elkton house

Hootenanny has just learned of the transfer in ownership of the Elkton House in Wall, South Dakota. Wall is a small town of about 700 semi-lost souls on the edge of the Badlands in South Dakota and the Elkton House is a beacon of hospitality and satisfying, well-prepared family food in a well appointed environment situated in the heart of the motel district just off the town's only boulevard. (And I mean motel, not hotel. There are no hotels in Wall. All of the rooms open onto the parking lot. Nonetheless, it's a hospitable town of accomplished and dedicated 'moteliers' and otherwise.)
What I've heard though is that the new ownership of the Elkton House is contemplating the establishment of a 'gentleman's club'. Yes, they want to turn it into a titty bar. A gosh darned titty bar. In Wall. Just up the street from the school I might add.
At this titty bar, they will of course hire dancers. That is what they will call them. They'll really be nickel and dime prostitutes from Arkansas, the Carolinas and Texas but they'll argue they're all just feeding a family or working towards that degree that will spring them from the stage fees that keep them tied up like slaves.
Leaving aside the community issues (because ultimately, this idea will fail on that level and become fodder for lawyers if pursued), let's consider the likelihood this would actually succeed as a business.
In Wall, as noted above, there are about 700 people wandering around. A large proportion of these are women and children. Another large proportion are males who are either family men or otherwise wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this in their hometown. That leaves you about 30 likely candidates most of whom would show up once just to have a look and would never come back. Now you're down to to three or four. The pariahs. The untouchables. Wall's version of a ghetto crackhead. If there were enough of them, I'd say go ahead, you can't lose with those guys. But the dancers don't work for spare change only so we're back to square one. Pardon the French but we're talking skanks here. A small step up from a disease-ridden truck-stop lot lizard. Maybe. There's no real dancer money to be had in the eastern Pennington County market. Not legally anyways.
So does that mean your target audience is going to wind down to single male tourists of a "sporting" nature? (Are there a lot of those outside of Bangkok, Thailand?) In June you'll get a few custom harvesters but they work all day and into the night. In August, you'll spot some Hell's Angels, Outlaws and Bandidos due to Sturgis Bike Week. Guys from Phillip and Kadoka will round out your year and you might catch a few big-dollar, fat guys from the east coast in the area for deer hunting season in the fall. Slim pickings overall, I would guess, because even if you try to run this locally as a regular restaurant the rest of the time - no one will come. No one.
We should support business freedom and individual rights and a property owner's right to present a tax-based business model with adequate community support. But, most of all, we should support the community's right to reject it based on sound home-based reasoning and accepted community standards. It's called zoning. They ought to zone this idea and these crackpot owners right out of town.
Perhaps they'd do as well or better in Quinn or Wasta. Hell, when Tim owned the Wasta Bar, the last time I was there, there was a saddled horse in the bar before 10:00 PM. I'd pay more for that than a worn out idea.

i'm charlie chaplin

and what about the memorial to the lost
we think it was so long ago
Auschwitz
Belsen
a survivor stated she was given two left shoes and she said look
i'm charlie chaplin
she lived

i couldn't get out of my bunk
but my mother made me
unbelievable

memorial day

PINE RIDGE, SD. High on a windblown hill overlooking the Red Cloud Indian School, one Lakota name stands out among the gravestones in the Holy Rosary Church cemetery.
Red Cloud, the Lakota leader and warrior for whom the Jesuit-run educational mission is named, is buried in the school's historic cemetery. Red Cloud was born in 1822 and died at the age of 87 on Dec. 10, 1909.

This is Red Cloud's final resting place, often decorated with tobacco pouches, trinkets and other tributes to the Lakota leader. The old cemetery is closed to new burials now, but the history of that transitional period for the Lakota tribe is written in its granite headstones. The graves tell of a nomadic warrior culture rapidly replaced by life on an arid reservation. There are graves of numerous Lakota men that are also engraved with the words "U.S. Army Scout." The graves of schoolchildren who died while attending the boarding school tell the history of assimilation through the U.S. government's educational policy. The victims of several deadly blizzards that hit in the early 1900s speak of the dangers and deprivations that were part of daily life.

