Category: columns-culture

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Sky High

By Katie Hunhoff

Dave Tunge has been photographing South Dakota from his Super Cub for nearly 15 years. South Dakota Magazine has gathered his most captivating images in a new book, Sky High South Dakota.

My heart was in my throat as pilot Dave Tunge’s tiny plane gently rumbled and glided down the runway of the Yankton airport. It was a beautiful August morning and the air was still and warm. I noticed yellow flowers growing wild along the concrete lanes. The sky was the blue we all love.

Despite the sunshine, I was texting friends, family, and, well, anyone who might respond, about how nervous I was to be in a tiny plane. I have a fear of flying, and had never been in anything but big, commercial aircraft. And while I knew Dave’s Piper Cub would be small, I didn’t expect it to be so small I could barely fold my legs into the back seat.

In the spirit of journalism — and overcoming my fears — I had agreed to this early morning flight. I figured we couldn’t publish Tunge’s book of aerial photos unless I could see and experience the South Dakota skies like he has.

When I asked Tunge why he liked to fly, he replied,”I can’t tell you, but I can show you.” So this was show and tell day.

I steeled myself for takeoff. We gained speed on the runway as I muttered a prayer and kept a death grip on the pen and notebook in my hands. But my anxiety lifted with the plane as it gracefully ascended over Yankton. I stared out the tiny window and quickly forgot to be nervous as I saw the city I’ve lived in for most of 40 years from an entirely different point of view.

There were the soccer fields where I cheer on my 10-year-old son. There was our family farm, looking familiar yet different with a view of the trees, hills, valleys, stock ponds and creeks that let me see how everything was put together. The winding James River looked like a corkscrew jutting out from the wide, wild Missouri.

Transfixed by what I was seeing, I finally got it. I could feel why flying became a passion for Tunge and for so many others.

There was no need for my anxiety that morning because I was in safe hands with Tunge, who was all but born in the cockpit. His father was a pilot when Tunge was a small boy.”After Dad died, I went through his logbooks and I found I got my first ride with him in a Piper Cub when I was five years old,” he says.

He felt the urge to fly again during his junior year in college, so he took flight training in Sioux Falls. Tunge worked as a flight instructor in North Dakota, before moving to south to fly for Yankton Livestock Company. That’s when he began to explore South Dakota from the air. Although he was living his dream of flying, it wasn’t always exciting.”There’s an old saying that flying is hours and hours of sheer boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror,” he laughs.

Maybe it was boredom that led him to aerial photography. He started taking photos from the sky in 2004. Turns out he had a talent for capturing artistic scenes from the air. Photography is challenging enough from the ground; flying 50 mph while shooting from an open window is another thing altogether.

Through the years, Tunge has developed a true appreciation for South Dakota’s unique landscapes as well as a talent for capturing them with his camera. His photography is a gift to all of us who love South Dakota. We are thankful for the opportunity to present a retrospective of his work in a new book, Sky High South Dakota.

Dave Tunge’s aerial photography book is available from South Dakota Magazine. Visit our online store for more information on Sky High South Dakota — as well as our other books — or to subscribe.

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A Beardless Hobo & Other Homecoming Traditions

By John Andrews

I cannot grow a beard. Whenever I try, it looks like those photos we all have of our children the first time they grab a pair of scissors and give themselves, or their favorite doll, a haircut: bald spot here, 3 inches of scraggly growth there.

That’s why I sadly never took part in one of my alma mater’s most time honored homecoming traditions. The One Month Club at South Dakota State University is for students who want to look their hobo-est by the time Hobo Day arrives. Exactly a month before the homecoming game, men stop shaving their faces and women do the same with their legs. It’s all in good fun and a fine way to show school spirit, but I could never compete with my classmates who looked like the guys in ZZ Top after 30 days.

It’s homecoming season at colleges and universities around South Dakota, and when I thought of the One Month Club I wondered what unique traditions students observe at other schools. So I asked around.

