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Why South Dakota?

By Fraser Harrison

The rolling hills along the Missouri River near Platte are an attribute that draws Fraser Harrison to South Dakota. Photo by Christian Begeman.

I was lost. Somewhere west of Springfield in Bon Homme County I had missed a vital turn that would have taken me to Marty and the Yankton Indian Reservation by way of the Scenic Byway that runs parallel with the Missouri River. Surrounded by fields of green corn, I was now adrift in a network of straight and seemingly endless dirt roads, none of them on the map, all terminating in junctions without signs. Mine appeared to be the only vehicle trapped in this labyrinth, and while I passed several fields occupied by contented cattle, I drove for many miles before seeing a farmhouse close to the road. I drew into the yard to ask for directions.

As a rule the traveler is well advised to be wary of farm dogs. But on this occasion the creature in question was a grizzled, moth-eaten Corgi that was wagging its stump of a tail and appeared to be friendly enough. I got out of my car and walked into the farmyard. Using what I hoped was a reassuring tone, I asked the mutt where his owner was. Giving the equivalent of a canine shrug, he looked around the yard, which was deserted, though signs of life could be seen everywhere. A barn stood open with a tractor at the ready in its doorway. I walked over and called out. The dog followed me, apparently as interested in the outcome as I was. We looked into buildings and workshops, but got no response. Finally, we climbed the stoop and knocked at the door of the farmhouse. I could see lights burning inside. I shouted, the dog looked expectantly, but still no answer came. I was forced to say farewell to the amiable janitor of this forsaken property and drive away.

Guided by my compass, I reckoned that if I kept going west or south whenever I was offered the choice I was bound to hit the river eventually. And, sure enough, after another 20 minutes the land began to undulate and lines of cottonwoods appeared, telling me that the riverbed was close. When at last I saw the Missouri River, it was a mere trickle wandering aimlessly among yellow sandbanks that had invaded its ample course. A little further upstream, where the channel was narrower, the water was flowing vigorously, but its surface was bristling with scores of snags. Blackened branches and trunks of trees were rooted in the mud and angled like spears placed to repel a raid.

I had found my way. Furthermore, I had reconnected with the river that is South Dakota’s great artery, the river that has determined much of its history, the river that splits both the state and the continent. I can never contemplate the Missouri without a pang of respect for this leviathan, which like the plains that form its basin belongs to a mammoth category of nature not found in our islands.

Why return so repeatedly to a state not famous for its beauty? Even at its dullest, South Dakota possesses a quality that is both charismatic and hard to define.

No one likes to be lost, but it is a condition I am used to. Thanks to having no sense of direction, I suffer from a virtual disability when making journeys — hence the compass in my car that is as valuable to me as my passport. But if I had to be lost, this was the landscape in which I preferred to have it happen.

I have been coming to South Dakota for more than 20 years, and its topography still has not lost the power to excite me. Why return so repeatedly to a state not famous for its beauty (excepting the Black Hills)? It is a question that always smacks of condescension when it comes from someone, American or otherwise, who lives outside the state. And it is a question that I always feel I answer inadequately when it comes from a resident. True, parts of East River may sometimes appear featureless, and its roads may sometimes dismay the most optimistic driver as they relentlessly unwind across the prairie, turning a slight rise into a positive adventure. But even at its dullest, South Dakota possesses a quality that, for me, is both charismatic and very hard to define.

I live in the eastern part of England, not far from Cambridge, which is an area that is largely flat and fertile, a kind of miniature equivalent to the American Midwest and known as the”breadbasket of England.” By upbringing and inclination I am an urbanite (Liverpool), but I have come to value my adopted region for its spacious, uninterrupted skies. These are the skies that John Constable, the English artist, painted so movingly in the 19th century, capturing their luminous airiness and moist, cloudy hurly-burly. He believed that the sky in a picture was”the chief organ of sentiment,” and over the years I have been lucky enough to live in houses that have had views encompassing the open sky and distant horizons, views that seemed charged with the emotional dimension that obsessed the painter. That emotion has primarily been the very English one of submitting philosophically to the weather, as we must submit to time and our biological fate, by rejoicing in sunshine and blue skies when they come, while always knowing that cloud and rain may soon replace them. To that degree, we are Stoics.

