Canyon Country Zephyr page 22

<<Prev                                                   Home                        PDF                              Next>>

up, the Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, South Dakota hadn't enjoyed a boom year since 1877; and, though it didn't fully close operations until 2002, business lagged all through the nineties. Fathers of friends lost their jobs, families moved away, more houses lay empty. Stray cats roamed the worn down residential districts. Rumors circulated through the hills of chemicals leaching into Lead's water supply. Too many people had cancer. Too many women couldn't have children. By the early years of the new millennium, Lead could have been a ghost town

In Sturgis, where my sister and I attended school, most businesses were only open two weeks a year. While Deadwood had slot machines, we had Harley Davidson—and bars. Lots of bars. For two weeks a year, Sturgis was either hell or heaven, depending whom you asked. Most locals fled town while two to five hundred thousand people descended on the town, decked out in leather, motorcycles humming, purring, screaming through the streets. The smart locals rented out their basements, extra rooms, even made campsites of their front yards, charging visitors $1000 or more a week for a couple square feet of grass. Most every young girl in the area worked the Rally at least once. We vied for two-week positions at the local bars, campgrounds, street vendors, bike washes. If you looked good in a bikini, you were pretty well assured a gig. Guys worked the Rally too, but since they weren't working the string bikini jobs, they didn't make the same kind of money.

The rest of the world, witness only to those two weeks, painted my home town, Sturgis, as a biker metropolis—but the other fifty weeks of the year, Sturgis was a ranching town. Quiet, empty, and very poor. Most of the men in town worked construction. Most women were waitresses or, if they were lucky, secretaries. Teenagers loitered in front of the grocery store after school. Ranchers gathered mornings at Bob's Restaurant to talk shop. As a child, I often begged my parents to take me into Bob's, and sometimes, despite their concern for their cardiovascular health, they did. As the child of two professionals, both of whom worked in nearby, relatively sophisticated Rapid City, I understood nothing about

Watching

SOUTH DAKOTA

GROW...

A Century After Wild Bill, the Boom &Bust Continues

Tonya Morton

I know the drive back home intimately. Coming from any direction, the Black Hills are a forested island, rising out of the dust-sea of plains. The hills are old and carry all the legends of old age. Harney Peak, where the Seven Sisters rose into the stars to form the Pleiades constellation, lies in the South; Wind Cave, home to the Buffalo Lady, a few miles down the road. Just outside Sturgis, my hometown, Bear Butte stands as testimony to centuries of spirit quests, to the boyhoods of men like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and also to the continuing saga of greed. When climbing the Butte, it's always disheartening to know General Custer stood in the same spot in 1874, surveying the land South and West, and he imagined himself master of everything he saw.

To those moving into the area, the Black Hills are an oasis, a "fairy-land" as journalists described them in Custer's time. It's true that the hills are beautiful, thick with Ponderosa Pine and Black Hills Spruce, whitetail deer, mountain lions and coyotes. The

I was never surprised that people

wanted to live in the Hills.

People are drawn to mythological places,

and the Black Hills, as I knew them,

were choked in their own mythology.

snowmelt each spring lets loose waterfalls and rushing streams down through the hills. And, in the fall, the leaves of the few deciduous trees, fluttering brilliant red and yellow off their branches, blanket the forest floor. With winter comes the snow. It falls in a fury, thick, erasing roads, vehicles, even entire homes, and then, after hours, or even days, departs suddenly and quietly. In the wake of such snowfall, the earth lies still. The hills are hushed. Those who can still open their front doors do. They look out into the white, breathless.

I was never surprised that people wanted to live in the Hills. People are drawn to mythological places, and the Black Hills, as I knew them, were choked in their own mythology. I was raised five miles from Deadwood, witness to the death of Wild Bill Hickok, and the mourning of Calamity Jane. Both are buried above the town in Mount Moriah Cemetary, where they can peacefully watch over the telling and re-telling of their memories. Gunshots from the re-enactments of Wild Bill's death, and trial of his killer, Jack McCall, echo through the Deadwood streets on summer afternoons. Among the clatter of fake bullets, saloon girls pile on makeup and flouncy satin costumes to charm the tourists and lead them into casinos, where out-of-towners and seniors bussed in from the local retirement homes sit reverent, with identical frowns, at the rows of machines.

