I was on the road to Aberdeen yesterday, and at various points along the way people were talking about turkey buzzards.

The big black birds have returned to roost on the water tower in downtown Mitchell. At Wessington Springs, I walked the city's nature trail with retired science teacher Lowell Stanley. He said the birds have also arrived there, but we didn't see any. They've been spending spring and summer in the hills near town for a number of years. They like to roost on the new Alltel cell phone tower that was built on the south edge of town, near the trail. Perhaps they felt it was erected just for them?

Duke Wenzel of the Wessington Springs True Dakotan ran a picture of the buzzards on the cell tower and wrote, "Noted to be a bit on the ugly side while on the ground, the huge birds are among the most beautiful while in flight."

The buzzards have also made it to Aberdeen, where the front page of the daily American News announced "Ominous Visitors Descend on Aberdeen." The story reported that the homely cousin of the hawk has the best sense of smell of any American vulture.

We see very few of them in Yankton County. Maybe it smells differently here?

If you had asked me before Friday night to guess how many cartoonists we have in South Dakota I would have answered with the fingers on one hand: Scott, um, Marty, ah, John, ahem ... Tim ... I still have a finger remaining.

So I went to the Cartoonists' Exhibition at Michelle's Cafe in downtown Sioux Falls on Friday evening figuring it would be a small crowd and there would be lots of extra food. I was wrong; now I couldn't count our cartoonists with two hands. They are a mostly young gang of jesters-with-pencils who add a lot of spice to the South Dakota cultural/political scene.

The cartoonists are starting to organize (a scary thought, perhaps, to some of their favorite targets). Look for a similar exhibit coming soon at the Black Sheep Coffee House, which is on 12th Street, just a few blocks west of that nasty overhead "stop light" photo-cop at 12th & Minnesota.

Among the cartoonists at Friday's event was Scott Ehrisman, one of our favorites, who drew the above Thune 'Toon. Also on hand was Chris Browne, the illustrator of the popular Hagar the Horrible cartoon. Browne recently moved to Sioux Falls, and he has become a true South Dakotan in a short time. Once he incorporates South Dakota into the internationally-popular strip a few times, we'll be doing an interview with him in the magazine.

He's much friendlier than Hagar, by the way.

The Center for Western Studies was kind enough to include me in last weekend's Dakota Conference, and by luck the speaker prior to me was Sterling Evans, a North Dakota native who now teaches at Manitoba. He may be the world's leading expert on farm twine, and in fact Sioux Falls physician Jerry Simmons — after listening to his speech — called him the "Mark Twine" of farm country.

Even though i grew up on a Yankton County farm (and even did some threshing for neighbors in the 1960s), I must confess that I haven't given twine its due. Sterling pointed out that without it, the modern agriciultural revolution could not have happened. Twine impacted the politics, economics and ecology of the Americas for many decades, he noted.

Mexican workers manufactured the twine cheaply for a time, but eventually they revolted. In the 1930s and 1940s, farm leaders persuaded state governments to use prison labor to produce twine. Inmates at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls made their share of rope and twine.

A few years ago, we featured an article on longtime prison guard who remembered those twine-making days. He said the prisoners apprciated having a task, and since they couldn't afford tobacco they also liked to smoke the leaves of the twine fiber, which was either sisal or hemp. "They were happy workers," recalled the guard.

Evans hadn't heard about the twine-smokers, but he mentioned that the workers were not always so happy. At one point, they protested by slyly slicing the twine rolls so they were worthless out in the grain fields. Senator Peter Norbeck demanded an investigation of the plant, said Sterling, and before long "the entire state was entwined in conflict.

Evans has written a book called "Bound in Twine."