Tag: day county

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Sweet and Sour in Roslyn

By Hannah Schaefer

Roslyn alumni parade through town during the annual Vinegar Festival, a tradition since 2001.

When Lawrence Diggs moved from San Francisco to Roslyn, he had already spent years researching the properties of vinegar. He’d visited France, Egypt, Mexico, South America, the Philippines and Italy, all to study the flavored concoction. It led to his first book, entitled Vinegar: The User-Friendly Standard Text Reference and Guide to Appreciating, Making and Enjoying Vinegar.

Diggs was looking for a quiet summer home where he could write when a real estate agent told him about a house in Roslyn, so he came to see it. He liked the town and people so much he never left.

Thanks in part to Diggs, this tiny town in northern Day County is now home to the International Vinegar Museum. The idea came as the community was looking for a unique way to draw visitors. A former opera house, auditorium and community hall provided the space.”We wanted to create something that people hadn’t done before. We weren’t going down without a fight to keep the town open,” Diggs says.

The museum was designed to teach visitors about vinegar and its varied uses. Diggs has turned over the role of museum curator to the community, but he remains connected and supportive. Fran Rougemont, Marnah Woken and Richard Snaza work at the museum and Josh Wagner handles the accounting. Mary Wagner volunteers doing the purchasing and mail orders.

A museum devoted to vinegar was not likely on the radars of Roslyn’s 19th century founders. The town traces back to 1882 when H.H. Russell, the first postmaster, took the name from his native city in Scotland. Roslyn began as Old Roslyn with just a post office and trading post. In 1914, the town was officially surveyed and platted by August W. Hartge after the community of settlers raised $60,000 for the Soo Railroad to be built. Soon businesses began coming into town.

Lawrence Diggs.

Today’s Roslyn looks a little different. Longtime businesses have closed and been replaced by new endeavors. The Roslyn Event Center, housed inside the school that closed in 2010, is rented for weddings, funerals and gatherings. Grade school kids from Webster, 12 miles south, still use the gym for basketball, volleyball and pole vault practices. Becky Lundquist’s city finance offices are inside. The former computer room is the Viking Fitness Center owned by Amber Huggett. Dave Strege lives in the school’s old library and has a business called Roslyn DÈcor.

The Roslyn Creamery Company was in business for 68 years. Nathan Johnson has turned the facility into a furnished rental for hunting and fishing groups. It also hosts the Roslyn Creamery Company Band for jamborees.

Roslyn Meat Market was built in 1914 next to the post office. After a 1964 fire destroyed most of Main Street, it was rebuilt in the same spot. In 1976, Robert Coyne sold the business to Shirley and Norman”Tubby” Schmidt. Their son, Craig Schmidt, bought the business in 1992, but it closed in 2004.

Another son, Paul Schmidt, had been working at Mike’s Jack and Jill in Webster as a meat cutter when he decided to open his own store. Schmidt’s Custom Meats is now part of a mini mall with a small grocery store, auto shop and furnished rentals. Paul still uses recipes handed down from his grandparents and parents.

Roslyn has another claim to fame that South Dakotans of an older generation will recognize. Myron Floren,”The Accordion Man,” attended school in Roslyn through his junior year of high school. He learned to play the accordion while growing up on a small farm outside of town. His 32-year career with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra and numerous television performances began after touring Europe with the United Service Organizations. He returned to Roslyn to play for his hometown’s Diamond Jubilee.

But these days, vinegar is the star. Roslyn’s first Vinegar Festival was held in 2001 in conjunction with the town’s alumni weekend. A parade, vendors, food trucks, vinegar tasting, kids’ activities and music lead up to the annual crowning of the Vinegar Quart, comprised of Princess Pickle, Princess Vinaigrette, Princess Sour and the Vinegar Queen. This year’s honorees are Helen Trautner (Princess Sour), Kimberly Lorensberg (Princess Vinaigrette), Marci Johnson (Vinegar Queen) and Shauna Kjos-Miotke (Princess Pickle).

Sure the vinegar makes things unique and fun in Roslyn, but it still has the small-town qualities that Diggs sought when he left the fast-paced life of northern California.”The best part of living here and to be part of the community are the relationships,” says Diggs, who’s become known as The Vinegar Man.”It feels good to know people and be a part of what is going on. People have opportunities to belong.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2024 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Glacial Lakes in Winter

By John Andrews and Bernie Hunhoff

South Dakota’s Glacial Lakes country is perfect for day trips this winter. More than a hundred lakes — plus sloughs, wetlands, ponds and rivers — combine to create a scenic and unspoiled countryside rich with wildlife and waterfowl, friendly farm towns and numerous opportunities to enjoy nature.

Melting glaciers shaped this prairie pothole country 20,000 years ago. The lakes are so numerous that some remain unnamed. Most have grown in size and depth over the last 25 years. Bitter Lake, once little more than a shallow slough, is now the state’s largest natural lake; it is encroaching on Waubay Lake and other bodies of water to create an ocean-less, inland sea.

In this winter of the pandemic, we are all looking for new outdoor sights and experiences. Winter serenity and solitude has always been a trademark of the unspoiled Glacial Lakes region.

Here are 10 suggestions, organized by county, on how you might explore the Glacial Lakes. Some are auto drives, others offer winter hikes that could be compromised by the amount of snow on the ground. However, this list only scratches the surface so don’t hesitate to roam the lake country. You’ll discover many surprises, and they’ll all be good.

BROOKINGS COUNTY — The 135-acre Dakota Nature Park (at the corner of 22nd Avenue and 32nd Street South) lies in the southeastern corner of Brookings. Gravel mining led to formation of ponds and wetlands, and a restored prairie now grows atop the old landfill mound. A portion of the Allyn Frerichs Trail System — named for the city’s longtime parks and rec director who passed away in 2014 — skirts the north edge of the park, while a network of paths weave around the wetlands, prairies and trees.

BROWN COUNTY — Take a trip to Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Though the classic 15-mile auto tour is closed in winter due to hunting and snow conditions, other roads remain open on the perimeter of the refuge. Explore the gravel roads that lead north and south from Highway 10. The snow geese are gone, but you’ll see other waterfowl, eagles and the Arctic’s snowy owls. Deer, pheasant and coyotes are also common. Sand Lake rose from the dust of the Great Depression to become one of the world’s most important wildlife sanctuaries. It is 30 miles northeast of Aberdeen.

CODINGTON COUNTY — Just southwest of Watertown is Pelican Lake. An observation tower near an inlet on the lake’s south side provides a sweeping view of the water, its namesake birds, the prairie and Watertown’s skyline. The Observation Tower Trail is a three-quarters of a mile hike through the woods and winter grasses. A longer jaunt, the Pelican Prairie Trail, gently meanders 5.2 miles.

DAY COUNTY– Explore the trails of Waubay National Wildlife Refuge, situated in the very heart of the Prairie Pothole landscape. Scientists say the region produces 50 percent of the continent’s waterfowl. Trails range from a few hundred feet to a mile, and jaunt around an island that houses the refuge headquarters. However, the public facilities are closed in winter.

DEUEL COUNTY — Visit 12-acre Ulven Park, which occupies a point on the eastern shore of Clear Lake. The frogs and toads, noisy in summer, are now hibernating so they’ll not interrupt the serenity of the park’s half-mile hiking trail.

