Tag: humor

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Navigating the Dog Days

By Roger Holtzmann

These are the Dog Days of summer, so named because in Roman times the constellation Canis Major, or”greater dog,” rose at the same time as the sun.

Or something like that. Like many matters pertaining to constellations, this makes no sense. How could stars and the sun rise at the same time? Not to mention the whole”dog” thing. Canis Major doesn’t resemble a dog anymore than the Big Dipper looks like the hind quarters of a bear, but that’s what you do for fun if books haven’t been invented and you don’t have cable TV: you look up at the night sky and connect random stars into fanciful pictures.

When I was a kid someone told me you’d get sick if you went swimming during Dog Days. I curse the swine — it may have been Bradley Larson — who implanted the image of oozing pustules that left me sweltering on shore during the hottest part of that summer!

Anyway … here’s the part that concerns you, my long-suffering readers. You turn to me for tightly reasoned prose on important matters of the day, and at the risk of sounding immodest, I have always delivered.

Until now. Dog Days have induced a deep and abiding lethargy this year. I’ve got nothing for you. I keep notes in a file, but upon closer inspection these turned out to be … well, you supply the adjective.

If you have ever dealt with a building contractor you are no doubt aware that the term”week” has a fairly elastic meaning for them.”I’ll be there the first part of next week,” and,”I should be able to wrap it up by the end of the week,” means the promised event can occur anywhere up to six months later. When they finally do show up they act as though nothing is amiss, which was supposed to lead to a hilarious discussion about Einstein’s theory that time passes at a different rate for an object in motion than for one at rest.

See what I mean? That’s not funny. It’s stupid. Some of my”ideas” weren’t even ideas, just pithy sayings.”Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie!’ while you look around for a rock.” That was useless, but it made more sense than,”Yuri and Olga Find Love While Increasing Production at the Cement Factory.” Where was I intending to go with that?

Sometimes when I’m adrift I go online, hoping it will jar something loose. It never does. You probably have your own embarrassing way of wasting time on the internet. I often end up reading about bombers and battleships and such. I don’t know why. I am a man of peace who is strangely drawn to the implements of war.

This fascination/affliction has been with me for some time. When I was a kid, my best friend, Jerry Cavanaugh, bought an old helmet at the Army surplus store. How I coveted my neighbor’s goods! I might have moved on to violating the Seventh Commandment if Jerry hadn’t gotten bored with the whole head-in-a-steel-pot experience and passed the helmet on to me.

Oh, joy! I wore it everywhere, including at the supper table, which prompted my dad to ask,”Is that thing nailed to your head?”

“No,” I replied, somewhat mystified by the question. At that stage in my life I wasn’t adept at picking up on sarcasm. He then suggested that, since an attack upon our kitchen seemed unlikely, we could proceed without helmets.

I thought about sharing my Saving-the-World fantasy. Mine doesn’t involve super powers. I imagine I have a device that enables me to deliver a taser-like shock to every politician and corporate flack who utters a hollow phrase or half-truth. If such power was within my grasp, if our leaders could be so induced to speak meaningfully and truthfully, I am certain some of our most pressing problems would soon be solved.

My next thought was that fantasizing about saving the world through physical abuse might raise a red flag or two, so I moved on to the story of a slacker who may yet be drawing a paycheck from the state of South Dakota. This idea came to my attention when I was reading about Alleged Drug Courier vs. The State of South Dakota, a case that was argued before the S.D. Supreme Court. A highway patrolman who had a drug-sniffing dog with him stopped the alleged courier. To make a long story short, 53 pounds of a substance resembling marijuana was found in the vehicle’s trunk.

Not so fast, argued the perpetrator’s alleged attorney. Police officers need probable cause — information sufficient to convince a prudent person that contraband will be found — before they can search vehicles. In this case, the patrolman wasn’t supposed to search until he got an indication that the dog smelled something suspicious. The dog never gave any such indication, said the lawyer, until the patrolman prompted him.

If you ever get hauled into court you’ll want a suit to stand up and spin implausible theories on your behalf, so don’t judge this trial tactic too harshly. What if the lawyer is right? Are we the people employing a drug-sniffing dog that can’t find 53 pounds of dope on his own? Has anybody checked his credentials?

Is that interesting to anybody besides me? I doubt it, which leaves me with nothing to … oh, wait. I do have something to offer. Just to be safe, don’t go swimming until the Big Dog sets. Bradley might be right.

