Category: culture

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Dakota Duets Debuts

Talented musicians can be found in towns and cities, large and small, across South Dakota and our bordering states. Unfortunately, we don’t always get a chance to know and hear those who live outside our own neighborhoods.

That’s exactly why Spearfish singer/songwriter Jami Lynn is hitting the road, performing with six men and women in a new summer-long web series called Dakota Duets.

“There are so many musicians in South Dakota that I really admire,” Jami says.”Some of them are people I’ve gotten to work with in passing. Some of them, I’ve just enjoyed listening to, or learning from. I started this project because I wanted an excuse to work with each musician featured, and to hone my backup skills a bit. It’s also an opportunity for me to play a few different styles of music that I maybe wouldn’t have touched on my own.”

Jami began to perform at age 13, debuting at community gatherings in the little town of Peever in the Glacial Lakes country of northern South Dakota. She majored in music at the University of South Dakota. She also studied and performed in Nashville, but her deep connection to our rural landscapes, people and culture of the Northern Plains called her home. That’s good news for music fans who love her range of country, folk and jazz. She has quickly become one of South Dakota’s most popular performers.

Thanks to a South Dakota Arts Council fellowship grant, Jami is now embarking on the Dakota Duets road trip.

Her first video features Paul Larson, a cowboy poet from Rochford who also performs traditional cowboy music. The duo sings”Butterflies and Pearls,” a cowboy waltz that tells the story of how Larson met his longtime girlfriend, Amy, while riding horseback in the woods.

Jami plans to release five more videos — one in each of the next five months — and you’ll find them all here on our South Dakota Magazine web site. Next up is Thomas Hentges, also known as Burlap Wolf King, of Sioux Falls.

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My Day at the Track

By John Andrews

Horses take off from the starting gate during a race at the Brown County Fairgrounds in Aberdeen. South Dakota’s horse racing season occupies six weekends every spring.

I am not a gambler. Never have been. Perhaps it’s my stoic, fiscally conservative Norwegian lineage, but the idea of playing fast and loose with my money has That’s why I felt conflicted when the publisher of this magazine gave me $100 of betting money the day before I left to attend my first horse race. It wasn’t my money. It was simply to help immerse myself in South Dakota’s rich horse racing culture, which takes center stage in Fort Pierre and Aberdeen for just six weeks every spring. It shouldn’t have mattered if I lost every penny. Still, the thought of losing $100 (and I just knew I would lose it, because going to the racetrack was akin to abandoning me in a foreign land) made me slightly anxious.

But somewhere in my stomach was a twinge of excitement. What if I got lucky? What if I bet half the money on a long shot and came home with $500, or $1,000? Racetrack veterans would be astonished. They would wonder if I’d gotten inside information. It could be the start of a new hobby.

I learned two things at the racetrack that day. Horseracing cannot simply be a hobby. Once it’s in your blood, you live it every hour of every day. That’s true for hundreds of jockeys, owners, trainers, handicappers and fans that pack the grandstands.

And the old adage is true. A fool and his money are soon parted.

I awoke on race day to the rumble of thunder and the steady cadence of raindrops striking the pavement outside my hotel window. I pulled back the curtain and beheld a dull gray sky and a parking lot pockmarked with slowly swelling puddles. Rain could mean postponement or even cancellation of the final weekend of the South Dakota Horse Racing Association’s 2013 season.

Three hours — and nearly half an inch of rain — later I walked into the Brown County Fairgrounds. The sun shone brightly. A few cotton ball clouds dotted a deep blue sky. A John Deere tractor slowly smoothed the rich, brown dirt on the track, while horses and trainers milled about the parking lot. Fairgrounds manager Mike Schmidt swept excess water from beneath the grandstands as if it were nothing more than a nuisance.

“This track drains really well,” Schmidt said.”We’ll race today.”

Fans and potential bettors scrutinize their programs and study the horses in the paddock before each race.

As post time neared, I bought a program, only to find a confusing jumble of letters and numbers beside each horse’s name. The program seller must have sensed my bewilderment, and told me that an hour before every race local experts hold a seminar to explain the program to potential bettors.

Inside the expo building I found Ernie Kruse and Floyd Zimmerman, and the program began making sense. Those seemingly random numbers and letters are a snapshot of each horse’s racing history. A glance tells you where the horse has run in the last two years, who the jockey was, where the horse finished, the track conditions and a brief summary of the performance (“steadily faded,””weakened final furlong,””loomed boldly”).

Zimmerman grew up in Aberdeen and has been coming to the racetrack since he was 4 years old. He’s held a variety of jobs there, including maintenance, management and handicapping, which he’s done for the last 15 years.”I watch horse racing on the Internet constantly,” Zimmerman says.”There’s no real science to it. No matter what the numbers say, something else can happen.

“But there are people out here who know nothing, and are just looking for some kind of insight as to how to look at it, or they want a reason for why they’re going to bet on a horse. And that’s why they use us. We might bring up something they didn’t catch. Information is a dangerous tool.”

Experience has told Zimmerman that the most important factors at local races are jockeys and trainers.”You know who rides better than others and who trains better than others, who has better stock,” he says.”But there are always those surprises that seem to kill me in my wagering.”

By the time I arrived Kruse and Zimmerman were already handicapping the eighth race. I’d have to play the first seven on the limited knowledge I gained from them on how to read the program and the sage advice I had received from friends, colleagues and a few racing insiders.

Laura Andrews, who worked in our sales and marketing department, told me her husband Mike knew a bit about horses. He said the horse with the longest tail was often a good bet. Contributing editor Roger Holtzmann suggested I bet the horse that had most recently relieved itself. Our publisher’s 5-year-old grandson had just won bicycles in two separate raffles, so I tried to capitalize on his luck. He told me his favorite number was eight.

Horses are saddled and paraded in the paddock before each race.

These helpful hints seemed less than scientific, but Heather Benson provided an insider’s perspective. Benson is a former handicapper who owns the Back Forty Media and Marketing, a consulting and marketing firm based in Centerville that assists mainly horse racing industry clients. Her first tip was to bet the gray horse in every race.”Gray racehorses (which turn white as they get older) are uncommon, and if you see one it’s always worth a shot if you have no other good leads,” Benson says.”If you had bet $2 to win on every gray horse that has run in the Kentucky Derby in the last 30 years, you would be ahead by about $100 right now.”

An even more solid lead, she said, was to bet any horse trained by Bob Johnson of Lemmon. Johnson has been considered the leading trainer on the South Dakota racing circuit for years.”It’s the closest to a sure thing you will find,” Benson says.”Bob runs mostly Quarter horses, which account for about half the races run in South Dakota, and has absolutely won everything that can be won here.”

Entries are posted a few days in advance, so my coworkers and I already knew the horses running in the first race. Holtzmann and Ruth Steil, our office manager, each sent $2 to bet on a horse they liked. Steil picked Shawklit Cat because the breeder was from her home state of Nebraska. Holtzmann liked Vincent’s Honor because Vincent is his middle name. I had already decided to heed Benson’s advice and put $10 on Smarter Than Momma to win. That was a Bob Johnson horse.

I felt confident as I approached the betting window. I’d read wagering tutorials online to learn the verbiage and had already practiced what I would say:”I’d like $10 on the 6 horse to win” (when betting, horses are always referred to by their numbers). But it wasn’t that easy, explained Kim Klostergaard, who works the betting windows every weekend. There were multiple combinations I could play. There’s the tribox, trifecta or the quinella. The first race was also the first half of that day’s daily double. This all went beyond my rudimentary”win, place, show” understanding.

My head swam with these new combinations. I mumbled something like”just to win for now” and took my little white betting slips to the grandstand. At 1 p.m., the signal sounded and eight thoroughbreds thundered from the starting gate. The 1,565 people in attendance raucously cheered as the horses passed the grandstand, now running full speed in their 5 1/2 furlong race. In a minute and 13 seconds the race was over. Twobuckstoomuch, a 4-year-old from Louisiana, came in first. Shawklit Cat finished seventh. Vincent’s Honor was last.

Horse racing in South Dakota is supported through simulcast wagering, which includes bets placed off-site and at betting windows at the track.

Though I lost, I took some consolation from that first race. Smarter Than Momma had finished a close second. I had been a heartbeat away from victory. Best not to pick the winning horse right out of the gate anyway, I reasoned. I had come close, so I felt a little better when I returned to Klostergaard’s window.

Races two through six were wagering disasters. I began experimenting with combinations. In the second race I took the 3 and 4 horses in a quinella, meaning I would win if they finished first and second in either order. The next race I bet a tribox with the 2, 3 and 4 horses, which covers every combination that could result as long as my selections finished in the top three. But my horses mostly finished in the middle of the pack. I sat out the seventh race, hoping to regroup but not knowing how.

Horse racing is called the”sport of kings” because of its long-running popularity among British royalty and aristocracy, but it has been traced to ancient Greece, Babylon, Syria and Egypt. It had become part of the Greek Olympics by 648 B.C., and chariot racing was a popular sport throughout Greece and Rome.

