US 16: A Miracle in the Badlands

Dawn was probably still an hour away as, with coffee in hand, I pushed through the front door and out into the car park. Though not raining, beaded water covered the chrome and painted surfaces of cars and motorcycles; and the asphalt was slick with moisture. Last evening’s storm had moved on or perhaps just exhausted itself; the air was still, clean and moist. Gone was yesterday’s suffocating heat and humidity; swept away in the fury of the storm. Later, we would ride out of Rapid City towards what turned out to be something of a miracle in the Badlands.

I took out a Marlborough, flicked my lighter, held the flame to the cigarette, and drew a long, slow deep breath. It wouldn’t start to get light for at least another half hour and the designated smoker’s area was empty. This seemed like an ideal opportunity to take stock.

It was Saturday – the third we’d spent together on this road trip. Last week on this day and at this hour I’d been sitting outside a motel in Eagle, Colorado. The Saturday before that I’d been on descent into LAX. 

Taking stock

We’d covered quite a few miles since then. More importantly though, we’d had an opportunity to get to know each other a bit. We could not, of course, make up for or bring back the forty years that had slipped away. But, we could get to know each other as a couple of adults – well, old blokes I guess – and we did. We didn’t try to make up for the past; way too much water had flowed under the bridge. But we did share stories from the past; the warp and weave of two lives separated by circumstance, faith or the absence of it, belief, and juxtaposed perspectives and mindsets.

Right after school Mel had enrolled in an undergraduate degree in Biology at Sydney University. I remember, at the time, calling by the weatherboard house that he shared with a couple of other students down near the end of Fox Valley Road in Wahroonga. Somewhere during that year, though, Mel took the decision or, depending on your perspective, ‘answered the call’ to study for Church Ministry.

A family legacy

I was initially surprised; but when I thought about it a bit more,  this turn of events seemed to be almost inevitable. Mel came from a fairly long line of clergymen on both sides of the family. I’m not suggesting that our Dad, a clergyman, consciously exerted pressure in this direction. He wouldn’t have done that, and didn’t need to. His personality and stature within his Church cast a long and influential shadow.

So pervasive was this shadow, this unspoken expectation, that I’d succumbed to its allure back in the late 1960s. In fact, I actually enrolled at the Avondale College Seminary for the 1970 Academic Year. All these years later, I vividly remember completing enrolment formalities and moving in to my allocated dormitory room in Watson Hall. This happened on a Sunday early in February. The next day, the main cohort of new students would arrive to complete their enrolment protocols; and, had I stayed, I have no doubt that I would have been swept along with the new cohort’s enthusiasm.

It was only in the solitude of my allocated dorm cell, that the enormity of what I had just done, hit me; the breathtaking hypocrisy of my decision. I suddenly realised that I was just not fit or meant to travel this road. And not because of any lack of confidence in my ability to do the job; rise to the occasion – so to speak.

Defaulting

As a callow youth, I was considerably better than average as an orator. Even then, I could gain the attention of an audience and have most hanging on what I had to say. I was a persuasive speaker and a very convincing actor; I’d honed these skills to a razor’s edge during the process of constructing an acceptable, even compelling, external persona to hide my fear, insecurity and the emptiness of my spirit.

At the time, our Dad was attending a Church Annual Committee Meeting in Fiji. This was to be his last Pacific Islands Union Mission meeting because he was about to take up a new appointment as Manager of the Auckland Adventist Hospital. For those old enough to have been around at that time, you will know that in 1970 there was no Auckland Adventist Hospital. That was to be Dad’s challenge; he was to manage fundraising, design and construction of a new hospital for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in New Zealand.

So, during the early evening of that Sunday, I rang Dad in Fiji to let him know that I just couldn’t go through with the whole Church Pastor thing.

‘What do you think you will do then?’ he asked.

A change of direction

‘I’m moving out of the dorm tonight,’ I said. ‘Will take the late train to Sydney, make my way to Auckland, enrol at University, and live at home . . . if that’s OK with you.’

Dad must have found this call heartbreaking. I’d been in more than my fair share of trouble during my journey through adolescence, and the decision to study for the Ministry must have delighted him; offered him a glimmer of hope that I’d grown up – turned the corner. But, in the end. I’d let him down – again – though he never said so.

