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Local Experts’ Dining Tips

By Katie Hunhoff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Writers of the Iron Road

By Michael Zimny

Wakinyan Chief works in Rapid City’s art alley.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Famus” passes through Buffalo Gap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A train model by Charlie Davis.

“Foamer” is slang for rail fans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Credit Or Blame The Aberdeen Priest

By Katie Hunhoff

South Dakota was the first state to allow voters to enact or block laws through the initiative and referendum process. Since then, we the people have passed laws on corporate farms, Right to Work, term limits, Daylight Saving Time, the minimum wage, nuclear waste and even dove hunting.

Our process of voter-enacted laws and referendums is getting a lot of attention in this year’s legislative session in Pierre. Depending on your point of view, you can credit or blame a Catholic priest from Aberdeen for all the fuss. Father Robert Haire is known as the father of the initiative and referendum. Born in Michigan in 1845, he grew up in an Irish Presbyterian family. He taught school as a young man and boarded with an Irish Catholic family who inspired him to convert in 1865. He eventually entered the seminary, became a priest and then headed west to Brown County, Dakota Territory with several of his parishioners, arriving on June 26, 1880. The next day he said his first Mass in a sod shanty, and began to plan for Brown County’s first Catholic Church.

He founded a school, Presentation Academy, in 1888. And he became the state leader of the Knights of Labor, as well as the group’s newspaper editor. From there his political involvement blossomed. He was active in the Dakota Farmers Alliance, a group created to protect farmers’ interests from politicians, corporations and railroads. Haire directed the Alliance’s political wing, which later become the Populist Party. He advocated the idea of the initiative and referendum for years before it became a part of the Populists’ platform.

Haire distrusted politicians and felt strongly that citizens should also have the ability and right to propose laws without having to go through elected representatives. In an 1891 issue of the Dakota Ruralist he wrote: “These men make the laws to suit themselves — are a law to themselves. The people seldom get any law passed they want.”

South Dakota became the first state to adopt the initiative and referendum process in 1898, passing easily on the same ballot that re-elected South Dakota’s Populist Governor Andrew E. Lee. Twenty-six states now allow some variation of the initiative and referendum.

Father Haire left other notable legacies in Aberdeen, including the creation of Northern State University, originally Northern Normal and Industrial School, in 1901. Today a memorial to Father Haire stands on campus.

As a political and religious leader during tumultuous times in our state’s history, Haire made friends and enemies. He spoke his mind even when he knew it might antagonize Bishop Martin Marty or his own parishioners. He eventually was dismissed by Marty for his radical views. He remained a priest but could not practice. Later, Bishop O’Gorman reinstated him and appointed him chaplain to the Presentation Sisters, a role he served for the remainder of his life. After Haire’s death in 1916, O’Gorman wrote this epitaph: “He had been in earlier years, when the State was still in the pioneer stage, a most zealous missionary. I believe that the last ten peaceful years of his life and his happy death were rewards of the good and fruitful work of the early years.”

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Homemade Noodles

By Jane Milstead

Mother’s homemade noodles helped stave off family confrontations in one Aberdeen household.

Words weren’t allowed in our Aberdeen household. Not harsh ones. Had they occurred between my two older brothers and/or myself, it would have killed my mother, or so she swore (not as in curse, she would never do that).

So “words” just didn’t happen in the ready-made family I was born into when my mother was in her 40s and my father was just turning 50. They were losing their teenage sons to the outside world and had long since given up hope of having anything else in common. Therefore, they decided to give that over-the-counter wonder, Lydia Pinkham’s Compound, a try and a year later I arrived, the promised “baby in every bottle.”

I don’t remember my brothers ever living with us and my life was a reasonably pleasant, largely-unsupervised jumble of library books and movie shows and best friends. I have since annoyed many of my adult friends (for whom life began in college) by recounting the great times I had at Central High School even though I was hardly cheerleader material. I’ve thoroughly disgusted others who dread family get-togethers by pulling a pollyanna about the joys of such reunions.

This so ticks them off and in turn tickles me, I don’t always tell the whole truth and add that I’m not holiday-happy because of the world’s strongest familial ties, or because I have Martha Stewart Syndrome (I hear this first manifests itself with a sudden midnight urge to get up out of bed and make hats out of empty milk cartons).

It has thus far remained a secret that my love of holidays comes largely from the ingredient that infused them with magic: my mother’s homemade noodles.

