I Wish You Could See What I've Seen.

When drinking beer and writing songs got boring, I headed back into town. I stopped into the public library - one room chock full of books and three computers - to check my email. The librarian was an older grandmother-type, so sweet and soft-looking with her white hair and pink blouse. She sat behind the one desk, surrounded by piles of books, a printer, a fax machine, and a computer. The only other people in the library were a woman and her two children. Just like the couple in Devil’s Gulch, everybody looked so wholesome. I’m tempted to say "corn-fed", but I think that’s considered derogatory. In New York my friends and I used to call it "whole milk". "Your new boyfriend is so whole milk!" we would say. I love whole milk.

The computers weren’t working, so I headed over to the Sports Cabin to drown my frustrations and get some writing done. Before propping the laptop on the one accessible outlet in the place, I ordered a beer and grabbed a stool at the end of a line of regulars already bellied up. There were two women and two men, but it was obvious that none were a couple. After shooting the breeze with the man closest to me, I heard the woman at the end ask the lady bartender, "Is she new in town?"
I answered for her. "No, I’m just passing through."

The sweet man with striking blue eyes and a red trucker hat smiled and asked, "Well, what the hell brings you to Garretson?" I explained the whole trip, the book, the quest to erase misconceptions (I like saying I’m on a quest, it makes me sound so Legend Of Zelda).
They all nodded in agreement and looked excited. They told me how to portray them in the book. The man closest to me, Marv, said, "Well, you can write in your book that I’m a Weed Eradicator!"
"He’s a landscaper," someone said.
"Oh, no, I like ‘Weed Eradicator’ much better!" I said. "I’ll use that."
Marv continued. "I’m an Organic Weed Eradicator. I don’t use pesticides."
Later on, I went to my car for something and he left at the same time. He has an American flag and a Minnesota Twins flag flying from the windows of his truck.
"Guess you like those Twins, huh?"
"Oh, you betcha!" he said.

I told them that I had been in the night before, and talked with Shirley. "Who?" they asked.
"Shirley. Shirley? The bartender?" Everyone laughed.
Denny, the blue-eyed man, said, "That’s Julie, we just call her Shirley. Short for Shirley–" *he said something funny, like Shirley You’re Joking or Shirley Ain’t Right, something like that, but I forgot it.*
Later on, when Julie came in for a beer, we all had a good laugh.

People trickled in and out of the bar for Happy Hour. From 4-7 you can buy bottled beers for a dollar, so some people were buying rounds for the whole place. The mood was so fun and everyone was so nice. Some people saw me and asked, "Are you the girl that’s writing the book?" It made me laugh - the word was already out on me, I guess. One middle-aged woman, Kathy, she was so sweet. She came in still in her McDonald’s uniform and we got to talking. It turns out that McDonald’s benefits program is quite good, as is their pay raise system, which many people don’t realize. "It gets a bad name but people don’t know how good it can be," she said.
I agreed. "At the end of the day, it’s an honest living."
"Exactly."

She introduced me to a woman named Justina who made me laugh. Each time Kathy finished another sentence explaining who I was, Justina would give me a high-five. "Jessica’s writing a book on how we’re not all backwards."
"Give it up, girl," Justina said, raising her hand to mine. "I’m guessing you don’t have a husband or kids?"
"Nope, just me," I said.
"Amen," she said, high-fiving me again. She was hilarious.

We joked about her household, how her daughters both had babies within six months of each other. "One’s boyfriend’s an Indian and one’s Puerto Rican. And my husband is Jewish."
"Does that mean if you make breakfast on a Sunday morning I can call your place The International House Of Pancakes?"

Another woman came in, a pretty blonde, with a little boy of about 8 or 9. He headed back to the arcade room as she sat next to Denny. He grabbed her hand and held it. Her name was Penney. They’ve been married about 8 years and have 8 kids between the two of them. "Penney and Denny?" I thought. It was too cute. When Denny explained to Penney what I was doing, she said, "If you’re sticking around til Saturday you should come to the Goat Races."
"The what?"
"The Goat Races. They’re over in Jasper, Minnesota. It’s a big party."
Denny agreed. "Yeah, it’s quite a time! You should come!"
"Well, I was actually headed for Montana, but maybe I’ll have to come back for that!"
"Yeah, we’re gonna meet right here Saturday around noon. We’ll wait for you if you want."
"Sounds good, I may see you!"

Sitting at the bar, an old farmer came in and took a seat next to mine. We didn’t talk, but I heard Kathy ask him, "Hey, Owen, looks like you need a new plier-holder! Why don’t you get one?" She pointed to the ratty holder on his belt held together by duct tape.
"I can’t afford it," he said, shyly. I blushed for him, sad that he couldn’t afford it and that he’d had to admit it in public. He left not long after that.

The local news was showing an hour-long special on the Midwest’s problem with crystal meth. One of the towns featured on the show was Sherman, a town a few miles away from Garretson. Another visitor in the bar, the only other out-of-towner, a biker passing through for Sturgis,asked, "Is this the only thing that happens in this town? Meth?" I explained that it was a special report. The prevalence of meth is a real problem, and can be felt all the way from South Dakota to Arkansas. I’ve seen newspapers all over the Midwest with front page reports of the sharp increase of children neglected, labs found, and crimes related to meth.