The grave markers document the events of the time. Red Cloud faced intense criticism within his own tribe for his decision to invite the "Blackrobes," as he called the Jesuits and their long black cassocks, to educate future generations on the reservation. The schools were often mean and dirty, offering lille hope for a better life. But Red Cloud saw that the traditional life of his Lakota people was ending and that in order for his people to prosper, their children would have to be educated to walk in both the Lakota world and the white man's world. Today, on Memorial Day, 100 years after his death, when we honor our warriors, Red Cloud's gravestone speaks across the century to the bridges and partnerships he fostered and promoted. Washte, kola.

hitch 'em tall

run westy run. you can look this band up online but you probably missed most of their shows in Mpls at 1st Ave or the 7th St Entry. we saw them all in various states of inebriation. we were acting like bad oranges.

when the world is running down you make the best of what's still around

In my case it meant borrowing my friends .308 with 15x Leopold scope, loading up an S&M .357 revolver with the 'Magna Shocks', filling the 25 round banana clip on the Ruger and heading for Nogales. Of course, I stopped for cigarettes and beer and ice in Tucson. At a truck stop. Traded some jokes with the lot lizards and drove south and then east to Nogales. The plan was to hunt 'coyotes'.
They aren't hard to find. I used my binoculars before I scoped them with the Leopold attached to an elephant gun (high bore .308) that can reach out over a mile if I judge the trajectory correctly. I usually do.
So the dudes come flying up in a big truck and get tough, verbally. I step out with my can of Copenhagen and take a dip and say what's with the hassle? The big fat one said what are you doing here? I said, hunting coyotes. He looked down, and dug a hole in the ground with his boot and said "Mexican Coyotes"?
I said, whatever pays. Sixteen bales up to Pueblo, CO paid 17K. Heck, it was just weed.

the summer of lori

starts with a party on june 4th, when she's done teaching. according to lori, herself. the best way to describe lori would be to mention she's got a pretty twinkle and fierce spark; a little bash and some pop. about five-feet four-inches tall, give or take; smart-mouthed and as sweet as a frosted cupcake.
and had you seen her tonight in that spaghetti strap dress you would have stayed until last call too.

handled it

Willie handled the desert camping well but of course he would bacause he's a hobo cat with travel under his belt. He's straight-edge hobo. Comes and goes when it pleases him, sleeps and eats here at home, reads my newspaper and wanders off again for the better part of the day. If he has a job, he sure ain't paying rent or buying his own Purina.
Since he ain't been around tonight, I figure he's headed to Higley where he runs a string out of Candace Bergen's guest house. There ain't a lot of cats that can handle that kind of action.

different names

for the same thing:
weiners, hot dogs, frankfurters
noodles, pasta
ketchup, catsup
coincidence?
don't know but you can't find nothing at all if there was nothing there all along
(DCFC)

gas station tamales

Seems like the gig is up. The new owner at the Ray-Cooper Texaco won't let them peddle tamales from the back room anymore. I left my cell number with the cute tamale lady and expect a call today when my half dozen are ready. My tamale lady cooks on the side. I am all hooked up. Three beef, three pollo. Willie eats the leftover masa and smokes the greasy cornstalks. He's a weird little half-Siamese. Grows little red peppers in the backyard. Meditates a lot. Or is just sleeping.
Anyway, this gal, Lisa, makes the best tamales on the planet. She's my tamale lady and is cute as a kitten. She has a careful smile and flashes her big, searching brown eyes. Sometimes she even throws out a little pout in with a concerned look and becomes the prettiest girl in the world.

mi mejor enemigo

my close friend is in bolivia. fighting an insurgency. or filming it. same thing i guess.
he called tonight. he's in the field, commanding his soldiers/film crew. sleeping on the ground. eating canned fish and english biscuits. a big spider crawled into the tent as we spoke. he killed it with his boot. he is a world away. and they are shooting at him.

not bad oranges

Hashed it out with fellow founding member 'Porkchop' Pat via cell from the back porch of the Penny last night and it looks like this summer's Not Bad Oranges tour is on. Just gotta line up Clem. He's the glue that has kept the candle burning. Like that last sentence, he's a mixed metaphor. Being from Long Island he's sort of NBO's Jim Carroll. But, he named the band so he's due his props.
So this was how it came about. It was one hot afternoon in Minneapolis. Lower duplex at 2609 Columbus in the heart of the south Minneapolis ghetto and Clem's eating oranges that he claimed were 'not bad'. And he said, as he ate his third, 'these are not bad oranges'. Thoroughly stoned to begin with, we immediately formed a rock band. The rest is history. Sort of, anyway. None of us remember the early gigs. Just the giggles.
NBO rocks!

Tour Info:

June 12 - Interior, SD (Sharon's Driveway).
June 13 - Wall, SD (Badlands Bar). Free pizza to first six ladies.
June 14 - Wall, SD (Cactus Bar - basement).
June 15 - Creighton, SD (Randy Clark's Tool Shop).
June 15 - Creighton, SD (After party in Jim Eisenbraun's cow barn).
June 16 - Rapid City, SD (John Tyrell's house in north Rapid).
June 18 - Gillette, WY (Randy and Lisa's back yard).
June 19 - Valentine, NE (Fulton Ranch Rodeo).

