Tag: hutchinson county

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Holiday Kitchen Traditions

By Ruth Steil

Marion Kryger of Vermillion makes over 150 pounds of peanut brittle and gives it away every Christmas. His passion began 40 years ago when he came in from morning farm chores. His wife was bustling about making cookies and candy in preparation for Christmas.”You’re not doing anything,” she said.”You can make the peanut brittle this year.”

She helped him muddle through his first batch. After that, he continued to make the crunchy confection and began taking plates to local farm stores like Meckling Fertilizer, Mark’s Machinery and Vermilion Fertilizer.”They give caps away,” he said.”I wanted to give them something.”

Since then, it’s become a holiday hobby.”Some people hunt and fish, I make peanut brittle,” Marion says.”It makes me happy that people get so much enjoyment from it. I’ve never sold a plate of peanut brittle.”

A good peanut brittle is”all in the technique” according to Marion.”First of all, a heavy pan makes all the difference when you’re doing candy,” he says. He also finds the best possible peanuts. He buys from Palmer Candy Company in Sioux City, makers of the Bing bar.

Marion also recommends warming the cookie sheets a little before pouring the hot brittle; then the candy cools and hardens more slowly, giving him time to stretch it on the pan. Thinness is important; his is thick-paper thin, with peanuts bulging out.”Most people make it too thick and then it gets too hard,” he says.”Thinning keeps it light and crunchy. You can eat my brittle with false teeth.”

One hundred fifty pounds of peanut brittle is quite an undertaking. One batch produces two pounds and takes Marion about an hour to make.”The most I’ve ever done in a day is seven or eight batches,” he said.”I usually have the dining room table full then.”

Although Marion has never sold his brittle, he donates it to fundraisers for the museum, senior center, historical society and Catholic church in Vermillion. He also makes plates of brittle for donors to his country church, Bergen Lutheran near Meckling.

He gave us some too, and we agree with Marion when he says,”There’s a lot of good peanut brittle out there, but I’ve never tasted better.” Here’s his recipe:

2 cups sugar
1 cup white syrup
1/2 cup hot water
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons soda
1 pounds raw peanuts

Combine water, syrup, sugar and salt in a heavy pan and bring to full boil. Add peanuts carefully to prevent splatter. Continue cooking on medium heat using a good candy thermometer, stirring occasionally until the mixture reaches 275 degrees. Add butter and vanilla. Stir frequently to prevent burning. Cook to 300 degrees, remove from heat and add soda, stirring quickly and vigorously to distribute evenly and complete foaming action. Pour mixture evenly onto 3 buttered Teflon cookie sheets one at a time using stirring spoon to spread evenly. Use a fork to gently pull the outside edges flat. As brittle begins to cool, lift and gently pull until thin.

Marion recommends wearing gloves when pouring the hot brittle onto the pans to help avoid accidents.”Be very careful with the 300 degree mixture,” he says.”If you get the mixture on your skin, it just continues to burn.”

Preheim Pepper Cookies

Arlene Preheim’s family has gathered for over last 30 years to make Christmas cookies from a cherished family recipe.”I remember my granddaughter being in a playpen when we started,” said Arlene.”Now she has her PhD.”

The spice cookie recipe was given to Arlene by her husband’s mother. She doesn’t know where it originated, but the recipe is more than 100 years old. Both her mother-in-law’s mother and grandmother made the cookies.

On a Saturday in early December, family members bring their favorite cookie cutters to Arlene’s home in Freeman to spend the day baking the much-loved cookies. Dough must be rolled out and cut into shapes. Then, after baking, each cookie is frosted and decorated with colored sugar. An old dining room table in the basement becomes a drying station for the dozens of cookies the recipe produces. For many years, Arlene has kept a cookie count on the back of the recipe card. 2007’s total was 522.

At the end of a long baking day, the tired group enjoys dinner together.”Everyone usually brings something for a potluck after we’ve finished,” said Arlene.”But last year we got really lazy and ordered pizza.”

The frosting must dry overnight, so the cookies are divided the next day. The division is made carefully so that each container holds the same number of Santas, stars, candy canes, bells, etc.

