Tag: rural decay

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Free Market Vs. Small Towns

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

I want to believe in small towns. The free market does not.

Right after blogging about how our state economic development efforts may be accelerating our rural population drain by promoting jobs in “urban” counties that are already growing, I read the depressing news that after 85 years, Chester Hardware is closing its doors. Owner Denny Benson (grandson of founder Emil Benson) understood all the good his store did for his small town. But he had to give in to economics:

“…operating a hardware store in a small town just isn’t feasible anymore. My accountant has been urging me to get out of the business for six years or more. I would have liked to continue the hardware store, but the overhead in operating such a business just doesn’t make sense in these times [Denny Benson, quoted by Gale Pifer, “Chester Hardware Closes Its Doors,” Madison Daily Leader, 2013.04.01].

A friend tells me Hogen’s Hardware in Kadoka is for sale and may close. Another connects the draining of rural population with the shift to Monsanto-based industrial agriculture–more chemicals, bigger machines, and giant farms mean too few people to sustain a vibrant local economy. A third says the decline of our small towns may be the market’s correction of “rural sprawl.”

South Dakota’s small towns grew around small farms. The market has almost eliminated small farms. If there is no longer an extensive local agrarian base to whom small towns supply hardware, groceries, entertainment, and public services, then on what new basis can formerly agrarian small towns survive and thrive?

I want to believe we can telecommute and microenterprise our way to small-town revival, with help from the occasional big beef jerky factory. But telecommuters don’t spend their whole lives online. Small business owners want to take their kids to dance classes and museums less than 50 miles away. And healthy communities need wealth and power distributed among numerous property holders (ah, Jeffersonian agrarian democracy!) rather than concentrated in the pockets of one big employer on whom the vitality of the local economy critically depends.

Until and unless a revolution achieves Wendell Berry’s dream of resettling America with small independent farms selling their goods to local eaters, many South Dakota small towns will look like grim re-enactments of Children of Men. Most of the kids will leave to increase their economic opportunities; most of the residents who stay will hang on to houses that won’t sell.

38 of South Dakota’s 66 counties have lost population since 1980. I’m still struggling to figure out the minimum threshold of population and proximity necessary for a sustainable community. But if the free market judges small towns unsustainable, how should we fight that harsh judgment? And should we fight it?

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a right-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard every other Monday on this site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.


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In Search of the Lone Prairie Windmill

By Christian Begeman

The last part of October found me cruising the back roads of southeastern South Dakota in search of the prairie windmill. I was looking specifically for ones that stood away from tree belts and visual clutter. These are the type that I love to position against a sunset sky or dramatic cloud scene. The problem is, such windmills are proving harder and harder to find. In my travels, I noticed that there are far more windmills in disrepair than not. I would say roughly 80% don’t have blades anymore. I suppose it is a sign of better technology as well as better farming and ranching methods in rural America. Still, there is something special about seeing a prairie windmill in a farmyard, or even better, standing alone against the elements in an open stretch of pasture. It is sort of hard to describe. I guess a scene like that simply reminds me of home, for lack of a better explanation.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that well-composed photos of these prairie sentinels seem to resound well in photo contests and other showings as well. It seems folks still like their windmills. As a photographer I’m drawn to them as well. South Dakota’s regular offerings of majestic sunsets often work best if a silhouette of a recognizable object is added in the frame. Whether in the foreground or on the horizon line, a well-placed windmill silhouette can transform a nice sunset shot into a breathtaking photo infused with a common piece of symbolism. This allows personal emotions and memories to be added to the photo on an individual and unique basis. I think that is what good art is all about. That said, I readily admit that such high-minded thoughts rarely enter my mind when out shooting photographs. My method is simply finding a scene with potential and then working it to get a shot that speaks to me. Within those moments are where the fun and joy of photography are for me.

