Our new May/June issue has a good story by Susan Hoffman about some guys from Armour who are experienced at cooking with cream cans. You fill the can with vegetables, sausage, whatever you like, add water and cook it all atop an open flame. Sweet corn is supposedly an almost-essential ingredient but anything will work, they say.

Some in our office have dined at cream can cookouts and they give mixed reviews. There appears to be a partial correlation between the taste of the food and the amount of beer present at the event.

After the magazine was mailed, our friend -- the noted metal sculptor George Heinert of Mission, S.D., called to say that he has a number of 10-gallon cream cans that would be suitable for cooking. He also has wood or coal cookstove parts and warming ovens that have not yet been made into elephants or pheasants.

If you want to contact George, his phone no. is (605) 856-4853. We have no vested interest I assure you.

Our food related stories are always popular and we have more in the works. I hope I get a good crop of prickly pear cactus on the farm this year; if so, we'll experiment with a cactus recipe and give you a report. Any recipes would be welcome.

The tulips are blooming in Yankton.



... And in Elk Point. Photo by Craig Wollman

Have you ever heard of someone digging up a 45-foot high oak tree and moving it? You gotta love trees to do that, but leave it to a South Dakota girl. Kay Brown Gustafson (whom we got to know 20 years ago when she was a young VP at the now-closed Yankton College) was part of an effort to save an oak in Eagan, Minn. It weighed 250 tons. She called today to tell us about it. She says they had to dig 8 feet down and about 50 feet around to save the 150-year old tree.

Kay, a Parkston native, has become quite active in Minnesota since crossing the border. For a time, she served in the Minnesota legislature. Now she is a busy writer. She has written a children's book on the tree project, and may attend our state's book festival in September in Sioux Falls. She has a good website on the book called Aunt Gussie and the Grandfather Tree. Kay is also writing a screenplay about South Dakota that'll be titled "Killer of Dogs."

The good people of South Dakota Tourism in Pierre are now marketing pretty posters of South Dakota scenery, as photographed by Chad Coppess -- their veteran photographer. Only a few people have traveled and explored South Dakota with a camera as successfully as Chad these last few years. Here's a link to the first posters.

Love a piano bar? While researching for an upcoming story on Pierre's art and culture, we discovered that popular pianist Tommy Graham now performs at the historic St. Charles Hotel Restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights.

Tommy was playing in the Navy Band when JFK heard him and brought him to the White House as pianist. He was a longtime friend of Elvis Presley. When he and Elvis were both in Vegas, they sometimes circulated around the hospitals and performed for patients.

Word is that the St. Charles -- which was a fairly average restaurant some years ago -- is really quite a good place to eat nowadays as well. Longtime restauranter Ron Lutz and a friend, Texas chef Roy Stevens, are partners there.

You'll learn a lot of surprises about Pierre in our July/August story.

You can learn a lot by hanging around the historians and writers at a history conference. Here are some tidbits gleaned from last weekend's Dakota Conference in Sioux Falls.

How fast we developed: Brookings' retired prof John Miller talked about the railroaders' entry in Dakota Territory, and in the discussion it was noted that probably no other region in America boomed overnight as did Dakota Territory. Towns sprang up 8 to 10 miles apart almost overnight. The farm & smalltown population went from almost nothing to 400,000 in just a few years. Of course, the result was that we probably overbuilt the infrastructure just a little and now we're trying to keep about three times more towns alive than we need or can afford.

Sioux Falls DID want a college: An old story has long been circulating that Sioux Falls' pioneers didn't want a university because they figured the state might never fund it. Instead, they let Vermillion and Brookings take the schools and they took the "bird in hand," the penitentiary. Gary Olson, a very good Sioux Falls historian, noted in a Friday night address that it's all bunk. Of course they wanted a university. They just got out-manuevered in the terrtiorial legislature. So they were happy enough with the penitentiary.

That's healthy air: South Dakota was very fortunate to have Arthur "Cal" Mellette as its first governor. He was perhaps one of the most honest and dedicated of all prairie politicians, and in fact he gave up his own personal wealth to cover the losses when another state official absconded with funds. It was a fluke that he came to South Dakota from Muncie, Ind., where he was a successful publisher. A physician told his wife, Maggie, that she was dying, but might prolong her life with clean, dry Dakota air. So Cal insisted they move here and start anew. He was a friend of Benjamin Harrison, and thus won appointment as Territorial Governor. And how did our air affect Maggie? She lived to be 94.

P.S. -- Our good friend John Timm of Sioux Falls, who plays Mellette in historical re-enactments, is about to publish a long overdue book on the first gov's life.

