on everyone else, the world will be a much happier place.

Some might argue that these penalties run afoul of the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Not to worry. Something is “unusual” only if it doesn’t happen very often. Once it starts happening all the time then it becomes “usual.” Locking people in a room made of iron bars must have seemed pretty curious at some point in history. Now it’s normal. Once we have tattooed people walking around here, there and everywhere we won’t think twice about it.

AN ACT TO ENSURE FULL DISCLOSURE IN BAKED GOODS

Each and every year the state of South Dakota produces approximately 470 pounds of zucchini for every man, woman and child. This unwelcome bounty is a big problem. Lovers of this foul fruit of the vine, which I most assuredly am not, can only eat so much of it fried, baked or sautÈed. This causes them to seek out ways to use it in other recipes. Muffins. Bread. Chocolate cake — an abomination that cries out to the heavens for redress. Each fall I live in fear that I may accidentally ingest some.

This act would make it a felony to use zucchini in baked goods and not inform potential eaters of same. The prison term would be doubled for anyone who encourages consumption of a zucchini-tainted concoction by uttering, “Try some! You’ll never even taste it!” or the equivalent.

Since I’ve already done the heavy lifting by coming up with the Big Ideas, working out the details of these laws should only take a few hours. I have no idea what our legislators will do with the rest of their time. Perhaps a good book.

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the January/February 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Writers of the Iron Road

By Michael Zimny

Wakinyan Chief works in Rapid City’s art alley.

As an art form, graffiti on freight trains evokes a wide range of responses. Some consider graffiti writers to be vandals, while others amass photos of work by their favorite artists. One objective reality about freight train graffiti that it is illegal. On the other hand, many large companies and municipalities now hire artists with a pedigree in illegal graffiti to do commissioned murals. Rarely, a writer’s trajectory could lead to commercial success. More often it can lead to fines and jail time.

Another given about train graffiti is that it does travel, and as such might be some of the most widely viewed art work in the nation, reaching people — if only peripherally — who may never set foot in an art gallery. South Dakota may not be a hotbed of graffiti, but encountering work by an urban artist in the isolated butte country of Harding County shows how built-to-roll these works really are.

Wakinyan Chief is a former graffiti artist. These days, you might find him spray-painting an installation in Rapid City’s art alley. The alley, and his piece, is sanctioned by the city. But growing up in Chico, California, Chief got his start doing illegal graffiti — under bridges, on abandoned buildings, and on the graffiti writer’s most mobile, and dangerous, platform — freight trains.

“What I really like about graffiti is that it’s free,” he says.”You don’t have to pay money to go into an art gallery. It’s for everybody. Anybody can go watch a train go by and it’s like a moving art gallery.”

A train with an “Under the Sea” theme passes near McLaughlin.

He says his interest in graffiti started when he was about 13. He began by doing tags with sharpie markers. Then he graduated into aerosol. “I eventually convinced my mom to buy me spray paint. She was okay with it. So she took us to the store. She bought us a bunch of spray paint. Then she took us to this bridge where I wanted to go paint and said, ‘I’ll sit up here and I’ll look out and if I see any cops or anything like that I’ll honk.’

“But I didn’t know what to do. We just ran down there. Our adrenaline was pumping. I didn’t know what to write. My friend was like, ‘Just write your name, like your signature. But make it so no one can read it except for you.’ So, I wrote ‘WAK,’ W-A-K, like the first three letters of my name.”

He soon changed his signature, but graffiti writing became a passion, if one with consequences. “The deal I had with my mom was that once I got caught, I had to quit. I couldn’t quit. It became an addiction for me. I didn’t have a lot of self-esteem or confidence. It was like this other person that I created — that I could kind of escape from who I was.”

He did get caught, but by then he was hooked. He didn’t follow through on the deal with his mom, and he’s paid a price for that. “I have a few felonies as a juvenile and then I have three as an adult.”

All three felonies are for painting freights. And getting caught by law enforcement wasn’t the only hazard. “I had a lot of crazy experiences painting trains. Every train you paint, they consider it a felony, because the train companies say it costs more than four hundred dollars to paint over the train. So every train that you paint, that’s multiple felonies they’re going to charge you with. And so that was always pretty sketchy, cause we had to run from the cops a lot.”

Eventually, it looked like the consequences of his mental escape would lead to real jail time, or something worse. Chief gave up graffiti and left California for Rapid City. “Now I’ve found other escapes like exercising and Brazilian jujitsu, and doing sign painting and things like that. But I really think it’s important because I struggled with alcoholism for a really long time, and what I understand now is that alcohol was really just an escape from my reality. And I wasn’t okay with who I was, so I was trying to escape.”

“Famus” passes through Buffalo Gap.