“Even after eating all the other Christmas sweets,” says Arlene,”these cookies will still tempt you.”

2 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 pound butter
1 quart light molasses
1 tablespoon each cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, coriander seed (or ground coriander)
Small pinch of black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons soda
12 cups flour

Mix and boil brown sugar, butter, spices and molasses for 5 minutes. Cool slightly and stir in soda. (Be sure to use a large enough cooking pot because when the soda is added it will foam.) When cool, stir in flour to make a stiff dough.

Dough can be kept at room temperature for months to bake whenever you wish. In fact, it should age about 2 weeks before baking. (“We have evolved,” says Arlene.”We make the dough a day or two ahead and it seems to work better.”

Roll dough very thin, cut out and bake at 350 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. Watch closely, as cookies burn easily.

When cool, frost the cookies. Do not use a powdered sugar frosting as the cookies will absorb the moisture and become soft. Try this instead.

Frosting

1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1 egg white, stiffly beaten

Boil sugar and water until mixture spins a thread (230 degrees), then beat into egg white. Frosts 80-100 cookies.

Tillie’s Plum Dumplings

Edicts from Rome caused one meal to become a holiday favorite in Tillie Varilek’s family.”Growing up we didn’t eat meat on Fridays since we were Catholic,” she said.”Lots of times dumplings were our supper.”

Tillie took her mother’s dumpling recipe with her when she wed, and they were a mandatory dish at family get-togethers and reunions until she passed away in 2012. At one gathering, everyone asked if she’d brought them.”I said, ‘I brought kolaches instead’ and they said”Well, I guess you can stay then,'” Tillie told us in 2008.

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
Lard or shortening the size of an egg
Milk to moisten, approximately 3/4 cup
6-7 plums (peaches or Italian prunes may also be used)

Work ingredients together with fingers until right consistency. Wrap dough around plums and seal. Place in boiling water. Boil 30 minutes. Before serving, cut in half and remove pit. Sprinkle with sugar. Drizzle with melted butter. Serve warm.

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Capturing the Old and Weathered

By Christian Begeman

A couple weekends ago, I fell victim to another case of cabin fever … What am I talking about? It happens every weekend nowadays. There is always mail to be read and bills to pay, but it doesn’t matter. There is cleaning to do and usually dirty laundry waiting, but that certainly won’t keep me inside when the fever hits. In fact, there are no amounts of classic movies or great new television shows recorded on the DVR that will stop me. When the sun begins to make its decent in the lower western sky on a Saturday or Sunday evening I’m gone. The same holds true when certain weather events make conditions ripe for a great photo. Phenomena like fog, frost and thunderstorms usually get my engine racing as well.

Weather conditions only make half the photo though. I believe a good weather photographic has to have a scene or place to anchor our ever-changing South Dakota climate patterns. Over the last few years I’ve found myself drawn to symbolic structures of our past like country churches, old weathered barns, homes and schoolhouses to do this. Typically I like to find these buildings out in the open and away from tree belts in order to get an unbroken view of the horizon. However, interesting structures in and around trees are not discarded on my map. I make a mental note of these for the foggy winter days that produce hoarfrost. Those few still, frosty mornings where Jack Frost made magic provide photographic gold if you happen upon the right scene. It’s good to have these places mapped out ahead of time as I’ve found the best time to shoot frost rarely lingers. When the sun gets high enough in the sky to lift the fog, it usually doesn’t take long for the wind to pick up and start undressing the flocked landscape.

Back in the middle part of the ’90s, when I took my first photography class in college. I learned to process black and white film in the dark room and how to dodge and burn prints. The following summer I always had my dad’s Argus film camera nearby while out on the farm. Just a quarter mile from our farmhouse stood the one room schoolhouse that my mother attended as a child. One hot July day we had a good old-fashioned thunder boomer roll in from the west. As soon as it passed over, I grabbed the Argus and jumped into our old Ford work truck and headed for the schoolhouse. I shot a whole roll that evening. Out of it came maybe three usable shots. One of them I’ve included here. The schoolhouse was since burned down. I’m glad I had the shutterbug fever back then otherwise I wouldn’t have anything but a memory of that old building.

