We got on the road from
Branson at about 9:30 a.m. after Jerry got all his stuff sorted out – what to
take with him on the plane from Kansas City, what to leave with me to carry
home in the truck. My sorting was much easier this morning – everything piled
in a heap behind the driver’s seat.
A rainy day. The Weather Channel showed lots of rain and thunderstorms rolling over northern Arkansas
where we would have been if we had stayed another day on the river.
We took different roads back
to KC from those we took coming down to Arkansas, stopped for lunch at the
Smokehouse Barbeque and then drove Jerry to the airport where he hopes to catch
an earlier flight back to Seattle before his scheduled flight on Monday.
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| As a former Duck captain, I thought about trading my truck for this one. |
I drove north on I-29
across the rest of Missouri and then most of Iowa. Almost to Sioux City when I
passed a sign for the WinnaVegas Casino Resort. Decided to stay with the
Winnebago tribe for the night, which turned out to be a good thing. Won $110 at
the craps table when a short grandmother in a pink blouse rolled the dice for
about an hour. She barely stood tall enough to get her arms over the rail
and most of her rolls never hit the far end of the pit, all of them landing in
the piles of center bets and scattering chips across the felt. There was a
pause between each roll as the pit crew tried to restack the bets and figure
out what to pay to whom. She hit number after number before she rolled a seven.
When her turn ended, the players around the pit gave her a round of applause.
Why not? Most of us were winning money on her rolls. She had a great affinity
for rolling 10s, and the guys at my end of the pit were betting hard ways 10s
and collecting big stacks of chips. I stuck to the system Jack B. taught me but
still went away a modest but happy winner.
This casino sits alone out in
flat farmland of Iowa, and many at the craps table seemed to know each other, the pit crew calling players by name and one fellow joking to another that he thought he’d find his friend out planting corn
instead of playing craps.
I was up early the next day
and drove to Vermillion, S.D., for a visit to the campus of the University of South Dakota. The Al Neuharth Media Center was closed, but I found the National Music Museum fascinating. They have a huge collection of musical instruments,
some dating to the 1500s. The audio cassettes allow you to listen to many of
the instruments, and I figure I need to visit the iTunes store for music by the
Korn Kobblers (“Since they Stole the Spittoon”), Hoosier Hotshots (“From the
Indies to the Andes in his Undies”), Freddie Fisher and the Schnicklefritz Band, Webb Pierce, Furry Lewis, Eddie Peabody, Borah Minevitch and the Harmonica Rascals
("Chinatown, My Chinatown”), the Harmonicats (“The Ghost Waltz”) and anything
played on an echo horn, hurdy gurdy or theremin. Please don’t judge the museum
by my lowbrow taste in music; there’s a taste of everything here from the
classical to the . . . well, Korn
Kobblers.
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| Moving cattle to another pasture. |
Drove across South Dakota on
a southern route instead of continuing up to I-90. It reminded me of something
my parents and grandparents did. I remember it as an almost daily routine during
the growing season when someone in the family would say, “Let’s go look at the
crops,” which meant let’s go out for an evening drive. We’d look at the crops,
chat and usually end up at the Dairy Bar for a sundae.
Driving across South Dakota
seemed a national version of looking at the crops. Most of the cornfields were
ready for planting, there were some good stands of wheat coming on and pastures
were greening up nicely.
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| Wounded Knee |
The route took me through the
Pine Ridge Reservation, which did not have as many outward signs of poverty as
I had expected. But prosperity did not show itself either. The site of the
Wounded Knee Massacre was the saddest stop along the way. You’d expect this to
be a sad place because of what happened here, but the saddest part is how
shoddy it looks with a boarded up souvenir stand and a hand-painted sign
telling of the “battle” fought here. Saddest of all are the children who run to
your car as you pull up, offering to sell you “Indian arts and crafts,” which
look a lot to me like cheap plastic beads strung on fish line. But maybe my
taste in crafts is as bad as my taste in music.
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| Crazy Horse Monument in South Dakota. |
On to the Black Hills to
check on the progress at the Crazy Horse Monument since we last visited 20
years ago (they’ve finished the face since then and are now working on the hand
he holds over his horse’s head). Also planned a trip to see Devil’s Tower in
Wyoming.
But of course it rained the
next day and mostly I saw low clouds and wet roads. Made it to Billings and
woke up to Montana sunshine the next day for a lovely ride across the Big Sky
state and home.
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| Devil's Tower -- what I could see of it. |
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