Architects, artists, city planners and designers from across South Dakota converged in Yankton April 6-8 for Design:SD, an annual exercise to help the chosen community imagine its possibilities. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
Carl and Jan Brush of Yankton are loyal readers of our magazine, and avid bicyclists. This summer they are combining those two loves on a cross-country trip, using past South Dakota Magazine stories to guide them to interesting people and places. They’ve agreed to post some reports from the road so we can go along on their eight-day, 360-mile journey. ‚Ä®
DAY EIGHT: Home Again
We left Freeman and headed back to Yankton via the Jamesville Colony and Utica. It was a very scenic ride of 42 miles. The best view of the day was coming down the last hill and seeing Lewis and Clark Lake.
On our tour we met a lot of interesting people. It seems everybody has a story to tell. With her notepad and pen in hand, Jan sought out folks to interview. Carl took most of the photos. At the end of the day we compiled and edited, then emailed the information to South Dakota Magazine. We discovered that photojournalism is hard work!!
We had a great time on our tour. The weather and winds were mostly favorable. There were no flat tires or mechanical problems. We met a lot of pleasant folks along the way. We occasionally get asked how many miles to the gallon we get. The answer is 50 mpg — of Gatorade!
We totaled 377 miles in eight days. Riding the back roads is very peaceful. We appreciate how the communities and South Dakota farmers take pride in maintaining their properties. Thank you South Dakota for another great ride. And thanks to the folks at South Dakota Magazine for the opportunity to share our experience!
Click to read Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Day Five, Day Six and Day Seven of Carl and Jan’s journey.
Carl and Jan Brush of Yankton are loyal readers of our magazine, and avid bicyclists. This summer they are combining those two loves on a cross-country trip, using past issues and articles to guide them to interesting people and places. The Brushes have cycled in all 50 states.”But we like South Dakota best!” says Jan. They intend to travel about 360 miles in the next eight days. They’ve agreed to post some reports from the road so we can go along.
DAY ONE: German Cuisine and a Stone Church
We took off from Yankton Sunday morning. We met Ella Berth and Edna Kalubt near the old stone church south of Menno. They told us that Albert Gunderson split the stones with help from an inmate and the congregation in 1935. The church still has services on Wednesday evenings.
In Menno it started to rain so we parked the trike out of the weather at the school and visited the Open Door Cafe for lunch. Great food! We met owners Jerome and Rita Hoff. Rita was proud to point out the framed pages from South Dakota Magazine, Sep/Oct 2011, featuring their German meals that are still served every Tuesday. Rita mentioned the sign above her. It was made by Jerry Buum who passed away young. His widow, Vicky works at Yankton’s Hy-Vee bakery. The Elvis shirt is an antique, collected by Rita’s daughter-in-law.
Overall it was a great ride. We stayed dry. 51 miles total. We saw lots of wildlife. Everyone waved and a herd of horses greeted us west of Freeman at the Jonas farm and ran alongside us for 100 yards inside their pen. We love cycling in South Dakota!
Note: We ride a tandem recumbent trike. It is a 27 speed and is 10 ft long. The brand is Terra Trike, built in Michigan.
The Yankton Community Library and the Dakota Territorial Museum hosted their annual Cemetery Walk through the Yankton Municipal Cemetery Tuesday night. The tour included stops at the graves of six characters from Yankton’s history, where re-enactors shared biographical details and anecdotes from their lives on the frontier. The walk is a fundraiser for the museum. Photos by John Andrews.
Ever since Moses came down from Mount Sinai, we have been on notice. No killing. No adultery. No stealing. No giving false testimony against your neighbor. Which means if you accidentally run over your neighbor’s trash can don’t swear your other neighbor did it.
I have never worshipped a golden calf or other false idol, but I have run afoul of most of the other commandments in my time. My one bright spot, morally speaking, is that I have never had any problem with the last two commandments: thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods and thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. I’m not unmindful of the charms of other men’s wives, but I know if I ever crossed the line to coveting them my wife would find out and I’d be dead within the hour. This tends to keep me on the straight and narrow.
As for coveting my neighbor’s goods, my protection against envy is two-pronged. I am a simple man, and am content with simple things. Bigger, better, faster and fancier things don’t get me all googly-eyed, so I don’t lust after them. Plus I am well practiced in the art of creative disparagement, or seeing the glass half-empty. If my neighbor has a big house with a pool I think,”those things are a major headache. You’ve got to clean them every day or they get all gunky. No way would I want a pool.” If my neighbor has a big screen TV I recall something I once read about how they cause eyestrain or cancer or something. This makes me appreciate my TV, which has a screen the size of a paperback book.
My commendable record regarding covetous behavior, unfortunately, may be in jeopardy. I’m not sure because I’ve wandered into a gray area. It’s not my neighbor’s wife or my neighbor’s goods I’m coveting. It’s my neighbor’s moisture.