Horse racing in America began in 1665, when the first track was built on Long Island. Organized racing started in 1868, and by 1890 there were 314 operating tracks in the United States. Interest swelled and receded through the years, but two events — the introduction of pari-mutuel wagering in 1908 and the rise of the Triple Crown — were boons to the sport.

Several South Dakotans have enjoyed successful careers in horse racing. Among the most famous was Earl Sande, the Groton native who rode Gallant Fox to the Triple Crown in 1930. Thoroughbred trainer Steve Asmussen, born at Gettysburg, has more than 4,300 career wins, over $21 million in purse earnings and trained Curlin, winner of the 2007 Preakness Stakes and the Breeders Cup Classic, considered the Super Bowl of thoroughbred horse racing. Bill Mott, of Mobridge, worked with Cigar, who won 16 consecutive races in 1995 and 1996 and retired as the top money earner in thoroughbred racing history. Mott has been voted national leading trainer three times and was the youngest trainer ever inducted to the National Racing Hall of Fame.

Sanctioned horse racing at Fort Pierre’s track dates to the 1940s and they’ve been running for decades in Aberdeen. South Dakota’s modern horse racing system is supported entirely through simulcast wagering, allowing bettors at two or more sites to bet into the same pool. South Dakota’s two simulcast wagering hosts are the Time Out Lounge in Rapid City and the Triple Crown Casino in North Sioux City. The South Dakota Commission on Gaming regulates all pari-mutuel wagering, though no tax dollars support horse racing. The commission is required by law to disburse money generated back into the racing industry through the South Dakota-bred racing fund and another revolving fund.”People don’t realize how much income it generates,” says Jill LaCroix, treasurer of the South Dakota Horse Racing Association.”When you’re here for three weeks, think how much money you’re spending.”

Horses round a bend at a race in Fort Pierre. Photo by Jana Thompson.

LaCroix and her mother June own the Time Out Lounge and became part of racing history in 2003, when they sold the only winning Pick Six ticket in the world during the Breeder’s Cup. The men who bought it won $2.7 million. I could only hope for such luck in Aberdeen. The LaCroixs had three horses running that day, and fortunately for me one of them was slated for the eighth race.

The eighth race is where it all turned around. Not coincidentally, it was the first race I had been able to rely upon Kruse and Zimmerman, the expert handicappers, for advice. In the pre-race seminar, their favorite was Tickle the Ivorys (the 2 horse), trained by Bob Johnson and owned by his father, John. They thought LaCroix’s horse, Alotta Louie (1), could challenge and slotted Knud for a Buck (6) in third.

Relieved that my picks were handed to me, I returned to Klostergaard’s window and bet the 2 horse to win and a 2-1 quinella. As I stood in line, I noticed familiar faces in the queue.”Bettors can be superstitious,” Klostergaard said.”If they’re winning they’ll come back to the same window. And if they lose I probably won’t see them again.”

Had I been a racing veteran, she would have seen a lot more of me the rest of the afternoon. Kruse and Zimmerman’s picks were almost spot on. Tickle the Ivorys won, followed by Alotta Louie and the 4 horse, L Valentino. Knud for a Buck finished fourth. My first victory netted $9.80.

I let it ride. I hit another quinella in the ninth race and picked the winner in the 10th, falling just short of a winning tribox combination. I pocketed another $14.

Credit for my late surge goes almost entirely to the handicappers on whose wisdom I relied, but three of the horses I bet in those final races were trained at Bob Johnson’s sprawling ranch southwest of Lemmon. The family settled in that spot along the North Grand River in 1894.”My grandpa was a gold miner in Deadwood and grandma ran a boarding house,” says John Johnson, the family’s 82-year-old patriarch.”Then my grandma wanted to start raising kids, and Deadwood was a pretty tough place in the 1880s.”

The Johnsons started raising horses, and today Johnson Stables includes a half-mile dirt racetrack and stalls for 67 horses.”We train all winter,” John says.”Our track is in the river bottom and it never freezes. We can run them all year if the jockeys are tough enough to ride. That’s why the horses are in pretty good shape this time of year.”

John trained horses for most of his life. Bob started as a jockey until he grew too big and transitioned into training. There are many factors that make a good racehorse, but John says bloodlines are the most important thing.

“That’s a good start,” Bob Johnson says.”They have to want to be a racehorse. They’re like athletes — track, basketball, it doesn’t matter. They can have all the talent, but if they don’t want to, it’s not going to happen.”

Bob Johnson (right) of Lemmon is among South Dakota’s leading horse trainers. He trained Fast Eddys Eyeyinyou, owned by Jill LaCroix (left) of Rapid City.

Johnson says he can tell fairly early if a racehorse is going to be successful.”Horses are very comparable to people,” he says.”If you’re a student of people, you can be a student of horses, and it’ll work for you. They show you signs if they like what you’re doing. Some are defiant, some are complacent, some are regressive. My job is to take the ones that are non-players and make them into players.”

His day begins at 4:15 every morning and involves considerable travel. He had arrived in Aberdeen at 2 a.m. on race day because he’d run five horses at Canterbury Park just north of Minneapolis the previous day.”He does that all the time,” his father says.”He’ll run tomorrow and then he’ll go back to Canterbury. Some people couldn’t train a mouse to eat cheese. They don’t have the fortitude to work 12 hours a day, or travel 2,000 or 3,000 miles without stopping. It’s a lot of work, a lot of hours.”

Bob Johnson has developed a keen understanding of horses through a lifetime of working with them.”Everybody thinks that horse training is make them go fast, make them turn left and come back to the barn,” he says.”Then take the week off and make them run again.” But it’s much more cerebral. Some of the most important insights are gained simply through observation.

“Every night after we feed our horses, we sit for 20 minutes and just watch,” Johnson says.”The horses that aren’t happy won’t be eating. They’ll show you little signs. Like this horse’s head is hanging out. He doesn’t like his feed, or he’s not happy, or he’s got a stomach ache, or he’s got an ulcer.”

After the races, Johnson tended to Fast Eddys Eyeyinyou, a 4-year-old belonging to June LaCroix. The horse finished third in the ninth race after stepping badly out of the gate. But Johnson could tell the horse was pleased with his performance.”When he doesn’t do well, he’ll be dragging on the walker. Look at him. Tail in the air, happy guy. They’re all different,” Johnson says.”They’ll make your head hurt. And your heart hurt, especially when you know how much is there.”

It’s true that horses can break hearts, judging by the discarded betting slips that littered the grandstand post race. Certainly there were bettors who finished ahead, while others left in the red. I went home with $64. My day at the track was educational, and not just on how to play the ponies. Whether you win, lose or simply marvel at the powerful thoroughbreds thundering down the track and the dedication it takes to get them there, no spring should pass without experiencing the thrill of a South Dakota horse race.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2014 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Blizzard in a Small Town

Photography and story by Bernie Hunhoff

A winter storm overwhelms a small town, almost as if the North Wind is flapping a mile-wide blanket of gray goose feathers overhead, rudely muffling all the streets and houses.

The intentions of the few citizens spotted outdoors in a blizzard are immediately obvious. They are walking the dog. Rushing from the grocery store with plastic bags. Shoveling the front steps to maintain the”you’re welcome here anytime” look that’s exhibited on most small town houses in South Dakota. Dawdling is done indoors on days like this.

We waited out such a storm in Freeman (pop. 1,200) and watched the town come to a crawl. Activity was inversely proportionate to the growing speed of the howling wind. Gusts blew to 50 miles per hour, ignoring 30 MPH street signs that poked above the snowdrifts.

The clerk at a variety store on the edge of town lamented that she hadn’t been able to get home to Marion, just a dozen miles away, for two days. She was staying with a cousin. A hair stylist at the Mane Attraction was on the phone, switching appointments from rural people who couldn’t get to town with city dwellers hardy enough to venture a few blocks.

The grocer at Jamboree darted out of the store in a green sweater every hour or so and quickly shoved the snow from his sidewalk. Customers parked near the store’s front door and usually left their engines running as they dashed inside. A desperate thief could have had his pick but no one in Freeman fit the description that particular day.

A little boy in a ski mask came out of the store with two sacks, apparently on an errand for mom. He playfully scaled a 15-foot-high pile of snow in the middle of Main Street before he hustled home to deliver staples to the family kitchen.

Most of the town’s businesses were still open as darkness settled beneath the howling gray blanket. Lights stayed on at the Freeman Courier because it was deadline day and the Waltners were not going to delay the weekly newspaper for a blizzard. The new library was open next door. Flags whipped wildly over a local bank. A snowplow operator skimmed the streets. Fensel’s Motel on the edge of town had rooms available.”Take Number Seven,” said the clerk.”The key is in the door.”

