KELOLAND.com Blogs

 

Yeah, I know.  It’s still 2006 if only for a month but one network news organization is trotting out its new model early the way car companies used to.  NBC is not only going to call the war in Iraq a “civil war” but it has announced that it will, pretty much locking itself in. 

 

Semantics is always a problem for news organizations whose job is to inform, not to inflame, but there comes a point in many long running stories…like Iraq which has now lasted longer than America’s involved in World War II…when the facts just plain overpower the spin. 

 

The cycle usually starts with politicians in power.  We’ve had a couple of prison riots in South Dakota which officials preferred to call “incidents.”  I was inside one of them as a mediator.  When prisoners are out of their cells and in control it’s a riot the way I read the dictionary, especially when there are fires and weapons involved. 

 

When the American Indian Movement was tearing around South Dakota 30 years ago, officials preferred to call what was going on “disturbances” even though two courthouses were trashed.  To me, it looked like a riot. 

 

There was the SDSU Hobo Day “disturbance” some years ago.  KELO’s satellite truck was damaged, another station’s news car was flopped over and there was plenty of civilian property damage.  It was a riot. 

 

But back to Iraq.  The White House would prefer that Iraq not be a civil war because outside forces can’t do a lot about those, like the one in the United States 150 years ago.  Foreign forces chose up sides, but in the end it was a dys-United States problem. 

 

We should hope that Iraq turns out as well as the United States did in the long run now that the Coalition of the Willing is turning into a coalition with the willies. A couple of the minor foreign players are just going home.  Britain will cut back thousands of forces this year.  It has never had more than a few thousand forces in Iraq. 

 

A civil war, unofficially declared by a news organization and officially denied by the White House?   What’s in a name?  In this case, a total change in the mission that was declared accomplished three years ago, and we pulled the pin on the grenade, a grenade we’re now standing there holding.  

As for NBC's decision, take it as a sign that the power has shifted in Washington and probably by more than just a nose count in congress.  The big news organizations aren't often the initiators of change, just the reporters of it once the wind has shifted.  Most of them didn't exactly jump on McCarthyism or Watergate.

As I inch closer and closer to the date of my final time anchoring the news, I was reminded recently that it doesn’t take long to slip into obscurity once you’re off TV. 

I was sharing a story about the “old days” here at KELOLAND with some of my younger colleagues and mentioned the name Jim Burt. 

None of them said anything but I could tell that most had no earthly idea who I was talking about.

Perhaps many of you don’t either.

Jim was born in Melcher Iowa in 1914. As a boy he loved sports, especially baseball, and played in the minor leagues. He used to boast that he once had a “scratch single” off future Hall of Fame pitcher, Bob Feller. ( I know..Bob who?)

His second love was sports broadcasting and in 1947, he was on KELO radio and then made the transition to KELO TV when the station first signed on the air in 1953.


 

Jim Burt (right) with Ed Sullivan (Ed who?) in 1954

In his nearly 50 year career, Jim Burt was named South Dakota sportscaster of the year an unprecedented 7 times.  He was the radio play-by-play voice of the USD Coyotes for 25 years. He was instrumental in getting the DakotaDome built in Vermillion.

He was a KELOLAND icon. He was also a temperamental pain in the butt.

I’m sure others who remember Jim would agree and, in fact, Jim sort of enjoyed intimidating the crap out of people, especially new employees like I was in 1974. 

Try as I might, I could not get along with him. But that eventually changed.

Jim was proud of being Irish and in stereotypical fashion, carried his emotions..good and bad.. on his sleeve. (usually the sleeve of a check-pattern jacket he wore.)

Although quick to anger, he would turn to Jello when someone..like me.. pushed the right buttons and asked him about his family, his early baseball playing days, golf or his career in radio and television. He loved to talk about those things and I was an eager listener.


Big News Team, 1983 Jim Burt, me, Steve Hemmingsen and Dave Dedrick

He eventually accepted me as a colleague and I think I know when it happened.

One night during the 10 o’clock news in 1977,  I said hello on the air to my dad who lay dying in Sioux Valley hospital. He always had the TV on in his room.

After the newscast,  Jim grabbed my shoulder and with tears in his eyes said, “You’re a fine young man, Doug.”

High praise indeed..and a favorite memory from my long stint as a member of the Big News Team.”

Jim Burt retired in 1987 and died some six years later.  Now, hardly anyone under 30 remembers anything about him or his long television career.  

But his legacy lives on through the Jim Burt Memorial Endowment started by his family to assist USD students interested in broadcasting.

For those who want to do TV sports, you could do worse than to pattern yourself after Jim. Only please, don’t wear those jackets.