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

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These Eggs Are Peachy

By Fran Hill

Fried egg? Think again.

What does someone who is obsessed with food, recipes and fun do on April Fools’ Day? Of course, they pull a food prank.

Get up before your spouse, fry some bacon, toast your favorite bread and brew a pot of coffee. Then, get ready for the prank. Create a special “egg” on a breakfast plate and have it waiting when the sleepy fool meanders down the stairs. Having a spouse that doesn’t fully wake up until the second cup of coffee does help to pull off the surprise. Enjoy the laughs and have a great day!

Peachy Eggs for April Fools’ Day

1/3 -1/2 cup vanilla yogurt

Ω peach (canned halves in light syrup work well)

Spread yogurt into circle on plate, using the back of a spoon. Place peach half, flat side down, in the center of the yogurt.

Fran Hill has been blogging about food at On My Plate since October of 2006. She, her husband and their three dogs ranch near Colome.

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My Kind of Town

By Roger Holtzmann

I wasn’t born in Yankton. I didn’t set out to live here. Things just sort of worked out that way, but I’m content they did. I’m happy here.

And yet …

I was flipping through Yankee magazine the other day (I have since realized this was research, not goofing off) when I came across an article about a town called New Englandville. This fictional place was a compendium of everything the author thought a perfect town should include. It got me wondering: what would my ideal hometown, Rogerburgh, be like?

I think of myself as a bloom-where-you’re-planted type. Although I’ve spent most of my life in the Dakotas, I could adapt and be happy in many environments. By nature I am low-key, well suited to the glacial pace of small town life. I also have a built-in defense against people’s biggest beef about such places: everybody knows everybody else’s business. My life is so dull gossips soon move to more fertile fields.

How small is small? One water tower, two intersecting highways, no more than three traffic lights and no confusing turning lanes. The high school is Class A, which is big enough and not too small. Every day at noon the siren over the volunteer fire department sounds and it can be heard to the edges of town.

Unlike New Englandville, which is historic, quaint, unique and quite snobbish about it, Rogerburghers are unassuming: they like their town because it’s a wonderful place to live and raise kids. Beyond that, most of them are comfortable being ordinary.

Rogerburgh’s old streets are lined with stately elms whose roots wreak havoc with sidewalks and sewer pipes. In the new part of town every house has a specimen tree surrounded by a perfect circle of wood chips. A healthy town needs both kinds of trees.

Rogerburgh has a great hardware store, an if-we-don’t-stock-it-you-don’t-need-it kind of place. If you go in with a problem the clerks will spend a half-hour with you for a $2 sale. There’s also a farm supply store just outside of town. It smells like rubber hose, and they have a clothing department that sells canvas coveralls and Big Butt Cut jeans.

There are three kinds of eateries in Rogerburgh. One is the quintessential small town cafe. Old-timers gather there every morning and talk about how the country is going to hell. When the waitress is busy they feel free to pitch in and brew a new pot of coffee. Hot beef sandwiches — made with white bread and mashed potatoes slathered in gelatinous brown gravy — are popular. There was a huge brouhaha when the cook switched from real to boxed potatoes, but people are mostly past that now.

Rogerburgh also has a chain pizza place and a homegrown hamburger joint that serves greasy, salt-laden, unhealthy food because that’s what made America great. At the pinnacle of the food pyramid is an upscale restaurant. If you tell people you ate there they invariably say,”Must be nice!” It features cloth napkins, salads made with purple-tinged lettuce and served on a plate, and wine from bottles with corks. Only a few go that route, however. Most locals stick to boxed wine or Bud Light with their meals so people don’t think they’re putting on airs.

There is a bar with a creaky wooden floor, a perpetual pinochle game, and a dice box used to settle bar bills. A foul-tempered guy with a deep, phlegmy cough and a belly that hangs over his belt owns it. He lets people light up despite the ban on smoking indoors because that’s what made America great. Mike, who peaked in high school, owns Rudy’s, where the younger crowd drinks.

Strange as it may seem, my fantasy town has some bad apples. A friend told me about the place where she grew up. Her bike got stolen one evening, and when she told her brother he knew right where to find it. A certain family had a hand in most of the crimes in town. This saved a great deal of investigative time.