Though he grew up in Northern California, Chief’s heritage is here. His father is Oglala Lakota. He plotted his own escape from California to be closer to the Pine Ridge reservation. Right now, he’s teaching some of his skills to young artists there through a program called Generations Indigenous Ways. He says kids there could also use a mental escape hatch. “What I realized is that’s really what kids need, especially on the reservation. Because that’s the reason why so many people drink and turn to alcohol and drugs. That’s all they’re trying to do is trying to escape from their reality.”

The alter egos that graffiti artists like Chief create — whether to escape from reality, or themselves — assert a certain kind of power, enhanced by the mysterious identities of the artists — as they travel across the wide open spaces, through big cities and one-horse towns.

Charlie Davis of Aberdeen is a long-time admirer of train graffiti. An avid railroad modeler — and member of the James Valley Model Railroad Association — he often scouts the Hub City’s railroad yards looking for work by his favorite artists, camera in hand.

Then he meticulously resizes the photos he takes down to model railroad scale decals, taking care to remove shadows and preserve original details. “This one here,” he says, “pointing to one of the decals, in rows on sheets of sticker paper, “I don’t know who that artist is. The picture was sent to me by a guy in Los Angeles, to make him a decal out of it. And he took the picture through a chain link fence. So I had to go in there and get rid of all the fence. And it took me about eight hours.”

Charlie Davis inspects one of his model boxcars, complete with realistic graffiti.

The work can be tedious but once the decals are applied to his own model railroad cars, his trains become miniature moving art galleries.

Through his years of observing, photographing — and often miniaturizing — work by graffiti artists, he’s become a fan of certain artists’ work. “One of my favorite ones is called ‘Mr. HBAK,'” says Davis. “‘HBAK’ stands for ‘Hell Bred A Killer.'”

Mr. HBAK often incorporates images from popular culture into his productions. One large-scale piece he did — which Davis has reproduced — features Oompa Loompas.

Graffiti is recognized as one of the four elements of hip hop, and in a way what Charlie Davis does is a kind of creative reuse, the way a producer might lift a sample, or Mr. HBAK might re-appropriate the Oompa Loompas. And his work has been recognized by at least a few in the graffiti community.

“Probably the most famous artist that I’ve seen here — and I call him an artist because they are — is Ichabod. And his graffiti usually has “ICH” or “Ichabod.” A lot of times you’ll have a skull and a hand with a finger sticking up in the air. He’s probably done five thousand cars by now.

“He actually contacted me about six years ago through eBay — which is where I sell my decals — and thanked me for making them available to modelers. So I sent him some. And he got them, and he told me they were great. And that’s the last I’ve heard from him.”

Not everybody in the worlds of railroading, or even model railroading, share Charlie Davis’ appreciation for train graffiti. “The railroads hate it, and a lot of modelers hate it. I get comments from modelers who won’t touch anything that has graffiti on it. And I’ve had people tell me at train shows that I’ve attended that I’m helping to promote vandalism and lawlessness because I’m selling these graffiti decals. But I tell them back, well, it’s the real thing. If you want to emulate the real world today, in addition to weathering your cars, you need to have some graffiti on them.”

One notable piece that Davis has scaled down encapsulates the divide between graffiti artists, the railroads and some railroad enthusiasts. “It’s on the whole side of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe covered hopper. It reads ‘Artists Making Foamers Mad.’ Well, I’m a foamer, I guess.”

A train model by Charlie Davis.

“Foamer” is slang for rail fans.

“But, what it’s doing is saying that the graffiti writers are making the foamers, that don’t like graffiti, angry cause they’re defacing their stuff.”

Charlie Davis may be a foamer, but anger isn’t what he feels when he sees what he feels is a well-executed piece of train graffiti. “I don’t have any idea how many pictures I have, but I would guess at least twenty thousand. For being in an area that doesn’t have the huge volume of train traffic that they have in the Twin Cities or Fargo, for example, and other places, we do get an interesting variety of graffiti that comes through here.”

Davis’ own models include numerous cars by his favorite graffiti writers, like Mr. HBAK and Ichabod, and an occasional one-off by artists unknown.

For his part, Wakinyan Chief doesn’t see as many trains in Rapid City as he did in Chico, but he has lucked out in a way. “I ended up getting to live right next to the train tracks,” says Chief. “They opened up a line that used to be dead. Now I get to see trains coming between here and Minnesota all the time. I see my friends’ trains a lot. And then I see a lot of writers that I know, new writers that I never saw.”

Nowadays, he sticks to legal artwork, but despite the dangers, he still reminisces about his days as a writer. “I always thought, when I was younger — I was sneaking out and painting rooftops and stuff — what are all the other kids my age doing. And they’re probably all at home, doing homework, watching TV, playing video games or whatever.