Maybe that is why I’m still drawn to such structures when looking for great South Dakota photos and maybe that is why images of old barns and buildings still resonate with people today. There is a sense of history and a feeling of”remembering our roots” that these images can evoke. It is yet another reason that I like photography. An image made is an image saved and stored forever. That old schoolhouse was a play land for me when I was young and a place of work as I got older. It was a place of learning for my mom and now it is gone and lives only in our memories … and in a couple photos I took under a dark and stormy sky one summer long ago.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Menno’s Open Door

By Katie Hunhoff

Bored with the homogenization of America’s restaurants? You’ll find culinary and cultural relief at the Open Door in Menno, where Rita Hoff has been serving German and farm country specialties since 1986.

Menno, a town of 780 in Hutchinson County, was settled by Germans from Russia.”We started getting requests for the foods we all grew up with,” Hoff explained.”Fleish kuchle is the favorite. It’s a big day when we serve it. I don’t think there is anybody who doesn’t show up.”

Hoff’s Tuesday menu always includes one or more German dishes. She bakes kuchen and donuts on Thursdays and serves a big buffet for the after-church crowd on Sundays. She and her husband, Jerome, alternate every Sunday: one goes to church and the other sets out the buffet.

The Open Door is a success story, but it would be hard to duplicate the dÈcor or the entrees. A dry erase board of customers’ birthdays, recipe cards, a WNAX gas station sign, historic photos of Menno and an eclectic coffee cup collection that advertises current and long-gone local businesses all add atmosphere, but they’re just frosting on the cake.

The food is the essence of the Open Door. This is not a frozen-fries-and-burgers grill. Hoff makes each dish from scratch, and summer produce comes from local gardens.”One week we got a whole box of beans that didn’t sell at the farmer’s market,” she said.”It helps with expenses and it gives everybody a chance to eat fresh food.” She seems apologetic when she acknowledges she occasionally has to open a can of vegetables, or that she has been tempted to buy pre-made foods like most restaurants depend on these days.

“One time a salesman talked me into buying ready-made stuff,” she said.”Man, people noticed right away. They said, ‘You didn’t make your own macaroni salad.’ So I can’t do that anymore.”

Running a small town restaurant seven days a week is a challenge — even with donated green beans and plenty of happy diners. But Rita Hoff has good help, from her husband, Jerome, a county commissioner and a school bus driver, and several part time workers.

Rita and Jerome close the Open Door after the Sunday buffet and enjoy an afternoon to themselves. They often make a trip to visit their children in Brandon and Tea, and usually end up at a restaurant. We wondered whether the prepared foods were a disappointment.”If I can sit down and have someone wait on me I’m not real particular,” she laughed.

Rita’s Fleish Kuchle

Rita has been running the Open Door for over 25 years and said this is the perennial favorite dish.”It’s also the easiest to make,” she said.”You kind of enjoy making it more because they like it more.”

Her advice for first time fleish kuchle makers is to not use all the flour right away.”The dough will get tough,” she says.”Sometimes it takes a lot of practice with the dough to get it right.”

Dough:

1 stick margarine
1 cup warm milk
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
4 cups flour — don’t add all

Melt margarine and cool. Add milk, baking power, salt and egg. Mix. Add flour (save 1/2 cup for working the dough).

Filling:

4 pounds hamburger
Salt, pepper, chopped onion and seasoning salt to taste.

Mix meat mixture together after adding spices to taste. Roll out dough to thickness of pie dough. Cut into 4″x 4″ squares. Put one heaping tablespoon of hamburger filling in center. Fold in half. Cut edges to seal. Fry at 350 degrees for 7 minutes.

Editor’s Note: This story 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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Planting Seeds in Parkston

By Laura Johnson

Students from Parkston Elementary School are conducting a giant gardening experiment this spring and summer. Inspired by Kevin Marsh’s giant pumpkin-growing tips in our March/April 2012 issue, Parkston Principal Rob Monson requested 300 giant pumpkin seeds from Great South Dakota Pumpkin Weigh-Off organizer Cassandra Swanson of Canton. Monson and Parkston student council members recently started the seeds, placing them in dirt-filled plastic cups. As the seeds sprout, they are sent home with students eager to try their hands at giant pumpkin growing.