There are two grocery stores in my little town. One is on life support. People can’t understand how it manages to chug along. The second is modern and progressive and stocks exotic items like soy sauce and low sodium toaster waffles. Rogerburghers are proud to show it off to visitors. People were leery of buying ready to eat food from its deli department at first — this was considered a big city, even foreign idea back in the day — but the store’s fried chicken and fruit delight, with marshmallows and shredded coconut, no longer raise eyebrows when people bring them to potlucks.

As for the finer things, Rogerburgh has a theater that shows movies while they’re still being advertised on TV and a hoary Carnegie library that covers the ideological spectrum by subscribing to both Redbook and Good Housekeeping. Partisans of each have tried to get the other banned in the past — the two camps nearly came to blows in’09 when RB said long hair would be in for spring while GH counseled its readers to go with Easy! Breezy! short cuts — but Mrs. Finch, the crusty, loveable librarian, stood her ground until the storm passed.

Because that’s what made America great.

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

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Breezing by Towns

By Paul Higbee

Cars breeze along Interstate 29 at 80 miles an hour, passing small towns in the blink of an eye. Photo by Greg Latza.

I feel sorry for those two airline pilots, who several years ago were fired and had their licenses revoked after somehow missing Minneapolis, their intended destination. I’ve never held a pilot’s license, but as a longtime driver on South Dakota’s lonely highways, I’ve blown past a town or two.

Granted, none of my towns were like Minneapolis, with millions of lights stretching horizon to horizon. Mostly I’m talking about Artesian and Redig and only once a bigger town (bigger as in 706 residents).

Actually, much of the empathy I feel for the pilots stems from the fact that they did something I’ve fantasized about for years. Whenever I fly home to the Black Hills from the East — usually out of New York or Boston or Chicago — I’ve had my fill of big airports. I yearn for laid back Rapid City Regional and its easy baggage access and convenient parking. The last thing I want to do is deplane in Minneapolis and dash for my connecting flight, stumbling on the moving walkways, paying $6 for coffee and marching herd-like through vast concourses. What if, I’ve fantasized over Wisconsin, the pilots don’t land in the Twin Cities but instead ease directly into Rapid City? In my fantasy the reason has always been bad weather, but simply forgetting to land works, too.

Of course, I know how badly the pilots felt when they realized their error. I hate it when I’m driving Highway 34 and miss Artesian. As you approach Artesian from the west the road bends a bit and somehow that diverts my attention — or perhaps, more accurately, it focuses my attention on the roadway itself. Yeah, that sounds better. Either way, the next thing I know I’m staring at a sign telling me I can resume driving 65 mph and I realize I failed to spot another sign, half a mile back, that told me to slow to 45. At that point I always check my rearview mirror for flashing patrol car lights, and with guilt I bid Artesian farewell.

I’ve never missed a town because I was preoccupied on my laptop, as may have been the case with the pilots. But Johnny Cash can be a distraction. On the south edge of Harding County, Redig’s half dozen lights are just about the only man-made illumination seen in any direction. Driving north one moonless evening, I watched those lights coming nearer and nearer for six miles or more. Imagine my surprise minutes later when I realized I was still looking at the lights, only now they were receding in my rearview mirror. I pride myself in knowing lots of Johnny Cash lyrics, and when Boy Named Sue came on the radio I kept up with Johnny, but missed a planned stop at the Redig store.

Missing tiny spots is one thing. But it’s humbling to miss, in broad daylight, a major I-90 stop like Kadoka, with no fewer than two Interstate exits and 706 residents. A couple years ago I left Spearfish at mid-morning, bound for Sioux Falls. I decided Kadoka’s famous fried chicken gizzards would make a perfect lunch. Noon approached and passed, still no Kadoka, and suddenly Murdo loomed ahead. Kadoka lay 43 miles behind me and here’s an irony worthy of O. Henry: I think I missed my chicken gizzards because I was daydreaming of chicken gizzards.

Apparently the pilots were over Eau Claire, Wis., when they discovered they were off course by 97 miles. You can’t fully understand how disorienting that feels until you’ve actually experienced something similar. Boy, do I understand. Just a couple weeks before the airline misadventure, I was on my way to Vermillion for a conference. I crossed the Missouri River at Pickstown about 10 p.m., intending to make my way southeast via Highway 50. A while later, thinking it was high time for Yankton’s lights to pop into view, I found myself driving though Menno — 30 miles north of where I thought I was and following Highway 18, not 50! I’d appreciate someone in Pickstown or Wagner writing and telling me how I went wrong. Then just east of Menno a raccoon darted from the ditch. I couldn’t help hitting him. The raccoon looked plump, like maybe he helped himself to someone’s chickens now and then. So perhaps he’s not universally missed in Menno. Still, knowing my error put me in Menno in the first place, and caused the animal’s end, brought a lump to my throat.