Where other families longed for comfort foods like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, or pined for roast beasties, we whined for noodles. We always wanted noodles, every day if possible. Only we didn’t get them because they required a lengthy process of mixing and cutting and, if my mother had been the type, occasional cursing when the dog (Trixie) snagged a particularly long noodle off the back of a kitchen chair where a batch was drying.

Then just the right old hen had to be purchased or snatched from what she had hoped was her retirement eggness. Said hen had to be simmered until a rich, artery-hardening broth ensued, and then roasted to a golden crisp as the Noodles From Heaven roiled in their glorious schmaltzy stock.

Since my mother had a job and a life and some sense of nutrition, this rich, labor-intensive cuisine was relegated to the status of Holiday Fare Only. This, of course, included every holiday we could slide onto the list, such as birthdays, Easter, and every other celebration except the Fourth of July. We celebrated that by feasting ourselves sodden upon other of my mother’s culinary masterpieces: Her legendary fried chicken (homegrown, of course), her potato salad and her lemonade. Simple sounding enough, but somehow she could turn this ordinary fare into Godfood. My mother’s spice cabinet was limited to salt, pepper and cinnamon and I don’t think she’d ever even heard of garlic, but she was easily the best plain cook who ever lived.

All this considered, you can see why the near turkey-tiff took many years to almost happen. My brothers were both married with three young children each. Thanks to their wives’ less opinionated culinary backgrounds, they had learned that turkey was not just something people were forced to eat on holidays if they hadn’t behaved and therefore didn’t deserve noodles.

Turkey was also pretty darn good, and a lot better for you. Additionally, turkey also provided great leftovers. Of course, noodles were no slouch, either. First we prayed some would be left over because they were even better the next day, were that possible. Then we prayed that if any rotten person got up in the middle of the night and polished off the noodles cold, right out of the fridge (they were fabulous that way, too) that rotten person would be us.

Whatever, it came to pass that on the Christmas in question, my brothers decided to give my mother a rest and cook a bird.

I doubt if my mother had any rest for several days prior to the event. She was already worrying about her stove. It was a no-nonsense black cookstove to put it kindly, but it gave out great gusts of hot air and delicious aromas and my mother could play it like a grand piano. She refused to trade it in on something new and shiny and gaseous. Besides, we needed a strong heat supply in that end of the house to keep South Dakota’s chilly fingers from sneaking in and freezing the pipes solid.

My brothers had grown up around this stove and had learned, as had I, that when Mom wasn’t home, the most complicated thing anyone should endeavor to cook was toast. However, that bright holiday mid-morning, surrounded by their merry wives and kids and a few noodle-opting cynics like myself, my confident brothers chopped, stuffed, cracked wise and had a fine time in general.

When tom was finally in the oven, my brothers left the kitchen for us to clean up and went off in search of a quiet beer and a nap.

Up until then, it was holiday business as usual, except we were doing the work and my mother had been banished to a comfortable chair where she sat nervously nibbling her cuticles. Also, a pretender to the throne was perched in our oven where the aforementioned “old hen” should have been reclining, having already given much of her all to the vat of noodles atop the stove.

The trouble that almost started didn’t almost start until it was time to remove tom from his sauna. It was then discovered that while the diners and the rest of the dinner were table ready, tom was not. Nicely brown on the outside, inwardly he was un-pretty in pink.

So began a series of oven temperature risings and in due time, tempers showed signs of moving in a similar direction. At first, tom was pulled out of the oven, given a variety of gentle, though personal, tests for doneness, and slid back into the now-seething darkness. When nothing seemed to work , tom was soon being wrenched out of his quarters, roughly examined, sneered at and jammed back in.

By now, my mother’s eyes looked like Orphan Annie’s, great zeros of concern. But my brothers contained themselves beautifully, all things considered. Scowling did break out, coupled with a few traded glances that asked, “Whose damn fool idea was this anyway?” And they shooed both their wives out of the kitchen somewhat brusquely, stilling their helpful suggestions.

But “words” did not occur and once again, my mother’s life was saved. So, finally, was Christmas dinner, sort of. We finally ate the breast meat of the turkey, along with all of the usual trimmings which had somehow weathered the wait.

After dinner, my Scandinavian sisters-in-law pounced immediately upon the dirty dishes, as usual, while I figured the odds on whether I should try to make it to the couch or just ease onto the carpet beside my chair. Later, when everyone was gone and our household of three was back to normal, my folks and I sat at the kitchen table, sharing a bottle of the preferred drink of the manor (Pepsi on ice).