An awful assault of high winds, snow and cold could feel evil to someone suffering its clutches. But a small town is a good place to wait out a storm. Freeman’s citizenry seemed to accept the blizzard as nature’s due for the privilege of living in South Dakota, and that attitude seemed sensible. The storm was a nuisance that would pass. And sure enough, the morning dawned calm and clear.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Surviving Wind Chill

By Linda M. Hasselstrom

Chores need doing, even at 40 below.

“Wind chill is 70 to 90 below zero.” I shrugged as I snapped off the radio. I moved cattle on horseback one day when the wind chill was 60 below. Once it’s that cold, what difference can a few degrees make?

I found out. Exposed flesh freezes in well under a minute. In the time I took to open a gate, the naked skin behind my glasses began to sting. I think my nose is shorter — frozen off when my scarf slipped down as I hacked at six inches of ice on the cattle tank. When I stepped out of the pickup my often-frostbitten hands began to ache at once, and didn’t stop until hours later. My eyes burned for several days. My face felt sandpapered. My lungs ached, in spite of the scarf.

I followed all the well-known rules for living through cold weather. I kept a little water running, flushed the toilet frequently, checked the sewer vent pipe for frost, hauled in an armload of wood every time I went outside, plugged in the truck heaters. I called a neighbor before I went out to do chores, and called her when I got back safely.

But I survived. And that amazed me. I went outside often, though the radio was advising people not to, because I had work to do. I carried 50-pound sacks of cake to the cows, chopped ice, ducked behind a windbreak when I could, put my free hand inside my shirt when it hurt too much, and drove back to the house more often to warm up. I walked slowly, so I wouldn’t gasp for deep, dangerous breaths.

Once I went out when I had nothing to do, really — just to look at everything with new eyes: to see how the animals were staying alive. Grouse clucked at me from bushy branches of a cedar, an owl dropped silently out of a broken barn window. The cows had gone over a hill to a gully on a south slope and didn’t reappear until two days later. Their eyelashes were frosty, but their month-old calves were fine. I resisted hunting for them in the deadliest weather, remembering my father’s rule:”A cow can stand more cold than you can.”

That’s what amazes me: that humans survive at all. We are so dependent on our machinery and our miracle fabrics, so overconfident about our often-wrong interpretations of nature, that I don’t understand how we’ve lasted this long. A freight train barrels into a town, out of control and speeding because the air brakes didn’t work. Anyone who has heard her own footsteps on a 30-below morning knows cold air is thinner. Misguided folks feed starving deer and chase them away from hunters, thinking to help. They fail to see that starving deer mean too many deer for available grass. They should thank hunters for killing them mercifully instead of letting them be smashed on the highway. Our lives are so nearly automated that a problem requiring thought can kill us — because we are not used to thinking.

And if you’re not thinking when the wind chill is 90 below zero, you can be dead. I reached above my head to pull a bale of hay into the pickup. Two dropped, knocking me backward. I was quick enough to roll over the side of the pickup. But heavier bales might have knocked the wind out of me, broken a bone, made me fall on my head. Later I could think of a half-dozen ways I might have been badly hurt. Ten minutes of lying in the snow would have killed me. Next time I didn’t stand below the bales. Another of my father’s rules flashed through my head:”When you’re handling cows, it helps to be smarter than the cow.” Or a bale of hay.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2005 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Terry’s Domain

By Jerry Wilson

Terry Hill builds domes where his clients live, from wide open pastures to tree-encircled homesteads.

During the Vietnam War, Terry Hill made himself a promise. If he got home, he would do for the rest of his life what he could enjoy. He’s kept that promise.

That doesn’t mean just sitting by the fire with a guitar in his hands, or building boats and floating the Missouri River, though those are among his favorite things. It means that the work he puts his hands to will be creative work, work without a boss, work in which he can take pride.

In Clay County, where he lives when a job or other fun doesn’t take him elsewhere, many have seen an unglamorous room of their home transformed by Terry’s hands. But it is for something more unique that he is known. He is South Dakota’s foremost builder of one-of-a-kind domes.

But don’t call him up and order a new dome for occupation in the spring. Terry isn’t about to hire a crew and advertise for jobs. He works alone most of the time, works his own hours — which may be well over eight — and has other priorities than finishing by a certain date.

The seed of dome building took root in Terry’s mind when he was a student of Dick Termes, the famed creator of Termespheres in Spearfish. If you’ve been to Deadwood’s Saloon No. 10, you’ve seen a spherical double of the historic establishment’s interior rotating above the bar. Termes’ sphere that encapsulates in one continuous scene Lewis and Clark’s voyage up the Missouri hangs in the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre.

But back to Terry Hill. Two things happened when he was a student at Black Hills State University in the early 1970s. Termes and others brought famed engineer and building designer Buckminster Fuller, the father of the geodesic dome, to Spearfish.

Terry Hill has built dozens of homes, ranging from relatively temporary and primitive structures to large, elaborate homes.

Terry had seen pictures of Fuller’s grandest dome, the United States pavilion at the 1967 Montreal Exhibition. Now he heard Fuller speak, and wandered through the dome that had been temporarily erected on campus. Terry would never be the same.

Then Termes decided to move inside a sphere. He asked Terry to build him a dome.

South Dakota’s most famous dome, USD’s Dakota Dome in Vermillion, is visible from the window of the dome where Terry lives. Terry has a personal connection to the sports arena. In 2001, steel replaced the Dakota Dome’s synthetic fabric roof that had kept football and basketball players dry for over 20 years — except for its second year, when the roof ripped under a load of snow. The fabric was repaired, but many yards of good material was up for grabs, and Terry got a share. He still takes inspiration from floating the Missouri River in the canoe he built and covered with a scrap of Dakota Dome roof.

But from an engineering standpoint, the Dakota Dome is a simple structure compared to Terry’s dome. It’s an icosahedron. Of the many domed homes Terry has built, no two are alike. What would be the fun in repeating a creative act when other challenges lay ahead? But an icosahedron?

“It’s one of the Platonic solids,” Terry explains,”one of the five three-dimensional shapes that have the same angles on all the faces.” He launches into an explanation of variations of the dome, but soon it is apparent that it would be simpler just to build one than try to make me understand. Tetrahedrons, four sides with equilateral triangles, I comprehend, since that sounds something like the more conventional house in which I live. But trying to visualize dodecahedrons, which have 12 sides and every face a pentagon, is another thing.

Terry tries again:”An icosahedron is a 20-sided Platonic solid, one of the natural forms Plato described 2,400 years ago. Lots of life forms, like crystals, are Platonic solids.” The bottom five facets of Terry’s house are missing, of course, replaced by a flat floor. So the walls and roof of his house consist of a mere 15 equal triangular sides.

Yankton native Ed Johnson and his wife, Michelle Martin and their family live in another Clay County dome that Terry built. They were living in Pocatello, Idaho, where Ed worked as a psychiatric nurse, when they saw the chance to move home to South Dakota.”Actually this was 25 years in the works,” Ed said as we lounged in the late afternoon light on his front steps.”When we lived in Pocatello, Terry came out and built a domed sauna for us. Johnny Dome Seed. I was always going to move back, and I knew that when I did, I wanted Terry to build a dome.”

We go inside for a look. This dome is larger than Terry’s, 40 feet in diameter. I marvel at the construction, but still struggle to visualize how such a house is put together.”Here,” Terry says,”I’ll show you.” He digs in his wallet for a well-worn card with three sets of numbers: A: .3486-10%; B: .4035-12%; C: .4124-12%.

The skeletal frame of one of Hill’s creations.

“So that’s all you need to know to build a dome,” says Ed, for whom Terry also built smaller domes for a guesthouse and a sauna. His roaring laugh tells me I’m not the only one in the dark.”I’m good at carrying things,” Ed adds.

“This is for a three-frequency dome,” Terry continues, as if he’s mixing so many eggs with so much milk and flour to make a cake.”There are three struts. This number times the radius in inches will give you the length. The 10 percent is the angle of the bevel at the end of the strut.”

Terry sees that conveying abstractions is hopeless, and like a good teacher, he resorts to show and tell. We step inside Plum Lodge, Ed and Michelle’s guesthouse. The interior of this 24-foot dome is unfinished, which makes construction techniques easier to grasp. In the open space I realize two other marvels of domes: They seem much larger inside than out, and they amplify our voices; we unconsciously adjust them down.

To talk about domes requires setting aside conventional assumptions about buildings, concepts like walls and roof. It’s like asking where a snake’s neck ends and its tail begins. Terry explains that”geodesic” means the shortest line between two points, and that a dome is built by connecting many points to form the many facets of the surface. I observe that every facet in this dome has either five or six sides — pentagons and hexagons — but even with evidence before my eyes, I’m glad I won’t be tested on the information that A struts radiate from the centers of pentagons, B struts are their border, and C struts radiate from the centers of hexagons. I did build my own house, but my mind takes refuge in straight walls, where the ideal corner is 90 degrees. My eyes glaze over and Terry gives it up with a laugh.