But our East Anglian skies are miniatures by comparison with the immensities of deep blue that open above the South Dakota grasslands, and it is this vastness of scale that calls me back year after year. (I know that skies of similar immensity are to be found in other states, most famously Montana and its self-styled”big sky country.” However, Montana is also a mountainous state, and it is the particular quality, exemplified by South Dakota, created by the horizontal profile of the prairies and grassland and their infinitely extensible horizons, to which I have become addicted.) The English countryside is full of variety, and every turn in the road can bring fresh and surprising beauty, but the fact is the road is often narrow and enclosed by hedges. Our geography is small-scale, which is the secret of its picturesque changeability, but that does not protect some of us from occasional twinges of claustrophobia. As a result, the sensation of exchanging the confines of my local countryside for the limitless spaces of South Dakota is always prodigious. It is like opening a little gate in a wall and stepping out of a pretty English garden (there are none prettier) only to discover that I have joined the Lewis and Clark expedition and now face an unmapped wilderness.

I am talking about the sensation that overwhelms me whenever I leave the airport in Sioux Falls and begin a new journey into the state, especially on a fine summer’s day when the sky has acquired that piercing azure color we never see in England, and the white clouds (cumulus mediocris) are strung out like prairie schooners and can almost be heard to creak as they lumber across the horizon, and — to complete the picture — a turkey buzzard is already lolling on a thermal, methodically spiraling as if it hopes to sniff out carrion in the panorama below. I feel as if my soul is expanding within me while the landscape unrolls beyond my car windows. The eye is suddenly let loose to run as far as it can in all directions, to the very frontier of visibility. As with the eye, so with the mind; the sensation is at once external and internal. Though I am surrounded by what has become a domesticated terrain earning its keep as farmland, its sheer scale makes me feel as if my own capacities — for thinking, for feeling, for loving — have been enlarged in proportion with the topography. I feel intoxicated, capable of anything; I feel liberated; I feel taller, fitter, younger; I feel invested with infinite possibility.

I do not feel diminished when I return home to the cozier dimensions of my Suffolk scenery; nor do I feel that I have left behind the qualities, however illusory, with which I felt the prairie had empowered me. Adjustments have to be made; jet lag and post-travel blues demand their malicious fee; but in the end I know that my mind and soul have been amplified. With each visit some mysterious process of spiritual transportation ensures that what could be called my mindscape has been enriched by the South Dakotan factor.

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

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Doane’s Favorite Places

By Paul Higbee

Doane Robinson began his career in law, but eventually he became a poet, writer, publisher and state historian.

It’s an eight-minute walk in Pierre from Doane Robinson’s former home on Wynoka Street to the state capitol building, where he once had an office. Eight minutes, that is, if you walk with a sense of purpose.

And it is impossible to think of Doane Robinson ever moving without a sense of purpose. In the early days of South Dakota statehood he was South Dakota’s idea man, and he ranks among our most prolific writers. Usually men of letters leave behind books, and men with big ideas leave thinking that spurs others into action over time. Certainly Robinson’s legacy includes books and inspiration, but he also left South Dakota beautiful buildings at Gary, Pierre and Hisega, as well as a solid foundation for a department of state government. Oh yes … there’s also that sculpture of four presidential heads blasted from mountain granite near Keystone.

Robinson’s grandson, Will Doane Robinson, a retired teacher in Rapid City, remembers long walks along Wynoka and beyond with his grandfather in the 1930s.”A very, very nice man,” he describes him, and other neighborhood children concurred, often tagging along on walks. At the time they had no real idea of who their older friend was. Professionally Doane Robinson was a homesteader, teacher, lawyer, poet, editor and South Dakota’s first state historian. In his personal life he was a devoted family man who was widowed young. In his spare time he sometimes tinkered trying to invent a perpetual motion machine.

Born into a farm family near Sparta, Wisconsin in 1856, he was christened Jonah LeRoy Robinson. Two childhood incidents impacted the rest of his life. First, younger sister Sadie couldn’t pronounce Jonah and called him Donah, later shortened to Doane. He answered to the name the rest of his life. The second event, says great-granddaughter Vicki McLain, was much darker. Typhoid fever hit his family. No one died, but the family struggled for years to pay medical bills, keeping them in poverty for most of Doane’s childhood. Forever after, Robinson believed debt had to be avoided if at all possible.