Parkston’s planting committee must be a green-thumbed bunch.”We planted the seeds last Wednesday. They started popping up last weekend already! I would guess at this point I have sent home about half of the plants,” Monson said. Any fledgling gardeners who are successful can bring their big pumpkins back to school next fall for the Parkston Elementary Pumpkin Weigh-In.

The school also has a garden plot. Each grade picks a vegetable to grow. School gets out on May 11 in Parkston, so the kids don’t get to spend much time in the garden, but as Monson says, they at least get a chance to”get their hands dirty and know that vegetables don’t just come out of a can.”

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Freeman’s Tasting Festival

By Ruth Steil

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Knowing how much food to order for the thousands who attend the family-style dinner served at Freeman’s four-day Schmeckfest isn’t easy. Supplies for one evening include 260 pounds of potatoes, 500 pounds of beef and 2,400 slices of kuchen.

But that’s just part of the grocery list since the menu features green bean soup, noodle soup, fried potatoes, knepf, lettuce”salat” and egg, sauerkraut, stewed beef, sausage, wheat buns, zwiebach, poppyseed rolls and pluma moos. The German dishes are served fresh every night. Leftovers are against the rules of the kitchen.

Schmeckfests, or tasting festivals, are an age-old German tradition. As chairwoman of Freeman’s festival in 2000 and 2007, Joyce Hofer ordered the supplies and supervised the 50 volunteers who feed a thousand people at one meal.”I’ve worked all the years of Schmeckfest in the basement where the meal is served,” she said.”I’ve worked in every capacity in the kitchen and serving food.”

The chairwoman must wear a comfortable pair of shoes. Her day starts at 8 a.m. with food deliveries and ends 14 hours later when the last dish is washed and dried. Experience with German cooking helps, too.”You almost have to know how to cook each dish, so if there’s a question, you can answer it,” Joyce said.

Schmeckfest preparations begin in December, but Joyce has been preparing for it all her life. She grew up on a farm west of Freeman, the granddaughter of German immigrants. Her older sister helped their mother with the housework, but Joyce was a tomboy.”My dad always had me out on the tractor, doing chores, milking, whatever,” she said.

She also learned the German language.”I think we spoke it more often because our grandfather lived with us,” she said.”I got a good part of my German from him.” She wishes more children could do the same.”That is lost now with grandparents living far away, or being in nursing homes,” Joyce said.”I feel it was a real benefit to me.”

She and her siblings spoke German less after starting school. But she and her husband, Ray, find themselves talking German around the house.”If you don’t use it, you lose it,” she said.

Joyce believes German words are more expressive than English. She recalls her mother telling a story about a childhood fight she had with her brother.”It was terribly funny in German, but not so funny in English,” she said.

Will Joyce be working at this year’s Schmeckfest? Absolutely. She believes it encourages young people to get involved in the German culture.”I’m proud of my heritage,” she said.”I want to pass it on and keep it going.”

Schmeckfest in 2012

March 30-31 is the second and final weekend of the 54th annual Schmeckfest. In addition to great German food, the festival features culinary and historical presentations, bake sale and a musical. This year, local actors will perform The Wizard of Oz. Proceeds benefit the Freeman Academy, the local Christian middle and high school.

For more information on Schmeckfest, visit their website or call 605-925-4542.

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The Chislic Circle

By Rich Preheim

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

“A lot of people don’t even ask what the specials are; they just want chislic,” said Melissa Svartoein. Svartoein worked at Papa’s Restaurant in Freeman when she was a student at the University of South Dakota.

Open a map of South Dakota, place the point of a protractor on Freeman, on U.S. Highway 81 a couple of inches north of Yankton, and draw a circle with a radius representing about 30 miles. That is the Chislic Circle, the home of a culinary curiosity.

