Tag: mitchell

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Benevolent Baking

By Laura Andrews

Philanthropy doesn’t have an age limit. Just ask Dorothy Shannon, a resident of Avera Brady Health and Rehab in Mitchell.

Shannon, an octogenarian, hasn’t let her move to assisted living stop her from sharing her skills with others. She still bakes delicious cookies and other treats, which she sells to residents, employees and visitors to the assisted living center. Proceeds from those sales go to Shannon’s favorite charities.

It takes a lot of cookies to make a difference, but Shannon’s up to the challenge. With help from Activities Coordinator Lisa Larson and other staff members, she made and sold enough treats to pay for a big television for all Avera Brady residents to enjoy.

When asked about her favorite Dorothy Shannon creation, Nola Myers, a member of Avera Brady’s activities staff, rattled off a list: butterhorn rolls, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, peanut butter balls, toffee and a popcorn cake made in an angel food pan. Shannon’s Heavenly Desserts Cookbook, created during her stay at the home, includes recipes for many of these sweets.

Shannon may be acquiring more distant fans as well. She and Larson are both avid viewers of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Larson sent a package to DeGeneres with a letter telling Shannon’s story, a copy of her cookbook, and most importantly, cookies and other treats. In return, they scored 4 free tickets to the January 15th show.

It’s a long way from Mitchell to California, but Shannon’s had help. Avera Brady sold popcorn balls for three weeks this winter to help pay for the trip. Shannon’s daughter Colleen, her granddaughter and Lisa Larson will escort her to the taping. The show will most likely air on Wednesday. Shannon’s entourage doesn’t know what Ellen has in store for them, but as one Brady staff member pointed out,”It’s not every day that an elderly nursing home resident from South Dakota gets invited to be on a national tv show.”

True enough. Have a great trip, Dorothy. We hope you and your family and friends enjoy your California adventure.

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Unknown No More

By John Andrews

Jack Thurman remembers the photograph as if it were taken yesterday. He was standing on the slope of Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. It was the 25th or 26th of February, 1945. American forces were in the heat of a battle with the Japanese for control of the small island about 650 miles south of Tokyo. As a member of the United States Marine Corps’ 5th Division, 27th Regiment, Thurman had volunteered to help the 28th Regiment secure the mountain. They had been on Iwo Jima since the 19th. They were making progress.

On the 23rd a group of Marines made it to the top of Mount Suribachi and hoisted an American flag. A few days later, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal gathered those soldiers again for another photo around the flag. One of them noticed Thurman standing a few yards down the mountain and invited him up. After the photo was taken, the soldiers returned to the fight and Rosenthal left with another good war picture. In this one the soldiers were jubilant. Some held their helmets in the air. Others raised their guns. Rosenthal was able to identify everyone except one man — Thurman.

For more than 55 years, the smiling young Marine standing on the far left side of the photo was identified only as”unknown.” But his name is no longer a mystery. After years of silence, Thurman identified himself as the only unknown soldier in that image from Iwo Jima.

Thurman, the oldest of 15 children, grew up on a dairy farm outside of Mitchell. He remembers”a lot of hard work,” milking cows and farming with a team of horses (Thurman’s father finally bought a tractor in 1939). He rode a horse to country school before enrolling at Notre Dame School in Mitchell.

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, thousands of young men across the country clamored to join the military. Thurman was no different. When he was 17, he told his family he wanted to enlist, but his father wouldn’t sign the necessary paperwork, saying he needed him on the farm. So Thurman waited until Sept. 27, 1943, his 18th birthday. He walked into the recruiter’s office in Mitchell and joined the Marine Corps.

“As I looked over my right shoulder, I saw that flag going up…it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life.”

After training at Fort Snelling, Minn., and San Diego, Thurman became a member of Carlson’s Raiders in the South Pacific. In early 1945, Thurman found himself on a ship heading west from Hawaii. Only after a few days at sea did the Marines find out they were headed for Iwo Jima. As they approached the island they saw nearly constant gun flashes along the horizon.”We were all thinking to ourselves, ‘How can anything survive on that island with that kind of an attack?'” Thurman recalled.

On Feb. 19 the 5th Division’s 26th, 27th and 28th regiments landed on the southern coast of Iwo Jima. Thurman remembers chills running down his spine as he stepped over dead Japanese soldiers lying on the black sands of Iwo Jima’s beach.”We didn’t know what to expect,” he says.