I had companions with me that night. Much like those pilots, I didn’t tell my two passengers we were off course. The three of us were engaged in a good conversation and I didn’t want to take that off course, too. As was the case with the Minneapolis bound crew and passengers, we got to our destination late but otherwise no worse for the wear. Except we felt sad about the raccoon.

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the January/February 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Testing True Love in Faith

By Irean Jordan

One of the most colorful characters around Faith was Jens Peterson, aka Rattlesnake Pete. Pete came to South Dakota from Nebraska with a carnival about 1909. He drove a racehorse and chariot, and between acts ran a concession stand.

When he got to Faith he liked what he saw, and decided to stay. For years he lived in a sheep wagon, killed and skinned rattlesnakes to make belts and hatbands, stocked ponds and fished — and raised goats.

Now and then Pete gave a kid goat to a neighbor kid for a pet. In the early 1930s he brought a pair of baby goats to my friends Bernard and Eldora Thomas. As they grew, the goats lost popularity with Bernard and Eldora’s mother, especially when they ate the garden and the flowerbed. But in the middle of the Depression, children had few toys, and at least the goats brought some fun.

One afternoon I was playing with Bernard and Eldora when a shiny new car pulled up the wagon trail from the south. A tall young man got out, stepped back to admire his car, and hollered up to us,”You kids stay away from my new car, ya hear?”

It was a gleaming brown Whippet coupe with a tan canvas top. The young man was Gene Baker, who worked at Gilbert Lee’s garage in Faith. He’d come to take Bernard and Eldora’s visiting aunt Melissa to town to a dance.

When the sun set, I headed over the hill toward home, long before Gene and Melissa returned in the wee hours of the night. They got out of the car and went to the house, where Gene would spend the night. The commotion woke the two little goats, which slept in the yard. They apparently decided to inspect the new car.

The leapt onto the running board and climbed the fenders to the hood, their hooves furrowing the shiny paint for traction. From there they hopped to the canvas top, where they romped and butted in a game of king on the mountain, their sharp little hooves poking holes in the canvas. Then they nibbled the fraying fabric until they’d ripped a gash big enough to drop through to the shiny, patent leather seat. There they danced, pottied and chewed. But even fun can be tiring, so eventually they settled down to nap on the torn cushions.

Exactly what happened when Gene went out to his car early Sunday morning I know not, though Monday morning at school Eldora and Bernard told the terrible tale of the ruined Whippet.

In the spring, when Gene asked Melissa to marry him, she had no reason to doubt his love.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2002 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Metropolis and Me

By Roger Holtzmann

Most of the people who know me are aware of my fondness for Star Trek in all its many guises. What they don’t know is that part of me — a microscopic, infinitesimally small part — is actually ashamed of how much I know about the series. I can curse in both Klingon and Romulan. Seriously.

If you don’t understand those references count yourself lucky. On the nerd scale, from 1 to 100, knowing the name of an extraterrestrial species rates a 75. Knowing their language adds 20 points to that woeful total. I am on razor thin ice, dignity-wise: the only way for me to fall further, to actually peg the nerdometer, would be to don a costume and attend a sci-fi convention.

Which I … well, never mind.

Time travel is a recurring theme in Star Trek, and no matter how ridiculous or illogical the plots, I find those episodes endlessly fascinating because they spur my imagination. I would love to journey backwards in time and discover how they transported those great stones to Stonehenge, or forward a century to see what kinds of junk food they eat in the future.

I ask you, dear readers, even if you find such speculation ludicrous, to fire up your imaginations and visit me in early November of last year. I’m sitting in front of my computer. I’ve just written,”I’m sitting in front of my computer …” and wondering what will come next. Now I’m scratching my ear. Now I’m staring at a dark spot on the ceiling and wondering if it’s a bug, which I have done at least a hundred times. Now I’m wondering what we’re having for supper. Now I’m remembering it’s probably going to be leftover chili. Now I’m happy because I think chili always tastes better the second day. Now I’m wondering why.