EDMUNDS COUNTY — Shake Maza Trail at Mina Lake (between Ipswich and Aberdeen) is a short walk that explores the flora, fauna and other features at one of the first man-made lakes in northeast South Dakota. Shake Maza is a Native term meaning”shaped like a horseshoe,” which describes the 850-acre lake, ringed by picturesque cabins and homes.

GRANT COUNTY — This fascinating region is one of the USA’s five continental divides. Lake Traverse flows west to the Hudson Bay and Big Stone Lake flows south to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the best winter trails are at Hartford Beach State Park — a tree-filled, rocky shoreline north of Milbank that is quite unlike anything else in the Glacial Lakes. Signage in the park will direct you to several easy trails.

HAND COUNTY — Hike the Pheasant Run Trail at Lake Louise, 14 miles northwest of Miller. Beginning at the trailhead in the main campground, the dirt and grass trail meanders 3.2 miles around the south side of Lake Louise, which was created by damming the south fork of Wolf Creek in 1932. More than three dozen informational plaques identify trees and plants found along the way, though leaf identification will be challenging in December and January.

LAKE COUNTY — Wander the trails of Lake Herman State Park, which occupies a peninsula on the east side of Lake Herman, just west of Madison. A cabin built by pioneer Herman Luce in about 1870 stands along the 1.25-mile Luce Adventure Trail, which encircles Herman Pond. Connecting trails include the Abbott Trail (1.1 miles) and the Pioneer Nature Trail (.4 miles). All are easy walking.

MOODY COUNTY — Much of the prairie pothole region drains into the Big Sioux River, and the waterway starts to change its personality as it reaches Flandreau and Dell Rapids. Hike Red Rock Trail in Dell Rapids, where you can enjoy a closeup view of the famous rose quartzite that underlies the region.

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Bad Roads, Good Roads

By Bernie Hunhoff

Near the town of Kidder, Marshall County.

What a great idea. We’d cross South Dakota on gravel roads to see what we could find off the pavement. Maybe we could offer some tips to readers interested in a similar adventure?

A quick perusal of our Rand McNally Atlas & Gazetteer showed that it would be impossible to make such a trip east and west. West River has lots of dirt roads but it also has more curves and dead ends than a Black Hills cave. Going north and south from Nebraska to North Dakota across East River looked passable, however, with some careful zigzagging to avoid paved roads, lakes and East River dead ends.

The most feasible route, according to the Atlas & Gazetteer, would be from Bon Homme County to Marshall County. So off I went on a spring day with the atlas, a cooler of water, a camera and an 8-year-old grandson, Steven, for company.

We left at 8 a.m. on a glorious spring morning, the air freshened by a heavy rain that had fallen overnight. But what’s a little mud? We had a four-wheel-drive Jeep. Meadowlarks were singing and big black bulls were grazing belly-deep in brome grass. Steven and I could see Nebraska across the Missouri River. North we went on 424th Avenue.

The first official road in Dakota Territory was a dirt trail that ran from Yankton, the territorial capitol, to Smutty Bear’s Camp in Charles Mix County. Smutty Bear was one of the last holdouts on the 1858 treaty that allowed white settlement west of the Big Sioux River. As the story goes, Washington officials threatened to throw the old chief in the Atlantic Ocean if he wouldn’t sign; another version is that he was told he’d have to walk home from Washington.

The thought of walking home didn’t faze Smutty Bear even though there weren’t many roads west of the Mississippi. America was then more interested in rail development. Dakota Territory established a railroad commission in 1885, but a highway commission wasn’t formed for another 28 years.

Tyranny Smart enjoys an evening walk along 424th Avenue, near the North Dakota border.

However, decades before the invention of the automobile, politicians showed some vision for transportation. In 1866, Congress passed a law that allowed states and territories to claim public rights of way on lands in the West that were being opened to homesteading. The 1870 Dakota territorial legislature in Yankton acted on that authorization and declared that 66-foot strips dividing sections (square miles) should be established for the public.

When cars became available in the early 20th century, section line roads became a travel grid. In 1905, 10 years before he became governor and a champion of road building, Peter Norbeck bought a new Cadillac and drove it from Fort Pierre to the Black Hills on dirt roads.

State Representative Joseph Parmley of Ipswich introduced a bill two years later to make road construction the duty of county commissioners. His proposal was ridiculed and then defeated by fellow lawmakers. Undeterred, Parmley returned home and thought even bigger — he spearheaded development of The Yellowstone Trail, a dirt road that guided travelers from Minnesota’s Twin Cities to Yellowstone National Park.

The Yellowstone Trail became today’s Highway 12. Further south, business leaders promoted an east-west trail from Sioux Falls to Rapid City as the Custer Battlefield Highway. State workers smoothed the ruts with horse drawn drags in the 1920s. Gravel was added in 1928 and when concrete was laid in 1931 a”pavement dance” was held at Pumpkin Center near Wall Lake. That road is now Highway 16.

Thanks to the foresight of Norbeck, Parmley and many other pro-road politicians, South Dakota now has 83,609 miles of roads and 70 percent of them — 49,046 miles to be exact — are gravel. That doesn’t even count the 3,195 miles of dirt roads.

Most of South Dakota’s gravel roads never had a fancy name or a hard surface. However, they were numbered as streets and avenues 30 years ago in a statewide rural addressing program that has made life easier for hunters and fishermen exploring the back country, and for 911 dispatchers unacquainted with the red barns and lone trees that acted as landmarks prior to the green signs that now stand at every intersection. Rural streets run east and west in South Dakota while avenues are north and south.

Roger Holtzmann, South Dakota Magazine‘s resident humorist, lives on a gravel intersection west of Yankton. He recently wrote that the addresses make it much easier to give directions to relatives:”If you needed to tell someone how to get to your farm you’d tell them, ‘Go to Wyoming, and when you’re 127 miles away from North Dakota, hang a right. Then go 391 miles east and you can’t miss us, a white house with green trim. If you hit Minnesota, you’ve gone too far.'”

The rural numbering system gave gravel roads very urbane names, but in many cases the street numbers might also be the traffic count for the year. Steven and I only met a dozen vehicles (10 pickups, one car and one big tractor) during our entire trip on gravel. So we were free to enjoy the sights. The first thing we noticed was a proliferation of red-winged blackbirds. Perched on cattails and fence posts, the chattering birds dominate every pond and swamp. Meadowlarks were singing from the street signs and an occasional rooster pheasant peeked his head from the wet grass, perhaps hoping to dry his feathers on the gravel.

Presbyterian Cemetery, Bon Homme County.

We also saw several modern-day reminders of southeast South Dakota’s diverse ethnic heritage. Our starting point was 312th Street and Colony Road, which leads to the Bon Homme Colony that was organized in 1874 and became the mother of all Hutterite colonies in North America. A few miles north of the colony, we came upon a Presbyterian Cemetery established by Czech settlers in 1878. A church they built of chalk rock was moved to nearby Tyndall in 1953, but a waist-high stone border surrounding the large cemetery is well preserved, as are its few hundred gravestones.