One early summer night a few years ago, I was back home near Isabel, SD shooting the Milky Way in the southern sky with a lone windmill in the foreground. The night was very dark and I was working alone. All of the sudden, the windmill began to turn and whine. Soon it was pulsing a faint metallic tone while turning briskly. I was a bit startled since there was no wind at ground level. The sound was loud in the otherwise still night, reminding me of the opening scene of one of the best spaghetti westerns of all time, Once Upon A Time in the West. At first it was spooky, but after I told myself it was simply a wind current well above ground, it became sort of a soothing sound as I worked. When it stopped turning about 10 minutes later, the night was too quiet.

This September I was chasing the last big thunderstorm of the season near Epiphany, SD, and happened to stumble upon an abandoned farmhouse with a windmill near it just off the county road. I set up my camera in the post-storm wind and pointed it at the scene with plenty of room in the sky to try to catch some lightning. I got a couple decent shots, but the cool thing was being able to go back and re-shoot the scene in October against an evening sky on a nearly full moon night. Those old windmills have seen a lot of storms and skies, yet they still stand and endure, even if the times have passed them by. There’s probably a good life lesson in there somewhere — and even if not, a lone windmill standing against the South Dakota sky will always remind me of home.

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. To view Christian’s columns on South Dakota’s state parks and recreation areas, visit his state parks page.


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Horror on the Hill

By Christian Begeman

The fog was thick by the time we heard the knock on our door. My brothers and I were drifting off and Dad was half asleep on his easy chair. Boom, boom, BOOM came the frantic knocks. When Dad opened the door, a wide-eyed, white-faced stranger stumbled into our home. Dad sat him down at the dinner table but couldn’t get much out of him other than gibberish about getting lost in the fog and something about someone needing help. This of course prompted Mom to call the sheriff. My brothers and I huddled in the shadows of the hallway out of sight, but not out of earshot.

What we didn’t know at the time was the scene that unfolded earlier that day in town. A stranger with a camera arrived, checked in at the post office, the bank and finally into the cafÈ. He apparently was a somewhat renowned photographer working on his next book featuring ghost towns and abandoned buildings.

By the time he finally pulled a chair up to the main table of the cafÈ, the elderly members of the liar’s club (as they were affectionately known by the cafÈ’s regulars) already knew he was coming. Such is the miraculous nature of news in a South Dakota small town — it travels faster than the speed of light. The liar’s club proceeded to tell this stranger the best place in the county to photograph. About 13 miles south of town on a lonely gravel road was an abandoned house on a hill. This wasn’t just any house, mind you. It also happened to be haunted.

The story went something like this: During the Great Depression, two brothers in their twenties and their younger 18-year-old sister lived with their aging parents on this ranch. They suffered like all the rest of the farmers and ranchers due to the hard times. The impossibly dry weather couldn’t stop love from blossoming, though. The girl fell in love with a boy from Nebraska who worked on the WPA crew that built the dam just south of town. One foggy October night this girl snuck out to be with her lover and accidentally fell into the open well her brothers had been digging next to the house. No one heard her cries above the wailing wind. By the time she was discovered, it was too late. The brothers took their grief out on her boyfriend. A week after the funeral, they caught him, tied him up and threw him down the same well that took their sister’s life and then sealed it tight. No one ever saw the boy after that. Eventually, the brothers were found out, convicted and later died in prison. Folks who lived in the house afterwards talked of strange sounds and eerie cries on nights when the weather was foul and the wind blew. It wasn’t long until no one wanted to live there anymore.

Only the old-timers knew how much truth was in the story. The stranger was smart enough to figure that out. His only real concern was if there truly was an abandoned house on the hill. If so, a nice photo of it along with the ghost story would be perfect for his new book. He was assured the ranch house still stood.

After getting directions, he left town in order to shoot the building in the golden light before sunset. The golden hour never came, as the wind switched and a cold front blew in from the northwest. The remaining warm air collided with the chill to create a thin, drifting layer of fog. Our photographer didn’t mind as the atmosphere and fading light provided for dramatic shots of the house and he soon became lost in his craft. After taking his time to frame up a few photos, a shrill shriek pierced the evening. He called out. No answer. All at once, he felt like he was shoved squarely in the shoulders. He tripped, fell backwards and blacked out. When he awoke, the fog was so thick he couldn’t find his camera… or his car. A gnawing feeling of fear began to wash over him as he remembered the story from the liar’s club earlier. Alone in the dark, he left the house behind and started running as pure terror washed over him. He ran far and he ran hard. That was when he saw our yard light through the fog and began pounding on our door.