Time travel, as you can see, isn’t all about witnessing noteworthy historical events. It’s often boring and always confusing. To wit: at this moment in your temporal journey — which is back then for you now when you’re reading this but now for me back then — you know things I will know when it is now for me. For both of us, I mean. Are you following this?

Among the many things I don’t know in back then now is how the 2010 high school football playoffs will end. All I do know is that the big schools’ champion will be from Sioux Falls, because the four semi-finalists are all from that city.

“Is this a joke?” you snort.”You pretend violated the laws of physics and got my thens and nows mixed up just to talk about some stupid football games? I don’t believe you! I’m going back to January! In my head, I mean, because I always was in … AARRRGGGHHHH!”

Wait! Don’t turn the page! No more fake time travel, I promise. Give me a minute to explain why those games were a big stinking deal and what that portends for the future of Sioux Falls and South Dakota.

Here’s the deal. I am an admitted football fanatic, yet my attitude was,”Who cares? Not me, that’s for sure!” Why such petulance, you ask? It was a simple case of sour grapes. It’s petty and it’s poor sportsmanship and I hate to admit it, but gee whiz! Sioux Falls seems to be winning everything these days!

Before I go on, let me emphasize that I harbor no ill will for the good people of Sioux Falls. I love you guys like Moe loves Curly! Think of my pique as an inevitable consequence of the growth of your city. Technically speaking, you are still within the four square boundaries of South Dakota, but your relationship with the rest of us is changing.

Let me illustrate my theory by using the example of our sister state to the south. Nebraska has lots of farms and small towns, and many of the people who live in them think of such places as the”real” Nebraska. Their relationship with the”other” Nebraska, Omaha, is complicated. When their children grow up and want to wear suits to work instead of seed caps they are glad so many kinds of Big City careers are available in the O, yet the grandkids are only a day trip away. They are also, in a very real sense, as proud as the city’s residents that so many possibilities and amenities can be found so close to home.

At the same time, there is an uneasy”nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there” attitude in the wide open spaces beyond Dodge Street. Every step removed from the way things are done in a small town is seized upon and exaggerated; parallels are drawn to Sodom and Gomorrah. When a son decides to move there, mothers sigh and light a candle. If a daughter gets a job in the city fathers start forwarding them e-mails with subject lines of”Top Ten Tips for Surviving in a Godless Metropolis,” like always look through the peephole before you open your apartment door and never leave home without mace in your purse. They envy the city for its advantages and resent its successes. What galls most of all is that so many young people would rather visit and shop and live there than in the”real” Nebraska.

Okay, perhaps I’m exaggerating. A little. Besides, Sioux Falls and the rest of South Dakota aren’t quite to that stage in their relationship yet.

But if you step into my time machine …

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

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Louie, Louie, Rene and Me

By Roger Holtzmann

No matter how organized I try to be, my important documents are rarely where I think I put them. If I need my car registration, for example, it won’t be found in the vinyl pouch labeled”Registration.” It will be smashed into a corner of the glove compartment with my wintertime emergency rations, a bag of Jube Jells, melted all over them.

I’ve always found it interesting that I can readily produce a registration and title, which prove I own my car, but I don’t have anything like that for my house. Each year the Yankton County Registrar sends me a real estate tax bill, so apparently I do own the property. I just wish I had a deed — an actual piece of parchment with a big gold seal and a little red ribbon thereunto affixed — that I could hang on the wall.

There’s another thing I was thinking about while I was supposed to be listening to … well, never mind. When we bought our house the seller didst convey and transmit to us an abstract, a curled up sheaf of papers that detailed who owned our property all the way back to Adam and Eve.

Okay, I’m joking. The record only goes back to 1871, when the land my house sits on was part of a homestead claim authorized by President Ulysses S. Grant himself. As a dabbler in things historical, I found that document quite interesting. It provided a chain of ownership, nice and neat and legal, all the way back to Ulysses.

So how did Ulysses come to own my property? Let’s step into the Way Back Machine and find out. Our first stop is 1803, when my property and most of South Dakota belonged to Napoleon. He needed cash to buy cannons and croissants for his army more than he needed land in far-off America, so he sold it all to the United States for $15 million. This was the famous Louisiana Purchase. So far so good. Nice and neat and legal.

How did Napoleon come to own this territory? He got it from the king of Spain, who had in turn obtained it from the king of France. This back and forth was all quite complicated, with secret treaties and whatnot, but it gets us back to 1762 and everything is cool, title wise.