‘Les,’ he said, ‘My place will always be yours. See you in Auckland next week.’

Moving on

I hadn’t unpacked, so there wasn’t a lot to do other than call a cab. I left a note for the College Registrar; caught a cab to Morisset Station; and got on the last train to Sydney. My ‘promising’ career as a Church Minister had come to an inauspicious but honest end just six hours after it had been launched.

So, early in February, 1970, I found myself in Sydney bound for Auckland. Beyond enrolling at university, I had no real idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life; but, I was at peace. I just knew I had done the right thing; the ‘faithful’ would have a far better chance of finding God without me being impedimentary to their quest.

Another change of direction

Some ten years later, Mel was about to head in the polar opposite direction. He was eschewing the academic rigour and seductive decadence of university life; and taking on the diametrically opposed and more stringent intellectual and spiritual rigours of theology and training as a man of the cloth.

I knew this would please Dad; and so, it pleased me too. Mel was about to make good on the early promise I’d shown but defaulted on. Mel’s mother, always aware of and sensitive to ‘what people would think’, was delighted; her son was ticking all the right boxes – and indeed he was. Throughout his years in secondary school, Mel’s track record was virtually flawless; he rarely took a misstep. As a toddler, he’d stolen his maternal grandfather’s heart; and that heart, together with our Dad’s’, swelled to almost bursting point when Mel ‘answered the call’ to Church Ministry.

Then, midstream and concurrent with his clerical study, he’d taken on a training appointment with Rod Ratcliffe; as Youth Pastor to the Church in Minneapolis. When he returned to his study at the end of this posting, he came with a fiancee in tow.

Man of the cloth

Mel completed his studies in typically exemplary fashion; graduated; flew back to marry in a Minneapolis winter wonderland wedding; and then took up an appointment with the Church Pastor in suburban Sydney. Although I didn’t get an invitation, I know about the winter wonderland wedding; we heard repeated and detailed expositions after the fact. And, each Christmas, for the next three years we were the ‘grateful’ recipients of enlarged prints in glorious technicolour of the happy couple posing formally at the front of the Church; standing against a background newly fallen snow; and, reclining nonchalantly against the Wedding Limousine.

Mel’s was a truly ‘white wedding’; white church, white limousine, white gown and formal suit, white snow-covered landscape, and yes, even a ‘white’ bride. Mel’s mother had never quite managed to adjust to my marrying a Pacific Islander from the Kingdom of Tonga; though I have no doubt that she would strenuously deny ever feeling that way.

It was about this time that Barb, my good lady, our two girls and I went to Papua New Guinea to help establish and staff a Senior College at Kabiufa in the Eastern Highlands Province. My career with the church as a ‘missionary’ barely made it to the end of the academic year. From an educational standpoint, we were resoundingly successful; our first group of Senior Students topped nationwide results. From a personal perspective, my presence at the College seemed to be an anathema to the conservative evangelical ethos.

How to screw up a career

I raced dirt bikes, played golf on the weekends, wore a wedding ring; and was said to be arrogantly dismissive of authority. On a request from the school principal, church authorities sent their Education Director to sort me and the situation out. He offered me an ultimatum and, because I don’t respond well to ultimatums, I threw him out of my house. I was duly fired and told that my family and I would have to make our own way back to Australia; because we had not completed our agreed period of service.

Fortunately, word quickly circulated about the success of our students and we received government contracts to work in Papua New Guinea’s National High School System; we stayed on in the country for another nine years. There is an irony in all this though. Four years after my dismissal, I was appointed Regional Secondary Inspector for the Eastern Highlands Province. In my new position, I had responsibility for the registration, standards and compliance for nine High Schools in the Province; and one of these schools was Kabiufa High School. All of which, I guess, goes to show that one should always be cautious about stamping on toes . . . because, those toes may well be connected to butt that you just might have to kiss one day.