One that warms my Scandinavian heart happens at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, where the students nominated for Viking Days king and queen don Norwegian sweaters. It seems appropriate for a school founded by Lutheran Scandinavians, and practical, too. I bet those sweaters take the chill off the cool October morning air on parade day. Incidentally, to celebrate Augustana’s 100th year in Sioux Falls, the school unveiled its version of the popular Monopoly board game called Augieopoly. One of the game tokens is a Norwegian sweater modeled after one owned by the late Dr. Lynwood Oyos, a longtime history professor.

Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell crowns not one king and queen, but two. In addition to the royal pair that reigns over Blue & White Days, two members of the freshman class are chosen Beanie King and Beanie Queen. They perform many of the same duties as the homecoming court, but wear blue and white beanies, festooned with optional decorations. The tradition began in 1926 and included all members of the freshman class, but over the years has been whittled down to just two.

Students at Dakota State University in Madison enjoy a citywide scavenger hunt. The Student Services department hides a small statue called the Traveling Trojan somewhere on the DSU campus or around Madison. Clues are given on local radio and on the school’s Facebook page. Whoever finds the statue receives a prize package.

West River students incorporate the Black Hills in their homecoming traditions. During Swarm Week at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, students make an annual pilgrimage to a giant letter H that sits on a mountainside near campus. Visitors to Rapid City may have noticed a similar M on a hillside above the city. Students at the School of Mines make a homecoming trek to whitewash the M, a tradition that dates back to the very first M-Day on October 5, 1912.

Alumni of other colleges and universities surely have their own favorite homecoming traditions. Hobo Day will always hold a special place for me. I’m pretty easy to spot watching the parade along Main Avenue or at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium for the football game. I’m the clean-shaven one.

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Sobbing in My Frozen Pizza

By John Andrews

I like going to college football games in the fall, especially in Brookings where my alma mater, the South Dakota State University Jackrabbits, play in the wonderful new Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium. I often buy single game tickets when they go on sale in late summer, but in particularly busy months I take it game by game.

Of course, my friends think there is a better way.”Why don’t you just get a media pass?” they ask. In their minds, it’s a free ticket in. I could enjoy the game from the comforts of a press box that’s cool during the warm days of August and September and toasty on those Saturday afternoons in October and November when the wind howls from the northwest, all while saving the price of admission.

I suppose it would be easy to submit a request. The university might even grant it. But I’m not there to write about the game, or any of the players. I’m just there because I like football and I want to watch. Someday, I might attend a game for magazine-related purposes, and maybe I’ll inquire about a pass, but until then I’ll buy my ticket (usually in section 206) and watch from there with a dish of cookies ‘n’ cream.

No, I’ve always said that taking advantage of my position in such a way is something I’d never do.

Until last week.

Having been with South Dakota Magazine for more than a decade, my email address has been bought, sold, shared and traded more times than I can imagine. I must be on the mailing list for every public relations firm in the country (and at least one in the United Kingdom).

As a result, I’m often flooded with press releases. Surely I was among the first writers in the country who was offered a chance to interview Sue McCarthy, founder and CEO of The Vault Luxury Resale and star of reality TVs”Resale Royalty.” McCarthy, I was told, would have great insights for men about shopping resale so they don’t completely ruin Valentine’s Day this year, as men are wont to do.”Women want to one-up each other on Instagram to prove they have the best boyfriend,” I learned.”So how does a guy get his girlfriend (or wife!) the gift she really wants — like a designer handbag — when he can’t afford the full retail price? The secret is to shop resale!”

Kieran Elsby graciously offered to introduce me to the Root7 G & Tea Cocktail Gift Set, which you can apparently use to brew a smooth gin and tonic just as easily as a cup of earl grey.”The borosilicate glass is compatible with both hot and cold beverages,” he wrote.”The possibilities are endless!”