The 28th Regiment was assigned to take Mount Suribachi, an inactive volcano on the southern tip of the island. The 26th and Thurman’s 27th Regiment were to take an airstrip that sat just a few hundred yards northeast of Mount Suribachi. The Marines set to work, firing on foxholes and rooting out Japanese soldiers, many of whom were hidden within 11 miles of tunnels.

While Thurman and other members of his regiment fought the Japanese on the ground, the 28th Regiment started its slow ascent up Mount Suribachi. On Feb. 21 the men had nearly surrounded the base of the mountain and started to climb. At a little after 10 a.m., on the morning of the 23rd, as Thurman was fighting in the middle of the airstrip, a soldier noticed activity on the mountaintop. Marines had reached the summit and were raising a flag.”As I looked over my right shoulder, I saw that flag going up,” Thurman said.”It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life. The ocean breeze hit it and the flag itself unfurled. It was just a beautiful thing up there. And there were a few of us who had some tears in our eyes, because we lost a lot of men between the 19th of February and the 23rd of February. We lost a lot of men, so we weren’t ashamed to shed a tear.”

Marine Corps photographer Lou Lowery captured the first flag raising. A few hours later, another group of Marines reached the top of the mountain with a larger flag. As they took the smaller one down and hoisted the bigger flag into place, Rosenthal snapped a picture. The image, which was given the title”Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima,” won a Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most reproduced photos of the war.

Thurman was a bit hesitant days later when that soldier from the 28th Regiment invited him into Rosenthal’s group photo.”I said, ‘Well I’m 27th Regiment.’ And he said, ‘That makes no difference. You’re still one of us.’ Well, that sounded pretty good to me,” Thurman said,”so I went up.”

Thurman is standing directly behind Ira Hayes, one of the six men immortalized in Rosenthal’s flag-raising photo. John Bradley, Franklin Sousey and Mike Strank–three other soldiers from the flag raising–are also in the photo. As the only man who was not a member of the 28th Regiment, Thurman became the only unidentified soldier.

Many of the men standing alongside Thurman, including Sousley and Strank, were killed days later as the Japanese continued their attempt to hold Iwo Jima. The fighting continued until American forces finally secured the island on March 26, 1945. Thurman left Iwo Jima that same day.

In a few months the war was over. Thurman came back to the United States and bounced around the West Coast looking for work before coming back to South Dakota. He had a number of jobs in Mitchell, Aberdeen and Rapid City before he and his wife, Carol, headed for San Diego. It was there that he was introduced to drafting and embarked upon a career in architecture. He finally settled down in Boulder, Colo., where he designed many of the buildings on the University of Colorado campus.

After years of silence, Thurman identified himself as the only unknown soldier in that image of Iwo Jima.

For more than 30 years after the war Thurman remained silent about what he had experienced.”I just didn’t particularly care to talk about it,” he said.”It was hard for me to hold back my emotions when I got into the real messy part.” In the late 1970s, though, Thurman was invited to speak at a Denver-area Kiwanis Club. Since then he has been open about his war experiences and has written a book detailing his military career.

The country was re-introduced to Iwo Jima in 2000 with the publication of Flags of Our Fathers. Written by John Bradley’s son James, the book chronicles the lives of the six men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. The picture of those men from the 28th Regiment, plus an unknown Marine, gathered on Mount Suribachi is included in a section of photographs from the battle.

After the book came out, Thurman’s family members and friends were sure they knew the unidentified soldier.”People in the family were calling me asking ‘Isn’t that you in that picture?'” By saying yes, Thurman finally ended a half-century of mystery.

In 2006 Clint Eastwood turned Flags of Our Fathers into a movie. Thurman saw the film in Denver with a host of other Iwo Jima veterans. Shortly before Christmas that year, Thurman met Lt. Keith Wells, the platoon leader whose men were charged with putting the flag on Mount Suribachi.

“So you’re the guy in that picture?” Wells asked.

“Yes, sir,” Thurman said.

“We’ve been wondering who in the hell that guy is,” Wells said.”We could not figure out who he was. We’ve got a name for everybody but that one.”

“Well,” Thurman answered, with a laugh,”I’m the lone ranger.”

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


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Tonight, Let the Kids Cook

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Students learn cooking skills and try new foods in Mitchell-based nonprofit Time at the Table’s Kitchen Kids program. Photo by Billy Mawhiney.