If you live there —- maybe in Marion or Menno, Parker or Parkston —- you probably are acquainted with chislic, a simple dish of bite-sized chunks of sheep meat on wooden skewers, deep-fat fried or grilled. Other parts of the world may have their kebabs of mutton and other meats, but chislic seems distinctive to southeastern South Dakota.

For decades a mainstay at cafes, bars, fairs and celebrations, it historically has been enhanced only by salt or garlic salt and served with saltines and, if you are so inclined, washed down with a cold beer. Recent years have seen the introduction of chislic in various marinades and with various sauces.

However it’s prepared, chislic sells. Papa’s Restaurant in Freeman serves up to 3,000 chislic sticks a week. Rachel Svartoein, whose grandfather sold chislic at a corner store south of Freeman for many years, provided 1,200 sticks for her high school graduation reception. At Marion’s 125th anniversary, the Jaycees sold 4,000 sticks on the first night. The chislic stand at the Turner County Fair in Parker sold 40,000 in 2004.

Chislic is simply an unquestioned thread in certain community fabrics; yet it remains a mystery meal, its origins unsure. Even theories and myths are difficult to find.”I know there are sheep in other places, so why chislic is popular here and not there, I don’t know,” said Papa’s co-owner Susan Letcher.

Even some sheep producers outside the area know little about chislic.”Ask people in Aberdeen, they’ve never heard of it,” said Bill Aeschlimann, a Hurley farmer who is active in national and regional sheep associations.”Ask people in Rapid City, they don’t have a clue.” Attempts to sell chislic have flopped at the Sturgis bike rally because nobody knew what it was.

Scant historical accounts suggest that chislic was introduced in Freeman at least 100 years ago by Russian immigrant businessman John Hoellwarth. But that’s about all anyone knows.”All I can tell you is my dad tells the story how his father, on a day for celebration would buy a couple of young lambs for 50 cents a piece and make chislic,” said grandson Robert Hoellwarth, a retired physician in Vallejo, Calif.

The Hoellwarths arrived in Hutchinson County in the 1870s from the Crimea of southern Russia, a region where”shashlyk,” cubes of skewered beef, lamb or pork, were grilled over an open fire. Chislic probably evolved from shashlyk, according to Darra Goldstein, editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture and food editor of Russian Life magazine. But she and other food experts are not familiar with the South Dakota version.

Whatever its origin, chislic is a distinguishing feature of southeastern South Dakota. Aeschlimann, who has sold it at the Turner County Fair for 20 years, had his first chislic stand at Hurley’s centennial in 1983.”We knew there would be lots of people coming back,” he said.”And what would they think of from their childhood? Chislic.”

Jake Huber ran a chislic stand in Freeman on summer Saturday nights during the 1930s and’40s, days when farm families came to town for shopping and socializing.”There was such a tremendous amount of people in town on Saturday nights, it didn’t take long to sell out,” said his daughter Nita Engbrecht of Marion.

The whole family prepared the chislic and cleaned up late Saturday night. Engbrecht’s job, which the health department might frown upon today, was collecting the used skewers, which her father fashioned from bamboo.”Those sticks had to be boiled, dried out and used again and again,” she said.

Among Huber’s patrons was Bill Gering, then a teenaged farm boy. But chislic was not new to him. Several farmers owned a threshing machine together, and when harvest was done, everybody gathered to celebrate.”The men figured out who owed who,” Gering said. Then everybody ate chislic and homemade ice cream.

In Freeman, residents bring out-of-town guests to Papa’s to introduce them to chislic.”Most people like it,” Letcher said.”If they’re here a second night, they come back and have it again.” Papa’s serves five varieties: original, barbecue, lemon pepper, garlic and even one marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and soy sauce. But the original recipe remains most popular, Letcher said. But regardless of how it’s cooked, mutton on a stick remains popular in the Chislic Circle.

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Easy Summer Salad

By Katie Hunhoff

Today I ate lunch at the Open Door in Menno. It’s been years since I’ve visited the tiny, pretty town located near the James River. My dad told me that people used to come from miles around on Sundays to drink a cold beer in Menno’s very popular beer garden, which was more like a back alley than a garden.