He possessed an amazing memory, claiming he could recall incidents that happened before age 2, and maybe even before age 1. Robinson seemed strangely attuned to history-in-the-making. He remembered his parents discussing news that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president the month after Robinson turned 4. His parents were Democrats and he recalled they were unimpressed with the Republican Lincoln. Later he heard talk of distant fighting as the Civil War played out, and Robinson remembered news of Lincoln’s assassination — his mother worried Democrats would take the blame. Much later Robinson decided”in some ways the truth about Lincoln had been withheld from me,” and he committed himself to reading political theory. He became a Republican but, he wrote,”will give my support to another party any minute I am convinced that the sum of happiness will be enhanced by it.”

During his teens he worked hard on the farm, was able to run the place on his own in the event of family emergencies, and he worked equally hard in school where he honed his love of words. In his early 20s he taught school, homesteaded near his brother’s place in Minnesota, and began studying law at the University of Wisconsin. All the while he fretted about Jennie Austin, a Wisconsin girl he greatly admired and found beautiful, but who was a teenager too young for him.

Robinson fell in love with a spot he saw while traveling on the Crouch railroad line. He named it Hisega, and soon build a lodge there featuring a wraparound porch. Photo by Paul Horsted

Of course, Jennie matured. She became a teacher herself. The two decided their affection was mutual in 1883, the same year Robinson got serious about finding legal work in western Minnesota or across the border in Dakota Territory. He hadn’t earned a law degree but had learned enough to feel confident he could offer quality legal services — not an unusual course of action at the time. He considered setting himself up in Ortonville, Minnesota, but didn’t like the town. Then he visited Watertown”and made up my mind I had found the place I was looking for.” He opened a Watertown law office in September of 1883.

Months later he bought one-third interest in the Watertown Daily Courier.”The law is a jealous mistress and must come before anything else in your life,” Robinson would one day counsel his son Will, an attorney. By buying into the newspaper and, in fact, becoming its editor, Robinson demonstrated an unwillingness to focus on the law alone. The result, he decided later, was failing to be”much shucks” as a lawyer.

In December of 1884, Watertown’s young lawyer and editor rode the rails to Wisconsin to marry Jennie. Then the couple came home to Dakota Territory. Son Harry was born in 1888, and Will came along in 1893. In those years Robinson learned he could supplement his family’s income nicely by selling poetry to magazines across the country. He actually attracted a national following. The Boston Herald noted that”perhaps no one of the younger poets of America has so quickly established himself in the hearts of the common people.” Robinson came to know South Dakota in part because of requests to travel from town to town and recite his verse. His dialect poetry, recreating the speech patterns of the state’s immigrants, often for humorous effect, was well received. He also toured other Midwestern states. Even after he became state historian, Robinson remained a poet, and found he could sometimes combine verse and historical interpretation. An example is this poem about W.H.H. Beadle, Civil War veteran and pioneering educator who championed South Dakota School and Public Lands for generating public education funds:

Man of vision! Man of mission,

Patriot, soldier, scholar, seer.

Man of action! Man of purpose! Duty led

in thy career.

Forward looking; self forgetting; unwaged

drudge for learning’s gain;

South Dakota reaps the harvest planted by

thy care and pain.

In 1894 he moved his young family to Gary, a railroad town in Deuel County, close to the Minnesota border. He bought the Gary Interstate newspaper.”Getting out an edition of the eight page newspaper was frequently a family affair,” son Will recalled in an excellent little biography of his father.”The press was an old Washington hand press.” Jennie positioned the newsprint in the press and Doane swung a big lever to apply pressure and make the imprint. At age 6 Harry removed the finished newspapers from the press and stacked them.

After the town of Gary lost its status as the seat of Deuel County, Robinson urged the state to locate the School for the Blind there. Today the campus is the Buffalo Ridge Resort and Business Center.

The year after the Robinsons moved to town, Gary lost county seat status to Clear Lake. But the new newspaper publisher had an idea: Why not lobby the state to build a School for the Blind on the former courthouse grounds? Robinson did some research and determined it cost South Dakota $2,000 per student, every year, to send children with visual impairments to out-of-state institutions, in the era when it was assumed students with disabilities learned best in segregated environments. Robinson’s idea won statewide support and ground was broken in 1899. Students arrived in 1900. Vicki McLain thinks perhaps there was more to her great-grandfather’s passion for the school than commerce for Gary.”When he was studying law in Wisconsin,” she says,”he temporarily lost sight, apparently because of severe eye strain. He recovered but never took eyesight for granted.”