Finally my mother turned to me and I knew what was coming. “You realize your brothers almost had ‘words,'” she said, her voice low and confidential. Then came the kicker. “If that ever happened,” she added even more sotto voce, “it would kill me.” My father’s newspaper rattled ever so slightly.

I thought a moment. This was no time to tell my mother that words are okay sometimes, even necessary, in order for siblings and other strangers to really get to know each other.

“Let’s avoid such a possibility by always having noodles from now on,” I cooed, unselfishly thinking only of her.

She nodded and noodles we had, from that day forward. I remember those holidays with bliss. We had them down to a science. We were agreeable. We made nice, which wasn’t very difficult since we had no visiting relatives to monkeywrench our well-thumbed scenario, and whatever we had to say to each other that wasn’t positive was well buried. And when we had done all that was expected of us, we were rewarded.

Then we sat around that large table, wordlessly, joyfully savoring the plump, chewy, chickeny noodles as they dripped with the rich gravy they formed all by themselves. And all was right with the world.

Mother’s Noodles (Small Batch)

3 large eggs

Pinch of salt

1/2 eggshell water

Flour to make a stiff dough

Mix well, then roll out on a floured board and cut with a pasta or noodle cutter (the latter does exist) or very sharp knife. Allow to dry at least an hour. Cook covered for 25-30 minutes in freshly made chicken stock. (Canned will suffice if you absolutely must.)

Editor’s 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.

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Traditional Tea

By John Andrews

Native Americans have long recognized herbs, flowers and roots as an important component of their diet. The founder of the Native American Tea Company heard elders explain their origins and wanted to ensure that future generations knew the stories. He established the Native American Tea Company in 1987 on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana. When he moved to Aberdeen, so did the business. Now under the guidance of Tom Aman, the Native American Tea Company distributes blends to stores, museums and national parks around the United States.

Each tea is created with a specific story in mind. In traditional Crow culture, successful horse raids were celebrated with Victory Tea.”The Victory Tea has herbs that the camps would take with, like hibiscus and wild cherry bark,” says Joe Moore, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing.”They would bring them for their quick energy, nutrition and light weight.”

There are blends for work and relaxation. Warrior’s Brew combines cinnamon and orange peel for a steady stream of energy, while Teepee Dreams contains valerian root, which soothes and calms.

The company donates 5 percent of profits for scholarships at Sitting Bull College, a four year tribal school based in Fort Yates, N.D., with branch campuses in McLaughlin and Mobridge. Aman has a long relationship with the school and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. His parents met at a pow wow near Little Eagle in 1926. Since then, the family has encouraged economic development and education on the reservation.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Oddities and Fun

By Katie Hunhoff

“I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel,” wrote children’s author E.B. White. Colorful games and rides, people of all ages spending time together, laughing, eating, chatting with neighbors. Fairs are exhibits of our culture at its finest.

Late summer gatherings date back to the early years of our United States. Eventually the fairs evolved and became more elaborate. But they’ve always symbolized a last hurrah before school begins and winter comes.

One of our favorites is the Turner County Fair in Parker (Aug. 15-18). This year the fair turns 136, making it the oldest in South Dakota. Once inside the gates (free admission, by the way) you’ll find a fun little pioneer town to tour known as Heritage Park. It has a general store, church, school and millinery. Each is furnished with antiques and open to the public. Outside you’ll find a shaded stage which hosts non-stop music and entertainment throughout the four-day spectacle. If you’re wondering about food, you’re in for a treat. Local beef and pork producers run dueling booths that garner long lines at dinner, but another popular choice is a chislic booth organized by sheep farmer Bill Aeschlimann and some friends way back in 1983. Turner and Hutchinson counties are known as the home of chislic — a Russian tradition of beef, lamb or pork seasoned and grilled over an open fire. (Or, here in America, deep fat fried as we also do with Oreos and cupcakes.)

Other fairs are known for fun and games. The Potter County Fair (Aug. 6-9) in Gettysburg features Cow Patty Bingo. An open patch of grass at the fairgrounds is divided into squares, each of which is for sale. Once the squares are sold, a cow is turned loose on the grass. The owner of the square where the cow first leaves her mark wins the jackpot.