Building a vocation . . . and paying the price

Eventually though, we moved back to Australia and then on to Darwin; and though we only intended to stay for a year, we’ve been in Darwin for the past thirty years. So, the fact that Mel and I have had very little to do with each other for almost forty years, had nothing to do with any sort of falling out, dispute or bad blood. It had just been that our two roads had diverged somewhere in the woods . . . and I’d taken the one less travelled by

For his part, Mel quickly rose through the hierarchy of his Church; the self-same organisation that had sacked me a few years earlier. He completed a Masters Degree through La Sierra University and then a PhD through Fuller University in Pasadena. And, shortly after his graduation, Mel accepted an appointment to the Theology Faculty at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

He commenced the August semester lecturing in his area of specialisation, Youth Ministry. The plan was to allow his children to complete schooling for the year in Australia; then he would return to Australia, pack, and go back to the US with the family. Upon his return home, however, and just a week or two before the family’s planned departure, his wife walked out. Mel didn’t see that one coming; neither did I for that matter. I guess we’re all pretty good at papering over the cracks and, in truth, I hadn’t been paying much attention.

Family comes first

Mel took the decision, in the interests of his children, not to return to his appointment at Andrews University; if he had returned, I have no doubt that by now he would have been Dean of Faculty. Instead, he accepted an appointment as Chaplain at the school where his children were enrolled; and became something of a solo parent. I would like to think that, in like circumstances, I would have been as altruistic and balanced. But, I know myself and my talent for screwing things up too well, to think that my judgement would have been as sound.

Now, although it does not have much direct bearing in this yarn, I need to comment on the response of Andrews University; and the Dean of Mel’s Faculty in particular. Mel phoned just before Christmas, to advise that he would not be returning; and why. And there is no doubt that this would have placed the Faculty in a difficult situation; Mel’s program in Youth Ministry was fully subscribed. In general, I do not have a great deal of faith in the ability or willingness to be compassionate. But, in this situation, the Dean was exceptional; among other things, he continued paying Mel’s salary until he was able to secure an alternative appointment.

In reflecting in this later, Mel said that this support had kept him afloat financially; and provided a beacon of spiritual and emotional hope in what was an exceptionally difficult time. Sometimes, there is decency and compassion out there, and this speaks volumes for the quality of Andrews University. Unlike me, Mel is a thoroughly decent and principled bloke and often to his own detriment; if anyone deserved to be treated with understanding and compassion, he did. I’d learned this much about him as we’d ridden roads less travelled over the past twelve days.

Coping with pain

Mel did contact me at the time to ask about buying a Harley; he was badly in need of something that would help to take his mind off his pain. I advised against buying; anything he acquired in the way of assets would probably be lost in the inevitable family law settlement. As an alternative, I put one of my bikes [the re-built Sportster] on a trailer and delivered it to him the next time I travelled down to Brisbane to visit Dad.

Now, although we didn’t know it at the time, Mel’s domestic pain turned out to be a harbinger of greater pain to come. Within months, our Dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; and given about six months to live. It was from this point on that Mel and I jointly began trying to come to terms with the impending loss of the most important person in our lives; our beacon on the hill.

Now, if you have been riding this road with us from the beginning, you will know that we spent week about with Dad. We wanted to spend as much time as we could, travelling with him through the last months and weeks of his life. You would also know that while we did this, we hatched a plan to do an extended motorcycle road trip together in the United States.

Crossing stuff off the bucket list

All of this, of course, was what lay behind the fact that, five years down the road from the loss of our Dad, we were in Rapid City. We’d spent almost two weeks on the road together on the other side of the world from where we lived; covered a few thousand kilometres; and were in the process of getting to know each other in a way we had not ever done before.

We’d set out on this odyssey with three explicit bucket list items on our agenda; and, for my part anyway, one unspoken hope. Our bucket list items were to visit Sturgis; be in Milwaukie for Harley Davidson’s 110th Anniversary Celebrations; and, ride Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica in California. And, the hope? Well, I’d hoped that we’d get a chance to know each other a bit; and maybe even get to be friends.

So, here we were, two weeks into our time in the United States. We’d ridden a little over two and a half thousand miles [4,070km] from Vegas through Utah’s Canyonlands, Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, the BearTooth Highway, and on to Rapid City. We’d checked Item One off our Road Trip Bucket List – Sturgis – and had visited what must surely be the world’s largest sculpture at Mt Rushmore. Great stuff; eye-opening, heart-breaking, and awe-inspiring.