These days people still gather on Sundays in Menno, but it’s for the brunch at the Open Door, not a beer party. The restaurant is run by Rita Hoff and is open seven days a week. Rita features German food on Tuesdays so today I tried some fleisch kuechle, knoefla and saurkraut. We’ll have a story on Rita’s German cooking in the September/October 2011 issue.

Besides making German dishes on Tuesdays and the large brunch on Sundays, Rita features homemade kuchen and donuts on Thursdays. All her food is made fresh daily, including the seven or eight salads she had featured when I stopped today. The pea salad was my favorite and I asked for the recipe (below). Rita said it was one of her easier recipes, and most popular.

Pea Salad

2 cups cooked macaroni
1 can peas, drained
Ω cup green sweet pickles
Ω shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup salad dressing
2 tablespoons sugar

Mix all ingredients and chill before serving.

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Clamming on the James

Clams once thrived in the clean, steady waters of the James River

By John Andrews

Clamming pioneer “Fisher Bill” Richards spent most of his life digging clams and living in a tent along the James River.

Clams still lie in the beds of some South Dakota rivers and lakes, but 100 years ago they filled the James River and created a thriving business. People from Mitchell to Yankton spent summers prying the mussels from the muddy river bottom and then sent the shells east to become pearl buttons.

Families set up summertime clamming camps along the river. A hub developed near Tuscan, a water station about four miles southwest of Menno in Hutchinson County where the river and railroad met. Trains got water for the steam engines and clammers loaded their harvest into railcars, which took them to button factories in towns along the Mississippi River like Muscatine (the Pearl Button Capital of the World), Davenport and Guttenberg in Iowa.

Clammers were busy on other area waters, like the Vermillion and the Minnesota River across the border in Yellow Medicine County, Minn., but the demand for clamshells and the abundance of mussels in the James River made Tuscan the”Mother of Pearl Capital of the World” by the 1890s. Trains regularly left Tuscan loaded with clamshells. Once the Hutchinson Herald reported a train headed east with 17 boxcars full of shells, worth $35 per ton.

The murky Missouri River held few clams.”At one time the Missouri River was the ‘Big Muddy,'” says Doug Backlund, a wildlife biologist with the state Game, Fish and Parks department’s Natural Heritage Program.”It was a big, turbid river with a shifting bottom. That’s not a good habitat for clams. Clams like clear streams with a fairly firm substrate that doesn’t shift around a lot.” Hundreds of years ago, the Missouri’s tributaries in southeastern South Dakota — the James, Vermillion and Big Sioux rivers — were cleaner and more stable, providing prime habitats for clams that arrived attached to fish and then burrowed into the river bottom.

Robert Coker and John Southall, working for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, explored the James River’s mussel beds from its source in North Dakota to its mouth southeast of Yankton in the summer of 1913. They found few decent shells until they reached Riverside, near Mitchell, where they discovered a large commercial shelling operation. A pair of fishermen there took 20 tons of shells from the river. Three miles downstream another man had harvested 15 tons. The busiest stretch of the river was from Milltown to Yankton, where clammers dug 400 tons of shells by the time Coker and Southall visited late in the season.

Arnold Diede built boats (top) for he and his wife, Evelyn, to use during clamming expeditions near Menno, South Dakota. After cleaning clams, they piled shells at their camp near Milltown (bottom) before trains carried them East to button factories.

Arnold and Evelyn Diede were newlyweds when they began clamming near Menno in 1929. That spring Arnold built a boat using the engine from a Ford car. He fashioned a digger out of a 2×4, an iron shovel and a hand-woven basket that could hold 100 pounds of clams. The Diedes attached the digger to the front of the boat and Arnold pried clams from the mud while Evelyn drove.

“Arnold would drop the digger to the bottom of the river, the power of the motor pulling the digger along on the bottom of the river as we rode over the clam bed,” Evelyn wrote in a family history book years later.”By holding the handle Arnold could feel what sort of clam bed it was, how long and wide, also how deep. When the basket was full, he would tell me to turn around on the river and as I did so, it aided Arnold in lifting up the full basket. He then would dump the clams onto the boat and lower the basket again and I would follow the same line we had taken before and repeat the whole process.”