In Aberdeen, at the Brown County Fair (Aug. 15-21), a fair staffer goes out early every morning to hide a stuffed monkey named Casey. The first kid to find Casey wins carnival tickets or another fair prize.

Visit the Corson County Fair in McIntosh (Aug. 12-14) to view turtle races — prizes go to both the fastest and slowest racers. Here’s a hint: painted turtles are faster than mud turtles, in case you didn’t know. Here’s another hint: snapping turtles can be dangerous.

Food competitions are popular attractions at our local fairs. Often attendees get to taste the results. The Custer County Fair (Aug. 11-14) in Hermosa features an ice cream crank-off. Power models are forbidden, guaranteeing an old-fashioned experience for kids who have never had an opportunity to make their own. A chili cook-off is one of the highlights of the Sully County Fair (Aug. 11-14) in Onida. The public can sample all the chili they can eat after the contest, for only $5.

Fairs are a fine way to celebrate our communities, but the food, games and exhibits aren’t as meaningful if people don’t show up to enjoy them. We hope you take the time to visit one of the dozens of fairs in South Dakota this summer.

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Pitching To Bill Prunty

Editor’s Note: The South Dakota State Amateur Baseball tournament begins Wednesday at Cadwell Park in Mitchell. Perhaps because of baseball’s long history, no other sport seems to have such rich stories and legends. One of the most famous involves Bill Prunty and the home run he hit in the dark to give Claremont the state championship in 1938. But that’s not the only tale about the South Dakota baseball legend. This story is revised from an article former ballplayer Jim Wittenhagen wrote for the July/August 2004 issue of South Dakota Magazine.

By Jim Wittenhagen

Behind every uniform or bat in the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame in Lake Norden, there’s a story. Behind the ball Bill Prunty smacked into the darkening sky over Aberdeen one summer night in 1938, there is a legend.

The state championship game between Aberdeen and Claremont was in extra innings, the score tied 4-4. The field had no lights, and umpire Tommy Collins declared that if nobody scored, the game would be replayed the next day. The count was three balls and two strikes on the Claremont slugger. With the crack of Prunty’s bat, everybody knew the game was over, and Claremont had won. The ball wasn’t found until morning light.

Bill Prunty was known to take less orthodox routes to victory. I grew up in Carthage, where Bill later lived and started summer baseball. I was 11 or 12 and the batboy when Carthage played Ramona to see who would go to the state tournament in Watertown. When I handed Bill the bat, he told me,”If he throws a pitch inside, I’m going to get hit.” The third pitch was inside, and Bill turned sideways and the ball hit his elbow. The hit batsman won the game and we were off to the state tournament.

We played six games at state. I got $2 per game for meals, but Bill paid for them. Then Harvey Grapes hit a home run and was awarded five gallons of ice cream from the old Langenfeld Dairy. With ice cream and all that loot, I was the happiest kid in the state.

A few years later, in the 1950s, I was on a pretty good Legion team, and Bill arranged for us to play his team that had won the state tournament. I was pitching, and Bill was at bat. Of course I wanted to strike him out in the worst way, and I was throwing as hard as I could. I lost control and hurled one right at his head. It appeared to hit his bat, but he collapsed.

I ran to the batter’s box, scared to death I’d hurt him. He looked up at me with his baseball grin and said,”If my wife wasn’t in the stands I would have laid there and kicked my legs a couple of times.”

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Cecil Harris Honored in Aberdeen

By John Andrews

In our May/June issue, we wrote about young Aberdeen sculptor Ben Victor’s latest project: a 9-foot bronze of Cresbard native and World War II naval flying ace Cecil Harris. More than 200 people gathered on the Northern State University campus in Aberdeen over the weekend to officially dedicate the statue outside Spafford Hall.

Harris had gone largely unrecognized for his heroics until friends and family began spreading his story in recent years. In 2010, an 80-mile stretch of South Dakota Highway 20 through Potter and Faulk counties was designated as the Cecil Harris Memorial Highway. There has also been a push to have the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to Harris posthumously, but when it appeared unlikely to happen, efforts turned to raising funds for the statue.

Harris was born in Cresbard in 1914. He was a student at Northern when he joined the Navy before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. His most memorable mission came on Oct. 12, 1944, when he shot down four enemy aircraft and saved two of his Fighting Squadron 18 teammates at Formosa. His heroics earned him the Silver Star. On two more occasions he shot down four enemy planes without taking a bullet. By Nov. 25 he had accumulated a total of 24 and a new nickname: Speedball.