June 29 - Whiskey, Los Angeles CA. (With Exene Cervenka and John Doe).
June 30 - San Pedro, CA (With Mike Watt).
July 4 - Huntington Beach, CA (With Alien Sex Fiend).

August 8 - King's Park Long Island, NY (With Ryan Adams and the Cardinals).
August 13 - Kannapolis, NC (Unplugged).

September 7 - Duluth, MN (Some coffee shop with Charlie Parr).
September 8 - Superior, WI (Kerosene Bar). Free beer.
September 10 - MN State Fair Fried Cheese Curd Booth (Unplugged).
September 14 - Appleton, MN Apple Fest (Unplugged).

November 6-17 - Fargo and Grand Forks, ND (Fall Eel Pout Festival).
November 19 - Tempe, AZ (HOME AT LAST - Library Bar on Mill Street). Free fish-net stockings for the chicks with the shortest skirts, longest legs and rattiest dreads(3 pairs per participant).
November 20 - Tempe AZ (Cheba Hut on University - go with a pinner, the blunts are huge).

More dates to be announced later.

NBO. Come see us. Drive your life in circles. Circles of joy!

can you believe it

I met this lovely young lady last night at the Copper Penny in downtown Gilbert. I'd seen her before at the Liberty Market and behind the counter at Joe's Real BBQ which is kitty korner across Gilbert Road, but it wasn't until tonight when I saw her again and she smiled at me and said "hi, that chair next to me is empty". I lost contact with reality momentarily and just barely managed to say hi right back. And then, of course I took the empty chair.
Her name is Barbara Anne Hall. Originally from Sioux Falls, SD. Was a Chi Omega at the same time I was a Teke (Theta Eta 286). So, unlikely though it seems, USD frat boy meets USD sorority girl a million miles away.
We closed the Penny and spent the rest of the night down by the canal. To me, she looks just like a young Doris Day. Or just the prettiest girl, ever.

the night the grain elevator burnt down

i was at scott's house. there was a a big boom and a flash. sirens. a huge fire. the grain elevator was on fire. we ran over to look and watch.
jerry morgan pulled up in his pontiac firebird. fleetwood mac, go your own way. loud. on the car stereo. elevator burned. we watched, mesmerized by the fire.
after awhile, it collapsed.
so did i, elated by what i'd seen.

big steve

We didn't get too scared when Big Steve waved a crooked stick and brandished a pocket full of rusty nails at us down by the sale barn. We just scattered, left and right. The cowboys on horseback running the cattle in would step on it to calm him down and Steve would break down and cry. We'd laugh, but we weren't sure we should. Big Steve was OK most of the time. Crying concerned us. He was the crazy guy that chased us through the goat pens and out across the field towards Dart's Dam. And back again. We didn't like it when he cried.

Big Steve was a Vietnam veteran and his time in Vietnam broke his brain, body and spirit. He walked around town with a thick leather belt on his head. Not on his forehead but underneath his chin and over. So adorned, he wandered. In and out of here and there. He ate for free but no one knew where he went at night. He was good at disappearing.

One night while walking home from work, I passed by the sale barn and ran into Big Steve on the old dirt road next to the Fire Department. He was bedding down in the ditch by the old Fisher Implement shop (next to the old laundromat). He had a boom box with Cheap Trick's 'Surrender' playing very loud. As I sat there with him and his boom box, Big Steve began to evaporate. Somehow he lost his gravitational relationship with the ditch and began a molecular disintegration. I was fascinated and compelled.

He hasn't been seen since.

dear john

Well when I woke up this mornin',
There was a note upon my door,
Said don't make me no coffee Babe,
'cause I won't be back no more,
And that's all she wrote, Dear John,
I've sent your saddle home.
Now Jonah got along in the belly of the whale,
Daniel in the lion's den,
But I know a guy that didn't try to get along,
And he won't get a chance again,
And that's all she wrote, Dear John,
I've fetched your saddle home.
Well she didn't forward no address,
Nor she didn't say goodbye,
All she said was if you get blue,
Just hang your little head and cry,
And that's all she wrote, Dear John,
I've sent your saddle home.
Now my gal's short and stubby,
She's strong as she can be,
But if that little old gal of mine,
Ever get's a-hold of me,
That's all she wrote, Dear John,
I've sent your saddle home.
Now Jonah got along in the belly of the whale,
Daniel in the lion's den,
But I know a man that didn't try to get along,
And he won't get a chance again,
And that's all she wrote, Dear John,
I've fetched your saddle home.
Now I went down to the bank this morning,
The cashier said with a grin,
I feel so sorry for you Hank,
But your wife has done been in,
And that's all she wrote, Dear John,
I've sent your saddle home.
Hank Williams

