Tag: Deadwood

Road Trip to Deadwood, Part 2

Batteries recharged after a good night in Rapid City, we proceeded on our journey. First stop: Mt. Rushmore. We drove into the Black Hills National Forest in the southwest corner of South Dakota and immediately saw a big difference from the rest of the state. The elevation rose around us, green forests replaced brown farmlands, and we saw beautiful scenery in all directions. The majestic heads of Washington, Jefferson, TR, and Lincoln peeked through the trees as we approached the park.

The next step was to park the car. The parking system involved pulling into a gateway, taking a ticket, and later paying at a kiosk.  Not as easy as you might think. Kathleen, who was driving, is a wonderful woman, but . . . and there’s no easy way to say this . . . she has short arms. She drove up to the gateway and reached for the ticket. As has previously happened at every parking garage or drive-through ATM that we’ve ever been to, she suddenly realized that she could not reach the ticket. She put the car in park, opened the door, and reached through the window again. Still no good. She clicked open the seat belt. In the process, she must have hit another latch next to her seat, and that’s when the fun began. The back of her seat suddenly dropped flat behind her, and she went into panic mode. The door was still open, her seatbelt was unlatched, her arm was out the window clutching the ticket, and the seat was down flat. I was reminded of Lincoln’s phrase when one of his generals was attacked while his army was crossing a river: “He’s like an ox that’s jumped halfway over a fence.” Then the warning system of the car kicked in. Annoying signals began sounding periodically, adding to the pressure she was feeling. The line was beginning to form behind us, and an official-sounding voice yelled, “Please pull forward.” So Kathleen, always a rule follower, did as she was told. She put the car into gear and tried to pull forward with the door open and the seat belt tangled around her neck. At the same time, she was trying to fix the seat while sitting in an awkward upright position. We inched forward and the warning signals became more insistent, beeping more frequently, urgently reminding her that the door was open and her seat belt was not attached. The voice of the park ranger also grew louder, “Ma’am! Please pull forward!” During this entire fiasco, I was no help, because I was laughing so hard. We finally cleared the gate, pulled to the side, and set everything back to the normal position. The beeping stopped and angry drivers accelerated past us. Crisis averted.

Once in the park, we walked in until we had a clear, unobstructed view of the monument. It truly is magnificent, and you can’t help but marvel at the vision, the artistry, and labor that went into the project. We looked at it again from a slightly different vantage point, but then . . . we were pretty much done. I mean, I’m glad we saw it. We can check it off of the list of things to do in our lives, but you can only look at four enormous heads for so long. Back in the car, we enjoyed the scenery as we wound through the National Forest. The Black Hills are much prettier than the Badlands, and the weather had turned sunny and warm. By the time we reached Deadwood, at 11:30 in the morning, it was about 75 degrees. We were too early to check in, so we decided to drive up to Mount Moriah Cemetery, about a mile from Main Street—that’s a mile straight up.

Deadwood is situated in a narrow little valley between two ridges of mountains, with Mount Moriah located at the high point above the town. Our original plan was to walk to the famous graveyard, but I am glad we opted to drive. Otherwise, I would have had to dig another hole up there and drop Kathleen in it. She does not do well on hills.  I was picturing a “Boot Hill” type of graveyard, with wooden tombstones and barely legible names, but the cemetery is neat and well-organized in concentric ovals of marble headstones. The centerpiece, figuratively and literally, is the grave of Wild Bill Hickok, Deadwood’s most famous dead person. In 1876, he was shot in the back while playing poker at the #10 Saloon in town. A large, bronze bust now adorns his gravesite. Right next to Bill’s marker, lies the grave of Martha Canary, better known as “Calamity Jane.” She was a rough-hewn woman who performed jobs normally reserved for men in the West, such as driving mule teams. She also fostered an unrequited love for Hickok and requested that she be buried next to him. Her last wish was granted. Both of their graves are festooned with coins, stones, and small bottles of whiskey left by tourists and other well-wishers.

