Traveling with Jack and Theresa

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After Thoughts 2005

Probing America: High Tech on Back Roads

Day Five Gillette, Wyoming, to Rapid City, South Dakota

June 28, 1992
To: Meg

From: Suzie in Eugene
To: Meg
Date: June 29, 1992

Wow, I had to get another map out. I am using the little pocket size Rand McNally Road Atlas compliments of the U.S. Army medical department. I wished I had known you'd be going through my family's town of Deadwood. My great uncle was the Justice of Peace and I think Sherif there for many years.

Today's adventures held both disillusionment and hope. The disillusionment came at Deadwood, S.D. One of the happy campers had visited this town 32 years ago and at that time the old mining town retold the tales of its famous residents, who included Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane. It was a charming mining town much in the character of Virginia City, Nevada, or Bisbee, Arizona. Today's reality was a mini Las Vegas complete with fat men and women in garish t-shirts carrying around their plastic buckets of nickels and quarters. We queried one gaming hostess and she said that in 1989 the state legislature made gambling legal in Deadwood only. Before that, she said, Deadwood had been, well, dead. The gambling has been an economic boom but the hostess, who was in her 20's and a lifetime resident, said she cried as she noticed how much the small community was changing. Is gambling and its profits suppose to rectify all the economic ills we have?

Mt. Rushmore Memorial

The hope came at Chief Crazy Horse Memorial which is just a few miles from Mt. Rushmore. The Crazy Horse Memorial was started in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowski, a sculptor. If ever completed, it will be the largest sculpture ever made. To give you a sense of size, the four presidents of Mt. Rushmore would fit in the armpit of Chief Crazy Horse astride his horse. The sculptor has never taken any government funds to complete the project, and it is sustained by donations and admission fees from visitors. It has been a family project of Korczak, his wife, 10 children, and others they have hired. The same happy camper visited this memorial in 1958. At that time Korczak's wife collected fees and pointed to a mountain that she said would be Chief Crazy Horse. She seemed a bit crazy herself because you could not ascertain a thing where she was pointing. Now, 32 years later, it is much different. There is a face of Chief Crazy Horse, the arm is pronounced and the horse is beginning to have a shape. Korczak died 10 years ago but the work goes on. There is a quotation from Korczak in one of the pamphlets. "It does not matter when Crazy Horse is completed; the only thing that matters is that the progress never stops."

Crazy Horse Memorial

In between disillusionment and hope was Sturgis. The annual Harley Davidson rally is held in Sturgis, S.D. We visited there today. The bikers were not there, but for one week in August literally thousands of bikers descend on the 5000 population community and spend the weekend biking the Dakota hills.

A major thought at this point is the vastness of the land. Most of us know that, intellectually, but there is something about driving mile after mile along nearly deserted freeways in Montana and Wyoming that heightens the concept. It looks big from 35,000 feet, but it is big on the ground level.

The weather has turned miserable, which is consistent with a 34 year old memory of summers in the Midwest. We are looking forward to thunderstorms, which Morning Edition says are moving eastward at 20 miles an hour. PBS FM , incidently, is a real plus. The familiar voices of Bob Edwards and Cookie Roberts bring morning cheer to the worn out hotel rooms each morning.

So far about the only apparent function of eastern Wyoming and South Dakota is to take up space. There must be a reason for Rapid City, but it is not obvious. The parking lot is full of tour buses, so someone knows something we do not. So, some things remain normal and we are thankful for the steadiness. On to Pierre, and the Missouri River!


© 2014 Theresa Ripley