 

No matter how repugnant to some or even most of the population once something has been legal...say gambling or abortion...it’s darned hard to make it illegal again. 

 

There’s no better testament to that than prohibition, when congress tried to make the whole United States take the pledge, the cure, go cold turkey by banning the sale of liquor.  The “dries” led by Minnesota Republican Congressman Andrew Volstead actually got the country to slap itself sober with a constitutional amendment, the 18^th.  Thirteen years later, the 21^st amendment repealed the sobering 18^th, the only time an amendment has been repealed after it made the likes of gangster Al Capone, future presidential father Joseph P. Kennedy and a bunch of Canadian rum runners rich.  Judging by the stories of that era in my family the 18th had very little effect on drinking.  Every town has a bootlegger story. 

 

That’s where the Silver Dollar in tiny Ghent, Minnesota, comes in.

There are Silver Dollar Bars all over the country, like “Fish Lakes,” but it’s the date on the sign of the Silver Dollar in Ghent just west of Marshall that’s historically significant. 

 

 

The Volstead Act was struck down in 1933 with one simple line in the 21^st amendment: “The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”  By the time the states had ratified it 1934 was at hand, but Minnesota already had its state liquor law in place.  So in November 1934, the Silver Dollar in the Belgian-American town of Ghent became the first legally licensed bar in Minnesota after prohibition. 

 

FDR was getting ready for a war in Europe, fighting the depression and a drought of historic proportions, two of them if you count prohibition.  Congress dampened one of them over night with the 21^st Amendent.  Happy days were here again, or at least you could get an honest drink to help convince you.  

 

 

79 year old Johnny Tillmans tends the original bar.  Tillmans owned the Silver Dollar for 29 years before selling it to his son-in-law last November the 12^th owner since the national dry spell ended in 1934.

 

The bar in the Silver Dollar is original, but the business started next door in what was a railroad hotel and barber shop.    

 

By the way, the two amendments between prohibition and its repeal are sobering.  The 20^th lays down some of the finer points of presidential succession if a president-elect dies before he takes office and there’s no way it wasn’t going to be a “he” in those days.  The 19^th gave women the right to vote. 

 

 

As I write this blog entry, the wind is already increasing across western KELOLAND.  That's the one part of our climate I could do without...but it defines our area and it's what we expect.  The wind chill will be the big story and could be very cold for many areas.  Here are the forecast windchills tomorrow at noon.



It gets even worse by Thursday morning!



With weather like this...please remember your winter survival kit.

The following items should be included in your winter weather survival kit:

• Shovel
• First aid kit
• Non-perishable food, such as granola bars and peanuts.
• Flashlight with extra batteries
• Candles and matches
• Extra clothing, sleeping bags or blankets for everyone
• Tire Chains
• Battery-operated radio with batteries
• Empty coffee can to be used to burn the candles or to melt snow for water.
• Booster cables
• Cell phone with fully charged batteries

Stay Warm!!

 

A lot of little towns have just given it up, rolled over and died, but not the little town by the lake. 

 

Hardly anything was open on Thanksgiving aside from the gas station, the main grocery store for a few hours in the morning and Vick’s darned near all night grocery.  Friday was kind of a slack day, but Saturday dawned with energy abounding starting with the annual fish house parade, even though at this writing the lake is once again wide open, and ending with Santa Claus. 

 

Hendricks’ fish house parade.  Click the video button below for more.


Lori's holiday decor at Main Street Floral started on a wing and a prayer five years ago.

 

Lori had Main Street Floral all decked out.  The hardware store had it Christmas annex open.   And John Thomsen’s “The Local” deli just reeked holidays offering lutefisk and anchovie pizza.  You would think that if one didn’t turn you off the other would, but several people lined up.  I sampled it, but I don’t think Pizza Hut will be calling for the recipe.  I shivered when John’s eyes lit up as I flippantly suggested lutefisk fettucini Alfredo.

John Thomsen offers samples of lutefisk-anchovie pizza. 

 

With the drawings for prizes, the campaign for best fish house and Santa for the dwindling number of kids the little town by the lake was still kicking off the holidays into the afternoon almost 50 years of wrenching changes in the farm economy hadn’t happened if only for a few festive hours. 

 

I gave the fish house parade video an old-fashioned look that might bring back memories of a more simpler, black and white world, except for the last scene which just has to be color.  Santa in sepia tone? 

 

It’s Thanksgiving Friday.  I’m watching the CBS Evening News minus Katie Couric.  There are pictures of people arm wrestling each other over flat screen TVs, pictures of people being hauled out of stores on stretchers, Wal-Mart’s website crashed under the Black Friday shopping crunch.  Where did that name come from anyway? 