Our first challenge, I thought, might be to find a gravel crossing on the James River, but that’s not a problem. We approached the river on 423rd Avenue, and did have to detour east on a mile of”oil” on State Highway 44 (we knew we’d need to make a few east-west hard-surface corrections). We resumed the trip north on 424th Avenue and soon dipped into the river valley, where a concrete bridge provides a sturdy crossing. A large flock of swallows performed acrobatics over the muddy river. Steven had a fishing pole, so he made a few casts with a spinner. But the muddy water didn’t look like a northern fishery, so he quickly agreed to reel it in and we headed north.

At the intersection of 424th Avenue and 269th Street, we saw one tall gravestone in the corner of a cornfield. What a lonely place to be buried, especially compared to the well-tended Bohemian cemetery we’d just seen. The gray stone belongs to Abraham Bechthold and it includes this notation: Geboren 1880, Gestorben 1903. He was just 23 when he died.

“Why was he buried all alone?” wondered Steven.

History is everywhere along South Dakota’s gravel roads, but much of it is buried by graves and grass. Very visible, however is the changing face of agriculture. In the eight counties we traversed — Bon Homme, Hutchinson, Hanson, Miner, Kingsbury, Clark, Day and Marshall — the human exodus is harder to ignore than the chattering blackbirds.

All that remains of many family homesteads are a few rows of cedars or elms that served as a shelterbelt. Churches and schools are shuttered or gone. Even entire small towns have disappeared. Still, every acre of the land is tilled and seeded unless it’s too steep, wet or rocky for a tractor and planter. South Dakota farmers have remained true to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s definition of a good man,”that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.” Nary an acre is wasted whether it’s along gravel or a concrete thoroughfare.

Lone grave, Hanson County.

Ironically, as the population dwindled the need for good roads increased. East River South Dakota is the western edge of America’s grain belt. The surviving farmers feed the world, and their machinery is bigger than some of the houses in which their grandparents lived.

County officials thought they were modernizing when they asphalted more than 13,000 miles of gravel roads in the 1950s and 1960s during the heyday of family farming. But today’s tractors can weigh up to 30 or 40 tons, and a semi-truck loaded with corn might be nearly as much. At that size, vehicles can wreak havoc on hard surface asphalt roads. It’s cheaper to maintain gravel, so many counties are grinding up asphalt roads and returning them to gravel. In some cases, they just let the asphalt crumble and go to weeds, giving some old roadways an apocalyptic appearance.

Dick Howard, a longtime road guru in Pierre, says there are differing attitudes about roads even within South Dakota.”The country roads still serve an important function in farming country, especially in those areas where we have ag development, dairies, grain transfer facilities and the big feedlots,” Howard says.”They need roads to move the products in and out. But when you go west of the river, where there are mainly cattle ranches, they don’t necessarily want roads every mile where people are running around in their pastures and have too much access.”

Howard’s theory is plainly illustrated in the Atlas & Gazetteer. Roadways in counties west of the river look like the crooked crease lines on your palm, while east of the Missouri the road system is a perfect grid, straight as a checkerboard.

Howard, now a mustached and affable lobbyist, has advocated for roads all his life. He served as the Secretary of Transportation for three governors and worked for the Association of County Commissioners and the Association of Towns and Townships. As Yogi Berra might have said, local government in South Dakota is 90 percent roads and 50 percent taxes. Howard has been on the front line of that paradox.

Everybody wants to live on a hard-surface road, quips Howard, but most of us want to pay for gravel.

A long trip on gravel demonstrates why rural residents — and their once-happy-to-oblige county officials — preferred asphalt or concrete over gravel. We started our journey slipping and sliding on muddy roads. After a few hours of sloshing our way, one could hardly tell that the Jeep was red. Despite the scarcity of vehicles, there are ruts on some of the poorer roads reminiscent of the wagon wheel tracks still visible in some native pastures. Ruts can outlast people and farms.

By afternoon, the hot sun dried the gravel and soon we were kicking up a trail of dust that seeped in the rear door of the Jeep. We zipped up the camera bag and covered it with a jacket to keep dust off the lenses.

A man could starve on gravel, so we diverted onto an oil road to eat at Carthage, a little town that gained attention for the welcome it gave to another traveler of the back roads. Chris McCandless abandoned his comfortable Virginia roots to hoof and hitchhike his way across the American West before stumbling onto Carthage, where he temporarily found work, friends and perhaps even a home. However, he soon resumed his wanderings and came to a bad end in Alaska. Moose hunters found his body in the Denali wilderness in August of 1992. McCandless’ story, including his brief respite in Carthage, was documented in the book Into the Wild. Denali’s rugged, remote and unforgiving nature seems further-than-the-moon away from Carthage, where a teenaged waitress laughed at Steven’s antics as he played hide-and-seek by the cash register.

Carthage also has a second link to literary history; it’s located at a place once known as the Bouchie Settlement, where author Laura Ingalls Wilder first taught school. She wrote about the experiences in her book Those Happy Golden Years. Heading north, it’s easy to imagine Wilder’s love for the region; even today the landscape is rich with tiny lakes and grassy fields. This is now lake country, a lowlands geography shaped 10,000 years ago by the last of the glaciers.

North of Carthage, 5 miles into Kingsbury County, we came upon Esmond, possibly the best-marked ghost town in the West. The town was platted on a treeless prairie of grass. Early residents debated whether to call it Sana or Esmond but the latter won. They constructed dozens of impressive buildings, but only a few remain standing. Small green signs with brief histories of the site mark the others.

Esmond, Kingsbury County.

Esmond is no longer treeless. The lots and yards where men and women gardened and painted and gossiped in the hot sun are now a shady forest. Lawns that had been mowed for generations have grown wild except at the United Methodist Church, a pretty white-frame chapel that still hosts Sunday services.

The church door was unlocked so Steven and I took a peek. He played a few reverent notes on the piano and signed the guest book. Can it be a ghost town if people still go to church there, he asked?

The glacial lakes have been a blessing to South Dakotans. They are rife with walleye and northerns. Beautiful homes circle the waters, and an important recreation industry has developed that includes not just hunting and fishing but boating, bird watching, hiking, camping and countless other activities.

The gravel roads of northeast South Dakota are vital for visitors who come to enjoy the outdoors, and there are some excellent routes. Driving on 425th Avenue west of Willow Lake on a dry, sunny summer afternoon is paradise. You wouldn’t mind if the road stretched all the way to Alaska.

But once you’re west of Willow Lake you might just as well throw away your Atlas & Gazetteer. Even a cell phone with Mapquest and Google apps will be of little help. The atlas shows that 428th Avenue should be passable, but within a mile we ran into water and a dead end. We reversed course and tried 427th Avenue, but the Froke/Waldo Waterfowl Production Area (WPA) shown in the atlas has grown. Another dead end.

And so we tried 425th Avenue and made some progress. But the road grid is now a maze. Soon you long for a road that will just take you a few miles and then provide an east or west outlet to another. Is that so much to ask?

423rd Avenue brought us to the western outskirts of Clark, but as soon as we passed the manicured country club we encountered more prairie potholes. We found our way to Crocker, pop. 18, saw water on two sides, and took 422nd, but it ended at another swelled lake.

The glacial lakes put South Dakota”on the atlas” so to speak for geese, mallards and numerous other winged creatures — even the dainty whooping cranes — who migrate across North America every spring and autumn. But the lakes and potholes expanded during a wet period in the 1990s, and that has made it nigh impossible to go any distance on the excellent gravel roads of Clark and Day counties, where the transportation budgets must have a line item for yellow”Dead End” and”No Travel Advised” signs.