Over the next several years the school evolved into a pretty campus a couple blocks north of Gary’s business district. Services moved to Aberdeen in 1961 and the campus fell into disrepair, but more than 40 years later Joe Kolbach completed a beautiful restoration, creating Buffalo Ridge Resort.

Even as he was publishing the Interstate and advocating for the school, Robinson nursed a pet project, one he believed in so much that he was willing to sometimes serve as an”unpaid drudge,” to borrow a phrase from his Beadle poem. The idea was a magazine, the Monthly South Dakotan, that would heavily emphasize the young state’s history. Issues were produced over a period of several years and wherever Robinson moved, the magazine went with him. The Robinsons moved to Yankton where he bought controlling interest in a morning paper, The Gazette, and then it was on to Sioux Falls where Robinson hoped to find more ad revenue for the Monthly South Dakotan. Next the family made Aberdeen its home, and Robinson published the Brown County Review.

ìHe had a thousand irons in the fire,” Will wrote. As for the Monthly South Dakotan, he added, it claimed a loyal readership willing to pay for subscriptions, but ad revenue constantly fell short. The publication folded in 1904, and by that time Robinson’s life had changed drastically. In 1901 he was selected Secretary of the new South Dakota State Historical Society, a branch of state government. Now he had the opportunity to publish articles of the sort he prepared for the Monthly South Dakotan, but at state expense. After a few years in the position his income would allow for a very comfortable lifestyle. It should have been a happy time, but in 1902 Jennie died of acute bronchitis. Who else but Robinson, with his head for historical dates, would note that Jennie died 19 years to the day after she and Doane decided they were in love?

Robinson advocated for the stately Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in Pierre after World War I. It once housed the state’s history museum. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism

ìOh, my dear boys,” Robinson later wrote his sons,”I can never tell you how dearly I loved your Mama, not only those nineteen years, but long before, and every moment since.” He was 45 and never remarried.

Sadie, the sister who gave him his name, moved in to help run the household. The family relocated to Pierre and Robinson arranged for construction of the home on Wynoka Street. Future governor and U.S. senator Peter Norbeck would be a neighbor on Wynoka, and became Robinson’s good friend and ally.

Robinson perhaps occasionally lost himself in work as he grieved Jennie. He helped plan the state capitol building and wrote 1905’s Brief History of South Dakota, more commonly called”the little red history book,” which for decades was the standard volume schools used to teach about South Dakota’s past. Most important, though, Robinson got the State Historical Society off to a strong start, publishing the first volumes of South Dakota Historical Collections, the biennial series of papers that most every South Dakota historian has referenced.

ìHis was the foundation we’ve built on ever since,” says Jay Vogt, current State Historical Society director.”In his time, he was much more hands-on than we’re able to be, doing most of the research and writing himself.”

Indeed, when something big developed, such as the discovery of the Verendrye plate that proved French trappers passed through the state in 1743, Robinson jumped into action and researched, wrote and edited until he had 300 pages for Historical Collections. He also gathered South Dakota newspapers and indexed them, along with government documents, and he took special interest in seeking out American Indian historical perspectives. He considered it a great honor, before his state historian years, to have interviewed Hunkpapa leader Gall, one of the victors at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

While no one ever questioned Robinson’s work ethic, he has sometimes been criticized for not being an academically trained historian.

ìBut you have to put that criticism in context,” says Vogt.”At that time, in all states, history organizations were kind of amateur clubs, made up of people who had interest and maybe connections to historical sources. Doane Robinson brought a wide range of professional experiences to his work, and he possessed great curiosity.”

For many years his office was on the capitol building’s ground floor, along with a little museum. When the legislature was in session, lawmakers knew the state’s best writer was close at hand if they struggled with a bill’s wording.

After railroad tracks spanned the Missouri River and were extended west to Rapid City in 1907, Robinson had easy access to the Black Hills for the first time. The region offered intriguing history, and it was a perfect place to relax. In 1908 Robinson arranged a camping adventure for 17 friends, relatives and Pierre colleagues. The party stepped off the Crouch Line train in a beautiful canyon west of Rapid City and pitched tents. Robinson loved making up words and announced he would call the spot Hisega, a name derived from the initials of six women in the group: Helen, Ida, Sadie, Ethel, Grace and Ada. Everyone loved the place, talked it up back in Pierre, and Robinson devised a time-share scheme. If enough people contributed $100, he would build a mountain lodge for them at Hisega. The big structure with wrap-around porches awaited visitors the next summer, and it still greets guests today.