How did the king of France come to own my property in the first place? This is where things get hinky. About 20 years before that, the Verendrye brothers, Louis-Joseph and Francois, were wandering about these parts in search of magic mountains and silver cities. They had heard tales of such from the Mandan, who lived along the upper Missouri River in what is now North Dakota.

When we pause the WBM at that point we see a couple of Mandan waving goodbye to the Verendryes, and the instant the Frenchmen are out of sight the Indians fall to the ground, convulsed by laughter.

“Magic mountains!” howls one, tears streaming down his face.”How did you come up with that?”

“It just came to me!” shrieks the other.”What about you? Silver cities? I can’t believe they bought that!”

“I know! I wonder if all white men are that gullible?”

The New World’s native people were always shining European explorers on like that. Fountains of youth. Cities of gold. There didn’t seem to be anything they wouldn’t swallow, but I digress. Louis and Francois never found any silver cities, and the Black Hills turned out not to be magical. On March 30, 1743, Louis did, however, plant a lead plaque near the mouth of the Bad River. Inscribed on it were these words:”Those #&%@ lying Mandan! I haven’t seen any silver….”

Just kidding. Louis scratched his name and the date on the back, then placed the plate under a rock cairn. By doing this he claimed my property and most of South Dakota for King Louis XV of France. There were thousands of Arikara living along that stretch of the Missouri in 1743. No one recorded what they thought of this curious legal procedure.

There’s more. As it turns out, France already owned my property, thanks to RenÈ-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. He was a French explorer who floated down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, then to the Gulf of Mexico. When he got there, on April 9, 1682, Rene buried another lead plaque in the sand and claimed all the land drained by the great river for King Louis XIV of France. Talk about low closing costs!

Let’s recap. My title to my house — and your title to yours, perhaps — is nice and neat and legal because it came to me through Ulysses and Napoleon and a couple King Louies, who owned the land because RenÈ buried a plaque in the sand 1,300 miles from here.

I wonder if this sweet procedure is still legal? I’ve had my eye on this great house with a three-car garage and a pool, and I’ve got some lead ….

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

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Politics as Usual

By Roger Holtzmann

You’ve probably been trying not to think about it, but there’s an election coming our way. Time to drag down to the polling place and figure out what we think about a variety of public issues. When you think about it, voting is a lot like cutting the grass. You know it’s the right thing to do. You know it’s good for the neighborhood. But when mowing day rolls around, you find yourself wishing a giant flaming comet would land on your yard and make the entire exercise unnecessary.

As Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised by man. Except for all the rest.”

We all profess to hate political advertising, but it works. During campaigns is about the only time we like our politicians. Incumbents are reelected most of the time, so we must decide that the same person we’ve been bad mouthing all year long isn’t such a bad sort after all. Once he or she is safely returned to office, we go back to hating them.

I read a newspaper columnist recently who said that she was growing a little weary of Congress bashing. There are just two things I have to say about that: One, speak for yourself, lady. And two, how can anyone resist such a huge target, one that seems to spend every working day thinking up new reasons to be bashed. It’s as if Congress is the dorkiest kid in school, walking around with a”Kick Me” sign permanently affixed to his back.

In civics class you probably learned the function of Congress in our system of government. Forget that. In order to really understand its role today, you must watch professional wrestling on TV. Specifically, you’ve got to watch the referees.

Where I grew up there was an adult men’s basketball league that met on Sunday afternoons in winter. It was the sort of league where players would sprawl on the bench and smoke cigarettes during time outs. Or if a player was particularly tired, he might excuse himself to go to the water fountain while his teammates played four-on-five at the other end of the floor.

Referees for these contests were usually recruited by a player walking through the crowd carrying a whistle and a striped shirt. “Hey, wanna ref?” he’d ask until someone volunteered. One official was considered plenty, and it was understood by both teams that most calls would go to the home team.

I get the impression professional wrestling referees are obtained the same way. They put on a bow tie and strut around like they are running the show, but in reality they exert about as much control over the matches as they would over an exploding volcano.

Referees resemble Congresspersons during tag team matches. They can usually be found in one corner, bawling out the eventual loser for having the wrong color socks or something. Meanwhile, the evil winners are in the other corner ganging up on his hapless partner, dropping him head first on the concrete, searing him with a blowtorch, etc. The referee never quite sees what is going on. But when it is all over, he holds up the victor’s hand and says, “See, it’s all fair and square. We have a winner!”