Mackenzie Sanderson shared a new line of scarves from Sweat-o-pause. Using patented Coolcore technology, these scarves cool to 30 percent below skin temperature when they become wet with sweat or water.”This innovative and fashionable cooling scarf will keep women cool without anyone knowing they’re using it!”

The common thread with each of these press releases (in addition to excessive exclamation point use) is that none of them have anything to do with exploring life in South Dakota, which is our primary reason for existence around here. I could have tried a fun new Lotus Love scarf, or a teapot in which I could secretly make cocktails, but the point of offering these items to me is that I would, in return, use my position in the media to publicize them, thereby opening vast new markets to these companies. Since it didn’t seem natural to try to convince cowboys in Custer State Park that a Sweat-o-pause scarf would keep them cool during the buffalo roundup, or that tea time at the Anne Hathaway Cottage in Wessington Springs could potentially be A LOT more interesting, I declined their generous offers of free samples.

Then one morning, I found myself in a reckless mood. The press releases were flooding in, and I was just as quickly subjecting them to the trash when one appeared from Heather Wakely.”Move over meat and make way for pizza!” she wrote, excitedly.”Your grill can act like a portable pizza oven, giving pizzeria taste to a frozen pie. How about a story on creative food choices for tailgating?”

I knew there would be no story, but I do like pizza. In devil-may-care fashion, I clicked”reply,” instead of”delete.””I’d love some pizza samples!” I typed, taking special care to include exclamation points.”Please send them to the address in my signature block!”

I didn’t really know what would happen next. Would they require I speak to a chef or food developer in exchange for the samples? Would they make me sign a binding contract that stipulated I send a copy of my food review, which I never intended to write, before they gave up the goods?

I heard nothing until four days later when a cold-to-the-touch box arrived on my desk with the words”Freeze Upon Opening” written across the side. I opened it, and tucked beneath layers of finger-numbing dry ice I discovered three frozen pizzas.

Guilt washed over me.”These pizzas should be in the hands of a writer who can properly review them,” I thought as I shook my head in shame. Still, they arrived on a day when I had no lunch plans, so at noon I went home and drowned my guilt in a delicious chicken sausage pizza with Italian-style sauce and red bell peppers.

Ever since that day, I’ve felt pangs of regret about leveraging my position just to get free pizza, but there may be a way to assuage my guilt. SDSU still has a few home games left. If I find myself tailgating before kickoff, I’ll commandeer a grill and throw on a delightful thin-crust pizza from Smart Flour Foods.”These pizzas feature a robust tomato sauce and are topped with an indulgent blend of hormone-free cheese and uncured meats that are free of nitrites and nitrates,” I’ll tell my fellow tailgaters in a well-polished pizza spokesman voice.”In addition to premium toppings, the naturally gluten-free pizzas are made with an ancient-grain, Non-GMO Project Verified crust and clean ingredient list. They are available at select natural and mainstream markets nationwide for around $7.”

That’s better. See you in section 206.

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Our 100th Pheasant Party

By Katie Hunhoff

Families gather every autumn to walk the fields in search of ringneck pheasants. But the season has become as much about fellowship as bagging birds. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism.

Just imagine that we all dress alike for one autumn weekend in South Dakota. We cook big pots of chili and make ham sandwiches and taverns (or sloppy joes, if you prefer). We invite family and friends and retired baseball stars to go for long walks with us through the fields and weeds.

We bring our dogs and we take rides in the back of grandpa’s old pickup truck. We tell stories and enjoy the sunshine and blue skies of October in South Dakota.

Wouldn’t that be the perfect weekend?

Of course, I am describing the opening weekend of pheasant season. It would be a special occasion with or without 6 million pheasants. This year, there actually may be even more. Our wildlife experts predict there’s a 47 percent increase. But few of us are counting. This is the 100th consecutive”opening day” in South Dakota, and the hunt is no longer all about the birds. It’s a festival of our grand outdoors.