The town itself is a charming little place that extends over a three- or four-block main street in the shadow of looming mountains. For those who watched the show, we stayed at the Mineral Palace Hotel, built on the site of Al Swearingen’s Gem Theater. The term “theater” was used loosely, as, at the time it was actually a saloon, gambling hall, and brothel.  It is now a modern hotel housed in a building that is over a century old. The desk clerk who waited on us was apparently part of the original staff, as she seemed also to date from the 1800s. When we checked in, the old woman said, “Let me see if your room is ready.”  Instead of calling housekeeping, she scurried down the hall (at least as fast as a woman who was 112 years old can “scurry”) to check for herself.

While we waited, we looked around the lobby and saw that it extended in a labyrinthine manner down the entire street. Like many of the extant businesses in Deadwood, the hotel has expanded horizontally over the years, and now occupies an entire block of one and two-story places. The walls have been knocked out between them, and you can wander from one to the other without stepping onto the street.

I said, “Kathleen, Darling, what are those machines with bright lights and noisy sounds?”

“I’m not sure, Dearest; perhaps we should investigate.”

“Well, Pumpkin, I’m not certain, but those machines and the tables covered in green felt appear to be some sort of games of chance.”

“They do, Sweetums; do you think we should try our luck?”

“Yes, Sugarlips,” I said solemnly. “I believe that Wild Bill would have wanted it that way.”

(By the way, that’s exactly how we talk to each other.)

We spent the rest of the day roaming up and down the street in glorious weather, stopping in at one casino or another. Seth Bullock’s Hotel is still there on the sight of his original hardware store, and there are two saloons that claim to be the spot where Hickok was murdered. We explored everything. Drinks were complimentary as long as you were gambling, so we drank for free the rest of the day and had a wonderful time. It wasn’t crowded, the people were friendly and pleasant, and none of the prices were exorbitant, as is unusual for tourist locations.

We had dinner in the Gem Restaurant, where all of the dishes were named for characters from the TV show. Here is a link to the breakfast menu, if you want to see it: https://www.sirved.com/restaurant/deadwood-south_dakota-usa/gem-steakhouse-and-saloon/448710/menus/2847457 I actually won $300, so it was a lucrative day as well.

The next day, we drove back, but stopped in an Iowa motel, just across the border from Minnesota. To reach our hotel, we had to pass another casino, so we stopped in. Amazingly, I won another $300. By the time we got back to Ben’s house, we were tired, but happy that we had made such a memorable trip.

Road Trip to Deadwood, Part 1

In the 1978 comedy, Animal House, starring John Belushi, the men of Delta House find themselves stymied completely by Dean Wormer and his cohorts. They are about to be expelled from school and have their fraternity shut down. When some of the guys realize that there is really nothing that they can do about it, Otter and Boon know what needs to be done. “Road trip!” they announce.

Kathleen and I found ourselves in a similar situation in late September. We closed on our Nashville home on September 12 and drove up to River Falls where Ben and Amber were generous enough to allow us to stay with them and the grandkids until we closed on our new place on September 30.  We couldn’t start cleaning and painting, or even shopping for needed items until we actually had our furniture and were moved into the new place. Feeling a bit restless, and not wanting to overstay our welcome, we knew what we had to do: “Road trip!”