North Dakota border, Marshall County.

Our predicament improved somewhat in Marshall County. We made tracks on 421st Avenue before it was interrupted, so we circled to the east because Steven had spotted a town name in the atlas called Spain, south of Britton. He was imagining bullfighters and taco chips, but all we found was a railroad track and a few dilapidated buildings. The ghosts of Esmond should erect some green signs in Spain.

As the sun began to set on our 12-hour trip, we came to an end on 422nd Avenue. We drove through Newark, another tiny hamlet, and came to 100th Street on the North Dakota border where a dirt path and a row of cottonwoods separate the twin states.

Google Maps estimates that the trip from Tyndall to Britton should take four hours. But who would want to drive straight through without stopping to dine, fish, worship, bird watch and enjoy the sights and history of South Dakota’s gravel roads?

Would we recommend such a trip to readers? Steven pointed to a cloud formation in the Marshall County sky as we were closing in on North Dakota. Clearly the clouds formed the letters NO.

Like a lot of things that are less than perfect, our gravel and dirt roads are best enjoyed in smaller doses. Get off the paved roads. But don’t try 212 miles (plus another 100 or so of zigzags) in a day.

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

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Lily Lives

Our January/February issue includes a story on Lily, a tiny town south of Webster. Minneapolis photographer Howard Christopherson stumbled upon Lily in 2006 while exploring Highway 12. He was so charmed by the town that he purchased a small house there, which he uses as a creative retreat. It’s also headquarters to his Highway 12 Road Trip Photography Workshop, open to photographers of any ability who wish to explore Lily, the surrounding towns and backroads.

Christopherson shared several photos — too many, in fact, to fit within our magazine’s pages — so here are a few more that didn’t appear in print. Collector’s prints are available of these and all of Christopherson’s photos from the January/February 2017 issue.

South Dakota Magazine subscribers may purchase archival photographic prints from Christopherson at a special price of $450 (includes U.S. shipping and handling). Prints are individually printed by Christopherson using the best inks and paper available. Image size is 20″ by 13 3/8″ (paper size 22″ x 17″). Each print is hand signed and embossed. Framed options are available. A portion from each sale will be donated to the preservation of the town.

Contact Howard M. Christopherson at Icebox Gallery at icebox@bitstream.net or (612) 788-1790.

Shortly after the article was published, we learned that Lily will formally dissolve in March. There are no longer any permanent residents, mayor or board members to maintain the town.

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Verna Knapp’s Recipe Roundup

By Ruth Steil

Verna Knapp’s cookbook mixes family quotes and stories with prize-winning recipes. Photo by Dani Steele.

Verna Knapp tries one new recipe every week, which explains why she calls her kitchen a”laboratory for experimentation.” She doesn’t always create the dishes from scratch, but”when I try a recipe I change the ingredients to see if I can improve it,” she says. Her cookbook, My Recipe Roundup at the Knapp Ranch, contains a wide variety of foods. They include an uncomplicated”Broiled Fish,” a curiously different”Sauerkraut Apple Cake” and an exotic”Essence of Rose Ice Cream.” Small ribbons placed beside a title designate prize winning recipes. There are 26 ribbons in the”Bread Basket” section alone. Along with the recipes, Knapp added family and regional quotes and stories.

Knapp has always been an avid recipe collector, but the suggestion to write a cookbook didn’t come until the summer of 2003 when her youngest daughter vacationed at the Knapps’ Waubay ranch and brought a computer. She said,”Here, Mom, this is for you. Now you can write your cookbook.”

“I did recall saying to her and our other daughter that I planned to copy my favorite recipes for them someday,” Knapp says,”but I had no plans to learn to use a computer at age 80. My daughter said, ‘Mom, you can do it.’ Then she had to leave, but she showed me how to dial up and shut down.” Knapp’s progress was”slow and painful,” but through the winter of 2004-05 she organized and copied recipes using the computer. The following winter she completed the cookbook and sent it to a publisher.

The prize-winning ribbons in the cookbook might never have happened if it weren’t for chicken pox. In the fall of 1957, Verna’s husband became ill. They had three children at the time, including a three-month-old baby.”I was milking and running the combine to harvest oats,” she says.”So I hired two teenage girls from a little town west of here. They took turns staying with us and caring for the children.” One of the girls came down with chicken pox and her mother didn’t want her to come home because the father was quite elderly and ill with congestive heart failure. It was a big disappointment for the young girl; she’d been working hard on a 4-H project for the Day County Fair.

“We didn’t have a phone so I told her to write her mother and tell her that we would get her to the fair,” Knapp says.”She wrote back, ‘That’s fine if Mrs. Knapp exhibits, but if she doesn’t exhibit we can’t expect that.'” Knapp had never intended to use her cooking skills to enter competitions — besides she was too busy with ranch work. But to console the young girl, Knapp said she would enter something.”I whipped up some muffins to take. The results were great — the girls took top ribbons and I took top ribbon, too,” she says.”That started me in competition. It was fun and a challenge, and I love a challenge.”‚Ä®

Knapp Ranch is 27 miles from Webster, 20 miles from Sisseton and three hours from Huron. Getting to a competition wasn’t easy, but the distance wasn’t the only obstacle for her.”My exhibiting was by chance. My main job was here at the ranch; if we weren’t haying we were combining, if we weren’t combining we were bringing hay home,” she says.

“Many times if I thought we had time to go, I would start after chores and bake until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning. That was fun.” Knapp is a self-proclaimed bread-baker.”I never run out of bread,” she says. Maybe that’s why it was her biggest winner. She won a year’s supply of Red Star yeast, a year’s supply of Robin Hood flour and three photographs to be taken by a photographer of her choice when her rye bread took top honors at the State Fair.”Oh my, I appreciated the prizes so,” she says.”It was just great!”

Knapp hasn’t exhibited in many years, but she maintains an active lifestyle on the ranch.”This is my 64th garden on the same spot of ground,” she says. She raises a variety of vegetables including two kinds of potatoes, two kinds of squash, a variety of salad greens, beets, carrots, and tomatoes.”I’m really retired, but I don’t feel that way,” she says.”I’ve started selling produce at a farmer’s market.” Knapp also has several flowerbeds, including one that has roots in the long-gone claim shanty built in 1898 by her father-in-law and his brothers. The shanty’s stone foundation forms a 24 x 24 foot”sunken garden” that Knapp filled and surrounded with flowers.

To order Recipe Roundup at the Knapp Ranch, contact Verna Knapp at (605) 947-4309, or write 13168 450th Ave., Waubay, S.D., 57273-7500.

Vegetable Harvest Dish

Verna Knapp’s Vegetable Harvest Dish takes advantage of a bountiful garden.