kicking bear and shortbull

In the summer of 1890, Kicking Bear and Short Bull visited Wovoka in Utah. They became enraptured by his faith and even stated that Wovoka levitated through the air above them. Wovoka spoke of the Ghost Dance. Kicking Bear and Short Bull brought the Ghost Dance back to the Dakota reservations, but in a form which lead to totally unexpected results.
Wovoka's faith was based on non-violence. In fact, he even urged his followers not to tell the wasicu what they were doing. But as interpreted by Kicking Bear and Short Bull, the Ghost Dance took on a militaristic aspect. Special garments known as Ghost Shirts were to be worn to deflect bullets fired by soldiers or settlers. Government agents were permitted to witness the Ghost Dance ceremony and were told what it meant. Kicking Bear and Short Bull assured the Lakota that the Indian Messiah would appear to them in the Spring of 1891.
All activities at the reservation were put aside, government agents and settlers were terrified by this sudden and (to them) bizarre turn of events. Newspapers spread stories of savage Indians in wild pagan practices. Tensions became overpowering in the region as the Lakota people gave all their waking hours to the Ghost Dance.
Blame for the Ghost Dance was placed on two people. Wovoka was traced as the father of the Ghost Dance and was interviewed by James Mooney, an ethnologist and anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institute. Wovoka passed a message to Mooney that he would control any militaristic uprising among the Native peoples in return for financial and food compensation from Washington. The offer was ignored. Blame was also put on Lakota elder and statesman, Sitting Bull. Ironically, Sitting Bull was apathetic to the Ghost Dance and only allowed its introduction with great caution. His initial fears were realized: government agents considered Sitting Bull responsible due to his leadership role among the Lakota. Tribal police were dispatched to arrest him, but his apprehension resulted in conflict when several Lakota fought to protect him. Sitting Bull was killed in the crossfire between supporters and Lakota tribal police on December 15, 1890.
Fourteen days after Sitting Bull's fatal shooting, the U.S. Army sought to relocate and disarm the Lakota people, who failed to stop their Ghost Dance. Big Foot took his band of three hundred from the Cheyenne River Reservation and fled south through the Badlands, eluding a reformed 7th Cavalry. On the frozen plains at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation, government troops opened fire on the overwhelmingly unarmed Lakota people with Hotchkiss gatling guns, forcing the killing field survivors into the deep gullies where they were hunted and massacred by 7th Cal horsemen. At least 290 souls were lost. Many lie in the original trench dug for their disposal, a heartless display of American Indian policy in the waning days of the century. Thirty-three soldiers died, most from friendly fire; 20 Medals of Honor were presented to surviving soldiers.
As news of Wounded Knee spread throughout the Native nations, the Ghost Dance died quickly. Wovoka's prophecies were seen as hollow; the land would not be returned through divine intervention. With the same suddenness of its birth, the Ghost Dance disappeared.
Wovoka himself virtually vanished into obscurity. In his later years, he exhibited himself at sideshows in county fairs and worked as an extra in silent movie Westerns. (The one surviving photograph of Wovoka was taken on the set of a film.) By the time of his death on September 20, 1932, he was virtually forgotten by both white and Native peoples. It would not be until the 1970s and the birth of Native American activism that the story of the Ghost Dance was told again.
The tragedy of Wovoka is a legacy of pain and suffering among the very people he wanted to save. The songs of the Ghost Dance are silent today and the dream of Wovoka vanished. The Christian principles which he laced into his theology were ignored by the soldiers and settlers who held allegiance to Christ and yet destroyed the Native way of life with a brutality unknown in the Gospel teachings.

This, then, is not the tale of a great hunter or of a great warrior, or of a great traveler, although I have made much meat in my time and fought for my people both as boy and man, and have gone far and seen strange lands and men. So also have many others done, and better than I. These things I shall remember by the way, and often they may seem to be the very tale itself, as when I was living them in happiness and sorrow. But now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people's heart with flowers and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people's dream that died in bloody snow. Ben Black Elk

cleaning the pool

The pool expert is back tonight. The pool murk remains unresolved despite our best efforts. A disturbing development has been the arrival of a hoard of poisonous desert toads who now ring the pool like funky gargoyles in the early evening and throughout the night and make a raucous noise akin to a threatened rabbit. Eerie and piercing. Caspar and Willie are on lock down which is good in any event because the backyard neighbor told me if our cats climbed the wall into his yard again, he'd trap them and feed each a toad. I decided to help him in his endeavor. I've been catching the toads with the pool net and heaving them over the wall into his backyard. If I should drop off line for a few days it's probably because I've been arrested for toad launching, a serious offense here in Phoenix. Wish me luck as I deliver the toads via air to their new digs in the hater's backyard.