“I’m out here cold, in the rain, sneaking out, might get arrested. There are drug addicts and homeless people. And I’ve seen all kinds of crazy stuff go down. I still think that graffiti writers are the most dedicated artists there are. Because they have to go out and go through all these extremes to just make it happen. And it’s for everybody. Anybody can see it.”

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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A Christmas Ode to Lutefisk

By John Andrews

I heard a story once that the grocer in my hometown ordered a barrel full of lutefisk in preparation for the holiday season. When the truck delivered it, the driver left the barrel sitting outside the back door to the store. Unfortunately, lutefisk delivery day also happened to be garbage day, and when the refuse wagon made its way down the alley behind Main Street just a few hours later, the garbage man tossed the barrel of fish in the back and went on his merry way.

I honestly have no idea if this is true. It seems like just the type of mix-up that could plausibly occur in a small town, but it could also simply be one of the countless jokes that have emerged over the decades with the much-maligned lutefisk as the punch line.

Our Norwegian ancestors delighted in a Christmastime lutefisk meal because it connected them to their homeland. Over the years, however, the funky fish has fallen out of favor, especially, it seems, with South Dakotans of my generation. It could be because cod that’s been soaked in lye doesn’t necessarily conform to today’s prevailing culinary attitudes that tend to favor fresh, organic ingredients that have never seen a whiff of pesticides or herbicides. Still, there are those of us who look past that minor detail and enjoy a piece of lutefisk this time of year. Whether it’s because we truly love it or we simply want to celebrate our cultural heritage and preserve memories remains up in the fishy air.

My grandmother deserves credit for introducing me to lutefisk. Grandma came to America from Norway in 1916. She took a housekeeping job with another Norwegian family, married one of the boys and became the matriarch of a huge family. By the time I came along in 1979, Christmases at the farm were loud and crowded affairs.

The one constant presence at these gatherings was a boiling pot of lutefisk. Grandma initiated all of the grandchildren early in our lives. She fed us a small spoonful of lutefisk as soon as we could consume semi-solid foods, and the portions slowly grew as we aged. The experiment failed with several of my cousins, but, incredibly, I did acquire a taste for it.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my childhood years coincided with a golden age of lutefisk feeds. There are far fewer today, but at least one church in my hometown always had one. Relatives owned two small town cafes, and each one hosted a lutefisk feed. Pulling up in front of the cafe on a frigid December night, its front windows completely steamed over from the lutefisk boiling away in the kitchen, remains a fond memory.

My lutefisk consumption declined precipitously after Grandma died in 2003. The cafes were sold, and lutefisk suppers in general declined. Many dark, lutefisk-less winters passed. Then, in the fall of 2016, I traveled to Summit, home to one of the longest running lutefisk feeds in South Dakota. All the sights, sounds and aromas from my childhood came rushing back. Most importantly, the perfectly cooked, flaky piece of lutefisk that I enjoyed brought me right back to Grandma’s table. And isn’t that where we’d all like to be during the holidays?

Here’s hoping your Christmas season is merry and bright — and that your lutefisk isn’t mistaken for trash.

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Lighting Up the Night

By Christian Begeman

I grew up in the country. Going to town always felt like a treat, especially before I started school. Every December, Isabel’s Main Street, which also happened to be a state highway, was adorned with holiday decorations hanging from the light poles. It wasn’t much, just a swirl of a wreath above a red bell and colored lights that turned on with the streetlights. It was, however, enough to make the trips to town for ball games, evening church services and other activities a little more enjoyable. Songs at church turned into carols and were sung a little louder. Soon there were get-togethers, baked goodies and gifts.

At one time, our town had two grocery stores. One of them had few aisles of general store items where you could find shoes, clothing and other odds and ends. There was also a hardware store, a cafe, a candle shop and three gas stations. When Christmas rolled around, you could find gifts right there in town. Of course, most people would take the trip to Mobridge, or Bismarck, North Dakota or to Rapid City to do the serious Christmas shopping, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Between circling what we wanted in the Sears catalog and pointing out which fishing lures and how many .22 shells we wanted at the hardware store, you could get Christmas done just fine in our little town.

Later, as I outgrew toys and grew into high school athletics, the addition of holiday lighting on Main Street meant something else: the start of high school basketball season. I’d see those lights go up and know that the first games of the year were right around the corner. Back then, the Little Moreau Conference had its tournament at the beginning of the season, and it was held in Isabel for all my high school years. Our team fared well with the hometown advantage, good players, good coaches and great fans. The Isabel Community Hall would be rocking on those nights in early December and Main Street would be full of cars, cheer and those holiday decorations. Those are great memories.