To commemorate the centennial hunt, we devoted much of our September/October issue to stories. We didn’t have to do much hunting. Just about everybody has a pheasant tale.

Sen. John Thune told us of the day he was hunting with a group that included Twins slugger Kent Hrbek. They knocked on a farmer’s door to ask permission to hunt, and as it turned out the man happened to be watching a replay of Hrbek’s dramatic home run in Game Six of the’87 World Series.

“He wasn’t that pleased to meet me,” laughs Thune.”But Hrbek got it done for us.”

We learned that the Dunse family of Beadle County has been gathering on the family farm for decades, and it’s really special when all 10 grandsons arrive. They usually dine at the Presbyterian Church supper in nearby Bonilla.

Madison artist John Green remembered hunting with some out-of-staters who had seen horned rabbits at a gift shop before they went afield. Once they reached the corn, a jackrabbit jumped up. It had big ears but no horns so one of the novice hunters yelled,”Don’t shoot, it’s a doe!”

Watertown attorney Lee Schoenbeck wondered if it’s sacrilegious to secretly help the bishop bag a bird. Peggy Schiedel remembered when actor Cary Grant visited her family’s Faulkton farm. Yankton broadcaster Monte James told of guiding a group of Coca Cola executives from Atlanta who hardly knew how to hold a gun.

Rapid City journalist and sage Kevin Woster penned a story about his family’s tradition of meeting at cousin Donnie’s farm. Kevin noted that his brother Jim called everyone last year to warn that the bird numbers were down and to ask who might still be coming.

“Well, is there still going to be some sloppy joes in the tool shed before the hunt?” Kevin asked.

Jim thought so.

“And are at least some of the Irish cousins and neighbors going to gather there in the shed and hang out for awhile and swap a few lies?”

Jim was sure they would gather.

“That’s all I need to know,” Kevin said.

One hundred years of South Dakota socialization will be celebrated in October. Toss in a few million pheasants and we’ve got a real party.

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My Favorite Time of Year

By John Andrews

Dell Rapids and Canova square off in a state tournament game at Mitchell’s Cadwell Park.

I know one South Dakotan who lives all year in anticipation of the Turner County Fair. Others yearn for the first Forestburg melon stand to open, or for the leaves in Spearfish Canyon to turn color, or the state capitol to be decked out in its Christmas glory.

My favorite time of the South Dakota year is the 12 days in August during which the state amateur baseball tournament is played.

For about 50 years after its inception in 1933, the tournament moved to different ballparks around the state, but since 1981 it has mostly been played at Mitchell’s Cadwell Park. This year, for the first time, the event was moved to Ronken Field at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, but Cadwell is the environment that I most closely associate with the State Am.

Allowing it to remain in one place for so long has allowed traditions to grow, and I look forward to them just as much as the baseball games. The Mitchell Exchange Club has become famous for its grilled hamburgers and onions. It’s one of the first aromas you detect when you wander into the ballpark, and very few spectators leave without eating one or two.

Every year, the same group of fans sets up lawn chairs on the lower levels of the concrete grandstand, or watches the game while standing directly behind each team’s dugout, a perspective that also offers an opportunity to catch in-game strategy or witty banter between players. The State Am is often the only time all year that these folks see each other.

For years, I kept an eye out for the guy wearing a blue T-shirt that read”Official Tamper,” who ran onto the field between games, filled the holes on the pitching mound and pounded them smooth. I always thought he must have been good at his job if they made him his own T-shirt.

Buying a state tournament program is often the first thing I do when I get to the park. The first six pages are packed with regular season and tournament records that delight anyone interested in baseball and history — Lefty Grosshuesch’s 62 strikeouts in a 28-inning game for Bonesteel in 1952, Wessington Springs collecting 36 hits in one game in 1988, Kevin Leighton’s whopping 501 career home runs.