 

I’m coming off a quiet three football game Thanksgiving with my son vaguely like the ones we used to have when a family of cousins came over, we all ate around a kitchen table not much bigger than a card table and then adjourned for grownup talk and kids’s play, outside, topped off with naps and everybody heading home before dark to the kids’ chargin and the parents’ delight.  Nobody had a truly reliable car. 

 

Today’s Thanksgiving is more like a strategy session for the following weekend.  Sitting here at the lake I can only imagine what it’s like in Sioux Falls where shoppers actually had a bonus day: yesterday, the holiday itself.

 

Anchorman Russ Mitchell is just telling me that Thanksgiving is already becoming a distant memory for many Americans.

 

Well, Russ, the traditional Thanksgiving still exists in small towns where you’ll see old classmates running into each other on Main Street on Thanksgiving Eve.  I doubt if that happens much in Sioux Falls or Minneapolis or New York.  One group did bolt for Watertown early Friday morning but were back by 9:30…9:30 a.m…having been shocked and awed by the Menard’s parking lot.   

 

What is all this buying is about?  The Hemmingsen clan used to be extensive, but mostly we exchanged cards and pictures of kids, pictures we’re now re-exchanging.  It costs us the price of a stamp, or even better, a quick scan via email for us more technologically savvy young uns, age 60 or so, the little cousins who used to be chased outside after dinner around the little kitchen table.  Few gifts were ever exchanged, none were expected.  Sometimes those with better luck helped those with worse luck, but that was about it. 

 

My kids and I and my brother and sister exchange Thanksgiving phone calls after dinner.  We do that about once a quarter.  My brother and I talk about how our feet hurt and the really cool shoes we found, the ones all the geezers are wearing, and he’s a lot thinner than I am and how I have to get out there for a visit. 

 

All in all, it’s like the Thanksgivings of the past before football and flat screens, before any TV at all, before the era of Christmas presents for people we don’t even know or even care about, expensive meaningless exchanges of crap that had better include a receipt or at least a bar code. 

 

I wonder where Katie Couric is.  Do you suppose she’s mauling her way through some mall?   Black Friday?  It was a sunny warm Friday up here at the lake, out on the deck, in shirt sleeves.  I didn’t whip out my credit card once.  I wonder if that blackened anyone’s Friday. 

 

 

 

If you’re thankful for having a job but not thankful because you have to be there this morning here are some rambling thoughts on nature and its conflicts with itself and man. 

 

A sliver of moon and security lights mirrored on thin ice.

 

If you get up early enough and have time to appreciate it you’ll catch scenes like this, a slice of the moon and security lights giving up to a rising sun over the lake.

A 360 degree sunrise on a 30 degree morning.  .

 

Later you can witness wind and water fighting each other as a south wind drives water across thin sheets of ice like snow or dust.  

Open water sifts across the ice as the lake opens itself up again. 

 

It’s water.  Click on the video below. 

And was it the wind that finally toppled this old farm house near Oak Lake or was it gravity?  If so, when?  Did anybody see it lose the battle? 

 

Another farmstead gives up the fight on the way to being reclaimed by the elements and the prairie. 

 

Wasn’t it just days ago it was standing one of the dwindling reminders of the 160 acre farm, the old John Deere tractor and a much simpler way of life when one dollar corn at 40 bushels to the acre added up to a “pretty good year?”

 

 

I could write about the stuff that I’m thankful for, that I only have two kids and no grandkids, that Cockleburr only does her stuff on the neighbor’s yard and isn’t the worst dog in the neighborhood, that my only deadlines are the ones I set for myself, that the holiday season is nearly over, that there’s always one squeeze left in the toothpaste tube and the shampoo bottle.  You know, the usual Hemmingsen-esque stuff.  Instead I’ll write about something I’ve probably written about before but am too lazy to check the files to make sure. 

 

This one is inspired by a little blurb on Bernie Hunhoff’s South Dakota Magazine website which was inspired by a bigger blurb in the Aberdeen American News about the old theater in Britton, South Dakota, still alive and kicking.   I’m thinking it may be the one where a former operator lured customers by shooting home movies around town and then showing them like a newsreel.  Go see yourself on the big screen. 

 

If there was a time when small town theaters didn’t struggle to stay open it was way before my time.  But the one day the theater in Morgan, Minnesota, prospered was when Santa Claus came to town. 

 

A Christmasy looking Morgan Theater after a blizzard around 1960.  It wasn’t Christmas since there are no decorations.  I can’t make out the marquee.

 

It was a big day someplace between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the days when we bought the tree a day before Christmas and ditched it on New Year’s Day. 