A building of an entirely different style that stands as a Doane Robinson legacy is the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, down the front steps and immediately across the street from the state capitol. Robinson pushed for the building after World War I, and it took more than a decade to raise funds and get the stately memorial finished. In addition to honoring South Dakotans who served and died in military service, the building housed the state’s history museum for many years and was usually referred to as the Robinson Museum.

Robinson dreamed of carving into Black Hills mountains. Newspapermen called the idea ridiculous, but Robinson partnered with Gutzon Borglum and history was made. Photo by S.D. Tourism

Of course, when it comes to tangible legacies, nothing tops Mount Rushmore Memorial.”My grandfather thought the Black Hills were beautiful, but that not enough people would visit just because of that,” says Will D. Robinson.”There had to be some other reason. I can show you the spot on the Needles Highway where his Model T Ford touring sedan got hot one day, and he sent my dad to bring water from a spring. When my dad got back to the car, my grandfather was looking at the Needles, thinking how they could be carved by a sculptor.”

That was 1923. Robinson talked to people who might help, especially Senator Norbeck, and sometimes took heat from South Dakota newspaper editors who considered the scheme ridiculous. But in short order internationally renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum was on board and in 1927, as Robinson looked on, President Calvin Coolidge was present for a ceremony launching the project. Only the location wasn’t the Needles but nearby Mount Rushmore because, Robinson’s grandson understood, the Needles spires contained too much feldspar and Borglum didn’t want to alter that stunning piece of God’s handiwork.

Borglum also didn’t want to carve figures related to the American West, as Robinson proposed, but instead presidents. In Borglum, Robinson met a man whose vast vision matched his own. In another way, though, the men were polar opposites. Borglum liked to move ahead without much thought about costs, while Robinson insisted on budgetary constraint. As an executive of the original association formed to oversee Mount Rushmore’s creation, it fell to Robinson to confront the sculptor at times about spending. He was happy to pretty much leave the project in 1929, content in knowing his role as instigator had been successful. Robinson was back at the mountain on July 4, 1930, as a speaker when the Washington head was dedicated. He was 73 and had retired as State Historical Society Secretary six years earlier.

In the 1930s Robinson had more time for his walks and young friends on Wynoka Street, and he kept writing. Unlike Borglum and Norbeck, he lived long enough to see Mount Rushmore in its final form. He also saw his son Will become head of the State Historical Society in 1946. Doane Robinson lived a few weeks past his 90th birthday and his grandson recalls his mind and memories were as sharp as ever toward the end. He had witnessed America’s evolution from Abraham Lincoln to the atomic age. No one observed South Dakota’s first half century more intently.

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

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A South Dakota Quiz

By Katie Hunhoff

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

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

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

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

4. Ten murals by Oscar Howe decorate what arena?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to see the answers.

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Steinbeck and Charley

By Paul Higbee

For John Steinbeck, the Missouri River divided East from West.

In the fall of 1960, John Steinbeck, soon to win a Nobel Prize for a lifetime of literary contributions, encountered the Missouri River. He wrote:”I came upon it in amazement. Here is where the map should fold. Here is the boundary between east and west.”

Steinbeck had loaded his dog, Charley, into a truck and set off across 34 states. He logged 10,000 miles searching for the nation’s essence. The trip yielded a great nonfiction book, Travels With Charley, and if you haven’t read it please find a copy.

Over the past several years I’ve retraced sections of Steinbeck’s trip. Like him I’ve sensed the intimidating enormity of the continent, struggled with bad directions from well-meaning folks, and jumped into conversations with strangers in diners. Although Steinbeck authored classic novels, no one recognized him — much to his satisfaction.

Half a century to the week after Steinbeck passed through the heartland, it felt like he sat in my passenger’s seat as I followed his route. I shared his”rich with butter-colored sunlight” view of Wisconsin, and got swept into the same”great surf of traffic” into St. Paul on old U.S. Highway 10. Later, there was the Missouri dividing east from west so that”the two sides of the river might well be a thousand miles apart.” I should note that Steinbeck crossed the river at Bismarck, not in South Dakota. But his feel for the entire heartland is one of the best parts of the book. He was a native Californian living in New York and everything about our part of the country felt fresh. He encountered colorful characters on the prairie (we’ve always produced plenty), with the best being a friendly yet very reticent Badlander who feels like an uncle to most of us with Great Plains roots. I actually found myself looking for the old guy, leaning against a barbed wire fence as he did in 1960, a little more stooped with age. Not that he would have volunteered to say anything to me.