The sheriff came and got him within an hour. That was the last I saw of the photographer. The next day my older, braver brother and I rode our bikes to the abandoned house. We found a camera with a shattered lens lying about 20 yards from the house. My brother took the film out before turning the camera in. We secretly mailed it off to have it developed. It turned out that only three images were on the roll; two beautifully composed shots of the ranch house in an eerie fog, and the last photo showed two faint yet unmistakable sets of white, ghostly hands reaching towards the lens. We burned the photos and never went near that house again.

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. To view Christian’s columns on South Dakota’s state parks and recreation areas, visit his state parks page.


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Rural Decay or Handy Tree Shelter?

By Laura Johnson

A bunch of us South Dakota Magaziners were talking about the recent New York Times article”Amid Rural Decay, Trees Take Root in Silos,” which hints at the failure of farm life on the Great Plains by using phrases like”the landscape of rural abandonment” and”a region laden with leaning, crumbling reminders of more vibrant days.”

The article admits that times have changed, and so have farming methods. It’s true. My family still farms, but they no longer store hay or shelter livestock in the barn that my great-great grandfather built shortly after coming to South Dakota in 1869. The old chicken coop is full — not of poultry, but of objects that might come in handy for something someday. Why tear down a structure when you might think of a new use for it? Saving what looks obsolete may be Depression-era thinking, but I come from a long line of jury-riggers, experts at finding a use for a discarded object decades after it first hit the storage shed.

The author of the Times piece, A. G. Sulzberger, cited cost as one reason why abandoned silos still stood. We wondered if he’d ever attempted to knock one down. Bernie Hunhoff told us about his experience at an attempted silo demolition near Gayville. The farmers had read that a few well-aimed blasts from a high-powered rifle could knock out a brick or two and cause the whole structure to tumble. An intense hail of bullets was unleashed and many beers were consumed, but at the end of the day, the silo stood. It’s still standing today.

Rather than view rural ruins as a sign that our prairie civilization is falling apart, I choose to admire nature’s ability to repurpose and reclaim that which we no longer use. There’s a reason why South Dakota photographers love taking shots of ghost towns and old farmsteads. Those abandoned structures have a poignant beauty. They encourage us to think about those who came before us, of the lives they lived and the dreams they had, and perhaps make us a little more aware of the fleetingness of our own time here. But that’s life. It’s nothing to get too worked up about. Here today, gone tomorrow. Unless you’re a silo, that is.

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Meat or Vegetables?

By Bernie Hunhoff

This picture has been floating around our magazine office for years. It shows early-day Watertown area hunters with their bounty from a 35-minute hunt. I like the photo because it illustrates the outdoor heritage that we all love. But it hardly speaks to sustainability. Fortunately, we’ve established some common sense limits on hunting and fishing in the decades since and sportsmen now fully support those limits and restrictions.

Dakota Dunes meat-packer BPI became embroiled in a national debate over food labeling this month. Five or six governors rushed to defend the beef product, along with national agriculture leaders. But even as the governors were chomping on burgers at the press conference, they and everybody watching must have been wondering where this is likely to lead.

Americans once were a lot closer to their food and their food processors. Most of us grew up in families that either butchered on the farm or bought beef, pork and poultry from a little grocery store with a butcher in the back.

But food production and processing has been consolidated, and we might actually need to start educating children on where milk and eggs and hot dogs come from. There’s a bill in the Nebraska legislature this year to mandate such schooling.

Meanwhile, more and more people are becoming vegetarians or variations thereof. I was having lunch with a few young people from Sioux Falls last week when one gentleman explained that he was no longer eating meat. So he ordered a salad special. It came, to his surprise, with grilled chicken. He did a double-take, and then decided he could eat it. He’s only been a vegetarian for a week, so what the heck.