1 med. unpeeled eggplant, cubed

1 med. unpeeled zucchini, diced

1 cup chopped onion‚Ä®

1 green pepper, seeded, diced‚Ä®

3 cloves garlic, minced

1⁄4 cup olive oil‚Ä®

2 large fresh tomatoes, peeled, cored, chopped‚Ä®

1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped

2 tbsps fresh sage, chopped, or 2 tsps rubbed sage

2 tsps dried oregano, crumbled‚Ä®

1 tsp cinnamon

‚Ä®1⁄2 tsp nutmeg‚Ä®

1⁄2 tsp allspice

‚Ä®1⁄4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)‚Ä®

1 cup cottage cheese

1⁄2 cup light cream

Salt and pepper

After cubing eggplant soak pieces in salted ice water. Prepare zucchini, onions, pepper and garlic; saute all vegetables in oil for 10 minutes. Add tomatoes and spices, cook a few minutes longer. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Spoon mixture into 2 quart baking dish sprayed with oil. Puree cottage cheese with cream. Spread over top of dish. Bake at 325 degrees for 1⁄2 hour or until bubbly. Serves 4.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Langford’s Titanic Victim

By John Andrews

Today is the day when, 103 years ago, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The massive ocean liner was designed to be unsinkable, but her maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City in April 1912 turned out to be her only voyage.

Few reminders of the tragedy exist in South Dakota, but there is one on a Day County farm. Sometime between 1885 and 1912, Ole Olson scratched his name into the wall of his family’s granary southeast of Langford. No one knew it was there until 2003, when Olson’s nephew Harlan and his wife Karen rediscovered it while converting the granary into a craft house.

Ole was among more than 1,500 people who died when Titanic sunk. Ole’s parents homesteaded in Day County in 1883. He grew up there and later moved to Canada to start his own farm. He spent the holidays visiting family in Norway, and was returning to Canada aboard the Titanic to begin spring planting.

Ole’s mother refused to talk about the accident. She firmly believed her son had survived and would simply show up one day at their farm. But passengers like Ole stood little chance of making it out alive. Women and children were given priority as the lifeboats were being filled, resulting in a 70 percent survival rate. However, only 20 percent of the 1,670 men aboard ship survived. Numbers were lowest among those traveling second (8 percent) and third class (16 percent). Oddly, 33 percent of men traveling first class were rescued. Many, including J. Bruce Ismay, the White Star Line’s chairman, endured social ostracism for fleeing the foundering ship with little or no regard for the 2,200 passengers and crew. Ismay is the subject of one of those new books.

Any family would cherish uncovering such a piece of family history, but it’s even more important to the Olsons, given Ole’s connection to such a famous disaster. The Olsons have created a small exhibit in Ole’s honor. They have framed the portion of the wall around Ole’s signature and added photos and information about the Titanic.

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Pickerel Lake’s Stone Walls

Story and photography By Dani Steele

Pickerel Lake is bordered by some of the West’s most magnificent displays of stone craftsmanship. Scattered around the lake are many unique and charming stone walls constructed throughout the last 80 years.

The ages and styles of the stonework vary greatly. There are stacked rock walls and mortared walls. Some were built with split stone and others with natural. Some soak up the blazing summer sun, while others are so heavy with moss and lichens that very little stone is visible. There are simple walls and multi-tiered structures with flower gardens and staircases.

Pickerel Lake lies in Kosciusko Township of Day County, a very rural place with far more than its rightful share of skilled stonemasons. Gust Gruba, Gus”Happy Jack” Schultz and brothers Tony and Alfred Miotke were trained by working alongside their fathers, who descended from immigrant families with European roots.

Jonas and James Keeble came to the profession through another route. Jonas was a Sisseton Sioux born at Pickerel Lake in a tipi in 1888. His parents sent him to the Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska, a vocational training school for Indian children. Jonas was interested in bricklaying, and when he returned to Pickerel Lake he did stone work around the area and soon trained his brother, Jim, to work with him as his assistant.

When he wasn’t doing masonry, Alfred Miotke ran a taxi service with his horse team and did various odd jobs for Harvey Jewett I, who decided to build a lake home in 1929. The house provided quite a boost to the local economy during the Great Depression. Jewett asked for a large stone fireplace, numerous retaining walls, a stone-lined driveway and stone flower beds (while the lakeshore retaining wall has been replaced, some of the original stonework on the property is still intact).

On larger projects like the Jewett stonework, the masons worked together. They were friends who looked out for one another and respected each other’s talents and abilities.

The Keeble crew grew to include other brothers, cousins and some of Jonas and Jim’s children. Jonas’ son Frankin Delano Keeble, who lives on the family’s original property, began mixing cement for his dad at age 10. He wonders now how children back then could have handled such heavy, labor-intensive jobs. Eventually Jonas turned the business over to Jim, who also played the fiddle and accordion at barn dances. Jim’s retirement marked the end of the line for the Keeble family masonry crew.

The children of Gust Gruba and Alfred Miotke are building walls at Pickerel Lake today. Gust’s son Ed and Alfred’s son Alfred Jr. (Fred) are unassuming, witty and good-natured, as was Fred’s brother Don, who passed away in 2011. Don and Fred built walls with Kenny Okroi, and Ed has taught his sons Mike, Steven and Curtis, as well as a few nephews.

Even with lifetimes of experience, the men insist they are still learning about the nature of rocks and how to stack them. A good wall begins with a stable base, able to withstand the South Dakota ice, winds, frost heaves and heat. Depending on the soil type, the footings need to go down as far as four feet. The most important part of the wall is the part you don’t see.

Aboveground requires imagination. Rock selection gives the wall its personality. The mason has to find rocks that fit visually and structurally. If done properly, the wall should be able to stand without mortar, though all of the walls created today are mortared. Split rock adheres better to the”mud” than natural rocks. The size and color of the rocks depends on the artistic vision of the mason. Rocks are his paints and brushes.

Pickerel’s masons do 90 percent of the rock splitting by hand, using shims and wedges and feathers to divide large rocks. Stones are most spectacular when split across the grain, exposing the color band, but it is not an easy task to hand-split a stone across the grain.

The personalities of the masons are reflected in the walls of Pickerel Lake. The Miotkes often add one of their signature patterns into a wall — a butterfly, flower, sunset or boots. In 1978 Fred took a day off, and upon his return he found his work boots permanently embedded in a wall near Pike’s Point. Later, Fred returned the favor. He and colleague Kenny Okroi were working at one side of a new wall, with Don at the other side. Don heard chuckling and knew the others were up to something. He soon found a pair of his own work boots embedded in the wall. Cabin owner Leni Johnson loves the masons’ humor.

Rocks for the lake walls come from local fields. The rocks were originally brought by one of two significant glaciers that covered the area. The first, called the Illinoisan, delivered granite rocks from the Lake Superior area. The second glacier, called the Wisconsinan, came from the north and formed two lobes, the James (to the west) and the Des Moines (to the east). Rocks with sharp edges most likely came from this glacier, or were displaced from the north end of the prairie coteau as the glacier slid through and dragged away much of the rich black topsoil.

Four factors account for the many stone walls around Pickerel. First, there’s a need due to the number of lake lots with a significant slope. Thanks to the glaciers, there is an abundance of natural building materials. Also, the property owners include families who can afford improvements to their cabins. Finally, there are local masons who love beautiful walls.

According to Fred Miotke,”If your goal is to get rich, you need to move right away. Our ancestors homesteaded here — this is home. We’re used to working together. Why stop now?”

Editor’s Note: This article is revised from the July/August 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Judge

By Bernie Hunhoff

Editor’s Note: Sigurd Anderson’s rise from a young Norwegian immigrant who couldn’t speak English to governor of South Dakota is inspirational. We interviewed Anderson at home in Webster in 1988, two years before he passed away.