On being friends

The real magic for me though, was something we never explicitly discussed. It was the way my brother and I, though stories, memories, chance meetings with people along the way, and just time together, began to find a common space; a space free from our own preconceived ideas, prejudices and mind sets. We’d become progressively relaxed and at ease with each other; and I’d learned that I’d been wrong about Mel. His Faith was the real deal; solidly grounded and firmly held. And yet he had the capacity and generosity to allow space for my agnostic cynicism, foibles and bad habits.

On the road, Mel would usually take the lead. He had what seemed to be an unerring sense of direction; and took the road at a comfortable pace. He also liked to stop frequently to take pictures and often simply to allow me a cigarette break. I was more than happy to cruise behind and soak up the passing vistas. Importantly also, riding behind gave me an unobtrusive opportunity to monitor Mel’s blood sugar; when he went high his bathroom breaks increased, when low his cruise speed and direction tended to become erratic.

Any time this happened, I would pull alongside and signal that it was time for a food break. So much of the ‘way we rolled’ was unspoken and suggested that we’d ridden together all our lives; we were becoming natural motorcycle road trip mates.

A new day

Over in the east dawn was just seconds away; daylight had already started to usurp the dominance of the night. I got up and headed back inside to get another coffee so I could have a last cigarette before returning to our room to wake Mel. But that turned out not to be necessary because there, in front of the urn, was my Bro decanting himself a hot Columbian.

‘Morning Mate . . . you OK?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, I know, I know . . . too early for me to be up and about right?’

We both laughed.

‘I went a bit low; needed to get something to eat.’

We sat in the lounge and savoured the coffee. Mel thought it was better than average which was something of a complement really; he had pretty high standards when it came to coffee. Eventually he looked up.

‘So, what do you reckon Mate . . . want to stick around for another day, or move on?’

To stay or move on . . . that is the question

‘I reckon we can cross the Sturgis thing off the Bucket List. We didn’t get to see the Crazy Horse Monument but I don’t think we’ve missed much other than that,’ I said. ‘It’s probably about the right time to get back on the road . . . what do you reckon?’

‘Getting back on the road sounds good to me,’ he said.

‘OK, let’s get something to eat,’ I suggested.

So, it was back to our favourite local diner for a long, leisurely, conversational breakfast. We laughed a lot and probably ate too much. It was beginning to look like this road trip thing was working out to be even better than either of us thought possible. Whatever problems we might have had were thousands of kilometres away on the other side of the world. There was nothing either of us could do about any of those issues; and there was a certain freedom that came with that realisation.

On the road again

After breakfast, we headed back to the room, packed, checked out, loaded the motorcycles and fired them up. I didn’t even bother to ask where we were going. After all, I hadn’t seen any of what we would travel through no matter which way we went; it was all new to me. We’d agreed that there would be no such thing as getting lost on our road trip; just riding roads we hadn’t travelled yet. We pulled out of the hotel car park and I just followed Mel as he threaded his way through a maze of city streets. The road we’d taken eventually climbed to a lookout; Americans refer to these as ‘overlooks’. We parked our bikes and looked out across the north eastern sector of Rapid City. Interstate 90 cut a clean line through a generally flat countryside into the distance towards the east.

‘That’s where we’re headed Mate,’ Mel said as he pointed east. ‘And the next State is Minnestota . . . my old stamping ground.’

‘Want to look up a few old Mates? Maybe the odd girlfriend or two?’ I asked with a grin.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘This road trip’s ours . . . and I reckon we should just keep it that way. Would have been a blast if we could have brought Dad along with us on this trip, eh?’

‘He’s here, Mate! I said. ‘He’s been with us all along.’

Away from the storm

I stubbed out the last of my cigarette and we walked back to the bikes, fired up and headed back down from the lookout towards I-90 East. It had just gone 10.30am as we worked our way through mid-morning traffic until we eventually took a right onto the on-ramp for the Interstate and accelerated to merge with the traffic heading east.