Fortunately for Steinbeck most of the people he met were more talkative, especially in the heartland. They spoke about worries related to”job uncertainty” and national security in a time of international strife. Americans I met still talk about those matters. One thing that disappointed Steinbeck was how no one wanted to discuss politics.”It seemed to me partly caution and partly a lack of interest, but strong opinions were just not stated,” he wrote. What’s surprising about that is he made his drive during the Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign. We tend to think of that as a political season that got lots of Americans engaged, but that’s not what Steinbeck observed. I can report that times have changed. Everyone, it seems now, has a political point of view, everything can be politicized, and opinions are stated strongly. Steinbeck might appreciate the noisy political discussions he’d hear in today’s early morning coffee joints, but he’d quickly note that there’s very little debate. Like-minded coffee drinkers tend to gather and preach to the choir.

Long before Facebook and Twitter made it possible to share life in detail with legions worldwide, Steinbeck observed a value people placed in maintaining respectful distance.”A direct or personal question is out of bounds … he did not ask my name nor I his,” he wrote of a farmer he talked to for a long while. So there’s mystery behind many of the people he described, and they haunted me as I passed their way. What was with the flighty waitress (with an aunt in Sioux Falls) who Steinbeck said could pass for either a young, troubled girl or spry old woman? And what drew a roving Shakespearian actor to a camping spot along the Maple River at Alice, North Dakota?

By no means is the book all about cautious conversation, Wisconsin sunlight, and vistas from Missouri River bluffs. Racial tensions had heated to a boiling point in 1960. In New Orleans, Steinbeck felt nauseated after witnessing a cruel, calculated protest against school integration. Obscenities were hurled at children. He painted the scene vividly but it’s easy to see that Steinbeck was naive in one respect. He saw racial injustice as a southern problem. As the rest of the 1960s revealed, there was racial injustice in northern cities, too, and in Indian Country.

Unlike the very first readers who picked up Travels With Charley a couple years after the trip, we know what waited in the wings — assassinations, Vietnam, riots that took lives and burned cities. Throughout the book there’s an uneasiness that Steinbeck sensed, as if Americans were bracing themselves for something without being able to guess exactly what.”My grandfather knew the number of whiskers in the Almighty’s beard,” one man told the author.”I don’t even know what happened yesterday, let alone tomorrow … we’ve got nothing to go on — got no way to think about things.”

Maybe thinking is best done in retrospect, which makes Travels With Charley more valuable now. And for all our thinking, there are eternal things Steinbeck found that exist beyond our influence: the power of autumn winds on the prairies, and how starlight alone can make the Badlands glow on moonless nights. They’re part of the nation’s essence, too.

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the November/December 2010 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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Like the Goldfish

By Katie Hunhoff

South Dakota writers and artists add spice to our lives.

My dad likes to tell the story of a favorite teacher who told students that goldfish don’t mind living in small fish bowls because their brains are very small, and every time they swim around the bowl, it’s a new experience.”Don’t be like the goldfish,” the teacher preached.

I thought of the goldfish story when I heard about the latest plans from Washington to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Without the valuable NEH and NEA programs, we would be like goldfish — swimming at random without much memory of the past and far fewer tools and skills to guide us into the future.

The humanities have always been a part of my life. My parents started South Dakota Magazine in 1985, and after college I returned to help with the family business. We have collected and told thousands of South Dakota stories.

My dad admits he had no noble goal at first.”Along the way, however, I realized our stories have worth beyond entertainment,” he once wrote.”The stories tell us who we are as South Dakotans. Reading the magazine should be like seeing your reflection in the lake. The man grins and you grin. He squirms and so do you. He grows sad and you know why.”

It took him a while to understand that importance:”Not because I’m an idiot, but because I was focused on stories, ads and renewal checks so I wouldn’t have to find other work. But now I know how we are all connected.”

We are all connected geographically, culturally and through celebration and tragedy. Like my dad, we are all focused on paying the bills. The humanities help us keep an eye on the bigger picture. What is the importance of the human experience? And how can we make it better?