In a world of harried schedules and grab-and-go food, the traditional cozy family supper around the dinner table is no longer the reality for many Americans. But would a return to family mealtimes be better for our health and overall well-being?

Billy Mawhiney of Time at the Table, a Mitchell-based nonprofit, thinks so.”I was fortunate as a child to grow up in a home where family dinner was a priority. Even during sports season my mother would sit with me while I ate dinner at the table, involving herself into my life. When I began researching family dinner and realizing that only 1 in 3 American families eat around the table, I knew we had to do something about it.”

Time at the Table offers a variety of tools that support their slogan,”Reconnecting families, one table at a time.” One of the most successful has been their Kitchen Kids program. Kitchen Kids is a series of classes for children in grades 3-8 designed to give them”cooking confidence” in a safe and entertaining environment.

When kids learn their way around the kitchen, it encourages them to take those skills home and show them to Mom and Dad, helping families connect in a fun, delicious way. The four-lesson series starts simply. Mawhiney says,”The first lesson is always attention getting — making pasta from scratch. It gets your hands dirty and focuses on simple, basic ingredients kids know.”

The classes also encourage children to try new and healthier foods. A grant from the USDA has allowed Kitchen Kids organizers to track the program’s success in nudging children into eating fruits and vegetables. It’s working — 83% of students show an increase in fruit and vegetable consumption after attending Kitchen Kids.

Groups are kept small, so students have plenty of help as they learn.”We keep the class ratio to 1:5 with volunteers from the RSVP program in Mitchell. The James Valley Community Center not only allows us to use their space, but also supports us with great volunteers to have an extra set of eyes and hands to help guide the kids,” says Mawhiney.

The program has been so successful in Mitchell that it’s expanding into Sioux Falls. A two-part Kitchen Kids class will be held on November 3 and 17 at the Cross Pointe Baptist Church from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The $40 cost covers both sessions, with scholarships available upon request.

Mawhiney would like to see Kitchen Kids-style programs available in communities across the state. To that end, Time at the Table is developing a Kitchen Kids Resource Guide to help local groups start up a program of their own, with well-tested recipes, step-by-step guidance for instructors and more. Time at the Table also offers family classes for parents with smaller children.

For more information or to donate to their scholarship program, contact Billy Mawhiney at 605-550-0335 or bmawhiney@timeatthetable.org.

A Kitchen Kids student prepares pizza rolls. Photo by Billy Mawhiney.

Pizza Rolls

From the Kitchen Kids Resource Guide

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour, plus more for rolling
Kosher salt
Black pepper, freshly ground
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 15-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon basil (dried or fresh)
2/3 cup shredded mozzarella
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 egg

In a mixing bowl or food processor, combine oil, flour and a generous pinch of salt. Mix together until mixture resembles small peas. Add yogurt and stir to combine a sticky dough. If dough is a little dry, add 1-2 tablespoons ice water. Cover dough and refrigerate until ready to use.

In another mixing bowl, combine crushed tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, garlic and salt and pepper to taste. Stir well.

Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface until it is about 1/8″ thick. Use a floured 4″ cookie cutter, cup or bowl (a plastic food container works well) to cut the dough into circles. Re-roll scraps and continue cutting until all dough has been used up. You should have 14-16 circles.

Place about 1 1/2 tablespoons of the tomato filling on one half of the dough circle. Fold the other half over and press gently but firmly along the edges of the circle to seal it, forming a half-moon. Use the back of a fork to create a scalloped edge along the seal. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough circles.

Beat the egg with 1/8 cup water to make an egg wash. Brush the tops of the pizza rolls with the egg wash and bake for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown.

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How Will the Corn Palace Look in 10 Years?

By John Andrews

Louis Beckwith would still recognize Mitchell’s Corn Palace if he were alive today. The corn murals, spires and flags are similar to those that adorned the first palace in 1892, built after Beckwith and fellow businessman L.O. Gale marched up and down Main Street and collected $3,700 in pledges toward its construction.

Unfortunately times have changed. Visitors aren’t coming in droves today like they did for the 1892 Corn Belt Exposition, for which the original palace (built two blocks further south) was constructed. Doug Dailey and the Tourism/Corn Palace Area Development Committee are trying to figure out how to reverse that trend. The solution might lie in a $20 million to $50 million renovation of the 90-year-old Corn Palace and the neighborhood surrounding it.