Ahead, the sky was a faded blue with high white diffused cloud above the distant horizon. Behind, to the south west the clouds progressively shaded from a mid blue to deep indigo just above the mountains; by mid-afternoon another thunderstorm would be moving out of the Black Hills to vent its fury on Rapid City. Already we could feel the air being sucked off the plains to feed the violence of the impending storm.

Although traffic wasn’t heavy on the Interstate we were back in the game of cat-and-mouse with the big rigs; and back to cruising above 80 mph [130kmh] to just stay in front. There was an upside though; we were moving more quickly than the storm building over the Black Hills. Ahead, the sky in the east was clear but we did pull over to get a couple of shots of what was coming at us from behind.

Towards the Badlands

So, there we were, belting along the Interstate in the general direction of Sioux Falls and the Minnesota State Line. Our Big Twins were thumping along easily but our exhausts were barking a little more assertively than usual as our speedos hovered just above 85 mph [140 kmh].

We were helmet free and I was listening to Creedence belt out Born on the Bayou, Rambunctious Boy and Who’ll Stop the Rain. The road was pretty straight, largely featureless and my brain was ‘in neutral’. But, as the miles slipped by it was impossible not to notice billboards; I’m not sure how many we passed before I bothered to read one of them. Wall Drug, it announced; nothing more, nothing less. And, as we pushed on, I noted that these billboards cropped up every ten miles or so.

Wall, South Dakota

I remembered reading Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent several years previously; he’d written about a small tourist trap town somewhere along I-90 in the Midwest. Now, it might be an indication of a brain getting a bit old and blunt, but I didn’t put Bryson’s description together with Wall Drug until I noticed Mel’s indicator come on just after we passed a sign indicating the upcoming off-ramp to Wall. Mel’s speed washed off as he headed for the exit – and so did mine. We took a left at the end of the ramp and cruised into town.

My guess is, if you’re travelling west on I-90, Wall is a convenient jumping off point for the Black Hills, or the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site or the Badlands National Park. This harshly beautiful region of hardpan buttes, pinnacles and balanced boulders, is divided north and south by a nine mile series of ridges. Known as ‘the Wall’, this is a natural barrier the Lakota reckoned with in their travels; as did open range cowboys moving herds of cattle. The town, in fact, derives its name from this natural feature.

A railway stop

Wall started life in 1907 when the Chicago and North Western railroad completed tracks from the Missouri River to the Black Hills. Homesteaders from all parts of the world rode trains into the Wall vicinity and within twenty-five years the town had a population of around three hundred. So, twenty some years out from its establishment Wall’s future looked auspicious; services had improved; a U.S. Post Route established; schools had been built; phone lines installed, and the Cheyenne Valley Electric Company had been founded. But then, as often seems to be the case, things went seriously sideways.

Hard times and a National Park

In late 1929, Wall Street collapsed. And close on the heels of this catastrophe followed the hard natural blows of the 1930s: desperate drought, blinding dust storms, hordes of grasshoppers the size of a man’s thumb. John Steinbeck, in Grapes of Wrath, had a great deal to say about the misery of the Midwest during this time. Although the Dust Bowl drove a few of Wall’s neighbouring communities into oblivion, it seemed to breathe life into Wall. So desperate were ranching conditions that the federal government declared some land sub-marginal and started buying acres. Eventually they owned over 240,000 acres and this turned out to be the beginning of Badlands National Park. 

The tourist trap

Having said all that, if you have a bit of a yarn to old-timers taking their coffee at the Cactus Cafe Lounge, they’ll tell you that agriculture never really went away. They’ll say that there’s good grazing in the area. The National Grasslands Visitor Center on Main Street does a great job showing how the Great Plains survived and bounced back from the Dust Bowl.

By the time we cruised down the main street, the town had a permanent population of around eight hundred – give or take a few. Wall still meets the needs of permanent residents, as well as those passing through; heading east to Pierre, or west to Rapid City and the Black Hills. But, you only had to cruise the main street, as we were doing, and you just knew there was something more going on here.

We left our motorcycle, fully loaded, leaning on their side stands and Mel led the way along a boardwalk sidewalk and into an arcade like structure that spread out inside something like a rabbit warren; he’d obviously been here before – or at least knew a lot about the place.