He represents American. Conflicted. Curious. Rooted in a nation rich in farm, fishing and filet mignon. But thinking that some changes lie ahead.

He’s re-thinking what he eats, along with many of his generation. It would be a monumental mistake for our farm state to ignore the issue and pretend that everyone will still want to eat hamburgers and hot dogs in 2050. Or that they’ll faithfully eat whatever the food processors churn out.

Anyone interested in having this converstaion may want to hear Dr. James McWilliams, associate professor of history at Texas State University and author of the award-winning book Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. He will speak on”Animals, Plants and Food: Eating Sustainably in the Twenty-First Century (and Beyond)” at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 14, in Augustana’s Gilbert Science Center Auditorium, room 100. The event is free and open to the public.

According to an Augustana College media release, McWilliams’ talk will explore the idea that the primary problem with”sustainable agriculture” and”the food movement” is our failure to come to terms with the economic, environmental and ethical dimensions of animal production and consumption. The only way food can be sustainable in a world of more than 7 billion people, he argues, is to do something as radical as it is common-sensical: Grow plants for people.

“One of the things sorely lacking in our public discourse is the ability to weigh the pros and cons of an issue,” McWilliams says.”Instead, arguments about anything take on a kind of religious fervor. So when I see conventional wisdom forming around an idea, I like to poke holes in it. I think any idea with legitimacy is going to withstand having holes poked in it and will actually be stronger as a result.”

Farmers know better than anyone that change is the only sure thing. Food and eating habits are going to change dramatically in a generation or two — for a variety of reasons — and nothing will change that.

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Our Old Barns

By Christan Begeman

Our barn meant many things to me while growing up in rural western South Dakota. We had a small dairy operation so heading out to the barn at least twice a day was not something I particularly looked forward to. With the AM radio blasting, we would chase, feed, wash and milk around thirty Holsteins twice a day, every day. These chores were often accompanied by dodging random kickings, avoiding filthy tail swats and weathering the annoying habits of brothers, which milking time always seemed to magnify.

For as many not-so-fun memories I have of time spent in the old barn, there are good memories as well. Taming new kittens in the hayloft as well as declaring war on mice and barn swallows armed with my Daisy BB gun top the list of fun childhood memories that I keep of that old barn. Now that I’m older I see barns in a whole new light. Literally.

As a photographer, one of my favorite things is capturing the famed South Dakota sunset. The colors in the evening sky can take your breath away. Trying to capture the beauty in a photo is a challenge. One thing that I’ve learned to make better sunset photographs is to find some sort of reference point in the foreground. Silhouettes of familiar objects like windmills or trees give the viewer a sense of how big and colorful the sky is. Lately I’ve tried adding the iconic shapes of the old, weathered barn as my reference point. Adding the”rural” feel of the barn somehow adds even more to the sunset sky and allows the viewer to infuse a wider variety of emotions and memories into the photo.

I like to bracket my photo exposures at sunset because sometimes I want more detail in the final photo than a silhouetted building or structure. Using photo editing software allows me to combine these bracketed images and render the scene more like I saw it while shooting. The camera sensor is not nearly as sensitive as the human eye and can not reproduce the kind of detail we see in real life. Using the bracketing technique can make up for some of this. In the last few years, this technique of high dynamic range or”HDR” photography has become quite popular. There is specific software out there now for this purpose only. What I do is not quite that in-depth and is more akin to having a graduated neutral density filter on my lens while shooting.

Another thing to keep in mind when shooting sunsets is to wait until all the light is gone. I have seen some of the most amazing color in the sky ten to fifteen minutes after the sun sinks behind the far hills. I’ve included three photos of a barn on the northwest edge of Sioux Falls that demonstrates how much the color can change. All three of these images were taken on the same evening in late September and over the course of the ten minutes after the sun had disappeared from the horizon. These are some of my favorite sunset shots that I captured all year. Funny how life brings you full circle. I used to dread chore time and now I can sometimes be found seeking out old barns around chore time in order to capture the beauty of a South Dakota sunset as well as a few good memories of life on the farm.