“We’re wondering if it’s starting to get tired and showing its age,” says Dailey, a Mitchell attorney who grew up in town.”Being from Mitchell, you don’t recognize the importance of tourism when you’re younger. I graduated in the Corn Palace, I went to youth wrestling in the Corn Palace, and every August there’s a weeklong carnival. There are a lot of memories for a lot of locals, but we think there’s memories to be made for people from all across the state.”

The current palace is the city’s third, built at the corner of Main and Sixth in 1921. It’s unique because not only is it a tourist attraction advertised around the globe, it’s also the city’s events center, hosting meetings, athletic contests and other functions. And that’s part of the problem.”It’s tough to host tourists with events and vice versa,” Dailey says.”We want to try to accommodate both.”

In the committee’s early days, there was talk of a”fourth generation” corn palace, an entirely new structure built in a different location.”But we recognized that the current corn palace is very iconic and recognizable to people worldwide, so we want to preserve the building we have now and improve it,” Dailey says.

In the short them that’s meant incorporating a historical video that plays regularly throughout the summer and adding Cornelius, a fiberglass corn statue outside the palace that makes for a good children’s photo op. But the committee has bigger ideas: added seating and better sightlines, green space, an outdoor stage, more parking and a return to the more ornate corn decorations found in early photographs of the Corn Palace.

“We think there’s been a change in tastes among tourists,” Dailey says.”The Corn Palace is something you can look at and appreciate its history, but people are more interested in ‘edutainment,’ a combination of education and entertainment. They don’t discern between the two. Right now there are less things for kids to do there. The Corn Palace itself is not really a destination. It’s maybe a stopover.”

Ultimately the renovation could include the Corn Palace neighborhood and the entire downtown business district. The committee is getting help from an architectural firm, and plans to hold a public input meeting Jan. 5 before concepts are presented later in the month.

Dailey equates a Corn Palace makeover to Sioux Falls’ Phillips to the Falls project that refurbished an area of downtown.”Everybody’s very proud of Mitchell and the Corn Palace,” Dailey says.”We want to get others around the state to recognize that it’s not just a tourist trap but something special.”

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Spinoffs from Sturgis

By Paul Higbee

The rumble of motorcyclists attracted by the Sturgis Rally fades with the pages of the calendar. But listen carefully and you may hear another motorcycling sound across South Dakota: the year-around hum of manufacturing, engineering research, and bike adaptations.

No one says the motorcycle industry is recession proof. A motorcycle is a luxury purchase for most buyers, but good bikes generally hold their value over time and are smart investments. Also there are high-end bike collectors, both in the United States and abroad, for whom the current recession is mostly rumor, and whose latest two-wheel purchase exceeded what most of us spent for our homes. Some South Dakota manufacturers have grown about as fast as companies could ever hope in recent years, and if sales slowed during the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, it felt like a mere bump in the track.

Company leaders say there’s an advantage in basing a motorcycle company in South Dakota. It’s a place bikers warmly associate with spectacular rides, freedom, annual reunions, and residents who are anything but buttoned-down. Plenty of industry leaders are transplants that seem to understand South Dakota’s mystique better than its natives do. Something else — base your company in South Dakota and lots of customers will stop every August for face-to-face hellos and consultations.

So get your motor running, head out on the highway, and meet some people who make biking a 12-month enterprise in South Dakota.

Brian Klock spent 15 years building a Mitchell bike business called Klock Werks. His bikes began to set records at Bonneville after he designed a new windshield during a Discovery Channel Build-Off contest.

Mitchell

How do you set a world’s speed record on Utah’s Bonneville salt flats? You need the right engine, the right rider, and as Brian Klock learned to his great benefit, you need the right windshield.

Over the past 17 years, Klock built up Klock Werks, a company that earned a great reputation producing parts for customizing bikes. Fenders, handlebars, gauges, exhaust systems — about 350 parts in all — are shipped everywhere, mostly with pre-drilled holes so buyers can build or rebuild their bikes themselves. Klock Werks won a loyal customer base, especially among Harley-Davidson owners who ride baggers. Baggers are long distance bikes with compartments, or bags, for stowing travel gear. Klock Werks products told the biker world that baggers could be stylish.

But could a bagger go fast?