Another method was used for clams in shallow water. The Diedes ran a small boat and dug them out by hand.”We used to wade in mud 4 to 6 inches deep,” Evelyn recalled.”It seemed we always had clothes hanging on the line.”

When the boat was fully loaded they returned to their riverside camp. The Diedes used a homemade cooker placed over an 18-inch deep pit near the riverbank to steam the clams open. Then they removed the meat and threw the shells in a pile. Farmers used the discarded meat as pig feed, while rotten meat became catfish bait. Buyers paid the Diedes $25 to $35 per ton for their clamshells, depending on the quality.

Clamming attracted unique characters. Bill Richards, a clamming pioneer, spent much of his life in a tent by the river west of Menno. Known as”Fisher Bill,” Richards lived a rough life before moving to Tuscan. Originally from New York, he spent his early years in an Illinois orphanage. He ran away at age 14 and found work with a railroad crew at Council Bluffs, Iowa. One day a prairie fire burned him so badly his co-workers thought he was dead. He crawled to the Missouri River where a settler found him and cared for him until he regained his strength. Fisher Bill then went to Tuscan, where he spent years clamming and living year-round in the tent. When Bill was 80, townspeople convinced him to move the tent into Menno. He lived behind the funeral home, where a small creek and wooded area replicated his longtime home along the James. He died in 1954 at age 92.

Another clam fisherman was known as Swede Al. He worked the James River from its mouth to Mission Hill. Longtime Yankton County resident Paul Nelson remembered that Swede Al’s territory was limited because his big houseboat couldn’t fit under the railroad bridge west of town.

Nelson, born in 1915, grew up in a”tar paper shack” along the James River. He saw many clam boats, but Swede Al had the biggest operation.”Other people used to fish for clams, but not like he did,” Nelson said when South Dakota Magazine visited him before he died in 2009.”That was his life.”

Some clammers worked solely to find pearls. Fisher Bill found and sold a few pearls, as did the Diedes. One pearl looked like a strawberry and brought them $15. Evelyn had two silver rings made with small pearls. Nelson’s uncle and aunt, Matthew and Nancy Seddon, bought clam meat and pearls from Swede Al. Men searching for pearls on the Vermillion River at Centerville found $500 worth by the time Coker and Southall arrived.

But most Dakota pearls were poor.”They weren’t shaped well and they were colored,” Nelson told us.”They weren’t like the pearls that were on the market from oysters, but you could make a pretty good necklace.” Two-thirds of the pearls in the Riverside fisherman’s 20-ton haul were worthless. Evelyn Diede thought it was because valuable pearls are found in clearer water, and”Jim River water was always dirty and muddy,” she wrote.

Clamming boomed from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Over harvesting and environmental changes nearly wiped out the James River’s clams by the 1940s. The railroad left and Tuscan disappeared. And the emergence of plastic buttons brought an end to the American clamshell button industry. In 2002 Backlund and Keith Perkins, a biology professor at the University of Sioux Falls, studied the James River’s mussel population. It was the first scientific study of its clams since Coker and Southall’s nearly 90 years earlier. They found live clams, but only a handful for every hour of searching, and many long dead shells, indicating their former abundance. Today one of the best places to find clams is in the Missouri River below Gavins Point Dam. The firm bottom and clean, warm water the dam releases create a perfect habitat.”The Big Muddy is now the nice, clear river with a good habitat for clams, and the Jim River and Big Sioux River have become turbid and muddy,” Backlund says.”There are still some species that thrive there, but not the same ones that used to be there.”

Though clamming on the James ended in the 1930s, artifacts from the era can still be found. The Menno Heritage Museum has a clamshell button display along with an old rake used for clam digging. Elmer Mueller, who lives southwest of Menno a quarter mile from the James River, has a few clamshells. He also found a clam rake along the riverbank near his home. And the Diedes’ granddaughter, Debbie Palmer, has a small jar of pearls Arnold and Evelyn found during their clamming summers. They’re all reminders of an era when people living in the James River valley could make money off corn, cattle or clams.

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