(9 minutes read time or click on Buzz Podcast to listen to the audio version)

Leaving Pierre, the Capital of South Dakota, I headed west on Highway 14, away from 83, towards the Black Hills. Highway 14 is a long straight two-laner, with one sharp left, and one sharp right between Pierre and Wall. It cuts across South Dakota, east to west, through miles of hay fields and rows of five-foot-tall sunflowers.

These big-brown-faced sunflowers are beautiful with their perky yellow petal fringe; and as farmers discovered, a valuable crop. Sunflower nutrients are used in various foods and to make vegetable oil. The seeds are healthy snacks. They also possess a power to clean the environment, called phytoremediation. Tuck that away for the next time you are playing environmental trivia with your friends!

A less visual person would become bored with the view. Not me. Ever-so-many-miles midst the sunflowers, bluestem, and switchgrass are homemade looking signs of varying shapes. Sign after road-sign advertising a drug store. I started seeing them more than two hours away, some giving the remaining distance: “WALL DRUG JUST X-MILES AHEAD.”

I could care less about a dang drug store ahead. However, the signs broke the pattern of the fields. After the umpteenth one, they got the inquisitive side of me wondering what the heck could be so special about a drug store.

The signs touted, “free ice water.” Another one claimed a cup of coffee could be had for only five cents. Apparently, that was an old sign with a neglected price update. Coffee below five-dollars is getting harder to find these days, much less a five-cent-cup.

I later find out signs have been posted as far away as China and Australia promoting the distance to Wall Drug store. And, no, it has nothing to do with the big “Wall” store that uses “mart” in the latter portion of its name. In case you were about to ask.

It’s sunset when I arrive in Wall, South Dakota at the intersection of I-90 and 240. I pass two gas stations and a Dairy Queen. Two RV’s and a semi are parked between one of the stations and a giant, eighty-foot tall, green dinosaur.

A few blocks down the way, Wall Drug store proudly sits along a narrow main street boulevard. Cars are parked along both sides in front of the drug store and a line of tourist shops, ranging from t-shirts to expensive jewelry. Trucks, buses and RV’s are routed to a graveled lot around the corner.

Wall Drug is the anchor for the tiny town of Wall, South Dakota. A burg that continues to exists because of it, along with it being the main turnoff to the Badlands and at the feet of the Black Hills.

As I step out of ARGO, I’m caught by the artwork in the sky over Wall Drug store and adjoining buildings, I knew I had to capture the moment with my camera. Swelling clouds with rich flame-blue colors, swirled with orange-red, moved south to north overhead.

Of course, by the time I got a camera in hand, the clouds had mostly dissipated. Managed to catch a fleeting shot; nothing like the fullness of it when I first stepped out of ARGO. The scene became a video-short in my mind’s filing cabinet. Odd how these moments occur.

Maybe it’s just because of seeing sign after sign, but the drug store does look interesting enough to explore. Something different after driving the miles. And, there are no other stops for many more miles.

I decide to stay the night, but looking at the motels available, I head toward the green dinosaur, where I saw the two RV’s camping. I figure I can have breakfast in the morning at Wall Drug Cafe inside the store, walk the place, then move on east on I-90 toward Rapid City. Without a lot of internal debate, which I sometimes fail into, I go with this plan.

Next morning at the cafe, I pass the buffet line with the usual suspects. Both the ones standing in-line and the fare served on-the-line.

As I walk around taking in the hodgepodge of artifacts on display, I make a stop in a bathroom across the courtyard, in what’s referred to as the back-shops.

Okay, stay with me here. On the stall door some lad who thought he was witted, maybe a budding standup comic, used a black marking pen to proclaim, “I took a dump at Wall Drug.”

Not really funny, except, after all the road signs I passed, it is kinda amusing.