Brian and Laura Klock

When the Discovery Channel invited Klock to participate in a biker build-off a few years ago, he decided to create the WFB (Way Fast Bagger). Part of his design was a new windshield. The standard issue windshield on this Harley bike, he discovered, moved air so that the bike’s front end actually rose a bit at high speeds. The lift slowed the bike and resulted in less stability and even a wobble. Klock’s new windshield, now sold as the Flare, directed the wind downward — a plus for rider comfort, safety, and speed. Klock won the build-off and took the bike to Bonneville in 2006.

He recruited a highly trusted rider, Laura Ellifson, for the salt flats time trials. A year later she and Klock were married.

Laura hit 147 miles per hour, a record for her type of machine, in land speed racing at Bonneville in 2006. The WFB name stuck, only now the initials stood for World’s Fastest Bagger. Laura broke her own record at Bonneville in 2007 and again in 2008 when she was clocked at 153.593 mph. She believes that unofficially she has reached 160 mph.

What’s it like to fly like that across the salt on two wheels?

“You learn to challenge yourself and your machine, and you learn to handle your fears,” Laura says.”You look straight ahead, pick a spot and keep focused on it, and you don’t look down at the track because that can be intimidating. In this kind of racing you hold your speed over the course of a measured mile, so it’s different than drag racing where you hit your speed and then back off.”

She attracted lots of admirers, some of whom have her posters tacked to their garage walls, and she’s in demand as a speaker. But Laura is not the hard-driven competitor some of her fans might guess. What she loves about salt flats racing is the comradery and the chance to showcase Klock Werks innovations (however, Laura does take great pride in the fact that she and her bike racing teenage daughters, Erika and Karlee, were the first mother and daughters trio to simultaneously hold records at Bonneville).

Brian and Laura Klock first met at Bonneville, where Laura’s daughters Erika and Karlee also hold records.

Showcasing the Flare windshield’s attributes at Bonneville was a big step for Klock Werks. The windshield was perfected at the A2 Wind Tunnel in North Carolina and is now the company’s best selling product. It deserves much of the credit for the way Klock Werks grew in recent years from five employees to 20.

“It costs under $200, takes just a few minutes to install, and it really improves a ride,” says Makel Juarez on the sales floor in Mitchell.

Sturgis

If you own a pre-1930 Harley Davidson, there are two things you should know. First your source for parts is Competition Distributing of Sturgis, because no one else in the world builds such an extensive line of Harley components for 1905 through 1929 models. There are 1,620 parts available, most for Harleys, and some for other vintage bikes as well.

Second you should know there are more people like you than you might guess. Competition Distributing has a customer base of 14,000. Seventy-five percent of those buyers are European. Some days 150 parts shipments leave the shop on Lazelle Street in Sturgis. That’s where”seven workers do the work of 14,” says Lonnie Isam, company owner.

Isam notes a key difference between motorcycle collectors and people who collect cars.”Motorcyclists love their engines, just the opposite of lots of car collectors who tend to love the car’s body,” he says.”So with these bikes we start out with lots of motors and not so many chassis.”

If there’s a look that distinguishes pioneer bikes, it’s the box-shaped flat gas tanks. The very first, not surprisingly, resembled bicycles with motors attached, because that’s exactly what they were. But the machines soon acquired identities completely separate from bicycles.

“The engineering is so obvious on these early bikes, and I’ve learned to respect the way the engineering evolved quickly, especially from 1905 to 1920,” Isam says.”We rebuild complete bikes here a few times each year, and we go through the exact process that the first bike builders did.”

He never forgets the historical significance of his work.”These motorcycles,” he says,”are our thoroughbreds, our roots.”

Isam grew up riding motorcycles in and around Seattle, then owned a Harley-Davidson dealership in Houston. In the 1970s, he says,”Harley-Davidson wasn’t cool, was having some labor problems, and you could pick up a dealership for just about nothing.” Isam and his wife, Marianne, ran the Houston shop for 34 years and at the same time were buying up struggling tool and dye companies there.”So I had equipment to make bike parts,” Isam recalls. If he made one part, he discovered, it made sense to make additional pieces as well. Sooner or later someone would need them.

Like so many others in the bike industry, Isam came to know the Black Hills through the rally and eventually bought property there. After the Isams sold their Houston dealership in 1999, they began thinking of a life in South Dakota. It was the right move.”In Sturgis,” Isam says,”I’ve forgotten what stress is.” He’s a new South Dakotan loyal to his adopted state–when he subcontracts work, he looks to Black Hills manufacturers and estimates that 80 percent of his company’s revenue remains in South Dakota.