Whenever the Anderson family went to Canton for supplies, young Sig had two favorite haunts: the corner drug store, where he read everything but prescription labels, and the Lincoln County courthouse, where he sat enchanted by verbal battles between country lawyers.

That love of the English language might seem surprising, since he was born in Norway in 1904 and came to South Dakota at the age of 3 with his parents. He couldn’t speak a word of English when he started country school. Even though there were many other Norwegians in the area, it seemed that he and brother George were singled out for teasing because they dressed differently. And even though they quickly learned English, the words came out with a distinctive Scandinavian brogue.

“One song I listened to a lot,” he laughs today, was, “Oh, the Norwegians and the Dutch, They Don’t Amount to Much.”

Little did the other kids know that their quiet, immigrant classmate would become South Dakota’s 19th governor.

Despite some teasing, and an occasional walk home across the cornfield to avoid confrontations, the Anderson boys adjusted. Their father, Karl, loved life in America and took his children to local political debates, where Sig received more exposure to fine oratory. He still remembers a Non-Partisan League debate in Canton where Gov. Peter Norbeck and Tom Ayres heated up the stage.

Eventually, his dress and speech became Americanized, and by the time he graduated from Canton Lutheran Normal School he was awarded a scholarship in debate from State College in Brookings. Scarlet fever cut his first college try short. After a stint as a hired hand on a farm, followed by a year as a country school teacher at Bancroft, he enrolled at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion where he became a good scholar, top debater and student council member.

He graduated with honors in 1931 and got a teaching job at Rapid City. But when school funds were embezzled by a local official, jeopardizing teacher salaries, he moved across the state to Webster and began a lifelong affair with Day County.

Sig returned to USD in 1935 to get a law degree. When he graduated, his goal was to return to Webster and establish a law practice. But he kept getting interrupted. First it was World War II, where he served as a legal officer in the Navy. Then, upon his return to Webster, he was persuaded to run for Attorney General. That followed two terms as governor, 10 years as a Federal Trade Commissioner, and eight years as a circuit court judge. Between almost every career change, he returned to Webster to try to get that law practice going.

Considering his love for Webster, it was not surprising that when he finally retired in 1975, he chose to stay right there, in the modest, two story white-frame house that he’s called home for many years.

He still keeps a second story office downtown — a place to stack his books and occasionally hang his hat. But mostly, the office has been a great excuse to put on his trademark suit and tie and walk down Main Street, where everyone greets him as either “governor” or “judge” or just “Sig.” This is his town. You get the feeling that they might even like to rename it for their graying favorite son. Andersonville? Sigtown?

But it won’t happen. Sig would be the first to object. He’d note that there would be too great an expense involved in redoing the road signs, maps and directories, not to mention the poor business people who would need to toss out all their Webster stationary and envelopes.

The county commissioners did name a room in the courthouse after him. Located adjacent to the county museum, it will be a showplace for some of the former governor’s photographs and memorabilia.

Until recently, he has enjoyed excellent health in retirement. However, at 84 years of age, he had a setback last winter and we visited him at the Day County Hospital, where we found him chipper and anxious to get back downtown. You can’t practice law from a hospital bed.

About all you can do in a hospital is tell stories, and that’s what he did.

He relishes the early days in politics. Soon after graduating from law school, he ran for State’s Attorney in Day County. Although the county is traditionally Republican, it had temporarily swayed to the Democratic side of the ballot due to Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Sam Buhler, a legendary political leader in northeastern South Dakota, was GOP county chairman. He rallied the Republicans by holding over 40 events in country schoolhouses throughout the county.

His Democratic opponent was a friend and former roommate, Lyman Melby. Both were nervously anticipating the early returns on election night. Finally, word came that the Oak Gulch precinct totals had arrived at the courthouse. Melby and Anderson and other candidates ran to the auditor’s office, where it was announced that for State’s Attorney, the results were: Anderson, 29; Melby, 29.

Oak Gulch didn’t launch his political career, but the other precincts gave him a victory. He was re-elected two years later, and before serving the second term he was appointed Assistant Attorney General in Pierre. Then, after four years of service as a legal officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he returned to Webster. Friends urged him to run for Attorney General. War veterans make good candidates, they explained, and he even had experience in the office.

Again postponing plans to get that Webster law practice established, he entered his name as a candidate.

Sig’s four years in the attorney general’s office were highlighted by a “Stamp Out Crime” program that was popular everywhere except, perhaps, in Deadwood, where main street entrepreneurs occasionally forgot that the Black Hills were not located in Nevada.

“We burned up a lot of slot machines in our day,” he says. “And we prosecuted a lot of people.”

He remembers a day when law officers carted an especially ornate and fine-crafted roulette wheel out of Deadwood tavern and lined it up with other gambling devices to be burned. A lady proprietor, appreciative of the craftsmanship, pleaded with Anderson to spare the game of chance. “That lady stood there and cried as they burned up the machine,” he says.

If he were in office today, he says, he would be strongly opposed to the new lottery program. “I really think we don’t need gambling as a source of revenue in South Dakota.”

As Attorney General, it was Anderson’s responsibility to witness South Dakota’s only state execution when convicted murderer George Sitts was led to an electric chair in the Sioux Falls penitentiary on April 8, 1947. “It was a rainy night, dripping outside, just the way the book said it should be,” recalls Anderson. “I walked in and there was Sitts. My, what a muscular fellow. He had been a stunt man in a circus. I said, ‘George, how are you.’ He said, ‘Not so bad, under the circumstances.’ We shook hands.”

Anderson said officers then put a hood over Sitts’s head and led him into the execution room, where he was strapped to the chair. The warden asked the prisoner if he wished to make a statement before they proceeded. “Warden,” said Sitts, “this is the first time the police have helped me out of jail.”

Then, recalls Anderson, there was a “Swish! Swash! Smell!!! And it was over.” Sitts was pronounced dead.

Sig calls it “the big one.” Of all his elections, nothing compares with the 1950 battle for the governorship. Again, both parties wanted qualified war veterans. The GOP contest became a five-way race, with Sig and war hero Joe Foss eventually rising to the top.

Foss was a World War II flying ace, a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor who downed 26 enemy planes. He campaigned by plane around the state, a tactic that not only speeded his travels but also was a constant reminder of his achievements.

“Every time a plane flew over, a little kid would say, ‘Hey, that’s Joe Foss up there,'” laughs Anderson. “No one had any battleships for Anderson.”

Sig campaigned hard. He and his wife, Vivian, left Pierre each day after work in their Chevrolet coupe, grabbing only a few Hershey bars for nourishment, and traveled from town to town. People liked the gentlemanly, soft-spoken Attorney General. And he was a natural campaigner. He had a command of the language, knew the issues and hardly ever forgot a name.

Most people felt that none of the five candidates would get the required 35 percent majority, and that a nominee would be selected at the state Republican convention. But Anderson narrowly crossed that threshold, and became the nominee.

His Democratic opponent in the fall was Joe Robbie, a young attorney who went on to become owner of the Miami Dolphins. As a Democrat, Robbie was the immediate underdog. Voter registrations then favored the GOP by a three to one margin. Republican gatherings drew much larger crowds, and Robbie was desperate to get his message out. He started an innovative attack of challenging Sig to a debate at almost every stop. He even brought along a chair for his “absent” foe. He’d tell his audience, “That chair is for Sigurd Anderson. He refuses to debate me.”