Though he wasn’t the highest-ranking pilot aboard the USS Intrepid, Harris’ shipmates always looked to him for leadership.”With all due respect to our senior leadership, it was Harris who build our squadron into the deadly efficient fighting force that it was,” says Harold Thune of Murdo, who served with Harris during the final two years of the war.”As a pilot, I believe he was without peer.”

At the dedication on Saturday, retired Navy captain and pilot Ken Schroeder explained how Harris saved his entire squadron of 20 pilots by leading them through darkness and thick fog to the Intrepid.”He located the Intrepid, almost hitting its superstructure, landed safely, and then asked the captain to call the squad in,” Schroeder said.”He saved 17 aircraft and 20 pilots that day.”

By the end of the war, Harris was the second highest Navy scoring ace. He received numerous honors in his long military career, including the Navy Cross, Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.

Harris returned to Cresbard after the war and lived quietly as a teacher and high school principal. He returned to active duty during the Korean War and became a career Navy officer, serving 27 years before retiring in 1967. He died in 1981 in Washington, D.C., and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Some wonder if Harris would welcome the attention. There’s a story that says when Harris came home from World War II, a large crowd gathered at the train station in Cresbard to greet him. The train pulled in and left again with no sign of Harris. Apparently he had sneaked out the other side and went to the local pool hall for a beer. Nevertheless, Ben Victor’s statue seems a fitting tribute to a World War II hero that few South Dakotans know anything about.

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South Dakota and the Triple Crown

By John Andrews

Last spring I spent a day at the Brown County Fairgrounds learning the ins and outs of horse racing. Perhaps because of that experience, I find myself more attuned to the story currently unfolding about the thoroughbred California Chrome and his quest to win horse racing’s Triple Crown.

Three races comprise the Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes. California Chrome won the Derby by 1 æ lengths earlier this month and prevailed at the Preakness on Saturday. If he wins at Belmont on June 7, California Chrome will be the first horse to take the Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978.

The idea of the Triple Crown originated in England in 1853, when a horse named Western Australian won three legendary races. The first horse to win all three Triple Crown races in America was Sir Barton in 1919. But the term”Triple Crown” did not become widely used in the United States until a South Dakotan accomplished the feat in 1930.

Earl Sande was born in Groton in 1898. He spent his first 9 years growing up on a farm near town, and that’s where his love for horses began. One of Sande’s friends in Groton was Leon Cassels.”My dad (Leon) and Earl would go out there to my grandfather Herb’s farm and ride horses,” Gene Cassels said in the Aberdeen American News in 2008.”Earl said that is where he learned about horses and got his start. Earl said he was always grateful for those experiences and the times he spent with my dad.”

The family moved to Idaho in 1907, and Sande bought his first pony in 1910 for $15, four ducks and a bicycle frame. He began his racing career in Arizona. As an 18-year-old, he ran 23 races in one day at Springerville, Ariz. During his first year, he started 707 races and won 158. That caught the attention of the horseracing world, and Sande’s ascent began.

The 1920s were the Golden Age of American Sports, and Earl Sande was to horse racing what Babe Ruth was to baseball, Red Grange was to football and Jack Dempsey was to boxing. Even Americans who knew little about horseracing were familiar with Sande’s name. He was the leading money-winning jockey in 1921, 1923 and 1927. He won the Belmont Stakes five times, the Kentucky Derby three times and the Preakness Stakes once. But 1930 was Sande’s golden year.

In May he rode Gallant Fox to victory at the Preakness, holding off a late charge from Crack Brigade to win by three-quarters of a length. Two weeks later, on a muddy track in Louisville, Sande and Gallant Fox won the Kentucky Derby by two lengths. Three weeks later, the pair won handily at Belmont. Charles Hatton, a columnist for the Daily Racing Form, began using the term Triple Crown after Gallant Fox’s spectacular 1930 run. Perhaps Sande’s popularity, combined with the nationwide interest in horseracing, led to the term becoming widely adopted.

In Sande’s career as a jockey, he rode 3,673 times and finished first 968 times. He earned $2,998,065. After his retirement he became one of the country’s leading horse trainers. He died in Oregon in 1968.

I’ll be watching the Belmont Stakes on June 7. And I’ll be thinking of Earl Sande as I watch California Chrome try to make history.