Inside there were concessions selling everything from Black Hills and Badlands memorabilia through handmade knives of every description to firearms; also of every description. There were home hardware concessions; DIY tool stores; men’s and women’s clothing stores selling mostly western gear; candy stores, coffee shops, eateries; and, a store selling Indian tassel jackets, boots and beaver-skin head-warmers. This really was a miracle in the Badlands; well, right next to the Badlands anyway. Bryson was right, it was a tourist trap; but it was also the most fun you could have anywhere while still sober – though, I don’t think sobriety is necessarily a prerequisite.

Ted and Dorothy Hustead

After spending the best part of an hour in the concessions, stores and memorabilia dealers, we wandered off up the street in search of a likely looking diner. It had gone 1pm and it was way past time that we got Mel something to prop up his blood-sugar. And we didn’t have to wander far because right there, on the main drag, was a likely looking, western themed diner advertising barbeque and hamburgers. We slipped into the air-conditioned semi-darkness, took a booth and waited for service.

While the purchase of land and establishment of the Badlands National Park provided a draw-card for the area, Wall’s real resource seems to have materialised with the arrival of Ted and Dorothy Hustead. In 1931 this young couple, just out of the University of Nebraska, arrived looking for three things: good schools; a Catholic church; and a drug store for sale. Ted was a pharmacist, and while the town already had a drug store, it sold only over-the-counter medicines and not prescriptions. The local doctor told Ted that the town needed a pharmacist and predicted he could do well. The doctor, it seems, was right but I doubt that he could have imagined what the pharmacy would become. 

Dorothy’s miracle

During the hot summer of 1936, Dorothy suggested the pharmacy might supplement its income by pulling travellers off the dusty east-west route across South Dakota; Interstate 90 had no been conceived or built. And the bait proposed to lure travellers? Free ice water advertised along the roadside on signs erected by the Husteads. At this time, when the only air-conditioning you got in cars was winding your window down, the ice water offer had lots of takers. Once in town, travellers were offered friendly conversation, ice cream and Badlands and Black Hills souvenirs. Dorothy seems to have been the miracle in the Badlands.

Wall Drug today

Eventually there would be mechanized cowboy musicians; full meals; a bookstore specialising in American Indian and western history; western wear; a travelers’ chapel; historical photos, and numerous original paintings; and even a snarling mechanized Tyrannosaurus rex. And yes, you can still get free ice water. By the time we arrived in town, the whole enterprise was being operated by the original Hustead’s grandsons Ted and Rick. Ted credits his grandfather with building the infrastructure for everything that was to come; and not only at the drugstore, but also community. 

By around 2pm we’d done with the diner – which was pretty good by the way – and we wandered out into the street. It was hot and humid with only the slightest breeze which didn’t do much to relieve the oppressive atmosphere. I could certainly see how ice water would have been attractive after you’d been beating along a dusty road for a couple of hours. The storm we’d left behind in Rapid City had caught up while we’d been window-shopping and ensconced in the cool half-light of the diner. We’d been riding under clear blue skies when we’d taken the off-ramp to Wall; but those skies had gone, their tenure usurped by the angry blue-indigo of an impending thunderstorm. We looked at the sky and then at each other.

We don’t do rain

‘I reckon we’re going to get a bit wet, Mate,’ I said.

‘No, we’re not!’ Mel contradicted.

‘Really? Why not?

‘Because, we’re going to find a motel . . . and get off the road, Mate.’

I nodded, and we headed back to our bikes, fired up, and cruised around looking for a place to stay. And, within a couple of hundred yards of main street we found the Sunshine Inn; an entirely appropriate place to stay given that we were trying to avoid a storm. As we checked in, unloaded and then kicked back in our air conditioned room, I heard the first large drops of rain on the roof.

‘Good call, Mate,’ I said.

Mel responded with what was to become another one of the themes of our road trip.

‘Mate,’ he said. ‘We just don’t do rain!’

Just a thought . . .

Success in Business is just a matter

of providing people with what they need

. . . and then delivering to them more than they need

Ted Hustead

Click Here to Continue Reading: US 17 A Palace and Drifters on the Great Plains