Anderson, now a skilled orator, was anxious to debate Robbie. But any such idea was vetoed by friends and supporters. “Are you cray? Ignore him!” they told Anderson.

The strategy worked. Using his lowkey, friendly style of campaigning, he won the election by 55,000 votes. Two years later, he was re-elected by a plurality of 203,102 votes.

The boy who couldn’t speak English when he started school was governor of South Dakota.

Though in years since it has become a cliche, Sig really did treat state government like a business. When the U.S. Air Force loaned him a plane to drop hay bales to starving cattle after a blizzard, Sig went along and helped push the bales out. Then he returned to Pierre and insisted on paying for use of the aircraft. “I believe that you pay your own way,” he said. “We tried our level best to pay off the federal government.”

Air Force personnel couldn’t understand that logic, and didn’t know how to accept the payment or where to put the money.

When you are governor of South Dakota, he said, people call you for just about any problem. After one heavy snowstorm, a Pierre area rancher called to complain that the county hadn’t yet plowed his road.

“But it’s absolutely, without question, the most challenging job you can have. It is the greatest thing next to being president of the United States,” said Sig.

His views melded well with the rest of South Dakota. “I didn’t believe in sin. I was pretty slow on drinking and gambling legislation.”

That didn’t make him a naysayer, however. He was an avid backer of building the dams on the Missouri River and worked to conciliate ranchers who would be losing land. He still remembers being at a hearing in Washington, D.C., when a prominent South Dakota rancher walked in with a stone and told the congressmen, “This is what they want to irrigate!”

He said there were also concerns about Indian burial grounds and many people were worried that the dams might break, causing even worse flooding than the river valley suffered without the project.

Of all the programs he worked on as governor, he cites the dams as the most important for South Dakota. Ranking a close second, however, is the fact that he stayed within a budget. “Spending within your means, that’s an old Scandinavian trait. You always payoff your debts.”

As governor, he retired the Rural Credit bonds owed by the state, created the Legislative Research Council, expanded the care of the mentally ill, accelerated the highway construction program, and terminated a 3 percent sales tax after it raised enough to pay World War II vets a soldiers’ bonus. Not many states were rolling back taxes in those days of growth, and the South Dakota governor made headlines in the Wall Street Journal that day.

His happiest day of being governor, however, had nothing to do with taxes or dams or roads. It was Jan. 11, 1954, when he and Vivian had a baby girl, Kristin Karen. She was only the second child born to a governor while in office.

Kristin is now editor of the Brookings Daily Register, and friends say Sig’s house is stacked with copies of that publication. “I don’t want to brag, but she is one of the best writers around,” he says with a grin.

Upon completion of his governorship, Sig returned to Webster, hoping to get that law practice established at last, with an eye on maybe running for Congress. But President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him to the Federal Trade Commission and he and his family moved to Washington, D.C., without campaigning.

Sig held the FTC post for 10 years. He enjoyed the challenge of investigating anti-trust activities and laughs at how slow the process could be. “It took us years and years to get them to strike ‘liver’ off Carter’s Little Liver Pills and make them call it what it is … and we bad 300 or 400 lawyers under us!”

The Andersons promptly headed west to Webster when his second term was up. He made two other tries at elective office. In 1962, while still at the FTC, be sought the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate after Francis Case died in office. He lost the nomination to Joe Bottum at a long convention, and Bottum ultimately lost to George McGovern.

Sig also sought the GOP nomination for governor in 1964, but lost to Nils Boe. At last, maybe he could really practice law. He was just getting started when Boe appointed him judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit. At least that position allowed him to stay in Webster. He retired from the judgeship in 1975, and since then he has enjoyed retirement.

He has that law office near Main Street. And when his health allows, he’s downtown every day. But be hasn’t run any advertisements. Fact is, he says, “Webster always had plenty of good attorneys.”

Editor’s Note: This story is edited from the May/June 1988 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Webster’s Golf Club

By Lee Schoenbeck

When you drive by a golf course in some small town along a South Dakota highway, it’s hard to slow down enough to see and appreciate the tradition and character that are part of where that community and its course meet. To the highway observer, the Webster Municipal Golf Course is just another traditional side-by-side course, indistinguishable from a hundred others across the state. With a slope rating of only 110, and 2921 yards from the men’s tees, it won’t intimidate too many golfers. And the locals will tell you that if you stay out of the National Guard parking compound (it’s fenced), away from Highway 12, and don’t hit Don Mahlen’s house or the cart shed, you can’t get in too much trouble. But that little glimpse wouldn’t tell you much about the traditions and the character of the course.

SUMMER REC

In Webster, Kids learned to golf in the summer rec program. Nobody I knew had their own clubs, although most had a few balls they’d found by scrounging in the roughs. On golf day, the community’s young’uns gathered at the course and were paired up in three or foursomes, along with a bag of clubs. The summer rec’s clubs were those left at the course through the years, so the”set” included a wood of some type, an iron in the 3 or 5 range, maybe a 9 iron, and a beat-up putter. A”round” of golf was about 3 holes — anything longer would have tied the course up for the whole day. This was about the joy of swinging and running around something like a big lawn. For our parents, it was probably about getting us out of the house for a few mornings a week. Nobody from my summer rec days went to college on a golf scholarship, but they all enjoyed learning a version of the game.

HIGH SCHOOL

Decades of Webster Bearcats football players dressed in the armory locker rooms, and charged off to the stadium, running across the golf course, helmet in hand, seeking Friday night fame and glory. The same golf course padded their tired trot back after the games, even on those occasions when the glory may have been fleeting.

The Bearcat cross-country runners got their taste of hometown fame on the golf course too. They streaked off down #1 fairway, covered the 9 fairways, and then looped back around three more holes to make the 2.2 mile course — and end with a lung-searing kick to the chute near the 9th green.

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY

Only a community golf course could give you the opportunity to wave to Great Uncle John and Aunt Anna in their room at the nursing home on # 2 or 4 tee boxes or #3 green, or maybe even take your cart over and tap on their window to make their day.

The club house at the course doesn’t have any columns and there is no Magnolia Lane, but it’s hosted a robust life of senior citizen meetings, card parties, and class and family reunions. It sports a deck looking out over the ninth green, where advice is freely and loudly dispensed — particularly on men’s night — to the duffers finishing their round.

IT’S A MAN’S WORLD

You don’t need to look at the paydays for majors on the LPGA and PGA circuits to understand that golf is still a male-dominated world. When we lived in Webster, my wife golfed and I didn’t, and I would get to hear about it after every Lady’s Day. Women golfed on Wednesday. Men’s Day was Thursday. Without all the modern watering devices and timers and things happening in the nights, sprinklers had to be turned on when somebody was around at work to do it. Greens and fairways had to be watered so they looked nice on Men’s Day. No greenskeeper dared mess that one up. It probably made complete sense to the groundsperson that the best way to have good greens for Men’s Thursday was to turn the sprinklers on during Women’s Wednesday! I’m not sure where the phrase”mad as a wet hen” originated, but I saw and heard where it fostered and grew.

AS GOLF GOES

There are two unique attributes about the Webster course. It is famous for its crowned greens that are the size of a quarter. If you can go”up and down” there, you can go”up and down” anywhere. When Webster golfers get to courses with bigger greens of more modern designs, they feel like they are being asked to hit into the Dome or something.