It’s somehow appropriate that Carl Herman Lang’s 1905 Harley Davidson sits in this shop that’s dedicated to the integrity of vintage Harleys. Lang was an early Harley-Davidson investor, patent holder, and the very first dealer. It’s believed the company turned out five bikes in 1905–this one and only four others. If there’s a Rosetta Stone in the Harley world, this is it.

Spearfish

Ken Hines relocated from South Carolina to Spearfish to become president and CEO of Lehman Trikes, which bills itself as”leader of the three world.” A former Blue Angels pilot, Hines now enjoys more leisurely motorcycle rides.

“I only rode 900 miles this past weekend,” he laughs.”If you’re in the motorcycle industry and you find yourself in the northern Black Hills, what could be better?”

His company originated in Canada in 1985 and named Spearfish its United States assembly and distribution center in 2004. Initially there were four Spearfish employees, but seven years later more than 130 workers are spread throughout four buildings.

“We take a partially assembled two-wheel motorcycle, add a wider differential that will accept two rear wheels, and then we add those wheels,” explains Paul Pankonin, operations manager.”And the framework gets a new body and paint.”

Ken Hines moved to Spearfish to become President and CEO of Lehman Trikes, but soon fell in love with the Northern Hills and the great biking routes. Lehman Trikes were designed for safety in the 1980s.

The Lehman story began in the early 1980s. Linda Lehman told her husband, John, that she wasn’t comfortable with their child riding on the back of a two-wheel bike. So for safety John created a three-wheel motorcycle. The customized machine won Linda’s appreciation and lots of attention wherever the family traveled. The Lehmans had struck gold and decided to mass-produce trikes, originally at Westlock, Alberta.

Today in Spearfish there are two assembly lines in a thoroughly modern, beautifully lit, and well-ventilated plant. Product demand keeps day and night shifts busy. One line culminates in a trike built for Harley-Davidson as a Harley product, and the other line turns out Lehman’s own products. About 130 dealers handle Lehman Trikes, across North America and Europe, and in Japan. Dealers who want Lehman kits for assembly in their own shops are invited to Spearfish for a four-day training session. Dealers are also invited to Spearfish for the rally each year, and can use the Lehman parking lot adjacent to Interstate 90 for demo rides and sales.”We open the factory for tours during rally week, too, but we never sell directly to the public,” Hines says.”Only through our dealers.”

It’s not only rally traffic and great Black Hills rides that have Hines singing South Dakota’s praises.”We love our workforce here,” he says,”and this is a state where the governor will come and visit for half an hour, and he knows your name and all about your business.”

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

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South Dakota’s Corn Culture

By Cindy Lange

Imagine South Dakota without corn. What would we feed our livestock? How would Mitchell decorate its Palace? Where would we hunt pheasants? What would farmers wear for caps?

Today we take for granted oceans of tasseled corn waving in the August breezes. We expect a local radio station to hold a “longest ear” or “tallest stalk” contest every September.

Corn, a leafy grass that gets little respect outside of agricultural circles, was ingrained into our prairie culture even before farm settlers arrived in the 19th century. Experts agree that the plant originated in Mexico or South America. As American Indians moved north, they brought along their seed corn.

When eastern farmers arrived in Dakota Territory, they assumed the growing season was too short for corn. The region was also considered borderline desert so annual rainfall was also a concern. At first it was planted as a sod crop.

“The summer the land was broken, there was little raised except sod corn and a few potatoes and vegetables,” according to Herbert S. Schell in History of South Dakota. “Indeed at times it was possible to raise a fair sod crop of corn from seed dropped in holes and chopped in with an axe.”

Corn farmers back then could only have dreamed of planting corn under today’s conditions: with a multi-row planter, sitting in an air-conditioned cab listening to the radio or talking on a cell phone, while simultaneously applying weed-deterring solutions. Most were lucky to have a horse, an ox or a plow – or to know a neighbor who did.

Though that made farming hot, dusty, hard work, many weren’t willing to trust amateurs at planting time because the family’s livelihood often depended on the crop. “Corn planting was the trickiest operation performed during the spring season, and many farmers insisted on doing it themselves, without the aid of hired men or family members,” according to Paula M. Nelson in The Prairie Winnows Out its Own.

Farmers stretched long rolls of wire from one end of the field to the other to establish rows and the proper distance between plants. “The wire contained knots every 40 inches, and when those knots passed through the planter mechanism, the machine dropped two or three seeds at the proper place in the row,” according to Nelson. At the end of the row the farmer would move the wire and begin again.