Talk about job security. Everybody admires Terry’s work, but few will take the challenge.”But I’m not advertising,” he reminds me.”I’m not looking for work.”

Both Terry and Ed are artists and musicians, and both speak of the calming feeling they gain from living in homes without corners or straight walls.”I don’t really think about it,” Ed says,”but I feel it. I had a good feeling when I first stepped into Dick Termes’ dome a quarter century ago, and I’d wanted one ever since.”

Ed speaks of the naturalness of round structures, the sacredness of the form in Native American cultures, which he thinks grew from reverence for the dome of the Earth. And in fact, Terry’s domes are far from the first in South Dakota. Centuries ago the Arikara lived in domed earth lodges along the Missouri, and Native dwellings from Lakota tipis to Inuit igloos to Navajo hogans are round.

In the more than three decades since he strolled through Buckminster Fuller’s dome, Terry Hill has built and lived in several of his own, once wintering in a dome that consisted of a parachute stretched over a lath frame.”It served well, actually,” he said. Most of his domes are far more substantial; he has built them as far away as Alaska, but most are in South Dakota.

In the winter of 1976, Terry, his wife and their newborn daughter were living in a primitive cabin near Custer.”There was a dome book in the cabin, which I was reading, and there were a bunch of little dead trees on the property, so I cut them down and made a little dome for a sauna,” he recalled.”That gave me the idea that I could actually build a dome to live in, so the next year I built a dome on my mother-in-law’s land west of Custer, and we lived there a couple of years.” Later, when Terry worked as a logger near Rochford, he lived in a primitive 12-foot dome he built near his work site, which he said was more comfortable than the winter he spent in a tipi near Deerfield Lake.

Word of Terry’s domes spread. Dick Termes called his former student and asked if he would build a domed studio next to his dome home near Spearfish. Another friend asked Terry to frame a dome for him near Nemo. He built one at Little Eagle on the Standing Rock Reservation, where in the absence of electricity he used a chain saw to frame the structure. The next he built near Fairbanks, Alaska.

In 2002, he began a large dome near Rochford, for Lucy Gange, an Eagle Butte native who is a professor at the University of North Dakota, but considers the Hills her home. The pair designed the house together, and each summer they built another phase.”Terry is the builder,” Lucy said.”I hold the dumb end.”

Hill built one of his signature domes for Spearfish artist Dick Termes, creator of the Termesphere.

This is the tallest dome Terry has built, four levels from the into-the-hillside ground floor to main floor to loft to reading cupola on top. Light filters through kaleidoscopic triangular stained glass windows, custom made by Carol Ellison of Rapid City. A pitch pine tree stands in the middle, now at the second level with lots of room to grow.”One thing I like about Terry is that he’s willing to incorporate what’s important to me,” Lucy said.

In an era when big crews frame a conventional house in a week, building a dome — especially the way Terry Hill builds them — is a different story. When Ed and Michelle decided to build, they found a long-abandoned farmhouse in a thick grove of trees in Clay County. Ed and Michelle were both working fulltime, so Terry mostly worked alone. But before construction on the 28-foot-tall dome could begin, Terry needed lumber.

Instead of calling the lumberyard, Terry disassembled the old farmhouse, a fine home that, judging by the inscription he found on a structural board, was built by Peter and Edwin Hesla in 1913, but was uninhabited for 50 years. Terry also tore down a deteriorating barn, and even salvaged lumber from the farmhouse where he grew up south of Wessington.”It was a little farm with cows and pigs and chickens, the kind that doesn’t exist now,” Terry said.”My folks moved to town, and the new owner was going to burn the house down. I said, ëGee, I’d like some of that lumber.’ So my old house lives on.”

“There’s even a sink in here from Terry’s family’s house,” Ed said.”And when we were building, we’d look up and there was a section of different-colored wood, like a patchwork quilt, and Terry would say, ëYeah that piece came from so and so.'”

Ed and Michelle’s 40-foot dome sits on a 32-foot, round concrete basement wall; the floor of the dome is cantilevered 4 feet out, giving the dome the appearance of a giant mushroom. Ed and his family moved in when the shell was finished, and the interior work continues. But in the meantime Terry built them a barn, a greenhouse and two more domes — the guesthouse, which Michelle dubbed Plum Lodge for the plum grove by which it stands, and a 12-foot sauna, also of recycled wood.

Most people these days are in too big a hurry to fool with recycling lumber. Once an old building is torn down, there are nails to pull. Some pieces will be damaged, so the lumber will not be uniform. But Terry prefers building with recycled wood. He’s not in a hurry, he likes reusing what would otherwise be burned or thrown away, and the quality of 50-year-old boards is generally superior to what is available today.”Plus I buzzed off about a hundred thousand logs in my lumbering days in the Black Hills,” he said.”I’ve got to atone for that.”

“Is there a downside to domes?” I asked.

“It’s definitely more work,” Terry said.”There are lots of angles. You can build a cube much faster.”

And besides not having big flat walls to hang oversized art on, are there drawbacks to living in a dome?

“I can’t think of anything,” Ed said.”I can even get my exercise in winter, power walking around the perimeter.”

Terry conceded that while domes are easy to heat, they’re harder to cool than conventional homes if exposed to the sun, because they have lots of surface to heat up and no attic to vent heat away. But Ed and Michelle avoided that problem by building amidst big ash trees that surrounded the old farmhouse their dome replaced.

Between domes, Terry still does conventional building and remodeling, but he’s happiest when conceiving and building a dome. He loves the beauty, the strength and the feel of the form, but he also likes knowing that for the material used, no other structure provides as much uplifting living space.

One other potential problem though. Without corners, where do spiders hang out?

“Don’t worry,” Ed said.”They find a place.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2004 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Animal Wisdom Stories

By Bernie Hunhoff


Mark McGinnis has a reputation as an artist who isn’t afraid to mix politics and paint. Nuclear weapons, socialism vs. capitalism and foreign policy are issues he has dealt with throughout his career.

So you can understand his friends’ surprise when he started a series on animals — buffalo, coyotes, mice, frogs and the like.

It developed almost by chance. In 1991, McGinnis was finishing a series on explorers. As usual, he found a controversial angle. He was comparing the explorers’ textbook reputations with his own expression of their lives based on historical research.

“One of the paintings was of Balboa and his dog, Leoncico,” says McGinnis. “To my surprise, I found painting the dog to be very enjoyable. I had never painted animals before.”

A year later, contemplating his next series and weary of confrontational art, he remembered the enjoyment of doing the dog and decided to create a series of animals based on Greek fables.

He soon changed the focus from Greek to Lakota/Dakota. “I thought it would be foolish to do a series on Greek fables when I was sitting in a homeland rich in animal stories of our own.”

As with all his projects, McGinnis began with extensive research. He studied Native American animal legends in turn-of-the-century books about Indian life.

At the same time, he became active in the South Dakota Peace and Justice Center and agreed to interview members of the Lakota and Dakota tribes for a newspaper project. He met many people on the reservations who knew similar animal stories. He also developed an even greater admiration for the Native American culture. “The people I interviewed really opened my eyes to the wonderful diversity of the Indian people and the wisdom that is there.”

When he visited with Indians about the animal stories, he found many knew the tales. “Sometimes they had a slightly different version, but I was amazed at how many had heard the stories before.”

Although Indian literature has historically been passed on orally rather than in written form, McGinnis says it has been preserved, and his goal is not to educate Indians about Indian stories. “This project is structured primarily for the European-American audience. I hope it gets some exposure to the Native Americans in the state, but I don’t think of myself in any way as a person who is going to teach them about their culture.”

Though McGinnis’ previous artistic subjects seemed foreign to South Dakota, he is not. Born and raised in Aberdeen, the son of a Milwaukee Railroad worker, he studied art at Northern State College. He received a master’s of fine arts degree from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and was working for an Indianapolis art gallery when Northern State offered him a teaching position in 1976.

He came home and taught art for 30 years. McGinnis is now retired from teaching but he’s still making art, specializing in acrylic, black ink and watercolor in Boise, Idaho.

The Meadowlark and the Rattlesnake

Once upon a time, there was a mother meadowlark. She had some little baby birds, but they weren’t quite ready to fly yet.

While she was sitting there with her little ones, a big rattlesnake came and coiled around her nest. She was very frightened. She feared for her little ones. She didn’t quite know what to do. She was shaking. Her heart was beating very fast. She had to think real fast about what to do. So she said,”Oh! Your uncle is here, your uncle almost never comes, finally came today, so I must cook for him!”

She turned to her oldest little one. She said,”Go and borrow a kettle, cause I must cook for your uncle. He must be very hungry. Hurry back with the kettle!”

So she sent the oldest one on. Pretty soon, he didn’t come back for a long time, so the snake waited there and kinda moved around a little bit and squeezed the nest a little bit tighter. And she got scared again so she told the second to the oldest son, she said,”You go find your brother, he must have got lost.”