It’s nearing the end of spring. Tulips, daffodils and those little purple flowers I can never remember the name of have made their appearance. Our Nanking cherry bush is loaded with blossoms, as are our apple trees. An ancient mulberry, which is always the last tree to leaf out, is finally awakening from its winter slumber.
Meanwhile, large swaths of our lawn look like a none-too-well-maintained Berber carpet. On every side there are bushes and trees that didn’t make it. Many that did survive look far from healthy. I feel bad for Carolyn because she has put so much time and effort into nurturing them, but I also realize that lawns, flowers and shrubs are a trifling matter in the grand scheme of things. Across the road are the stalks of last year’s stunted corn crop, sticking up from ground that’s as lifeless as chalk. What will it mean for farm families if the rains don’t come?
I’m not a weather worrier by nature. I’m one of those goofballs who love blizzards, and who does exactly what you’re not supposed to do when the wind starts howling and lightning bolts rend the heavens. Instead of heading for shelter I run to the window in hopes of seeing Dorothy’s house or the wicked witch fly past. If I ever get sucked into a funnel cloud I expect the last thing I’ll see is Carolyn yelling up at me,”I told you to get in the basement!”
Even so, I have been conjuring up all manner of dreadful drought scenarios of late, and I didn’t need maps in the newspaper indicating Yankton County is in the”drier than Mars” stage to get them started. All I needed to do was look at my rain gauge, which is filled with dead bugs that didn’t die by drowning.
When I was a wee lad my dad used to play the guitar and sing a song that caused my siblings and me to roll our eyes and cringe in embarrassment, as children are wont to do around their parents. Now it’s the soundtrack to my nightmares.
Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no mo, no mo
It ain’t gonna rain no mo‚Ä®
How in the heck can I wash my neck
If it ain’t gonna rain no mo?
Which brings me, at long last, to the matter of my covetous ways. We had one snowfall of consequence in Yankton this past winter, and a couple that barely whitened the ground. My mom and dad in Milbank, on the other hand, seemed to be in the middle of, or just getting over, a major storm every time I talked to them.
My obsession with moisture was such that I watched those storms dump on the northeast and all I could think of was, what did they do to deserve a blizzard? How come they get to be snowed in and not me? I’d see pictures of the interstate with stranded trucks barely showing above the drifts and I’d be perturbed to the third degree. Why do they have all the luck?
We had a rip-roaring, old-fashioned thunderstorm a couple days ago, which has helped my mood somewhat, but I’m pretty sure somebody got more rain than me. That leaves me right back where I started, with my soul in peril. It seems odd that a people who live in the desert, where every drop of water is precious, wouldn’t spell out whether coveting your neighbor’s rainfall is a sin or not. I don’t know where I stand.
Could you say a prayer for me just in case?
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
Every South Dakota town we visit is looking for ways to attract new families. Well, there was that one mayor in the town of Cottonwood (pop. 12) on Highway 14 that didn’t want necessarily want people poking around, thinking it was a ghost town. But generally every other town is trying something — from painting storefronts to offering free lots or building event centers — to rejuvenate their communities.
Yankton is trying something different. We are holding a 100-day search for a big idea that has the potential to change Yankton for generations. The person with the winning idea will receive $10,000. But the hope is that everyone in Yankton will be a winner if we can have a conversation about Yankton’s future, and also find a project the whole community can rally behind. The search is dubbed Onward Yankton and you can follow along or submit ideas on the website. The Onward Yankton group hopes submissions come from not just Yankton but across the state and country.
Larry Ness, a local banker and a founder of Onward Yankton, says the old river city is just one of many places struggling in today’s fast-changing world. “We think a community-wide exercise to decide Yankton’s next step will have a lot of value in itself. But once we select an idea, a bunch of us are committed to seeing if we can’t make it happen.”
Carmen Schramm, the executive director of the Yankton Chamber, says Yankton has always been a town of big ideas — starting with its designation as the territorial capitol in 1861. “As a city, we’ve started colleges, built one of the first bridges across the Missouri and our residents even built a dam and a lake in the 1950s — not to mention schools, hospitals and serving as an agricultural center.
“We’re proud of all we’ve accomplished,” she said. “But cities our size can’t rest on their laurels. We have to keep adapting and looking for the next challenge that will keep us as an exciting place where young people want to live and work.”
The May/June issue of South Dakota Magazine includes a feature article that talks directly to young South Dakotans, specifically to May graduates. Yes, they already receive advice from parents, teachers and mentors. But we found 18 interesting (and wise) South Dakotans to provide a unique and heartfelt perspective. One of my favorite submissions came from our poet laureate, retired SDSU Professor David Allan Evans. He begins with an anecdote from about 20 years ago when he was very earnestly and carefully teaching a writing class at SDSU. He finished the class feeling pleased with himself. But then a student came up to him and told him he had a leaf on his head. The young professor became embarrassed and agitated, and he felt it had ruined his entire lecture. Now, the story has become a lesson on humility and how not to take himself too seriously — “Something that all of us need to learn as we mature with time,” he writes.