Precision was critical. “If the farmer worked carefully, kept the horses neatly in line, and set the trap door in the planter boxes correctly, the corn would grow in forty-inch intervals in each direction and could be cultivated lengthwise and crosswise.” Not many farmers today can boast such a feat.

Relying on the calendar told some farmers when it was time to plant corn and avoid frosts. Others planted when the leaves on hardwood trees were as large as a squirrel’s or mouse’s ear, or when they spotted the first bobolink or oriole, according to Funk & Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. Some wouldn’t trust kernels to the earth until spotting a redheaded woodpecker, though. Farmers could follow the advice of a corn-planting rhyme if they weren’t sure how many kernels to plant:

One for the cut worm.
One for the crow
One for the blackbird
And three to grow.

Whether any of the old wives’ tales or advice worked is debatable, but something was making South Dakota corn grow. Soon the state became regarded as one of nation’s corn planting states.

“The skeptic on this question is no longer heard, and the man who would disdain South Dakota soil because of its inability to produce corn has been shown his error,” Clifford Willis, an agronomist, wrote in Corn, a 1909 report. “In fact, men who once scoffed are now buying South Dakota farms on which they expect to grow corn.”

In that year, 65.25 million bushels of corn were produced on 2,059,000 acres of South Dakota farmland. Willis said it averaged 31.7 bushels an acre but added, “We know that there are farmers who produced eighty and a hundred bushels to the acre. Someone must have produced a very low yield to so lower the average.”

Conditions were better in 1914, and the State Department of Immigration used corn to tempt sellers to South Dakota. A promotional booklet, Corn Is King in South Dakota, boasted farmers’ successes and the land’s abilities in addition to mentioning popular attractions like the Black Hills.

“The area devoted to corn is increasing rapidly and is extending to every nook and corner of the state, and yields of 40 to 50 bushels per acre are the common thing,” it read. Boast yields like that today and you’ll not only be blamed for lowering the state’s average but you might also find yourself laughed out of the local elevator’s coffee circle.

Maybe those early promoters weren’t so far off. Tourism officials are still using corn to attract visitors to one South Dakota city. Considering the number of visitors who pilgrimage to the city’s corn-covered palace each year, it appears to be working.

Mitchell’s corn-filled tradition began in 1892 when civic promoters decided to stage a harvest festival in a grain decorated building. Sioux City, Iowa, had been holding a similar event, first begun in 1887.

“However, when the fifth venture in 1891 was a financial failure, the backers decided to forego any future shows and it was then that the South Dakota town alertly seized the opportunity to capitalize on the Corn Palace theme,” Robert F. Karolevitz wrote in Challenge: The South Dakota Story.

Obviously, Mitchell is proud of its Corn Palace image. Many businesses have adopted “palace” as part of their names and the school’s athletic teams are known as the Kernels. And 500,000 people visit the palace, now at its third location, from Memorial Day to Labor Day each year.

Mitchell officials no longer question the power of corn. Neither did Delores Walter, a lifelong Howard farm wife, who wrote about rural living for the city’s Daily Republic newspaper. A bumper crop almost halted her wedding.

“In 1948, the corn crop was so abundant that we didn’t think we could take time off to get married. After all, a couple can get married any old time, but there will not always be a big corn crop to harvest,” Walter wrote in a Nov. 5, 1992, column. “But being practical and being in love doesn’t always go together. We were married November 6, 1948.”

Corn has played an equally important role for Elk Point’s Curry family members who have built their lives around corn. J.J. Curry began his Curry Seed Company with a 20-acre field in the 1930s. Today, over 3,000 acres are planted to seed corn within a 15-mile radius, and more and more farmers in the region are using their product.

J.J.’s son Ed, who led the family business when we spoke with him in 1997, said the development of hybrid seeds replaced the settlers’ practice of open pollinated corn and created increased yields. “In the Thirties, an 80 bushel crop was tremendous,” Curry said. “Now 180 bushels is obtainable, and certain test plots produce over 200 bushel yields.”

Technology has produced hundreds of corn hybrids, all varying in maturities to suit different needs. Curry research and testing has produced 20 varieties for the current market.

Advanced technology also allows seed corn to be harvested in half the time and to be dried mechanically with natural gas heat. Such improvements always come with a price, in this case it’s increased production costs.

