Engine Trouble

The Drive
In the musical Calamity Jane, the titular character, played by Doris Day, is astonished to find not one but two men calling at her cabin outside of Deadwood, South Dakota.
"Why I'm plumb flattered! What brings you out here?" she asks. Then, noticing one of her callers is none other than her frienemy Wild Bill Hickock, she inquires, "Injun' trouble?"
We didn't run into any tribal skirmishes on our drive from South Florida to South Dakota, but we did have some engine trouble. Engine failure actually. After three days and approximately 1,000 miles of hard immigration--first leg from Ft. Lauderdale to Dothan, AL; second from Dothan to West Plains, MO; third from West Plains to Sioux Falls, SD--we made it about 5 miles before I said to Amy, "I'm going to have to pull over." Five hours later, we left Sioux Falls in a new used car. At least this one has snow tires and 4-wheel drive.
If you've never driven I-90 across the state of South Dakota, please make plans to visit us pronto. The wind sweeping against the buffalo grass makes the prairie look like the surface of the ocean during a storm. The green rolling farmland knolls east of the Missouri smooth out the creases in the car purchasers' forehead. The stark dropoffs at the river midway through the state introduce the West, and when you climb up out of the valley, you're officially in God's storage space for surplus sky. The Badlands jut from the grasses like so many set pieces from a Mars exploration film, and the Black Hills make you want to build a cabin and settle into a career as a prospector, just so you can see the tall pines and jagged slopes each morning over your kettle of coffee. By the time we were heading into Harding County, our new home, night fell, and I no longer smarted from the morning's frustrations. And the country I woke up in the next morning has convinced me that "Great Plains" is the worst geographic misnomer I know. More on the beauty here another time. Just come and see it for yourself.
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The Church
Community Bible Church welcomed us on a bit of a risk, and we accepted on the same conditions. The greater the risk, the greater the reward, right? Wow, have people been welcoming! A sample of the love we've been shown:

• Furniture already set up for us in our house to hold us over until our things arrived in the truck
• Cleaned the inside and painted the outside of the house before we arrived
• Taken out to lunch on our first day here
• A potluck at church
• An invitation to the community fish fry (in Montana!) (complete with Rocky Mountain oysters!)
• An afternoon at the lake with some families
• A gift certificate to the local grocery
• Kind words after sermons
• Help moving all our stuff in
• More than 10 people showing up to our house Sunday to celebrate God's goodness on the Lord's Day

Folks, we've not even been here two weeks yet!

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The Plains

Darby has been on a charming streak of inserting the word "poop" into every sentence, and Amy told me that I need to lighten up about it. So in an attempt to be a good husband and father, and to help you understand just how far you can see when you're out in the country here, please enjoy this poem:

Where Does The Cowboy Go?

If you stand on a ridge in the buffalo grass

And you raise to your eye your binoculars' glass,

You can see every blade, for there aren't any trees,

Every butte, every draw, all the birds, all the bees.

Yes, every cowpoke on the range can be seen.

So where does the cowboy go use the latrine?

He could hide in a herd of the tall buffalo

But what if they go when he starts to ... you know.

One cowboy once tried it but didn't succeed;

He sat helpless and pants-less under a stampede.

So where does he go when he's out on the prairie

And he feels like he's got a small treasure to bury?

He can hide all his toes 'neath a Cuban-heeled boot,

But where does he hide when it's more than a toot?

He can hide a bad coif 'neath a 5-gallon hat,

But where does he hide when depositing scat?

He can hide both his legs behind rawhide-lined chaps,

But where does he hide his behind when he craps?

Yes, life must be tough for the bashful cowman

Who can't make it home before using the can.

In a creek, underwater, is his only chance

To sit for a while without needing his pants.

The moral of this tale of the poor cowboy's toilet:

If you drink water camping, it's better to boil it.

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Get In Touch

You can keep emailing us at our regular email addresses. We have internet at home. You can also send us mail at 

PO Box 321

Buffalo, SD 57720

Until next time!

-Conner