Anyhow, we all watched it together and then I got some more writing done. Grabbing my laptop from the car, I ducked into the hardware store and bought the last plier-holder in the place. I asked the clerk to double-bag it. When I went back into the bar, I walked to the end, away from everyone, and handed the bag to the bartender, Kandee. "This is for that guy that said he can’t afford new plier-holders," I whispered.
The woman closest to us, Sue, heard me and let out a huge laugh. "Christ, that man’s got more money than Carter’s got pills!"
Kandee laughed too. "Yeah, he’s not poor, don’t be fooled. He’s just a little shit wanting everyone to think so."
I felt had. "Well.... I guess... tell him it worked. I certainly thought so." Really, I was very embarrassed. "I was just trying to be nice," I mumbled under my breath, going back to my writing corner.
"Don’t you worry, honey!" Sue shouted. "We’ll tell him and make him feel good and guilty for tricking ya!"

After having 8 beers bought for me, it was definitely time to go. Still, I had a tab. "Can I have my tab, please?" I asked Kandee.
"Your beer is paid for."
"Well, can I have my food tab, then?"
"Your food’s been paid for, too." She smiled at Penney and Denny, who smiled at me. I blushed terribly.
"Thank you," I said, staring at the floor.
"Don’t forget, Saturday’s the Goat Races!" they said.
"Oh, how could I?" I left to look at my map. How far could I get before Saturday morning, when I would turn around and head back for the Goat Race?

Well, I made it all the way to Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills of west South Dakota, but not before seeing some beautiful country along the way. When I left Garretson, I took a northern route through the Great Plains. It took a couple hours before the scenery started looking like I had imagined, but when it did...... it was spectacular. I listened to Alison Kraus and Union Station as I passed over the huge golden mounds of earth. A few cornfields dotted the landscape but for the most part this was cattle country. Grain and hay blew gently in the breeze, making waves that looked like water. The hills were so covered in different kinds of vegetation that they almost looked like cammoflague, all different shades of yellow and gold and green. In some spots it looked like pure butterscotch growing out of the ground, in other places, pure honey. Each time I crested a hill I would gasp, trying not to cry. They were both happy and sad tears - sheer joy at the beauty of it all, happy that I was there and sad that I had no one to share it with. "If only you could see what I’ve seen," I told every friend, in my mind.

The occasional tractor was out harvesting the wild hay from the roadsides. Black Angus cattle munched on sweet grass and clover. I couldn’t get over how gorgeous it was. I passed through tiny little towns - Roswell, Fedora, Woonsocket, Wessington Springs. Entering the Lower Brule Indian Reservation, I got cheap gas in Lee’s Corner, just south of Mac’s Corner. I wondered how the towns had been named. I stopped in Pierre around dinnertime. I had a lot of writing to do. Earlier, talking with some people from The Sports Cabin, they had told me, "We’re not responsible for people west of the river (the Missouri River). Don’t judge us like you may them." Driving into Pierre (pronounced "Peer"), I realized why. No one was nice. Not a one person. Everyone was very snooty and in some cases downright rude.

I stood on the street in front of my car, talking on the phone, and people actually came out of their shops and stores to stare at me. When I waved hello and smiled, they sneered and went back inside. "What did I do?" I wondered.

This continued throughout the night - when I went to a restaurant to plug in the laptop, when I ordered a food, when I walked back to my car, when I pulled into my campsite at Farm Island State Park for the night. All of the surrounding campers just gawked at me, even when I tried to be friendly. For the record, I really didn’t like the whole area in and around Pierre.

The one possible exception was the girl at the ranger booth. She looked about 19, thoroughly bored with life. When she noticed my tags as I signed in, she asked how many were in my party. "Just me," I said. Her eyes sparked a little.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Twenty-five."
She processed that. "Wow. That’s cool."

I ditched the hostility of the campsite and went to the park’s tiny beach on the Missouri. But I didn’t go swimming. I was going to, but when I walked into the bathroom area and saw THE HUGE FREAKING TURD on the floor - one that was obviously too big to have been made by an animal - I thought, "If this is what these awful West South Dakotans will do on the bathroom floor, I don’t even want to know what they’ll do in the water." I drove instead to some of the hiking trails, armed with my 35mm camera. A big marker gave a little history of Farm Island - it’s a small patch of land that isn’t an island at all, but it juts out of the mainland into the Missouri River.

During the Great Depression, Farm Island held one of the Civilian Conservation Corps camps. These men were employed by the government to create usable parks and accessible natural areas. They lived on the site, in barracks, and were paid $25/week, most of which was sent home to their families. Some of the foundations of the barracks still remain on the Farm Island site, although that is all that’s left of that era. It’s almost sad, in a way, but good that the hiking trails and clearings still exist.

The first trail I turned down, there was a huge doe standing to the side. She saw me and took off, but it was quite cool to see a deer that close. I also saw rabbits, black-footed ferrets, ruby woodpeckers, a turtle, a chipmunk, and a pheasant. That, to me, is the best part of hiking; just getting in the woods with the wildlife. It was a great hike, albeit somewhat lonely, in flip flops. That is, it was great until it started getting dark, and I couldn’t find the exit. I was starting to get scared. I hadn’t brought any gear, not even a flashlight, because I hadn’t expected to be in the park so long, but the trails were so windy, not at all like the map. When I saw the sun set through the trees on the other side of the island, I started running, visions of "The Blair Witch Project" dancing in my head. I ran and ran so fast down the trails with the hairpin turns that I almost ran right into a 10-point buck in the middle of the trail as I came around a sharp corner! It was amazing! I caught myself and braked on my flip-flops before I struck him, but it shocked us both. We just looked each other in the eye for a moment, as if to say, "Uh, what are you gonna do?" Then he ran off to the left, only to double-back and run past me again, back to the right. It was awesome!

But I was still scared. I kept running. Finally, I hit the area of the trail that leads past Turtle Pond, back to the roadway. I said, "That’s enough hiking for one day," and went back to the campsite to play my guitar and deflect the stares of the horrible West Dakotans.