Back in 2013, I happened to be on Phillips Avenue in Sioux Falls during an early December snowfall. It was a snow globe kind of evening, with giant flakes and no wind. It was so beautiful I had to get my camera out, step into the middle of the street and snap a few photos. I’ve never been one to shoot a lot of city scenes, but there was something special about all the lights and leading lines of the street falling off away from me. This December, I resolved to revisit a few smaller towns to capture a bit of this simple beauty on our main streets during the Christmas season. I used a tripod and shot long exposures with a high aperture to get the star filter effect and the light streaks from passing cars. I think they add visual interest. On my last loop from Salem to De Smet to Flandreau just a few nights ago, I stopped in Lake Preston and was both surprised and happy to discover that their decorations are the same as the ones we had in Isabel. I couldn’t help but be swept back into a wave of holiday memories.

Decorations and fond memories are fun, but the simple beauty of colorful lights reminds me of why Christmas celebrations come around in the first place. On a starry night long ago, we all were given the greatest gift of a babe swaddled in a lowly manger, and,”In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Bullhead Remembers the Doughboy

By Michael Zimny

South Dakota’s only Spirit of the American Doughboy sculpture, in honor of America’s World War I infantrymen, is found in Bullhead on the Standing Rock Reservation.

Though they often go unnoticed, “doughboys” are a staple in America’s small town squares. Not the Pillsbury creation but the ubiquitous, if barely noticed, monuments to American soldiers who fought in the so-called, “war to end all wars.”

The term “doughboy” originated as in-group military slang, working its way out into popular culture. It’s a strangely jolly sounding word for the people to which it referred, given where they’d been, but it stuck.

After the war, as millions of veterans returned to their communities, there was a drive to memorialize the doughboys. Doughboy statues popped up in hundreds of towns. Artists competed to capitalize on the trend. Many were made of cast bronze. Then an artist named Ernest Viquesney, of Spencer, Indiana, developed a mass-produceable number he titled The Spirit of the American Doughboy that became the most widely proliferated.

“The original model was made out of pressed copper, so it was cheaper than ordinary bronze,” says Les Kopel, who has compiled decades worth of Viquesney doughboy research on his Doughboy Searcher website. “A lot of towns that couldn’t afford a monument could afford one from Viquesney.”

Viquesney’s doughboy is no Michelangelo’s David. For a work that’s supposed to portray a soldier stepping into the hellfire of No Man’s Land, his visage is more like that of a man about to walk the dog. His pose is rigid, a grenade held aloft in an unnaturally stiff right arm.

“If you view the statue from the side and you view the Statue of Liberty from the side, the pose is exactly the same,” says Kopel. “I’m not sure he got his idea from that, but that’s my idea anyway.”

For all the doughboy’s lack of realism though, like his name, he radiates a sense of calm in the face of adversity. The art establishment panned Viquesney, but people didn’t seem to care. There are still 140 of Viquesney’s Doughboys around the country, not including copies.

The only one in South Dakota is in the tiny town of Bullhead, on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

Wilma Tiger was born and raised in Bullhead and says the town’s annual Doughboy pow wow has long held an important place on the local cultural calendar. “It started with a pow wow by one lady that had it every year, Agnes Long Elk,” Tiger says. “She kept it going and of course I had grandmothers that were also on that. Now, it stopped for a while but then it was picked back up. And it’s been happening ever since.”

Among the names of Word War I veterans listed on the base of the memorial are Tiger’s grandfathers.

“A lot of the veterans in this community started way back in World War I,” says local American Legion post commander Joe Montana. “A lot them volunteered to go. It kind of went down the line from then, from families. Like my father was in Korea, and I kind of wanted to serve too because he served.”

Why such a strong tradition of service in Bullhead?

“I think it’s because a lot of them consider themselves warriors and braves,” says Montana. “They want to defend the country and they know they’re defending their people. Their people also live in this country. This country was established way back, way back before anybody came here. There was Native Americans, millions and millions of Native Americans that used to live here and everything else. So, just to defend the country and keep that mentality of being a warrior or brave that carried down from generation to generation.”

Though Bullhead was smaller, perhaps poorer, than most of the towns in the market for a doughboy, Montana says people pooled their money to get one. “They were like five hundred dollars short for the doughboy,” he says, “so a [rancher] out of McIntosh donated the last five hundred.”

As the Legion post commander, Montana is the doughboy’s caretaker. He recently painted the memorial to match the colors of uniforms in old photos.

Though the real doughboys of Bullhead are all long gone, the annual pow wow is still a draw. “We do turnip soup,” Montana says, “papa soup, tripe soup buffalo, beef, fry bread. A lot of the people living in Standing Rock too, they kind of know when the Doughboy is going to happen, because they start calling right away, start calling the district office here and asking about the pow wow.”

Veteran’s Day of 2018 marked 100 years since the armistice that ended the “war to end all wars.” But war is still with us. Maybe it always will be. After World War I, people wondered what it all was for. Now as then, people still remember their doughboys. Or at least they do in Bullhead.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.