I began attending the tournament regularly in 1991, when my hometown Lake Norden Lakers fell in the championship to Dell Rapids. Lake Norden is one of a handful of towns in South Dakota that is synonymous with baseball. Games have been played there nearly as long as there has been a town. It’s also home to the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. Growing up immersed in baseball, it was impossible not to fall in love with the small-town version of our national pastime, which is why I love going to the State Am every year, whether the hometown Lakers are in the field or not. I suspect there are other South Dakotans who feel the same way.

Maybe one of these years, I’ll witness something that becomes part of South Dakota sports legend. The State Am already produced one of our most treasured baseball stories. Claremont and Aberdeen were tied 4-4 heading into extra innings of the 1938 championship game in Aberdeen. It was getting dark, so umpire Tommy Collins ruled that if no one scored in the 10th inning the game would be replayed the next day. Aberdeen went scoreless in the top of the 10th. In the bottom, Claremont’s Bill Prunty stepped to the plate. He worked the count to 3-2, and then crushed a home run over the center field fence, giving Claremont the championship. The ball was recovered the next day and is now exhibited at the Hall of Fame in Lake Norden.

I don’t know where the rest of the year will take me in my travels for South Dakota Magazine, but I know where I’ll be in early August of 2019. I can already taste the onions.

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Beyond the Chair

By Michael Zimny

James “JJ” Janis wants people with disabilities to come out into the open and talk about them, but he also wants people to see beyond the mechanized wheelchair that helps him get around. The Chair is Not Me is the title of a book of poems and prose he’s just published, which he hopes will spark a dialogue between diversely abled communities.

“My primary purpose is to foster an understanding between the diverse ability community and those that don’t have a disability,” Janis says.”It’s getting better but we need to do more work and by we, I’m talking all of us.”

Janis was born with cerebral palsy and grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation and in Rapid City. In his poem “My First Taste of Freedom,” he recalls that as a child, before he had a wheelchair, he sometimes got around in a little red wagon, “powered by my cousins’ legs.”

“We didn’t go very fast or far if people didn’t eat their morning eggs.”

Disabled people’s voices are rare in the media landscape, and consequently some of the issues they face aren’t widely discussed. Janis wants to change that with poems like “Unsung Heroes,” dedicated to direct support professionals (DSPs).

DSPs help disabled people, in countless ways, to go about their daily lives — taking them to appointments or visits with family and friends, helping them eat, shower, groom, get dressed. They are indispensable to the people they serve, not only because of the support they provide, but also because of intangibles like relationships and moral support.

“Their influence can ripple throughout our lives,” Janis writes.

DSPs are not highly valued by the market. They often receive at-or-near minimum wage pay. Turnover is high.

This places stress not only on the DSPs, but on the people they serve. “When I have somebody leave after a year, two, three, and even four years, it’s like a board pierced my heart,” Janis says. “When we lose someone, even if they’re just going to a different job, it’s like the loss of a family member.”

As an advocate, Janis is working to bring more attention to the work DSPs do. As a writer, he’s hoping to bring the issues faced by his community into the mainstream. He’s not shy about reaching out to high-profile people. He sent a book to George H.W. Bush. “I wrote him a letter thanking him for signing the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Janis says, “and told him about how civil his administration was compared to what was going on today.”

“When [President Trump] was running, he mocked a news reporter [who] had cerebral palsy, and it was kind of a disgrace. So, I was going to send one to President Trump to let him know that people with diverse abilities can do something, and he shouldn’t do that.”

The Chair is Not Me — which is illustrated by a group of diversely abled artists — is opening doors. Janis and some of the artists have been invited to present a show at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City next summer.

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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Major or Not?

By Paul Higbee

When writing about Hot Springs for South Dakota Magazine several years ago, I flashed back to fifth grade, green mimeograph paper and talking my way out of an academic jam.