I’ll let you figure out all the gruesome parallels.

When you think about it, it should be no surprise that members of Congress are held in such low regard. By far, the largest group among them is lawyers — the very last group in America whom it is socially acceptable to hate.

Personally, I have nothing against lawyers. If I ever fall and hit my head against a multinational corporation I intend to call a lawyer as soon as I wake up. But having them make all the laws for the country is probably not the best idea we ever had.

Consider this: If you walk in to a lawyer’s office and ask him to argue that the earth is flat, he will. As long as your check doesn’t bounce, he’ll stand up in court and say — with a straight face — all sorts of far-fetched things on your behalf.

You gotta love them for that.

The problem is that next month, when Client B comes in, seeking to prove that the earth is shaped like a zucchini, he’ll do the same for him. Provided, of course, that Client B is willing to spend every last cent he has on such a quest.

Doesn’t it seem odd to let people who think like that make all the rules for all of us?

Once again, I must leave imagining all the gruesome reasons why to you, since I see that we are almost out of space. It is something for you to think about between now and next month’s election.

Which we’ll get to, provided we don’t run into any comets.

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the September/October 1994 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream

By Roger Holtzmann

Hark! What light through yon window breaks? Could it be the dawn, arriving before my weary mind hath been anointed with the sweet oil of slumber? Or, perchance, a fiery bolt of lightning from the hand of Zeus, herald of a summer tempest that will rend the dome of heaven and unleash upon this earth …

Wait … it’s just a car driving by on the gravel road. That’s the third one since I’ve been lying here awake. What in the world are these people doing out and about at 3:48 a.m.?

Make that 3:49 a.m.

These are the times when a man peers deep into his soul and wonders. Am I a good husband? Will my children always be healthy? Do I smell gas? What’s that twinge? Could it be cancer? Will the Vikings ever get a decent quarterback?

In addition to these universal concerns, there is one more question that torments me on these long summer nights. As I lie hot and miserable in a cloud of my own perspiration I ask: Should this be the year I break down and buy an air conditioner?

Every year at our house the same thing happens. When really hot weather starts coming on we launch Operation No Sweat. Open up the windows at night, close them in the morning, pull the window shades down on the south side, etc. etc. This works — sort of.

For a few days the house stays pretty cool. We walk around pleased with ourselves, mentally calculating how much we’re not spending on electricity to run an air conditioner. Then it drags into the second week. The house isn’t quite as cool in the morning as it used to be. Our weather standards get lowered considerably. “Good news,” I gasp to my wife, my tongue bloated with heat. “It’s only supposed to be 95 tomorrow instead of 100.”

By the third week the whole family is having feverish hallucinations. When we’re not delirious we’re cranky. In the middle of the night I sit by the bedroom window, listening as the night wind rustles the tall grass outside. “Please, please, please blow this way,” I moan, my nose pressed against the screen.

But the night never listens. “How can that be!” I wail into the inky blackness. “Why can’t the breeze ever blow from this side at night?”

“Shut up,” my wife says lethargically, her lips barely moving.

Fans help — sort of. Provided you sit right in front of them, and don’t think too hard about what is actually going on. I mean, a fan takes 100-degree air from one side of the room and moves it to the other.

Have I missed something here?

Besides, there is only one way that fans and kids can safely coexist in the same house. Lock up every stick, pencil, ruler, screwdriver — in short, anything long and skinny — for the summer. Otherwise, when you least expect it, you’ll be startled by a”burrububbuppp-schwinggggg,” followed by a wailing sound from the kid.

There is a powerful triangular attraction between kids, fans and things that can be poked through the grill. No mere parent can hope to counter it.

Sometimes I close my eyes and try to remember what January felt like, hoping that will make me appreciate the heat. This has never even come close to working, but I try it every summer nonetheless.

I can hear all you old timers out there. “Quit your whining! When we were young we didn’t even start sweating until it hit 105! And we couldn’t go to some fancy-schmancy refrigerator and get ice cubes any time we wanted, either. If we wanted an iced cappuccino in July we had to haul ice from the river when it was 400 below and store it underground till then!”

What can I say? Face it, older generation. You raised a bunch of sniveling wimps. It’s YOUR fault. YOU spoiled us!