Some people were making good money from the flashy saloons and casinos lining Deadwood's Main Street, but I didn't know any of them. The owners were typically from somewhere else. "California," locals would practically spit, seeing a New Ownership sign on the front of a casino, or a new mansion rise along Interstate 90. Wherever all that money went, not enough of it was trickling down to the people I knew—the people who cleaned the tables, mixed the drinks, vacuumed the motel floors.

General Custer's dream, and the industry which gave birth to Deadwood, was gold— though no one's seen much of it in South Dakota for quite a while. When I was growing

cattle prices or feed costs—but I loved the rhythm of the ranchers' talking, the words they used. These were words understood by my classmates, many of whom were ranchers' kids, whom I envied for having horses and cowboy boots. As a child, I would have traded all my toys, (and probably my older sister,) for a horse.

All in all, Sturgis was a typical dying town. We had no industry to speak of. The few shops remaining on Main Street slowly closed down as more families traveled to Rapid City's bigger franchises. And the ranching community dwindled with every prolonged drought. I heard jokes over the years—how the only thing remarkable about Sturgis, other than the Rally, was the teen pregnancy rate. But, Lord knows, we still had it better than the Indians.

It never ceases to amaze me that, in South Dakota, the Plains Indians Wars are taught as "history." The outright violence on the reservation only died down in the late 70s—replaced by a quiet hostility and tension. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills had been illegally taken from the Lakota. But the tribe wouldn't accept the $100 million offered by the government as repayment. Accepting the money would mean accepting that their axis mundi is lost—like asking Jews, or Palestinians, to give up on Jerusalem. In elementary school, I was told by Indian friends that I was living on borrowed land.

www.eddiemcstiffs.com

MAKE MINE A DOUBLE.

<<Prev                                                   Home                        PDF                              Next>>