As I’ve mentioned before in this column, in elementary school I lived in another state but was a fervent wannabe South Dakotan. To my thinking, at age 11, Hot Springs seemed like South Dakota’s most impressive city. And yes, by that point in my life I’d visited acknowledged major U.S. cities, namely Denver, Des Moines and Minneapolis. The notion that Hot Springs perhaps didn’t fit that category never crossed my mind. To my knowledge those other places had no vast, glowing hotel made of sandstone like the Evans. For sure they didn’t claim the world’s largest indoor naturally heated swimming pool.

Still Hot Springs didn’t make the list of suggested cities my teacher shared for our writing assignment. She did say, however, that there were certainly good candidates in addition to her examples. As I recall New York, Washington and Los Angeles were listed, and most definitely Baltimore. This teacher loved Baltimore. After my class pondered major U.S. cities for a couple days (not that I recall anyone pondering too strenuously) we announced our places of choice aloud. New York and Washington went fast. Los Angeles wasn’t far behind. When I said Hot Springs, my teacher nodded OK. Nobody chose Baltimore, which seemed to perplex her.

We had to write three pages and cite two sources. One source, we were told, would be easy: a set of encyclopedias on shelves at the back of the classroom. This being decades before the Internet, we’d access our other source by mailing letters. In this way we learned about chambers of commerce, travel bureaus and historical associations. We were instructed to enclose a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) with our information requests, but we were skeptical anyone would write back to a kid, SASE or no SASE. To our surprise, though, everyone got a reply, and in pretty short order.

In fact I got two responses, one from the South Dakota Highway Department and the other from the Hot Springs chamber of commerce or commercial club. I didn’t tell anyone but I wrote two letters in order to have two sources because Hot Springs wasn’t included in the school’s encyclopedia. Now it was my turn to be perplexed because my friend Matt found six full pages in the encyclopedia about Detroit, plus several more describing the city’s car industry.

All these years later I recall several things about the letters I received. It was an era of great letterhead art. My friends got letterheads featuring skylines, bridges, and complex municipal seals. But from the South Dakota Highway Department came my letter depicting Tootsie the Coyote howling at the moon.”Oh yeah,” I thought,”that’s the South Dakota I know.” One of my sources sent me a brief history of Hot Springs mimeographed on green paper, and as I wrote the article in this issue I found myself wishing I’d kept that historical overview. The folks in Hot Springs enclosed a picture postcard of Evans Plunge, and I knew for a fact that the postcard cost more than the postage stamp I sent them. But what truly amazed me was how someone in Pierre penned a little note at the bottom of a form letter, addressing me by name and wishing me the very best as I composed my theme. Incomprehensible! Someone in a government office in a state capital took time to tell me good luck!

As it turned out I needed good luck. The letters came to us at school, intercepted by our teacher, who noticed mine came from South Dakota.”I thought you meant Hot Springs, Arkansas, which isn’t real big,” she said.”But at least I’ve heard of it. I haven’t heard of this little place in South Dakota.”

I started sweating because I knew what would happen within two minutes if I didn’t think fast. I’d be handed the address of the Baltimore chamber of commerce and told to write for information.

“I think my Hot Springs is major because people from all over the country know about it and visit,” I blurted.”It has the biggest indoor swimming pool in the world where water comes out of the ground already heated.”

I could tell by my teacher’s eyes I had her interest.

“If you look at cars parked outside the pool,” I continued,”you’ll see license plates from every state you can think of.”

She”allowed” my town as major on the condition I mention all those visitors from all those states in my theme. I did. When we shared papers aloud a couple weeks later, Hot Springs was a hit. Everyone thought Tootsie made the coolest letterhead and my classmates were impressed by the cave that blows wind, and the town where water bubbles out of the ground warm enough for a comfortable shower.

I learned I could smooth-talk my way out of misinterpretations of school assignments, a valuable skill later in high school and college. I also discovered that in terms of character, history and unique natural features, small towns could be as major as New York, Los Angeles and Baltimore.