We had recently finished watching the old TV series called Deadwood on HBO. The show aired from 2004-2006, but has been played in reruns ever since then, building up something of a cult following. We resisted watching the show after seeing part of one episode in a hotel room years ago. Kathleen is no prude, but the profanity in the show was especially foul and seemed almost gratuitous, so she was turned off on watching it. She thought that the language was worse than at a Henderson-family reunion—and that’s pretty bad. We have loved long-form television series such as Sopranos, The Wire, and Game of Thrones, however, and eventually a teaching colleague of mine, Adam Wilsman, talked her into giving it another try. We were hooked from the first episode. We learned that the language was indeed excessive, so the show was not for everyone. Realistic profanity was used, though, because the creators were trying to duplicate the raw, uncivilized nature of a Western boom town in the 1870s. Once we got past the language, we found that the plotlines and characters were well-developed and intriguing, and the writing was first-rate and intelligent. In the second season (there were three all together), the writers seemed to make a conscious decision to include elements of Shakespearean writing in the scripts. From that point on, the style of the Bard was evident in each episode, complete with dialogue in iambic pentameter and soliloquies spoken to the severed head of a dead man (similar to the “Alas, poor Yorik” speech in Hamlet). Therefore, when we wanted a destination for our road trip, Kathleen said, “Let’s go to the real Deadwood.”

Deadwood was a mining boom-town that sprang up overnight in the mid-1870s. Gold was discovered on land previously granted to the Lakota tribe, white miners rushed in seeking their fortunes, Native Americans tried to protect their land, and the US Army was sent in to drive them out. It was an unfortunate, familiar story in Western history, and it led to Custer’s Last Stand in 1876, and the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890, both in the same region of SW South Dakota. Deadwood became a colorful town that attracted such Western celebrities as Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Wyatt Earp. Hickok was famously murdered there in 1876 while playing poker and holding the notorious “Dead Man’s Hand” of aces and eights.

As we drove over, we noticed some things I had never seen before on the bland, interstate highway system. As soon as we crossed over the Minnesota line into South Dakota, the speed-limit signs reflected the wide-open spaces of the Great Plains. You could legally drive 80 miles per hours in most places. Also, there were warning lights and railroad gates at each entrance ramp because the interstate is often closed during blizzards and heavy snow. Other than that, there was not much to see until we reached the Badlands National Park.  It left plenty of time watch the unchanging landscape and ponder the many famous South Dakotans who have left their mark on history since the area became a state. Let’s see, off the top of my head, there was Billy Mills, one of my boyhood heroes and Olympic 10,000 meter champion in 1964. Tom Brokaw from television. George McGovern, the last liberal to be nominated by a major party for president (in 1972; he lost badly to Nixon). Then there was . . . um . . . well. . . I guess that’s about it. Back to the unchanging landscape.

By the time we got to the Badlands, it was cool, overcast, and drizzling a bit. We were pleased to receive a senior discount—I still can’t get used to that idea—and bought a pass that allows us to enter any national park in the US for the next year. Kathleen paid no heed to the “Beware of Rattlesnakes” signs as she bravely forged a path from the parking lot to the inside the park. She is a true woman of the outdoors. When we reached a good vantage point, we scanned the bizarre landscape in all directions. Over millions of years, wind and water erosion have scoured the terrain, leaving reddish-tan structures of rock standing in all directions. It’s unlike any other place in the country. You could certainly understand why outlaws would choose this location as a place to hide from the law; there was little to differentiate one rock or hill or valley from another. Actually, it was beige, craggy rocks as far as the eye could see. “Look over there, some beige rocks! Hey! Some more beige rocks! My God, woman! Is that a big beige rock way out there?” We returned to the car and drove another twenty miles or so through the park and saw a lot more beige rocks. Perhaps we were just tired from a long day of driving. Perhaps the colors look more spectacular when the sun is out. The truth is, we realized, that we are simply not as affected by natural landscapes, especially deserts, as others might be. We tend to prefer historical sites and places where humans have left an imprint on the world.

We spent the night in Rapid City, SD. There was not much to see there except in the downtown area. On each of the corners, they had erected statues of the presidents. The first forty-one are included so far, through George HW Bush. They were each about five feet tall, which meant they were slightly smaller than life size. Except for James Madison, which was about the right height. I guess Rapid City’s proximity to Mt. Rushmore (about 20 miles away) is why they chose this unusual tribute to the presidents.

The next day brought glorious weather, with lots of sunshine and temperatures in the mid-seventies. On to Rushmore and Deadwood!