Big oak tree: The second biggest burr oak tree in South Dakota is inthe Perry Nature Preserve, adjacent to Arrowhead Park on the east side of Sioux Falls. The biggest is in the Black Hills.

Sioux City's mistake: Our state's poet laureate David Allan Evans grew up i Sioux City as a fan of the Sioux City minor league team. In the 50s, he said, the team needed an outfielder and the New York Giants offered to send a young black guy to play center. Sioux City passed, for one reason or another (one can only speculate) and the fellow went to play in St. Paul instead, where he batted .400 and made some sensational catches. Soon Willie Mays was playing in the majors, and the Sioux City fans had to go to San Francisco to watch him.

Over breakfast on Saturday morning at the Center for Western Studies' annual Dakota Conference I told the story of a young Indian boy from the Sisseton Wahpeton Tribe who badly wanted to be a farmer. He grew up in a home where Dakota was the main language. Realizing he would need to communicate with neighbors and suppliers, he worked hard on his English skills.

Finally, after his schooling, he was able to rent some land. He figured the next step was to get acquainted with the neighbors so he dropped in at the country grain elevator -- which rural people know is the equivalent of the businessman's country club: it's where you go to network. Imagine his chagrin when he sat down at the table and realized the neighbors were all speaking Norwegian! He didn't know if it was custom or a snub to him.

But he didn't complain or shrink away. He befriended his closest neighbor and asked if he'd teach him a few Norwegian words. The neighbor happily obliged. A few months later, the two (now fast friends) walked back into the grain elevator and sat at the coffee table.

The young Indian farmer, in very bad Norwegian, explained how much he wanted to be a farmer and how much he had to learn. He said he was there to help anyone who needed help, and he wondered if they would give him a few tips now and then.

The Norwegian farmers were charmed, and of course impressed that the newcomer went to so much effort to learn Norwegian. But he wasn't very good at it. And the farmers finally realized it was probably rude to be talking in their own language anyway. So that was the last day anyone spoke Norwegian in that grain elevator. Except the Indian, who continued to enjoy greeting his new friends with a rousing, hallo, god morgen!

That's the story. Sometimes when I tell it, a friend will ask me later if it's really true. I wasn't sure until Saturday. I was told the story by Gov. Sigurd Anderson. Then, a few months after Sig told it to me, U.S. Rep. Ben Reifel, our first and only Indian congressman, told it to me as well. So I figured it was either true or one had told it to the other.

On Saturday, Wayne Knutson (longtime fine arts prof and dean at USD) was at the breakfast. Afterwards, he came over and said he knew that Indian farmer when he was growing up in Sisseton. "It was Johnny Cloud. He was a big tall man with a booming voice and he loved to talk a little Norwegian now and then just for fun!"

Hallo! I told you it was true. Now if I could only find someone to verify my story on the rare car (junk) dealer from Scotland who promoted brain pills.

Will We See You at the Dakota Conference?



I'm about to leave for the annual Dakota Conference in Sioux Falls. It is a celebration of Dakota life and culture at the Center for Western Studies on the Augustana College campus.

I've been asked to talk about "Doing Business in South Dakota" at the Saturday breakfast, so I've been thumbing through old issues of the magazine to look for some good stories. I truly think we have our own business style -- not necessarily better or worse than other places, but different. I'm not suggesting that's good or bad, just a fact that is worth noting and appreciating.

One of 0ur first entrepreneurs was Pappineau, the French trader who had a post west of modern-day Geddes along the Missouri. He made a lot of money and married a beautiful Indian woman. "Old Paps" as he came to be know, developed a gambling and drinking problem, however, so he gave a large sum of money (they say $50,000 in Geddes) to Mrs. Pappineau and asked her to bury it along the riverbank so they'd have it for retirement. This was before mutual funds, and even before Meta-Bank and First Federal Savings. You might call it First Buried Bank.

She did as he asked. Then, one sad day, her horse spooked. She fell, caught her heel in the stirrup, and was dragged to her death. Old Papps grieved. He buried her with reverence and love, and then he took the same spade and he started looking for the buried savings. The old-timers in Geddes say he dug and dug and dug himself crazy. Eventually, the mental hospital at Yankton was founded and he was one of the first patients. He died there.

Yes, there is $50,000 or so buried in the river bank. Unfortunately, it now sits under about 50 feet of water, at the bottom of Lake Francis Case. Before the Corps of Engineers flooded the river, the people of Geddes moved Pappineau's trading post into town. It is displayed in the park.

I don't have a moral for that story.