The imbecilic graffiti triggers a super odd flashback. Reminds me of arriving on the University of Texas campus in Austin to start classes. It’s the beginning of my university education on the famed forty-acres. I walk into the UT Tower building at the center of campus, making a stop at the restroom located just beyond the north-side doors.

On the metal stall wall is written:

God is love.

Love is blind.

Ray Charles is blind.

Ray Charles must be God.

It was my introduction to inductive logic. I hadn’t walked into a classroom yet, and I was already being educated. Right there, on the wall of the men’s room stall in the UT Tower. Some student, or more likely a philosophy professor whose class I would take later, was applying sophisticated logic to solve one of life’s great mysteries.

I thought to myself, this college experience is going to be different. The people here think differently.

Okay, back to Wall Drug. After leaving the bathroom, my attention turns to the numerous black and white photos framed on the walls. I love historical photos capturing moments in time of the people who preceded us. The walls are covered in them. Many images dating back to the 1800’s, when cameras were scarce, and photos were a novelty.

As I start scanning them from the left side of the wall, there is a series of five photos tucked in a corner, half hidden by a wooden carving of Native American chief. The images capture a darker moment in time, the hanging of a man who killed two other men.

George Loveswar was convicted of murdering George Puck and Henry Ostrander. This is his day of reckoning, September 19, 1902.

Loveswar, a white man who appears to be in his twenties, is walking up the steps of a wooden gallows. The typed caption reads, “This was the last legal hanging in Meade County. An ordinary picture of an execution by hanging in not scarce, but a sequence of pictures such as this is rare indeed.”

The next photo shows the sentence and prayer being said over him as he awaits. The noose is placed around his neck. The last picture is after he drops to the end. The photos are haunting.

I move on to lighter subjects. There are rare vintage photos of Native American Indian reservations. Extraordinary scenes of routine activities, like a group of Lakota tribe women washing clothes and entrails in the river. Cowboys branding cattle. Scotty Phillips, an early West River rancher, in a wagon with his sons, being pulled by a team of buffalo. Main Street in nearby Sturgis, filled will cattle, wagons and ranchers. Soldiers lined up near Custer at the Gordon Stockade in 1874. Calamity Jane. Annie Oakley. Buffalo Bill.

I walk back through the courtyard, past the giant fiberglass rabbit, to the cafe. Usually, I try to eat healthy, going with food choices high in protein, low in carbs, with bad fats reduced. But occasionally, too often than I care to admit, Satan calls. He’s a powerful tempter you know. A master at it.

I stand firm against the evil force. But then I am weak, seduced by saturated fats, lured into the black hole of the grease trap of food choices.

I’m not alone. Many have fallen into that pit, based on the number of oval people I see everywhere. I’m not judging, mind you. Just observing, okay. Many, maybe most American’s, are ovals. I was once a skinny kid, but on this trip, I’m gaining a few pounds. I could quickly become an oval too. Easily, ‘cause I love to eat.

The ovalness of John could happen. Just two days ago I passed Zesto’s, a tiny standalone ice cream shop in Pierre, South Dakota. Their slogan is, “Zestos is Bestos.” Get it?

Yes, I gave in. I threw my culinary caution to the cream.

Zetos is an old fashion kinda place where you pull up in your car, walk up to a window and place your order. There is a changing flavor of the day, which happens to be blackberry today. You have a choice of four sizes for an ice cream cones ranging from “Toddler” size (at another place would be large), on to “Adult” (the supersized one), too big for the cone to hold it, so it’s dumped into a cup with cone mounted on top.

Cars were pulling up, with a continuous line of people at the two windows waiting to order. Fearing I would miss the excitement of experiencing Zetos apparent tastiness, I turned ARGO around, finding a spot to park across the street.

With modesty and refrain, I ordered the toddler size. A twist of vanilla and the flavor of the day, blackberry. Didn’t want to over-commit to the unknown blackberry, and figured vanilla would be safe as the fallback. And all on one cone. Yes, overthinking it. I know.