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the September/October 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Heads Up, Ralph

By Roger Holtzmann

Road maintenance can be a sore subject for county commissions and the South Dakotans who live along our rural routes.

Our car has every high tech device that was known to the automotive engineers of 20 years ago. It’s a top-shelf 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis with digital everything, including door locks, which we’ve never trusted enough to actually use. There were lots of these on the road at one time — they were a favorite of the Golden Agers Who Drive Large Cars set, and you may have seen one in your rear view mirror with lights flashing because many police departments used them.

It’s easy to understand why the police liked them. In the event of a high-speed chase they would come out best in a collision with anything up to a cement truck, and you could easily fit three beefy prisoners in the back seat without scrunching. Which is important because an uncomfortable crook is an unruly crook.

Most of my automotive knowledge is decades out of date, so this probably isn’t a new feature, but our Merc is also equipped with a Vehicle Safety Shutdown system. This consists of a dingus that helps prevent fires by automatically cutting off the gas in case of an accident.

This shutdown is initiated whenever a sensor experiences a sudden, violent movement; it interprets this as a car crash and goes into panic mode.

“What the heck was that?” shouts the microscopic man in charge of the system as he picks himself off the floor. He’s been sitting at a desk with his feet up ever since the car was built, waiting for just this moment.”Shut off the gas! Call my wife! Tell her I’ll be late!”

Pardon my digression, please. Whenever I am confronted with a mysterious device my default explanation is always that there’s a little man inside making it work. Ask me sometime how a toaster makes toast.

Simply driving down a gravel road can also activate the VSS. I know this because Carolyn was driving home one evening, hit an epic bump and the car promptly expired. Nothing was obviously wrong — no smoke was pouring from the engine, no parts littered the road — but the car refused to start. She called a tow truck, and bless his heart, the driver had heard of the VSS. He popped the trunk, reset the system and Carolyn was back in business.

Living on a gravel road means living with a few certainties. Dust fills your lungs whenever the neighbor’s wild kid blows through the corner stop sign at 60 mph. Your car is always dirty, which at least hides the chipped paint. You will need to replace your car’s windshield at some point, or get used to looking at the world through long spaghetti cracks. You learn to approach every stop sign at a crawl lest the washboards set your bones to jumpin’ worse than an acute case of St. Vitus Dance.

I had made my peace with all that, then the road up and committed autocide on our poor Merc, which had never hurt anybody. It did give our youngest daughter a backache because the leather upholstered, six-way power-adjustable driver’s seat swallows you like a beanbag chair, but otherwise it has been a well-behaved, dependable source of transportation. Knock on wood.

When I was a numbskull and thought I knew everything — last month — I would have used this incident as a launching pad for a tirade about the Yankton County road department. Like chronic grumblers everywhere, I’d have begun by loudly and profanely pontificating on a subject I know less than nothing about, in this case road maintenance. I’d soon move on to taxes, of course, citing the new courthouse carpet as evidence of a county commission that would rather waste taxpayer money on frivolities than take care of roads.

Then I’d get personal by pointing out that an oil road runs right by a certain big shot’s property. For my finale I would dump on the county road workers. I’d recall the time I saw a bunch of them loitering beside their equipment eating sandwiches RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY! Disgusting!

These days I try to be more understanding of the difficulties faced by others. Take one small concern of the road department: the”gravel” on gravel roads. We spread a truckload of gravel on our driveway, and a year later it was gone. Where did it go? Did thieves strike? Did a glacier scour our place? What is it like, then, trying to keep a good gravel base on a hundred miles of road when NASCAR wannabes kick rocks into the ditch whenever they pass? I’m amazed there aren’t more giant potholes and epic washboards lying in wait for us all.

As I was pondering the case of our dead car and the road that killed it a thought occurred: Yankton is a small county. If it’s challenging to maintain roads here, what’s it like west of the Missouri, where the counties and reservations are much larger and have many more miles of dirt roads?