So the next one [went]. She was just sitting there just talking, trying to keep the snake occupied. She ran out of things to say and the snake got restless because they didn’t come with the kettle. He moved closer and closer and coiled up his head.

She said to the youngest.”Go find your brothers! They should have been back. Maybe they both got lost. Bring the kettle cause your uncle is very hungry. I gonna cook for him,” she said.

So the youngest [ran] out of the nest and left. So now she had all the young ones out of the net, she flapped her wings and she flew up out of the nest as fast as she could. She said,”There, sit there and wait for whoever is going to cook for you.”

— Buckskin Tokens: Contemporary Oral Narratives of the Sioux by R.D. Theisz, editor (1975)

The Eagle and the Beaver

Out of the quiet blue sky there shot like an arrow the great War-eagle. Beside the clear brown stream an old Beaver-woman was busily chopping wood. Yet she was not too busy to catch the whir of descending wings, and the Eagle reached too late the spot where she had vanished in the midst of the shining pool

He perched sullenly upon a dead tree nearby and kept his eyes steadily upon the smooth sheet of water above the dam.


After a time the water was gently stirred, and a sleek, brown head cautiously appeared above it.


“What right have you,” reproached the Beaver-woman,”to disturb thus the mother of a peaceful and hard-working people?”

“Ugh, I am hungry,” the Eagle replied shortly.

“Then why not do as we do — let other folks alone and work for a living?”

“That is all very well for you,” the Eagle retorted,”but not everybody can cut down trees with his teeth or live upon bark and weeds in a mud-plastered wigwam. I am a warrior, not an old woman!”

“It is true that some people are born trouble-makers,” returned the Beaver quietly.”Yet I see no good reason why you, as well as we, should not be content with plain fare and willing to toil for what you want. My work, moreover, is of use to others besides myself and my family, for with my dam-building I deepen the stream for the use of all the dwellers therein, while you are a terror to all living creatures that were weaker than yourself. You would do well to profit by my example.”

So saying, she dove down again to the bottom of the pool.

The Eagle waited patiently for a long time, but he saw nothing more of her; and so, in spite of his contempt for the harmless industry of an old Beaver-woman, it was he, not she, who was obliged to go hungry that morning.

— Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales Retold by Charles and Elaine Eastman (1909)

The Raccoon and the Crawfish

Sharp and cunning is the raccoon, say the Indians, by whom he is named Spotted Face.

A crawfish one evening wandered along a riverbank looking for something dead to feast. A raccoon was also looking for something to eat. He spied the crawfish and formed a plan to catch him.

He lay down on the bank and feigned to be dead. By the by, the crawfish came nearby.”Ho,” he thought,”here is a feast indeed, but is he really dead? I will go near and pinch him with my claws and find out.”

So he went near and pinched the raccoon on the nose and then on his soft paws. The raccoon never moved. The crawfish then pinched him on the ribs and tickled him so the raccoon could hardly keep from laughing. The crawfish at last left him.”The raccoon is surely dead,” he thought. And he hurried back to the crawfish village and reported his find to the chief.

All the villagers were called to go down to the feast. The chief bade the warriors and young men to paint their faces and dress in their gayest for a dance.

So they marched in a long line — first the warriors, with their weapons in hand, then the women with their babies and children — to the place where the raccoon lay. They formed a great circle about him and danced, singing:

We shall have a great feast

On the spotted-face beast, with the soft smooth paws:

He is dead!

He is dead!

We shall dance!

We shall have a good time

We shall feast on his flesh.

But as they danced, the raccoon suddenly sprang to his feet.

“Who is that you say you are going to eat? He has a spotted face, has he? He has soft paws, has he? I’ll break your ugly backs. I’ll break your rough bones. I’ll crunch your ugly, rough paws.” And he rushed among the crawfish, killing them by the scores. The crawfish warriors fought bravely and the women ran screaming, all to no purpose. They did not feast on the raccoon; the raccoon feasted on them!

— Myths and Legends of the Sioux by Marie McLaughlin (1916)

The Little Mice

Once upon a time, a prairie mouse busied herself all fall storing away a cache of beans. Every morning she was out early with her empty cast-off snakeskin, which she filled with ground beans and dragged home with her teeth.

The little mouse had a cousin who was fond of dancing and talk but who did not like to work. She was not careful to get her cache of beans, and the season was already well gone before she thought to bestir herself. When she came to realize her need she found she had no packing bag, so she went to her hardworking cousin and said,”Cousin, I have no beans stored for the winter, and the season is nearly gone. But I have no snakeskin to gather the beans in. Will you lend me one?”

“But why have you no packing bag? Where were you in the moon when the snakes cast off their skins?”

“I was here.”

“What were you doing?”

“I was busy talking and dancing.”

“And now you are punished,” said the other.”It is always so with lazy careless people. But I will let you have the snakeskin. And now go, and by hard work and industry try to recover your wasted time.”

— Myths and Legends of the Sioux by Marie McLaughlin (1916)

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 1993 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Rally Ritual

By Debora Dragseth

Each year, when motorcycle enthusiasts gather in Sturgis, the town’s population swells from 6,500 to 500,000. Photo by Ron Linton

The outrageous phenomenon known as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally has evolved into a week-long, $987 million party for nearly half a million people. Every August, the city of Sturgis in the northern Black Hills hosts biking enthusiasts in a combination carnival, racing event, party, music festival and shopping mall.

It’s the oldest, biggest, loudest, most authentic and out-of-control motorcycle rally in the world. Sturgis’ small population, 6,500, skyrockets to become the largest city in the state by a factor of three. That equates to each household in town hosting 183″guests.” Consider this for comparison: New York City: 26,402 persons per square mile. South Dakota: 9.9 persons per square mile. Sturgis (projected): 160,427 persons per square mile.

If past rallies are any indication, nearly 500 festivalgoers will land in jail. Hundreds more will receive tickets for violations such as indecent exposure, open container or driving on the sidewalk. Some 350 will require emergency room visits, two or three will die of heart attacks and a half-dozen or more will die in traffic accidents. Keeping its guests safe costs the city of Sturgis over $1 million in insurance, increased law enforcement, attorney costs and fire and ambulance services. Nobody has tabulated the costs to the state’s judicial and state prison systems.

The town’s temporary denizens come clad in skullcaps, sunglasses, boots, sleeveless shirts and black leather. Tattoos are standard, piercings optional. Body paint, thongs and pasties will do for women. For men, cleanliness is not a virtue; grimy grubbiness is fine and chest hair encouraged. Don’t come to Sturgis looking for metrosexuals — they’re as rare as pedal bicycles.

The streets are thick with beautiful, scantily dressed women, but the real beauties are the motorcycles, their chrome sparkling in the sun as though they had just left a showroom floor. Even visitors who don’t live the motorcycle culture will marvel at the thousands of custom-painted Harley Davidsons parked four rows deep and lined up for blocks. Many are true works of visual art, and they make beautiful music. Few noises compare to the undulating river of 700-pound motorcycles. Hunter S. Thompson described it as”a burst of dirty thunder.”

Author Debora Dragseth may live in Sturgis, but during the rally she looks like an outsider next to the thousands of tattooed and bearded bikers.

But strip away all the aesthetics and the Sturgis Rally is an economic engine that drives state tourism and represents capitalism at its finest. According to a survey funded by the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, $987 million comes into South Dakota annually from the event. Rally-goers pay an inflated $5.50 for a beer at the world’s largest biker bar. Fortunately, a free pancake breakfast is served daily by the Son of Light Ministry, whose sign proclaims,”Flapjacks along with the word of God. And the best part — they’re both free!” In the same vein, the Christian Motorcycle Association will bless your bike while offering you a free bike wash, coffee and pancakes.

Tens of thousands of people get”inked” at the rally.”A decision that will last a lifetime,” warns the tattoo artist who works in a small concrete building that just last week was a beauty parlor. Many local businesses are”repurposed,” in other words, closed down and rented out to vendors for handsome sums. Grocery stores, gas stations and a local department store remain open for business; high demand items include sunscreen, pillows and energy drinks. The only liquor store in town is city-owned, a smart move on the part of Sturgis’ founding fathers given that rally-goers drink an estimated 3 million gallons of beer. On average, visitors stay 5.5 days and spend $180 per day.”It’s like a really loud relative comes to your house, stuffs your pockets full of money and leaves a week later,” quipped one Sturgis citizen.

Demand exceeds the supply of hotel rooms, camping spots and bathrooms. Hotel rates double and triple, climbing as high as $300 a night for a room — and most lodgings within 50 miles are full. It seems as though every square foot in town is rented to someone: locals rent their homes for $3,000 to $10,000 a week; some even rent their yards to campers who pitch tents or park bikes. City law limits homeowners to 19 renters per property.