All my hopes were confirmed. The moment my tongue touched the blackberry, a spark of cold happiness shot through my body, right down to my toes. People who enjoy life, especially life with good ice cream on their tongue understand what I’m saying here.

It was good. And I was pleased that I was measured in my selection of size. It was more than enough to satisfy my desires for something sweet. And I now had experienced Zetos.

But that is the way Satan works. A tiny taste on the tongue. A pleasing sensation, not harmful in any immediately apparent way. So yesterday I’m passing by Zetos again, entirely by accident. I think to myself, if the cone was so good, I bet they make a good malt or shake. I’m hungry. Maybe I could substitute that for the usual fare. Something different, eh.

There are three sizes for malts and shakes. I go with small. But, then I think about it. Since I’m substituting this baby for a meal, maybe I should go with a medium. Yep, a medium it is. And make it a malt. A chocolate one.

Not every place makes a malt anymore. I am “killing two or three birds with one stone, so to speak.

When the cute high school girl reopens the window, calls my name, placing the malt on the counter, the “medium” looks supersized to me. The contents are so thick it’s impossible to draw through a straw. I need a spoon. And, yes, it’s fantastic.

I’ll only eat half of it, I say to myself. Of course, as it melts to the point the viscosity allows for sucking the sweet cream up through the straw, I realized about two-thirds of it has been consumed. Consumed by me.

I’m feeling okay … for a while. Then the digestive process starts to say, “Hey, what a minute, what the $#@&*%#?” Alarm bells go off. Angry alarms, signaling an attack of bad trans-fats accompanied by legions of comrades in heavy organized battalions in full-armor carrying heavy artillery. My mind immediately denies the blame. It’s the Russians. Dang Russians.

I managed to live through it, with a pledge to God-Almighty, “I promise I’ll stick to only the good food choices, never backslide like this again.”

But, then today, I’m at Wall Drug Cafe. As I’ve said, they are famous for their free water and five-cent coffee, of course. But they are also renowned for their homemade donuts. Also, their pies. Today it is apple, cherry or blackberry. I resist the donuts. Stand strong. But, the pies are thick, full of fruit, with thin crusts, like my mom made.

A flashback of sitting around the kitchen table with mom and dad, God rest their souls, and my sister, Cathy, having mom’s homemade, from scratch, pie. Nostalgia is overwhelming me.

I know, I know. A bit of sentimentality is a good thing, but it can also be a useful tool of the Devil. And once again, I give into temptation. Cherry pie it is.

And, what the heck, maybe a donut for the road.

Hey, they are “world famous,” don’t-cha-know. Most likely, I’m only traveling this way once. I would regret missing out, denied from the joy of it all. I take a bite of the donut before I get out of the store, and instantly justify; something this good can’t be a devilish seduction, has to be from above, a Heavenly reward. It was like being kissed by an angel.

So, what made a tiny drug store along this long stretch of highway, “world famous?” Well, it all started with the advertising slogan: FREE ICE WATER.”

The family who thought up the marketing scheme, Dorthy and Ted Hustead along with their son, Billy, were marketing geniuses with a simple come-on, free ice water.

You’re saying, “No way.” I’m telling you that’s how it started. Offering free ice water, followed by a five-cent cup of coffee. That opened the door to visitors spending real money on the cherry pie, donuts and then an up-sale to the souvenirs. Smart thinking, and lots of signs.

As I look around, the store is filled with customers, all buzzing-high on cheap coffee, donuts, and pie, spending money like drunken sailors on souvenirs and knick-knacks.

The Hustead family grew the drug store they bought in depression era 1931, into a renowned retail roadside legend. This family kept a small town alive and thriving. In the process of building a legendary business, they became wealthy, and also, generous philanthropist helping many causes. The American Dream exemplified.

And so it goes. And so I go, on down the road, albeit, loaded with a few thousand additional calories and one-toke-over-the-line of nickel-a-cup-coffee.

~~~~~~~

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