In the spirit of public service, I thought I would pass on a little wisdom. I pulled out my trusty highway map and looked for a town that only has gravel roads connecting it to the world, and I found Ralph, in Harding County. There were many other possibilities, but you’ve got to love a town named Ralph, don’t you? So here it is, Ralphites: if you’re ever driving down the road and your car dies …

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the May/June 2016 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Put it on the Board

By Michael Zimny

A few local artists are etching their mark on the Rapid City art scene — in chalk.

Chalk art is an integral part of the mise en sc’ne of today’s American metropolis. At least in certain neighborhoods, chalkboards are one of the many types of space where the interests of local businesses and local artists converge — where artists take something fairly mundane, like the price of a cup of coffee, and make it into something beautiful.

For some residents of Minneapolis or Denver, chalk art may begin to fade — among the crush of symbols — into visual ambience. Not so much in Rapid City where the medium still feels new.

Rapid City native Christie Harris does chalk gigs for local businesses — like Klinkeltown and Essence of Coffee — when she’s not working as the studio manager at Canvas 2 Paint, a community arts workshop and studio.

She free hands drawings with a pencil outline, then emboldens them with chalk. She enjoys creating something unique to a particular place.”It’s a completely custom — to that business — piece of art,” says Harris.”You could order some kind of vinyl sticker or something, but it’s not handmade. You don’t see those little quirks.”

Laurel Antonmarchi is a freelance graphic designer. Chalk art is part of her toolkit for making it as an artist. SDPB recently caught up with her as she was touching up, and making permanent, a chalk mural at Cranky’s Bike Shop. A native of Armour who studied art at Black Hills State, Antonmarchi has also hosted a chalk art workshop for kids in Main Street Square.

“I like chalk because I can get my hands dirty with it,” says Antonmarchi.”It really gives a human element to the atmosphere.”

The quirkiness can be refreshing in a town dominated — outside downtown — by the familiar iconography of big box stores and chain restaurants. Chalk art’s origins can be traced back to the madonnari of 16th century Italy — artists-for-hire who often paid tribute to a famous personage in Christian circles. Sacred motifs are steadily losing ground to the gods of commerce. Today’s apple is symbolic only of Applebee’s. But chalk artists still manage to inject a little humanity into our transactional day-to-day.

“I love all the little imperfections,” says Antonmarchi.”It shows that a real person made 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 South Dakota Quiz

By Katie Hunhoff

At South Dakota Magazine, we have spent 33 years traveling, studying and writing about our state. Along the way we’ve grown fond of testing our readers (and each other) with a bit of trivia. The following 14-question quiz is a little sampling. You can find more trivia in every issue of the magazine. Feel free to contact us if you think you have trivia that would stump our staff.

1. A sculpture known as”The Potato Man” (pictured) stands in tribute to the thousands of Irish immigrants who settled in South Dakota in the late 1800s. Where can you find him?

2. What town is known as the birthplace of democracy west of the Mississippi River?

3. Established in 1867, what pow wow is the oldest continual event in South Dakota?

4. Ten murals by Oscar Howe decorate what arena?

5. How many steps does it take to reach the top of South Dakota State University’s Coughlin Campanile?

6. Fairways on what town’s golf course also serve as airport runways?

7. Geographically, which county is South Dakota’s largest?

8. Scotty Philip is known as the man who saved the buffalo, but from which South Dakota rancher did he buy his first animals?

9. What famous town founder is said to have discovered a cave filled with riches somewhere on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation?

10. At what bar is it a tradition to smash your empty beer bottle under the dock before ordering another?

11. During their journey up the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark explored what natural feature that Indians believed was guarded by”little devils?”

12. The exact center of the United States is found northwest of what city?

13. Mildred Fiksdal O’Neill’s collection of 10,000 pairs of shoes is housed in what museum?

14. Geographically, which is South Dakota’s largest Indian reservation?

Click here to see the answers.