And another thing. When you were young, nobody else had air conditioning either — except for the stores that had a sign on the door saying, “Come on in! It’s KOOL inside!” and a penguin smoking a cigarette showing you the way. You older types didn’t know what you were missing. Everybody was miserable.

Not me, though. As I lie here at night, heating up like a potato in a microwave, I know there’s a better way. If I weren’t so cheap I could buy me a window unit and ….

Hold on a minute. I’m getting an idea here. Work with me people! If none of you had air conditioning either, it wouldn’t make me any cooler. But I would feel better about being hot if I knew you were all suffering, too. Let’s try that. Everybody turn off your air conditioners, and then maybe I can get some sleep.

Ready. Set. Unplug!


Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the July/August 1997 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Hang a Left on 438th Street

By Roger Holtzmann

When or how or why it happened, I do not know. Perhaps it was while I was asleep, or when I was brushing my teeth. It may even have occurred while I was improving my mind by watching reruns of “Baywatch.”

All I know is that, not so very long ago, I was living at the intersection of two plain old gravel roads, complete with a pair of stop signs that most drivers didn’t even see as they raced by at the speed of Nolan Ryan’s fastball. But today I live at the corner of 438th Street and 310th Avenue. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Thanks to this new Rural Addressing System I was able to move, sort of, and I didn’t have to spend weeks digging in grocery store Dumpsters for boxes to pack stuff in.

While I am profoundly grateful for that, I have decided that this situation represents more; it is an opportunity for a new career. Some men hope for high public office, or great wealth. Not I. My ambition has always been to be a chronically crabby, suspicious, complaining, guaranteed-to-see-the-worst-in-everything whiner.

This rural addressing business could be just the issue I need.

My mentors in this new career are those guys, found in nearly every donut shop, cafe or tavern, who complain constantly about everything. From their perches at the bar or counter they nurse a cup of coffee or schooner of beer for hours while eavesdropping on the conversations around them, ever alert for opportunities to let others know this (town, county, state, nation, world) is going to hell. Since they invariably know everybody, and have opinions on all subjects from commodity price supports to whether the high school basketball team should use a zone or man-to-man defense, they are never silent for long.

Incidentally, I hope no women are offended by my excluding them from this group. Let’s be frank. Women simply don’t have what it takes to be negative for decades on end. Either that or they have sense enough not to do their complaining in front of strangers. Whatever the reason, constant public complaining seems to be almost exclusively a male pastime.

My whining colleagues and I have a rich history in these United States. Back in 1776 our grumbling forefathers were heard to mutter, “Independence my @#%&*! What did those fools think the British were going to do? They’ll get us all killed! And whose idea was it to make Washington a general? My %$&#@* horse could do a better job!”

And so on. With every political turn and technological development we were dependably, loudly and profanely there, declaring this or that would not work. We never actually halted anything; most of the time we could be seen in the country’s rear view mirror, fuming and sputtering and vowing, “You’ll never find any of that electricity stuff in my house!”

In the great engine of progress, we are the sand.

Which brings me to the Rural Addressing System. Was there ever an issue more in tune to the needs of complainers? Think about it. It requires us all to learn something new, which is one sure strike against it. For another, the whole scheme is figured by how many miles your section line road is from Wyoming (going east-west) and North Dakota (going north-south).

Does that sound like a system ordinary people would invent?

If you were using something equivalent in your home, and a guest asked if they could use the bathroom, you wouldn’t tell them, “It’s right down the hall, last door on the left.” No, no, no. You would say, “It’s 50 feet east of the garage and 4 feet north of the bedroom.”

Or 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.”

I just hope I’m not too late. All of the good lines have probably been used a million times already. “Some $%&#@ bureaucrat in Pierre with nothin’ better to do!” And, “What a bunch of @&*%$# foolishness! A waste of taxpayers’ money, all them %$#&@ signs! Ain’t but one $%*&@# place out that way and they need two dozen signs to tell you how to get there!”

There’s still probably room on the lunatic fringe, but I’m not up to speculating about how the Rural Addressing System is part of a CIA plot. Since I’m a novice I will probably stick to some basic grumbling about the cost, followed by the tried and true complainers anthem: “Well I’ll be %$#&@ if I ever use it! I’ll get my mail at the post office!”

Luckily, it’s not far from the donut shop.

Editor’s note: This article is revised from the May/June 1996 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.