This is the thirteenth and final part of my report of a trip into western South Dakota on Highway 212 to Highway 73 where I swung north to Lemmon, South Dakota, before circling back towards Redfield, along Highway 12 as far as Highway 281 in Aberdeen. The challenge was to understand where the middle west ends and the west begins; the Missouri River and the 100th Meredian demarcate that line between. Today we're headed east into Aberdeen along Highway 12, starting between Selby, South Dakota, and the turn off for Lowry.
Angus. Empty house,
the life gone out of it. Sign: "Lowry 9 -->." A very large field of soy beans. Then another. What more do we need. Is it soybeans rather than corn that marks the edge of the middle west?
Another old farmhouse come undone. Junction with Highway 271. Aberdeen, 67 miles.
WEB water project. Two huge, squat containers on a hilltop. WEB is rural water.
What the hell lake is this, which stinks? The map says Spring Lake. I don't stink so.
Rangeland and wheat where Highway 47 goes south. A couple sheds coming apart board by board.
An old farmstead, lived in and worked, trying to hold on. Someone has put in long rows of windbreaks, several of them, only a quarter mile from another windbreak.
Edmunds County.
"Bowdle Welcomes You." This is where I crossed Highway 12 last September on my way south from Rugby, North Dakota, to Smith County, Kansas. Someone here sells cars and pick-ups.
Aberdeen, 55 miles. Forty miles south of that is Redfield. I should be there by 5:00 p.m. or so. It is 3:18 p.m. right now.
This circle tour of north-central South Dakota has given me new respect for the people here. This is not the fat part of the land, yet with hard work and rainfall, they succeed. When the rain doesn't fall, they hang on. They know how to hang on.
At every pasture full of Angus I think: "There's a lifetime supply of steak for me."
A blackbird will not fly off the road but runs to the side, out of the way.
Oh, yeah, this is middle western to its core, the intersection of Highway 12 and 335 Avenue. Just look in any direction.
Beehives in a field of sweetclover. 3:28 p.m. I am lost in Sunday afternoon. I'm thinking of all the wonderful people I've met in the course of this project, and how kind they've been to me.
Sign: "Abortion kills."
Sign: "Roscoe."
A farmstead that looks empty doesn't stand long. A fellow bunches hay in the ditch with a hayfork on the front end of a Farmall "M." The "M," you should know, is the world's sweetest tractor.
There are not enough trees here for this to be Wisconsin, but it could be parts of Iowa or southern Minnesota. Corn and beans as far as you can see.
Ipswich. The father of the Yellowstone Trail lived here, J.W. Parmley. He conceived the idea in 1912, when automobiles were no longer a novelty and motorists needed reliable roads across the northern tier of states from Massachusetts to Washington state, "from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound."
We are upon the great flatness again.
Cows in the water, cooling off.
Sign: "Vote Pro-Life - Stop Abortion." Aberdeen, 20 miles.
A partly cloudy sky ahead. It might be close enough that I'll drive beneath the clouds.
I slow for a hen pheasant on the road.
That looks like a factory farm for hogs. Doesn't smell like hogs.
Sign: "Wetonka, 15 miles <--."
Sign: "Mina." A grain elevator along the railroad tracks and a few houses. A few lives. All the ghosts.
Brown County.
And this, this could be Wisconsin.
Aberdeen.
Redfield lies forty-one miles to the south. And beyond that, tomorrow, the drive home to Fairwater.
I'm ending my notes here. I'm closing the book of this day. I have nothing more to give now. Find a wheelbarrow and roll me home, roll me all the way home.
Funny. I combined around Lowry, SD, and the Selby area. Just cruisin' the name.
Posted by: angus lowry | January 26, 2008 at 10:39 PM