I’d like to think the citizens of Yankton are following his advice with our Big Idea contest. We’re not saying we know all the answers — that’s why we are asking for your ideas. And we’re not taking ourselves too seriously. We look forward to a lot of silly and fun discussion over which idea to pick. But we are serious about the future of our town and our youth. I encourage you visit the Onward Yankton website to learn more, and also to read our letters to youth in the May/June issue. Who knows, the letters might spark an idea worth $10,000. Even better, the project might provide Yankton and other rural communities some ideas on how to grow and prosper.
During the last two years I have sought out as many South Dakota country churches as I can find. Over the course of my wanderings, three unique and historic church buildings made entirely of stone have captured my imagination. I wanted to show them partly because we just celebrated Holy Week, which for many South Dakotans means an extra emphasis in the beliefs that root our faith. The other reason is to remember the hard work and strong community ties that went into constructing and maintaining these buildings.
Photographing these churches presents a challenge. I always want to capture them in the most beautiful light or weather possible, but more importantly I want to both respect and convey the significance of these places. Often I am literally treading on holy ground. I was surprised to find each church in this column unlocked and open to the public, with only small signs reminding to close the door when leaving or simply asking to sign the guestbook. That is South Dakota at its best.
The oldest stone church I visited was Historic Lakeport Church and St. John the Baptist Cemetery in Yankton County. This building was started in 1882 and finished in 1884, constructed from chalkstone quarried from the Missouri River cliffs south of the church site. Regular services are no longer held, but I did learn that Mass is still held once a year followed by a potluck. Lakeport is also affectionately known as”the smiling church,” nicknamed because its front windows and door form the image of wide eyes and a grin.
Chapel of the Holy Spirit, found roughly 3 miles south of the Grand River in rural Corson County, is a church I knew as a kid growing up in Isabel. I had a friend that would attend from time to time and he just referred to it as the”old stone church.” It wasn’t until I was in college that I actually got out to see it. The chapel was built in 1922 with stone quarried from a nearby bluff of Firesteel Creek under the direction of the Episcopalian Mission to the Standing Rock Reservation. To get there you must travel quite a few miles on gravel and then prairie dirt roads. Once at the site, it truly does feel as if you’ve taken a step back in time.
Our Savior’s Lutheran, found 6 miles south of Menno on the James River, was built with rocks found in nearby fields. Lloyd Sorlien was 8 years old when the building was finished in 1948. He clearly remembers helping gather rock in neighboring fields as well as attending services in the basement until the building was finished. Lloyd also told me how his dad had a particular skill for knowing where to hit a rock with his 10-pound mallet so it would split just the right way. He also pointed out a cross in the front of the church made from rocks brought over from Norway.
As much as I hope these grand old buildings stay standing as reminders of what once was, I’m also reminded that a church isn’t a church without the people that belong to it. That sense of community has always been strong in South Dakota in one form or another, whether religious, family or civic based. I’m hopeful that we South Dakotans continue in this grand old tradition for many years to come.
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 South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.
Grete Bodogaard and her husband, filmmaker Chuck Nauman, have been hanging out in the little Yankton County town of Volin for a number of years.
Many of us who live here in southeast South Dakota felt quite blessed to have such a gentle soul in our commuity. Grete and Chuck didn’t participte a great deal in community activities, but they were apt to show up now and then. And you might catch them at Mac’s Pub, which was across the street from the old Volin Bank where they lived and worked.
I looked for them on several trips to Volin this summer and fall, but to no avail. After asking around, I was told they had returned to the Black Hills because of Grete’s health. She is serioiusly ill. Our thoughts and prayers go to her and her family.
When in Rapid City last weekend, I attended a forum at the Dahl Arts Center on Seventh Street downtown and felt fortunate to happen upon an exhibit of Grete’s creations titled “Celebration of Works.”
Grete was born in Norway, and learned some of her techniques in the old country. She came to the United States in 1969, and she quickly spun her way into our hearts and into our art culture. She is not only one of South Dakota’s greatest and most accomplished artists, but also considered one of the master weavers of our time.
“As I travel on my journey around the sun I have learned to spin fibers, dye yarns and weave my thoughts and ideas,” she says in an introduction to the exhibit. “Weaving is my other language, my expression of joy and frustrations.”
Her contributions to South Dakota have brought only joy, and we thank her for that.
The exhibit will be up through Jan. 31, 2015.
130 years after her death, a First Lady of Dakota Territory was remembered Wednesday (Sept. 10) at the Yankton Cemetery. Amanda Pennington had been buried in an unmarked grave since her death at age 47 in 1884. Amanda’s husband John served as territorial governor from 1874 to 1878 and remained in Yankton as an active citizen for years. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