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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Technology: Friend or Foe to Rural South Dakota?

By Bernie Hunhoff

The 35 familes of St. Agnes Catholic Church of Sigel are wondering if this is their last Christmas as a parish community in Yankton County. And down the road a bit, the same families’ post offices in Utica and Lesterville are also on the chopping block. Both towns lost the last of their schools in the 1990s, and they’re probably just hoping that they don’t lose the last beer & burger joint.

Is it any wonder that Susy and Johnny have left for jobs in Sioux Falls and Omaha?

We constantly hear that technology is going to be a friend to rural America, allowing us to run a business no matter how far we live from the consumers of the world. But the hype isn’t matching reality. Not in rural areas. Not even in urban areas, if you believe Peter Thiel. And you should.

Thiel is the visonary founder of PayPal. He’s made billions on dot.coms, and put some of the early money into Facebook. But he told the New Yorker last week that he’s disappointed in the technology revolution because it hasn’t created the jobs or the quality of life advances that he’d hoped.

If the urbane Peter Thiel is disappointed, imagine how the familes of the Sigel community might be feeling this Christmas. Since 1886, they’ve done everything that Rome could have asked. They built a church, watched it blow away in a cyclone in 1907, and then built another. They’ve cared for a growing cemetery, educated their children to the glories of the Church, rasied money for the overseas poor, helped one another in hard times and celebrated together in the good times.

But because cars can easily transport them on good, asphalt roads to the next parish 15 miles away — and because more young men would rather work on Wall Street than attend the seminary, and because young women aren’t yet allowed in seminaries, and a dozen other becauses out of their control — they are unsure whether they’ll have a functioning parish in 2012.

The nearby post offices are also ripe with becauses. Technology made letters obsolete. Businesses gravitated to bigger cities because they couldn’t get broadband in the small towns. Immense equipment and high-tech seeds and pesticides made it possible for one man and his remote-control tractor to tend an entire township, so there are fewer mailboxes per mile. The postmasters in Utica and Lesterville could surely see that little brown trucks and cell phones were running circles around them, but no leadership came from above on how to compete.

So technology — thus far — has not been a great friend to all small towns.

We may see an alternative example, however, as the 2012 South Dakota legislative session unfolds. A big divide has occurred in the state for several years over whether many of the state’s 34 emergency call centers should be consolidated to just a few. Thanks again to technology — especially GPS — a state our size could probably be served by one 911 center and it could probably be located in India or Ireland. We no longer need a local operator to tell the deputy or the fire chief to head down Walshtown Road and turn left where the big cottonwood tree stood before it was struck by lightning 10 years ago.

Urban legislators and top law enforcement officials wanted to put major restrictions on the smallest 911 centers, including a requirement that every center be staffed 24/7 by two operators. Of course, that would be hunky-dory in an ideal world. But it hardly makes sense in small, rural counties where the dispatcher probably gets only a call a day and tends to a dozen other responsibilities while awaiting that call.

When emergency response leaders realized that the legislature was loathe to close rural centers, other ideas began to surface. Maybe, someone suggested, we could use technology to link the small centers together so the calls might roll from one town to another if the local dispatcher is already on a call, or running errands while on a lunch break. That seems to be the compromise that is part of a reform package heading to the legislature in January.

Technology is neither friend nor foe. It’s what we make of it. Could USPS become a player in the broadband revolution that’s badly needed in rural America? Could the Pope beam a Sunday Mass to every Catholic parish on Earth?

South Dakota won’t be the place we love today if it becomes a state of three or four cities, separated by economic hinterlands of unemployed, unchurched and unhappy people. Granted, that’s an extreme scenario. The good news is that we have more solutions and choices available than ever before in history, thanks to technology and the internet. But we need to make it work for rural South Dakota.

Masses at St. Agnes Catholic Church of Sigel north of Yankton were recently suspended, but parishioners will now be able to celebrate masses over the holidays before awaiting word on the future availability of priests. (Photo: Katie Hunhoff)