Three types of people come to the Sturgis Rally. First, the casual observers who ride occasionally or not at all. They’re easy to spot — they point a lot and look awestruck, like kindergarteners on the first day of school. They carry shopping bags filled with T-shirts as proof to the folks back home that they risked the mayhem and rubbed shoulders with the black leather crowd.

Next are the recreational riders. Mostly in their late 40s and 50s, they own bikes but don’t belong to biker clubs. They ride their Harleys only on sunny and mild weekends. They trailer their $35,000 bikes to the rally behind big pickups with heated leather captain’s seats. This group offers the best opportunity for vendors. They look like walking billboards for the Harley-Davidson brand, and buying the fantasy of the biker subculture does not come cheap.

Finally, there are the bikers whose leather jackets have a cracked”been there, done that” patina that matches their sunburned faces. (You don’t get that look by hauling your bike on a trailer or riding on weekends.) Their bikes have never seen a trailer, they do their own tune-ups, they sport socially offensive tattoos and they don’t own rain gear.

Although it’s impossible to determine the exact number of people at the rally, city officials use several metrics, including traffic counts and taxable receipts. Over 700 temporary vendors set up in the city, hawking everything from $2 rubber bracelets to $125,000 custom-made motorcycles. For a more ingenious method of estimating crowd size, the locals measure the quantity of what’s left behind. Over 500 tons of”rally garbage” was hauled away in 2011, and the town doesn’t expect this year’s guests to leave any less.

The rally has been held annually in Sturgis since 1938 with the exception of two years during World War II when gas rationing prevented recreational travel. Nine racers participated in the first rally, competing for $750 in prize money in front of a small crowd of racing enthusiasts who paid 50 cents admission. Attendance hit 800 in 1960 and 2,000 by 1970. This year, the city expects 500,000.

Campgrounds (empty fields during the rest of the year) pulsate with rock bands from high noon to early morning. The largest, the infamous 600-acre Buffalo Chip, has been estimated to host 25,000 rowdy revelers, transforming overnight into the third largest city in the state. Like several local campgrounds, it doubles as a concert venue. The Buffalo Chip also offers less conventional entertainment — topless beauty contests, redneck games and a shooting arcade for grownups billed as the ultimate Second Amendment experience. Participants can choose from World War I, World War II, Korean and Vietnam War era weapons and receive the training required for a 35-state concealed carry permit.

All the entertainment provides for some unusual entrepreneurial activity in South Dakota. Zackiary Crouch, a third-generation hair stylist, has the enviable job of making female bartenders look pretty. During the rally he works 14-hour days beginning at 5:30 a.m.”The rally isn’t as glamorous as it sounds,” he insists.”Girls who have been living at a campground and haven’t showered for a week are like a Monet, pretty from far away, but close up — a bit nasty.” During the 2011 rally, Crouch saw a heart attack and a stabbing both on the same day. At One-Eyed Jacks Saloon, where he has headquartered for the past five years, the self-described”gay kid of Sturgis” defines his job as a combination of hostess, hairdresser and psychologist.

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally seems like an anomaly to South Dakotans, but such events hearken back to ancient times. The Romans celebrated what anthropologists call rituals of reversal, times in the yearly calendar that allowed patricians, plebeians, and slaves to abandon the constraints of an ordered culture. The society enjoyed a”time out” during these festivals when people could break the rules without fear of recrimination. Reversal rituals included a strong sexual focus, anonymity, costumes, feasting to excess and some form of intoxicant to reduce inhibitions.

Tony Bender, an avid biker and former news director and publisher of Sturgis’ local newspaper, The Meade County Times-Tribune, spoke to what the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally really means.”I think it is one of the great expressions of American freedom. The open road, the sense of rebellion, the pulse of the V-twin motors … and yet, a real sense of brotherhood.”

Want to unleash your id? Come to Sturgis. My 6,500 neighbors and I are happy to see you, but to be honest, we’ll be kind of happy to see you safely leave as well. Go home, shower and shave, put on your khaki Dockers and your loafers, and squeeze back into your cubicle. In other words, get back to work — you will need to pay off your August credit card bill.

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

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Our Three States

By Patrick S. Halley

America is a great country for diversity. The notion of freedom and opportunity has attracted foreigners to our shores for more than 200 years and created the patchwork of identities and cultures that gives us strength. The vastness of our land area and the diversity of terrain and climate have appealed to different peoples, all of whom have found a place in our nation to call home. A by-product of this diversity can be the rather murky perceptions that one group of Americans has of another.

As a native of Boston, neither my friends nor I had much occasion to focus on South Dakota. When I announced that I planned to spend several months there working on a political campaign I got some curious reactions. Most Bostonians easily confuse South Dakota with its less populated neighbor to the north. I was asked if my office would be in Fargo and how I would like life along the Canadian border.

Another popular misconception is that all of South Dakota is mountainous”wild west” country. This is certainly true of the state’s magnificent Black Hills, but I hardly think farmers along the James River Valley feel much like mountaineers, or cowboys for that matter. Many Bostonians are smug (as they are generally wont to be) in their ignorance and proclaim without the slightest doubt that Sioux Falls is one of the larger cities in Iowa. Of course, I knew better. I had been through the state 15 years ago, seen all there is to see and knew everything there is to know. Or so I thought.

What follows is the result of three months of extensive research. The observations cited and the conclusions reached are the product of many hours of exhaustive probing. Data collection took place throughout the state, from the nightclubs and city streets of Sioux Falls to the cafes in White and Kadoka. No efforts were spared. I dined at the fanciest French restaurant in Sioux Falls, climbed Mount Rushmore and spoke on the steps of the state capitol in Pierre. I also ate at a pork roast in Pukwana, hunted pheasant where none existed and had a newspaper interview in a small northeastern town, where I had to ask all the questions as well as answer them. I therefore offer you an informed Bostonian’s view of the great state of South Dakota.

The first significant thing I learned upon close examination is that there are really three states calling themselves South Dakota. Each has a state capital, a unique economy and a fiercely independent identity. All three meet for a brief summit each year in a neutral place (Pierre), and then return to resume their mutually exclusive co-existence.

East River South Dakota is the most populous state. Its capital is Sioux Falls, which serves as its center for commerce, culture and information. The state runs on a north/south axis along route I-29 and extends as far west as the James River Valley through Mitchell and Huron, north to Aberdeen.

Residents of East River South Dakota are Scandinavian Americans. They drink their coffee black (and plenty of it), root for the Minnesota Twins and Vikings, wear seed caps and call themselves farmers if they are involved in agriculture. Residents of East River South Dakota observe Central Standard Time. They tend to feel the residents of West River are less sophisticated and think mostly of that end of the state as a nice place to visit.

The second largest state is West River South Dakota. Its capital is Rapid City, and it, too, runs on a north/south axis from Hot Springs through Custer, north to Lead, Deadwood, Sturgis, Spearfish and Belle Fourche. Residents of West River South Dakota are western Europeans. They drink their coffee with cream and sugar. They root for the Denver Broncos, wear cowboy hats and call themselves ranchers if they’re involved in agriculture. Residents of West River South Dakota observe Mountain Time. They tend to feel residents of East River South Dakota are snobby and think mostly of that end of the state as a place they’d rather not visit.

The third state of South Dakota is Indian South Dakota. It is spread out over a vast area, with nine identifiable municipalities. The capital is Pine Ridge. Residents of Indian South Dakota are Native Americans. They were here first and now want more of their land back, a claim that particularly bothers West River South Dakotans. Indian South Dakotans are not as visibly committed to coffee, sports or agriculture as South Dakotans from neighboring states, but theirs is the strongest culture. Residents of Indian South Dakota observe a less defined notion of time. They tend to believe that they got along just fine for a long time without either East River or West River at their borders and could easily do so again.

There are other South Dakota colloquialisms and idiosyncrasies that catch the eye:

You Bet –“You Bet” is South Dakotan for”yes,””you’re right,””you’re welcome,””happy to help” and quite a few other phrases. It is typical of South Dakotans’ economy with words, an economy no doubt born of necessity in the cold of a South Dakota winter.

The Wave — The wave is done on back roads and in remote areas. I’m not sure, but I think it may require a pickup truck or a Jeep to be official. Here’s how it is done: two vehicles approach one another from opposite directions, usually trailing a rooster tail of dust. At approximately 50 yards, the drivers of each vehicle raise the index finger of their right hand from the steering wheel without releasing their grip on the wheel. This particular greeting is unique to South Dakota. We have a similar signal in Massachusetts, but it involves a different finger and has a significantly different meaning.

The Nod — South Dakotans are skeptical by nature. This is particularly so when the person talking is from out of town. The stoic nature of these people of the land can be somewhat disconcerting for someone from the East, where emotions are more vociferously displayed. There is one way to know that your message is getting across. It’s the nod. After you’ve done your best to state your case, there is a long and silent pause. If there is no agreement someone will eventually mention that they have to be getting along. But, if you really hit home, what happens is a slight, almost imperceptible, nod. This is done in unison as if on cue. It means that your message has gotten across and they don’t think you’re full of what they spread behind their tractors to make crops grow.