That’s not enough to make Curry long for the days of hand picking, when harvesting 100 bushels in a day was a mark of achievement.

Though he doesn’t miss “the good old days,” he has tried to use the stories to cheer up young detasselers. Once on a hot day in wet conditions when the kids were really tired, he told them he had been detasseling corn since 1938.

It didn’t stir much encouragement. One little shaver looked at him and said, “You sure as heck haven’t gotten very far.”

Burton Ode, a farmer from Brandon, also remembered when corn was picked by hand. To help with the harvest, farmers hired transients who worked their way north following the grain harvest and then worked back south picking corn.

For their efforts, Ode recalled men earning first two cents and then 10 cents a bushel. Though horse-drawn corn pickers had arrived the 1920s and ’30s, they weren’t much better. “They were meager machines,” he told us in 1997. “It took a lot of horses to pull them.”

Then single and two-row pickers came in the late 1930s. “They were real good machines but no one could afford them.”

Finally, after World War II things boomed and mechanical pickers ruled until the late 1950s or early ë60s. That’s when Ode said an Illinois farmer decided there must be a way to use a combine for something other than grains. “He rigged up something in the front of the combine to make the corn run into it,” Ode said. “They really took off.”

Machines today are even more laborsaving. Gone are the days when farmers scraped the kernels from each cob. They no longer have to shell it by flailing it, driving oxen or horses across it, or by driving the ear through a metal ring with a mallet. Picking, husking and shelling can be done in one easy step now.

Eighty-five years after the Department of Immigration published its booklet, corn is still king in South Dakota. In 2010 farmers harvest 569.7 million bushels of corn, the state’s third largest crop on record.

How much corn is too much? That’s the million-dollar question every year in South Dakota. The largest percentage of the corn raised in South Dakota is used as livestock feed.

It’s hard to believe a little kernel of corn can do so much to critters but each kernel contains 61 percent starch, 19.2 percent protein and fiber, 3.8 percent oil and 16 percent water. Corn that isn’t used for animal feed is either exported or used to make co-products, all of the different products corn can be used in. That’s the fastest growing part of the industry.

One bushel of corn can yield 31.5 pounds of starch, 33 pounds of sweetener or 2.5 gallons of ethanol. You can also get 10.9 pounds of protein feed, 2.6 pounds of gluten meal or 1.6 pounds of corn oil.

Supermarket shelves hold more than 3,500 products that contain corn in some form – everything from detergents to crayons to batteries, sweeteners, soda pop, golf tees, road de-icer, trash bags and fuel in the form of ethanol, which is a multi-million dollar industry all of its own.

Corn can be grown almost anywhere, but because East River counties enjoy adequate rainfall, good soils and the necessary heat units, they tend to produce the most corn. Top producers in 2010 were Minnehaha, Spink, Brown, Moody, Lincoln, Hutchinson, Brookings, Union, Turner and Beadle counties, each topping 18 million bushels. Other counties such as Roberts, Kingsbury, Lake, McCook and Charles Mix, which produced around 17 million bushels, weren’t far behind.

Statistics show Harding, Perkins, Lawrence, Meade, Custer, Fall River and Jackson counties produced little or no corn that same year. Land west of the river tends to be better suited for rangeland, winter wheat or other small grains and sunflowers.

Early farmers didn’t have the benefit of that knowledge. “The earliest pioneers with any agricultural experience in their past were doomed by their ignorance of the new land since they were determined to practice the eastern forms of farming on the stubborn sod of Hand County,” Scott Heidepriem wrote in Bring on the Pioneers! History of Hand County.

They modified the methods after several failures after discovering eastern corn needed a longer growing season to avoid being nipped by September frost. Eventually, Hand County fanners and others turned to a shorter variety such as squaw corn.

The further west pioneers tried to grow corn the more difficult it became. “For farmers the west river country posed a riddle they had not yet been able to answer. Settlers had lived on the land for fifteen years or so by the 1920s, but farmers still learned mostly by trial and error what their land could produce,” according to Paula M. Nelson.

They kept trying even though they grew it profitably only every other year.

“Given the difficult environment, the commitment to corn is surprising, but corn was a versatile crop with many uses, and it also symbolized ‘the farm’ to west river residents ….”

It’s nice to know some things will never change. An unending sea of green leaves and golden tassels swaying in the breeze will always symbolize the farm to South Dakotans.

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