When Gov. Dennis Daugaard appointed me to the board of the South Dakota Humanities Council, I realized what we were doing at the magazine — telling South Dakota’s unique stories — was an important part of the humanities. And therefore, we are preventing our human experience from being as mundane and pointless as a goldfish in a bowl. The humanities create a forum for us to learn from the past and prepare for the future.

The National Endowment for the Humanities receives only about $150 million (from a $1.1 trillion federal budget), but the programs it funds make a substantial impact. NEH goals include strengthening teaching and learning, facilitating research and expanding access to cultural and educational resources. On the state level, the humanities council curates a diverse group of speakers on a variety of topics and runs the state book festival each fall. Click here to see even more ways the humanities impacts our state.

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Prairie Potlucks: Our Idea of a Dinner Party

By Linda Hasselstrom

I was stunned to read a popular columnist’s opinion that inviting friends for a potluck meal, with each contributing food, is impolite. Without potluck, we who live in the West wouldn’t have many parties.

The expression “take potluck” was first recorded in 1592, when peasants kept great iron pots simmering over constant hearth fires, tossing in leftovers after each meal. Servants might scavenge scraps from the meals of a rich landlord. The pot’s constant heat made the mixture safe to eat, and a visitor took the chance that he’d get enough of what remained. The expression came to mean, “It’s nothing fancy; just what we usually have,” or “plain fare.” The French called the ordinary family dinner the “fire pot,” pot-au-feu, and raised it to a high culinary art with spices and herbs. In Ireland, the “pot of hospitality” always hung over the open fire; any unexpected visitor was invited to dip his own cup or bowl into the concoction.

People who live in the country don’t necessarily keep a pot simmering on the stove all day, though many of us still use meat and vegetable scraps — even washed peelings — to make our own soup stock, making nourishment out of what might be waste in other households. Thawed and enhanced with garden extras, such stock becomes a hot supper in minutes, our version of instant soup. Country people don’t entertain the way city people do, anyway. Asking folks to drop in for a cocktail before the play when you live 40 miles from the nearest theater is impractical. Driving time isn’t the only consideration when inviting guests. For example, I seldom invite guests between November and June. If we have a heavy snowfall, unless they have a four-wheel drive vehicle, they can’t get in or out of the ranch. If they don’t realize this, I may be forced to explain that my road is impassable, then listen in dismay as they insist otherwise. Later, when they are thoroughly stuck, I will get out my truck, tow rope and shovels, and dig them out. After dinner, I may have to repeat the process. Sensible or native-born guests may call an hour ahead to cancel; I appreciate their wisdom, but I’m stuck with a large meal to be stored in the freezer and consumed for weeks to come. These are not inspiring reflections as one ponders dinner invitations.

Parties planned for summer months usually have fewer interruptions, though a prairie fire may claim half the men and women in the community for fighting fire. A hard rain eliminates the fire danger, but visitors’ tires leave deep ruts in the muddy road. As we smack our heads bouncing over them in corning months, we’ll reminisce, “Remember that rain, when Larsons slid into that ditch and got stuck? Now that was a good rain!”

For all these reasons, we tend to entertain everyone at once, wiping the slate clear of social obligations. To avoid spending a week cooking, a busy woman may issue invitations to a potluck.

A potluck dinner is my favorite entertainment, whether I’m the hostess or a guest. People of different backgrounds and cooking habits contribute to a meal unlike any other, and if the conversation drags, asking for a recipe will start it again. Some of my friends are vegetarians, welcome as long as they don’t disparage my profession of cattle raising, who bring tasty dishes composed of ingredients new to me. Putting warning labels on meat dishes is a small price to pay for the recipe for tabouli salad. In a world where not all families are nuclear, a male guest may contribute new tastes; that’s how I learned about sorrel and walnuts as salad ingredients. The same guest gave me slips of sorrel, lovage, anise and lemon thyme for my herb garden.

Though much of the food is already prepared when it arrives, I’ve enjoyed warm kitchen conversations as guests chopped, sliced, warmed, or frosted their dinner offerings; a guest, man or woman, who has prowled through your utensil drawer looking for a serving spoon has already broken through social barriers that can prevent us from speaking honestly to one another.