Also, Webster has a barber pole — but the haircut you get with one of these is a little different in golf. There are only two in the state– Webster and Clear Lake. (Of course I’m inviting readers to respond that I missed one.) If your ball doesn’t fly past the barber pole before cutting towards the green, you have to hit backwards and go around it. The barber pole allows a course to use a dog leg to make its course longer, without letting the unscrupulous cut the corner and make a mockery of the par 5.

YOU CAN ALWAYS GO HOME

After finishing up some business, I buzzed over to the Webster course for a quick nine, and the tradition and character of the community were in full bloom.

At the clubhouse there was only one group about to tee off — of about 12 golfers! It was the warmup for the Bob Wiley Classic, an event to raise funds and commemorate the most dedicated baseball supporter Webster has ever seen. Webster prep stars Bart Wiley, Lonnie Stover, Scottie Hanson and probably some others I didn’t recognize, were there enjoying home on their community course.

Webster’s a wrestling town, no secret to anybody in the 5-7 zip code. It seemed only right that out on the course I would come across Maurice Bierschbach, father of about 3 or 4 of those state champions. On the same fairway I again came across the 12-some, playing a spirited game of what appeared to be”worst ball” and laughing the whole time.

As I looked across those collections of people that embodied so many great memories for a community, I couldn’t help but think that this little piece of ground wasn’t really so much about birdies and pars, as it was about an opportunity to every once in a while, in some small way, bring a community together.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.


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Tragedy at Amsden Dam

By Lee Schoenbeck

Amsden Dam near Andover is a pretty little lake with humble roots. The 235 acre lake sits behind a Works Progress Administration dam. The dam was started in 1934, while South Dakota was in the grip of the Dust Bowl and the nation was mired in the Great Depression. Work was scarce and WPA jobs made it possible for the farmers of southwestern Day County to feed their families. The dam was completed in 1936 and the lake was full by 1937. The dam holds back water from Pickerel Creek and Mud Creek, both tributaries on their way to the Jim River. Lurking beneath the lake’s surface is an old gravel pit that provides its deepest holes — 27 feet. Those holes have provided Amsden with its most popular current use, muskie fishing, and its darkest day — less than one year after its birth.

The New Lake Held Hidden Dangers

In 1937 there weren’t community swimming pools, Red Cross swimming lessons or long road trips for entertainment. On August 15, Leo, a local farmer, and his wife Pearl, a country school teacher, gathered their 6 children and the rest of the Happy-Go-Lucky 4-H Sewing and Garden Club of Southeast Andover at their farm for their 4-H meeting. When the meeting was over, the kids begged Leo and another father, Herman Wenck, to take them to the new local lake to cool off. Pearl had lunch ready, but put it on hold for them to eat after a quick trip to Amsden. The group happily went down the hill for swimming and games on the southeastern shore. To the immediate west of the picnic area shore, hidden below the surface, were the now water-filled gravel pits.

Leo lived just up the hill from the dam and had worked on its construction. Because so few people had the opportunity in those times to learn to swim, Leo put a rock on the shoreline to mark a point that the bathers were not to venture past. Dilleen Ninke Wenck was 10 at the time and still remembers vividly the admonition:”Don’t go north of that rock.” The warning was needed because about ten feet out, and north from that point, the lake dropped off into the old gravel pit. As the day progressed the group enjoyed wading and playing waist-deep in Amsden — until an unusual event occurred, with fatal consequences.

False Teeth Led to Tragedy

Mrs. Simonson and her friend, Mrs. Miller, waded into the lake to cool their feet, near the forbidden limits. While leaning over, Mrs. Simonson lost her false teeth into the lake. As she searched about for them, she slipped into the gravel pit depths and began screaming for help. Leo, one of the few swimmers in the group, swam to her aid, but the screaming led to pandemonium. Family members focused on their screaming, drowning loved ones and not the warning about the pit ran to assist — and found themselves quickly in peril, thrashing in water over their heads. As the confusion and the tragedy unfolded, Leo swam and retrieved and swam and retrieved the neighbors thrashing in the lake. His youngest son Maynard, only 10, had an inflated inner tube that his older brother, Leo Jr., 16, swam out with to pull his father’s retrieves to shore. The news accounts of the day describe Leo as a”strong swimmer” and Leo Jr. as a”fair swimmer.” Sr. kept returning to the deep waters and retrieving bodies. Jr. split his time between pulling the saved to shore and punching others who were trying to get back into the water to help their screaming, drowning loved ones — and creating more work and danger for Jr.’s now tiring father. Helping Leo Jr. that day was his teenage friend, a non-swimmer, Orville Simonson.

But, in what seemed like just minutes, there was silence. The screaming from the lake stopped. Leo Jr looked about — his Dad was gone. As the families hugged and gathered, the magnitude of the tragedy was soon evident — five families would not go home from the picnic intact that day. Four bodies were recovered before the dragging equipment could arrive from Webster: Leo Sr. (age 36), Herman Wenck (age 42), Ruby Miller (age 12), and Mildred Simonson (age 13). That night a fifth body, Irene Wahl (age 13), was recovered, and the last, Mrs. Clarence Miller (age 42), the mother of deceased Ruby, was found floating across the lake the next day.

Leo Sr.’s body, clawed beyond recognition, was recovered with his last rescue effort wrapped around his head.

Leo Jr. was credited with saving a half dozen young 4-Hers that day. Dilleen Ninke Wenck was one of those children. She still recalls, just before she was pulled to safety, telling her father”Dad, I want to go with you,” and hearing her father’s last words,”You can’t go with me today,” as he slipped under the waves. Another of those children, Carolyn Schoenbeck Pooley, was 8 and recalls her father Leo’s last words being”Go to shore, Kelly” as he put her on the inner tube for Jr. to pull in, before swimming back out into the deep waters.

Lessons to Take Away from the Amsden Tragedy

There are lessons to be learned from the tragedy at Amsden Dam. The most obvious is, of course, the value of young people taking swimming lessons, so they have some ability to function in and appreciate the risks of a substance that covers over seventy percent of the earth’s surface. Also, as every student of a lifesaving class has been taught, a drowning victim is dangerous and presents special risks that only those who have been trained can safely manage.

Leo Sr.’s a special story. He was a strong athlete, the pitcher on the town team. His strength and commitment to survival manifested itself already as a young man in ways that were not so socially acceptable, but maybe not so uncommon in the Great Depression. He had already assaulted two people trying to repossess his family tractor, and earned another felony conviction for selling mortgaged grain, a likely product of the need to feed his young family. Today, Leo Sr. would likely have been sentenced to the state penitentiary, which would not have made him available to rise to the challenges of saving lives that tragic day at Amsden Dam. His story is one of redemption, a feeling surely shared by the families of the eight individuals that he saved that day.

Leo Jr., the 16-year-old average swimmer, never swam for fun again after that day. He would take his own family to the public beach at Blue Dog Lake to learn to swim and take lessons before his community of Webster ever had a pool. He even has granddaughters swimming in the state swim meet here in South Dakota this month, and several of his kids swam competitively. But water loses its attraction when it takes your father away far too early in life — at least that’s the way my father, Leo Jr., felt after that tragic day at Amsden Dam seventy-five years ago this August 15.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.