Visit — In Boston a visit involves going to someone’s home. It means, generally, that you have received an invitation to be there. In South Dakota people visit all the time, with or without an invitation. It can even be done at their offices or over the telephone, as in,”I called Dave on the phone and we just visited for a while.”

Say — South Dakotans are polite people and wouldn’t think of saying things like,”Yo! Listen up,” in the middle of a conversation. However, they have devised a more genteel but no less effective means of accomplishing the same thing. It’s called,”Say.” If in the middle of a”visit” (see above) a South Dakotan uses the word”say,” as in”Say, Mary, can I borrow a cup of flour?” It means,”OK, we’ve gotten the formalities covered. I’m now going to ask you a direct question. I want you to pay attention and give me a direct answer.” Not bad for one little word.

Leaving Things Unlocked –People in South Dakota don’t lock things up very often. One friend of mine agreed to lock her house since she was going out of town for the weekend only to find that she didn’t own any keys to her house.

In Boston, the car theft capital of the world, you can almost get your car stolen by slowing down at a stop sign. In South Dakota, people routinely leave keys in their cars and sometimes leave the cars running while they go into the store for a quart of milk or loaf of bread. In South Dakota that means you’ll have a warm car when you return. In Boston it would mean you’re going to be walking home.

Checks for Everything — As far as I can tell, it’s illegal in South Dakota to pay cash for anything except cigarettes and coffee. Sandwiches at the sub shop, dry cleaning, gas and meals at restaurants all must be paid by personal check. This is different from Boston, where an attempt to pay for any of these things by check would be met with gales of laughter and a firm rejection. In the few places in Boston where you can pay by check you must bring your maternal grandmother and the doctor who delivered you for positive identification. No wonder there’s no crime in South Dakota — no one ever carries any money. What are they going to do, steal your checkbook?

About the author — Pat Halley is an author and political strategist. He fell in love with South Dakota years ago as he traveled across the state in a 1973 Plymouth. He wrote this column one afternoon while sitting in his Boston office listening to big city noises and dreading the traffic on the commute home.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2006 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Advice from South Dakota Dads

In honor of Father’s Day, we asked South Dakota Magazine staff members for their favorite bits of fatherly advice, pet phrases and the like. If you’re a South Dakota dad looking to make your mark, take notes — or follow contributing editor Paul Higbee’s lead. “As a dad, if you find yourself in a situation where you have no wisdom to offer, try to at least be witty,” Paul says. “It’s hard to imagine a really good dad who isn’t funny on a regular basis.”


Andrea (center) with mother Lorri and father Spud.

Leland “Spud” Clark

My dad’s words of wisdom were also his dad’s words of wisdom. “Always carry,” “You can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one you have more of”‘ and “I’m gonna get my belt!” were perennial favorites. I never got the belt, but Dad did.
— Andrea Clark Maibaum, production manager

Bernard Hunhoff, Sr.

“Oh, it’ll be ok,” was Dad’s reply when Mom worried about one of us, and his standard reply to most crises unless it involved troubled farm machinery. Then he wasn’t always as positive.
— Bernie Hunhoff, founder & editor at large

Heidi and her father Doyle riding Purgatory and Rachetta. Sadly, Cakes probably stayed home for this outing.

Doyle Stevens

Growing up, we had a fat, stubborn horse named Cakes. She was adored by kids because she never turned down fresh grass and she never moved faster than a trot. Her one vice was being led into a trailer. We’d pull and tug on her lead rope and she’d tug back even harder. It usually ended with my dad leaving her home. ‘We don’t need that fat cow anyway!’ he’d snort under his breath. We finally discovered that it was the tugging on the lead rope that made Cakes so mad. Once the lead rope fell to the ground and she walked into the trailer on her own. “Huh,” said Dad, “Sometimes you have to let go and see what the other side does.” Letting go. Who knew? Well, I’m pretty sure Dad knew.
— Heidi Marsh, publisher
Frank, John and baby Joe.

Frank Andrews

Dad was never into gadgets and gizmos. All the extras — even power windows on vehicles — were just things that would eventually break and have to be replaced. He came along with us when we were shopping for our first house in Yankton, and I consulted him on major purchases after that. Every time he reminded me that the fancy add-ons were often just not necessary. You probably can’t find a decent car these days with crank windows, but I try to keep it simple as often as I can.
— John Andrews, managing editor

Bernie Hunhoff

My dad has always preached that ideas come easy and the real work (and fun) happens after you settle on an idea.
— Katie Hunhoff, publisher

Lewis Johnson

Father’s a bit of a free spirit. Me, not so much, but I’ve always admired his attitude. I’ve spent decades trying to process particular pearl of Dad wisdom: “As long as you’re having a good time, it doesn’t matter if anyone else is.” Maybe in another 40 years, I’ll get there.
— Laura Johnson Andrews, circulation and marketing manager

Gary Pederson

My dad recently retired from a long, successful career in sales. He’s given me a lot of good advice, but one thing that stands out is the importance of a good handshake. I had to practice it with him when I was a kid. First he showed me what he described as a dead fish or wussy handshake — gentle grasp or just grabbing hold of someone’s fingers. Then he taught me a good firm shake, palm to palm, not too short, not too long. I don’t find myself in a lot of hand-shaking situations, but I think I get some weak ones because I am a woman. Whenever I get a limp handshake, I think of my dad and how he would not be impressed.
— Rebecca Johnson, special projects coordinator

A self-portrait of Joe Holtzmann, Jr. as a young man in the 1940s, working in his photographic darkroom.

Joe Holtzmann, Jr.

Mom and Dad had a strict division of labor when I was growing up: Dad went to work and Mom took care of the house. Thus it was quite surprising to find Dad in front of the stove one day, spatula in hand, preparing to fry an egg. “Make sure the pan is hot before you put the egg in,” he advised, taking advantage of the teaching moment. And so I have from that day to this.
— Roger Holtzmann, contributing editor

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Heartbeat of Mother Earth

By Ried Holien

Dancers relate to winged and four-legged relatives through bones, quills and feathers that adorn their regalia. Photo by Greg Latza.

A pow wow is a living celebration of everything it means to be Native American. It would be difficult to find a cultural celebration that commands more meaning, history and devotion. The spiritual atmosphere of the pow wow is as pervasive as that of a Lutheran potluck dinner. The music and dance keep ancient traditions alive, and dancers prepare themselves with as much care as seniors for high school prom. Participants honor tradition at pow wows, but concede to modern life by driving there in cars and trucks. For non-Native Americans, imagine attending a family wedding, partying with hundreds of friends and family all dressed up in their finest clothes, dancing for hours, eating until it hurts. Then, when everything is over, you head to the next town to do it again next weekend. To repeat: pow wows are unique.

The history of American Indian dance and music stretches back thousands of years, but the pow wow as we know it is less than a century old. Pow wows slowly became organized events much like old displays of cowboy skills eventually evolved into rodeos. “Pow wow” is an Algonquin word referring to a specific medicine man dance. Whites then misapplied the word. “This term is far from universal,” writes Bernard Mason in Dances and Stories of the American Indian. “Many tribes regarded the word as foreign to them. [However] in the popular parlance of today, any Indian dance or gathering is apt to be called a pow wow.” In South Dakota, you may hear “wacipi” (translated as: “the people’s dance”) instead of pow wow.

There was a time, however, when neither term could be used. When United States soldiers forced Native Americans onto reservations, our government essentially banned American Indian culture. “They [pow wows] were outlawed for many years,” said Earnest Wabasha, hereditary Chief of the Eastern Dakota Nation. However, Wabasha says, “There was no way they could’ve completely eliminated pow wows. The people just wouldn’t let that happen. They would get together. They knew where secret places were and they let each other know by word of mouth and they would all show up there. Our culture and our traditions and our spiritual life, well our whole way of life, kept going that way.”

To fool authorities, these meetings were sometimes disguised as celebrations of “white” holidays, like Independence Day. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Pow wow has occurred over the Fourth of July for 150 years, making it one of the longest running events in South Dakota and among the world’s oldest established pow wows. Now, however, the date has more to do with the three-day weekend than with any secret agenda.

In summer, a pow wow takes place every weekend somewhere in the Midwest. Legions of dancers, singers, concession-stand vendors and fans follow this ” Pow wow Circuit.” Every weekend becomes a sort of family reunion where you see old friends, and make new ones — all the time reveling in a positive atmosphere.

The Drum

“One of the most important things in the life of a Native American is the drum,” says Paul Gowder, who maintains the Pow Wow Dancing website. “Our whole culture centers around the drum. Without the drum and the singers around it, the Native Americans could not have pow wows. The drum brings the heart beat of our Earth Mother for all to feel and hear. Drumming brings everyone back into balance. Whether dancing, singing, or just listening, people around the drum can connect with the spirit.”