	<<Prev Home PDF Next>>

	up, the Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, South Dakota hadn't enjoyed a boom year since 1877; and, though it didn't fully close operations until 2002, business lagged all through the nineties. Fathers of friends lost their jobs, families moved away, more houses lay empty. Stray cats roamed the worn down residential districts. Rumors circulated through the hills of chemicals leaching into Lead's water supply. Too many people had cancer. Too many women couldn't have children. By the early years of the new millennium, Lead could have been a ghost town In Sturgis, where my sister and I attended school, most businesses were only open two weeks a year. While Deadwood had slot machines, we had Harley Davidson—and bars. Lots of bars. For two weeks a year, Sturgis was either hell or heaven, depending whom you asked. Most locals fled town while two to five hundred thousand people descended on the town, decked out in leather, motorcycles humming, purring, screaming through the streets. The smart locals rented out their basements, extra rooms, even made campsites of their front yards, charging visitors $1000 or more a week for a couple square feet of grass. Most every young girl in the area worked the Rally at least once. We vied for two-week positions at the local bars, campgrounds, street vendors, bike washes. If you looked good in a bikini, you were pretty well assured a gig. Guys worked the Rally too, but since they weren't working the string bikini jobs, they didn't make the same kind of money. The rest of the world, witness only to those two weeks, painted my home town, Sturgis, as a biker metropolis—but the other fifty weeks of the year, Sturgis was a ranching town. Quiet, empty, and very poor. Most of the men in town worked construction. Most women were waitresses or, if they were lucky, secretaries. Teenagers loitered in front of the grocery store after school. Ranchers gathered mornings at Bob's Restaurant to talk shop. As a child, I often begged my parents to take me into Bob's, and sometimes, despite their concern for their cardiovascular health, they did. As the child of two professionals, both of whom worked in nearby, relatively sophisticated Rapid City, I understood nothing about Watching SOUTH DAKOTA GROW... A Century After Wild Bill, the Boom &Bust Continues Tonya Morton I know the drive back home intimately. Coming from any direction, the Black Hills are a forested island, rising out of the dust-sea of plains. The hills are old and carry all the legends of old age. Harney Peak, where the Seven Sisters rose into the stars to form the Pleiades constellation, lies in the South; Wind Cave, home to the Buffalo Lady, a few miles down the road. Just outside Sturgis, my hometown, Bear Butte stands as testimony to centuries of spirit quests, to the boyhoods of men like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and also to the continuing saga of greed. When climbing the Butte, it's always disheartening to know General Custer stood in the same spot in 1874, surveying the land South and West, and he imagined himself master of everything he saw. To those moving into the area, the Black Hills are an oasis, a "fairy-land" as journalists described them in Custer's time. It's true that the hills are beautiful, thick with Ponderosa Pine and Black Hills Spruce, whitetail deer, mountain lions and coyotes. The I was never surprised that people wanted to live in the Hills. People are drawn to mythological places, and the Black Hills, as I knew them, were choked in their own mythology. snowmelt each spring lets loose waterfalls and rushing streams down through the hills. And, in the fall, the leaves of the few deciduous trees, fluttering brilliant red and yellow off their branches, blanket the forest floor. With winter comes the snow. It falls in a fury, thick, erasing roads, vehicles, even entire homes, and then, after hours, or even days, departs suddenly and quietly. In the wake of such snowfall, the earth lies still. The hills are hushed. Those who can still open their front doors do. They look out into the white, breathless. I was never surprised that people wanted to live in the Hills. People are drawn to mythological places, and the Black Hills, as I knew them, were choked in their own mythology. I was raised five miles from Deadwood, witness to the death of Wild Bill Hickok, and the mourning of Calamity Jane. Both are buried above the town in Mount Moriah Cemetary, where they can peacefully watch over the telling and re-telling of their memories. Gunshots from the re-enactments of Wild Bill's death, and trial of his killer, Jack McCall, echo through the Deadwood streets on summer afternoons. Among the clatter of fake bullets, saloon girls pile on makeup and flouncy satin costumes to charm the tourists and lead them into casinos, where out-of-towners and seniors bussed in from the local retirement homes sit reverent, with identical frowns, at the rows of machines. Some people were making good money from the flashy saloons and casinos lining Deadwood's Main Street, but I didn't know any of them. The owners were typically from somewhere else. "California," locals would practically spit, seeing a New Ownership sign on the front of a casino, or a new mansion rise along Interstate 90. Wherever all that money went, not enough of it was trickling down to the people I knew—the people who cleaned the tables, mixed the drinks, vacuumed the motel floors. General Custer's dream, and the industry which gave birth to Deadwood, was gold— though no one's seen much of it in South Dakota for quite a while. When I was growing cattle prices or feed costs—but I loved the rhythm of the ranchers' talking, the words they used. These were words understood by my classmates, many of whom were ranchers' kids, whom I envied for having horses and cowboy boots. As a child, I would have traded all my toys, (and probably my older sister,) for a horse. All in all, Sturgis was a typical dying town. We had no industry to speak of. The few shops remaining on Main Street slowly closed down as more families traveled to Rapid City's bigger franchises. And the ranching community dwindled with every prolonged drought. I heard jokes over the years—how the only thing remarkable about Sturgis, other than the Rally, was the teen pregnancy rate. But, Lord knows, we still had it better than the Indians. It never ceases to amaze me that, in South Dakota, the Plains Indians Wars are taught as "history." The outright violence on the reservation only died down in the late 70s—replaced by a quiet hostility and tension. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills had been illegally taken from the Lakota. But the tribe wouldn't accept the $100 million offered by the government as repayment. Accepting the money would mean accepting that their axis mundi is lost—like asking Jews, or Palestinians, to give up on Jerusalem. In elementary school, I was told by Indian friends that I was living on borrowed land. www.eddiemcstiffs.com MAKE MINE A DOUBLE.
	<<Prev Home PDF Next>>