 

Morgan had one of those old town halls, something like the Oldham Social Hall at Prairie Village, a combination stage and basketball floor as the occasion demanded.  Santa in the form of NSP guy Al “Squeak” Hartzell would roll in laden with those medium paper grocery bags of goodies, mostly peanuts and hard candy with some fruit thrown in, but a big deal in the days before our kids ran on sugar and caffeine.  It was the one day when everybody was a town kid.  The farm kids poured in, three, four, six, eight, a dozen to a family, bigger than Halloween tricks or treating.   

 

The idea was to free up the parents (who used to raise their kids) for the hometown Christmas shopping spree.  There were no Target or Wal-mart distractions 12 miles away.  Drugs were drugs and you got them at Hageman’s Rexall Pharmacy, period. 

 

Either before or after the distribution of the goodies…I don’t remember 50 years later…all the kids ran a half a block to the theater.  Every seat was full as we watched reel after reel of the Three Stooges, Hugh Herbert and Vera Vague plus copious cartoons and maybe even a feature movie, all free.

 

The theater seemed huge at the time but probably wasn’t.  Like geese on the lake before freezeup, it never went quiet.  If kids weren’t yelling and screaming at each other or about each other they were laughing riotously at thrown paint, planks across the noggin, or Moe’s double eye poke.   

 

By the time the mayhem was over your parents had their shopping done and the gifts hidden, that smoke rifle or fire truck you had been eyeing all year at Gamble’s or the hardware store.  Not a word would be said, but it was implied. 

 

That was 1956 in Morgan.  Later, the theater closed, becoming the VFW’s dance hall.  Now it’s as privately run, open to the public bar and café, the victim of waning numbers of World War II vets and waning interest in our small towns. 

 

Flash ahead to 2006 to the little town on the lake, about the same as Morgan.  There are still bags of goodies, only 150 compared to the former 500.  And most of those go to the old folks’ home.  Hordes of kids are a fading memory.  There are just enough left to play “Survivor: School District,” a never-ending series of votes among ever shifting “tribes” from other towns facing the same fate; too many bags of candy, too few kids, just memories, thankfully, a lot of memories. 

 

I made it.  I survived two weeks of no sugar, no high fructose corn syrup, no hydrogenated oils, no enriched flour and no bleached flour.  I think that is an achievement on its own.  I also spent two weeks walking, running, stretching and doing the strength-training exercises.  And the best part: I was rewarded with a loss of two inches off my waist. 

 

Now that it’s over and I know it works, everyone wants to know if the diet is possible to follow for more than two weeks.  Can you do Dr. Oz’s plan for life?

 

I think the answer is yes.  Dr. Oz is not trying to take away all the foods that you love.  He just wants you to enjoy healthier versions.  After two weeks, I really didn’t miss a lot of the junk.  I can live without high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, enriched flour and bleached flour.  And I can cut down on my sugar intake (I think eliminating it would be pretty close to impossible).  We’re a society of immediate satisfaction, so I think a big plus of the program is the quick results.

 

Dr. Oz is all about forming habits.  Now that I’m accustomed to looking at the labels and not buying anything with the “Big Bad Five,” it’s something I do without thinking about it.  Three days after I finished the two week program and I’m still eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean meats, etc. 

 

That said, I have also allowed myself to indulge in some of the foods that were taboo.  I’ve had a fast food meal; I’ve had ice cream and even a donut.  There’s another problem I’m facing now that I finished my two weeks.  I’ve already gotten out of the habit of walking daily.  I’m still doing the strength-training and the cardiovascular workouts weekly, but I think that 30 minutes of walking per day was a large part of my success.  I keep telling myself that I’ve only stopped because I’m feeling under the weather, but I can’t let myself keep making excuses.

 

The other thing that I struggled with while on the diet was eating out.  In the entire two-week period, I only went out to eat once.  I had the hardest time trying to pick a restaurant and then once I got there, I stared and stared at the menu before I was finally able to pick an item that I thought would meet all of Dr. Oz’s requirements.  But I’ve decided that it won’t be the end of the world if I continue to avoid restaurants.  Not only is it better for the waistline, but it’s also better for my pocketbook!

 

After two weeks, I think I would recommend Dr. Oz’s diet to just about anyone.  It’s not only for people who need to lose weight; it’s for anyone who is looking to improve their health.  It’s not often that you can find a weight loss program where you see results in two weeks, includes a simple exercise program you can do at home and doesn’t leave you wanting to eat your arm because you’re starving. 

 

Now, if only I can survive Thanksgiving without putting back on the two inches I just lost!  Wish me luck!

YOU On A Diet

YOU On A Diet: Results