The drum sets the pace at the Flandreau Pow wow, echoing the heartbeat of the sacred buffalo. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism.

Strict rules are followed around the drum, whether it is a typical band bass drum or one with a traditional wooden frame and head of leather. The Head Singer enforces drum protocol. “Being Head Singer is a great honor,” says Gowder. “The Head Singer has the first and last word and has complete control of what goes on at the drum. Songs are started with a lead line sung by the Head Singer. This lets the drum group and the dancers know what song is coming. After the lead line, the second (another person at the drum) will take up the lead line, and everyone will join in. At this point the dancers beg in to dance.”

“Few non-Indian people recognize the importance of song to the American Indian,” says George P. Horse Capture, author of Pow Wow. “Fewer still can detect the structure of our songs because they are vastly different from the European or ‘American’ ones. To the untrained ear all Indian songs may sound alike. One can understand this situation better by comparing ‘hard rock’ to ‘disco.’ To the untrained or unappreciative ear, they too sound alike; but their individuality is readily distinguished by connoisseurs of those styles. And so it is with Indian songs.

“Indian songs have few words; most songs have none. Years ago only the Sioux people favored wording. Most tribal songs use vowel-like sounds such as ‘hey, yah, lay.’ The exact ‘vowels’ are not as important as their tones or notes in the musical scale.”

Historically, Sioux songs told stories of honor and bravery. Even without words, songs can still speak of legends in the feeling expressed. Other songs resemble modern pop music, simply pushing one to dance, dance, dance.

“Indian people have a unique musical system,” says Horse Capture. “There are no set rules of composition, no teachers and no concerts. Yet, like many aspects of our culture, the music has endured for many thousands of years.”

Dancing

Centuries ago, when warriors returned from hunting and battle, they stopped outside their camps to make sure they looked their best. They wanted to arrive like the heroes they were. Later, they acted out their exploits in front of others. They performed certain movements to show hunting buffalo, stealing horses or killing an enemy. Eventually, these movements became accepted steps, and dancing evolved.

Dancing connects the young to ancient traditions. Photo by Tom Nelson.

Today’s pow wow dances harken back to these ancient traditions. Men perform a grass dance, which is reminiscent of when warriors searched out new locations for campsites. At that time, tall prairie grass grew everywhere. Before setting up tipis, the grass had to be matted down, so warriors stomped and swayed in a grass-flattening dance. Those steps are still performed on the mowed grass and hardwood auditorium floors of modern pow wows.

Other dances arose from spiritual stories. A century ago, a medicine man at the Mille Lacs Reservation in northern Minnesota was told in a dream to put his gravely ill daughter in a dress decorated with chimes and to have her dance around a circle. The girl had to be carried the first time around. On the second loop, she walked with aid. On the third rotation, she was healed. This dance survives as the Women’s Jingle Dress.

A jingle dress is made by rolling the lids of chewing tobacco cans into cones, then tying them onto the dress. A skilled dancer gets the cones clinking from knees to shoulders, making a sound like soft rain.

Men and women perform different dances. Men’s categories are: Grass, Fancy, Straight and Traditional. Women perform Buckskin, Cloth, Fancy Shawl and Jingle Dress dances. Dancers are judged on their ability and regalia. They are grouped by sex, according to age, from seniors to “tiny tots.”

All dancers, regardless of style, must stop precisely on the last drumbeat of the song. Dancers must be knowledgeable to sense when the end is coming. Bernard Mason points out that some dancers, ìhave an individual and distinctive way of ending a dance, a sort of personalized sign, a rhythmic signature. Knowing when the dance will end, they stop precisely on the final drumbeat, each with his own little flourish. With no song to indicate the ending, a louder beat of the drum can be used as a signal that in eight counts the drumming will stop. Each dancer then starts to write his signature in rhythm.”

At most pow wows you will see a special dance called a “giveaway.” Native Americans judge a person’s value by what they give away, not by what they accumulate. Giveaways honor a person by giving gifts to others in the honored person’s name. Personal milestones, such as high school graduation, provide reasons for giveaways.

Regalia

Don’t call what a dancer wears a “costume,” in the sense that they are donning their clothes for a performance. Circus performers wear costumes. Dancers wear “pow wow dress” or “regalia.”

Dedicated dancers on the pow wow circuit train like Olympic athletes in order to perform at top level every weekend. Still, they must pay as much attention to their regalia as they do to their muscles. Dancers constantly mend their dress because beads fall, buttons fly and feathers jostle while performing.

While each dance style requires specific regalia, there remain some common characteristics. Men wear a headdress called a “roach,” made of porcupine quills. Around their necks are chokers, and on their chests are breastplates, both made of hairpipe or dentalium. Some prefer mirrors to breastplates. Dancers apply facial paint in a particular color and pattern to honor ancestors, or to accentuate personal power. Although some wear Nikes and Reeboks, beaded leather moccasins are preferred.

Women rely on one of two basic dresses: buckskin or cloth. They wear chokers or shawls around necks. Most carry fans or purses. Belts, colorfully beaded or shiny with brass tacks, hold traditional items like knife cases and pouches.

Men must be in full regalia to dance; women need only wear a shawl. “Perhaps the greatest area for creativity,” says Horse Capture, “is their shawls. Spread across the back, the shawl is held by the ends.” In geometric and floral patterns, women decorate shawls to express devotion to a reservation, a club, a symbol, a color, or an animal.” It is mesmerizing to see all the girls do the same dance, but doing it with their own flair and own look.”

All dancers share one characteristic: bells. “To the dancer, bells are well-nigh indispensable,” says Mason. “Bells on one’s ankles reinforce the drum. The custom goes back for we know not how long. Before the white man came the ‘bells’ of the dancing Indian were the dewclaws made of hoofs, often attached to turtle shells for louder sound. But once sleigh bells were to be had the Indians reached out for them avidly. Few things that the white man brought were received with such enthusiasm.”

Grand Entry

Grand Entry marks the beginning of every pow wow, and it reflects the wonderful warrior entrance of old. A time of pomp and circumstance, the audience stands as all participants enter in order of importance. First to enter are veterans carrying flags. The Stars and Stripes is always there, usually next to an “Indian flag,” which is a curved staff wrapped in buffalo hide, adorned with eagle feathers. Elders come next. Dancers, dressed in full regalia, enter led by Men’s Traditional, followed by Men’s Fancy, Women’s Traditional and so on until, after around 30 minutes, everyone has entered.

Once everyone is in place, two songs are performed. The first is patriotic in nature, and may be “The Star Spangled Banner” sung in a Native tongue. The second is an honor song done in respect to the event. After an invocation by an elder, and sometimes a speech by a politician or a pow wow princess, the fun begins.

Pow wow Committee

Ice cream transcends all cultural boundaries, and sharing food is an important part of the social gathering.

Each tribe appoints a committee to make sure the pow wow runs smoothly, and to extend hospitality. “We feed everyone at least one meal a day at no charge,” says Lillian Wanna, board member for the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Nation’s annual pow wow. “We feel that when people come to an Indian home they shouldn’t go hungry. We want to take care of everyone who is our guest. Thatís why we feed people. We want to be good hosts.” Both host and guest feel good, then, when everyone gets stuffed on roast beef, hot dogs, corn on the cob, buffalo or ethnic specialties like soup, Indian tacos, frybread and wojapi (a fruit pudding).

“It takes all year to organize our pow wow,” says Wanna. “We start right away after the last one. The grounds need upkeep. We register and organize dancers and vendors. We make posters. And, of course, we raise funds. We do lots of raffles and dances and such. We might have almost 1,500 dancers and over four thousand people in the audience. That’s a lot of mouths to feed, which means a lot of money to raise.”

As tribal council secretary, Kenita Taylor handled nearly everything associated with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Fair and Rodeo. Held annually over Labor Day, it features a four-day pow wow. “It takes me nearly six months after each pow wow just to pay the bills and post them and finish all the paperwork,” says Taylor. “Then, right away, I start working on next year’s event. I handle all the purchase orders. We order the oil cloth to label each dancer with numbers. We contract out portable toilets. And we handle camping. It fills up pretty well at the grounds. And, of course, we have to handle the arrangements to feed all the people.”

The pow wow committee must also select their Master of Ceremonies. The emcee makes the event move along, provides running commentary, relates background information, reunites lost kids with parents and tells jokes. Each emcee has a different style: some are like history professors, and others like stand-up comics.

The most important decision a pow wow committee must make is whether to have a Contest or Traditional Pow wow. At contest pow wows, judges rule on dancing skill, regalia and song-knowledge, awarding money to the top-ranked participants. Prize money can be sizable. The nation’s best competition dancers, such as Jonathan Windy Boy, make more than $50,000 a year by competing every week. A traditional pow wow offers day money (about $50) to all dancers and singers. Participants still perform their best, but the event carries a more laid-back feel.

Editorís Note: This story is revised from the July/August 1999 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.