And when the party begins to wind down, guests don’t simply grab their coats, mutter polite inanities, and leave. They take their empty serving dishes with them, moving half the dishwashing job to other kitchens. Other guests discover that “only a spoonful” of their dish is left, and dive into the kitchen to transfer it to a refrigerator container instead of allowing it to mold in their own refrigerator; with luck, the hostess can nibble for several days on food she has not cooked.

We westerners have another potluck custom that polite society might not approve; when guests begin to get restless and collect their dishes, the hostess trots right along beside them and fills up the pan with something edible. That way, her hospitality extends beyond the current meal, and everyone gets a chance to take home something cooked by another. One such exchange inspires another, and soon guests are happily trading leftovers; at the same time, they usually whisk paper plates and trash into the garbage can, gather their children’s toys, and rinse dinner plates to be stacked beside the sink. When the hostess finally faces her kitchen alone, at the moment of truth, she will often find it much neater than it has any right to be after the feeding of 40 people.

I think potluck entertaining, rather than being impolite, is a useful social tool particularly fitting for today’s busy, nontraditional families. Time is precious to working families, who often find they no long entertain; instead, the family snarls over boxed fast food. Instead of a meal being a time-consuming ordeal testing a hostess’ social skills, a potluck requires only a small contribution from each guest. Guests are not merely filling an evening but joining in a time-sanctified ritual; once you have broken bread with a guest, he becomes your friend, to defend as you might your own family. Potlucks can create a real community as it existed when people were really neighbors, dependent on one another, though today’s guests may be brought together by interests rather than proximity.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 1995 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Second Chances

Seldom in life do we get second chances. And the prospect of it happening 161 years after a calamity? Very rare. But our Nov/Dec 2016 issue has just such a story. It happened when Paul Stover Soderman of Colorado discovered he was a descendant of General Harney, the man responsible for a massacre of Lakota men, women and children in 1855 at Blue Water Creek in Nebraska. The killings happened after Harney rebuffed Chief Little Thunder’s extended hand. A few years ago, Soderman befriended the chief’s descendants.

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Growing a South Dakotan

By Katie Hunhoff

How do you grow a South Dakotan? We all want the children in our lives to grow up with a sense of place and pride. But nobody has ever published a”how to” guide on accomplishing such a goal. Finally the void has been filled. You’ll find such a guide in our Jan/Feb 2016 issue.

Our magazine staff began the task by recalling our own childhood experiences. Then we asked experts (anglers, cowboys, artists, rock hounds and a rattlesnake professor) to help. The result is a guide for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers and all adults who play important roles in young South Dakotans’ lives.

Much of the guide touches on ways to involve children with nature. We offer advice on best hikes, rock hunting, rattlesnake etiquette, and guides on how to identify South Dakota fish, trees and the most common cattle breeds.

Joel Vasek, a popular fishing guide from Geddes, tells how he engages children on a fishing trip. “Get them involved in some of the decisions,” he suggests. “We can catch fish on anything, so let them look through the tackle box and pick out a few lures. I also make sure the live well is accessible to them, and then I’ll ask them to check on the fish now and then.”

Are you familiar with”Hail, South Dakota,” our state song? That’s one of several cultural pieces we suggest are important to raising a South Dakotan. The song was written by DeeCort Hammitt of Alcester and adopted in 1947. He was the first director of the Alcester town band that performed for President Calvin Coolidge during his Black Hills vacation in 1927.

We also recommend a reading list and a compilation of art museums where they’ll find some of the most important works South Dakotans have created. And of course we suggest that kids learn about Badger Clark, our state’s first poet laureate who wrote the beloved poem “A Cowboy’s Prayer.”

We also solicited suggestions from the Reinhold family of Sturgis, operators of Rainbow Bible Ranch; Suzanne Hegg, the first executive director of the Children’s Museum in Brookings; and Steve Van Bockern, an education professor at Augustana University in Sioux Falls.

And we visited with Marla Bull Bear, director of the Native American Advocacy Program that hosts summer camps for youth at Milk’s Camp in Gregory County. Marla uses stories about nature to teach life lessons. At a recent camp, she and camp participants spooked a blue heron while taking a walk. That prompted her to tell the group a story of a heron that forgot it was a migratory bird. “It didn’t know its own history and forgot who it was,” she said. “It thought it could be a winter bird, but when the cold weather came it nearly froze to death because it was too proud and refused help.”

Like blue herons, it’s important for our youngsters to know their place. Our guide is a good start.