Depending on who is asking me and how I feel on any given day I am most likely to tell people that I'm from Seattle or maybe Wisconsin, but truthfully I was born in Des Moines, Iowa and spent several summers with my dad in Cedar Rapids. Our first stop out of Milwaukee was Cedar Rapids.
It was strange to be back, especially in Cedar Rapids, which still smells like burning barley and yeast from being home to the Quaker Oats factory. We had lunch with our friends and suddenly I was flooded with all these memories: learning to ride my bike, swimming all day long, birthdays at Showbiz Pizza (before it became Chucky Cheese), and going to day camp at the YMCA (my dad used to pack me canned fruit with a 3 lb can opener). Then my dad had a meeting downtown, so I called up the girl who used to be my best friend and road dog, Miss J. Though we hadn't seen each other since the third grade, I would have recognized her anyway. She looks just the same.
Miss J bought me a coffee and we got in her car and she took me on a tour of the town. Some parts were the same, but most showed signs of wear. Some places had been completely abandoned in the wake of the flood that took place two years ago. Even buildings that had been remodeled still held a mark on the outside indicated how high the water had risen. It was one of those disasters that didn't claim many lives on the actually day, but in the aftermath. People lost homes and businesses and despite the shiny new spots, over all CR had a sad vibe to it. Still I was glad to meet Miss J again. She was warm and fun and easy to talk to. I think we might just keep in touch. From there dad and I drove to Des Moines, Iowa's capitol (which I will be returning to shortly). We visited my grandma, had a glass of lemonade, then got back on the road. Iowa is flat, but kind of pretty this time of year, still kind of green with the occasional field of yellowed corn stalks. No shortage of cows or farms. In short no place I'd want to live, but even so, I did enjoy the sunset and the exceptionally clean and well spaced rest areas.
After spending the night in Sioux Falls, we woke at 0 dark 30 and got on the road crossing over into South Dakota. It was pitch black when we left and stayed black til past 7:00am when it finally started to lighten almost infinitesimally at first to a slate gray with a tiny pink patch streaking the eastern sky behind us, then finally to a light gray filled with rolling clouds. I fell asleep and when I woke up, the green familiar landscape of Iowa had been replaced by the stark gray, brown, and gold of South Dakota. The sky seemed so much bigger and expressive, the earth, so much dryer. We passed fields of dead sunflowers with bowed heads on brown stalks, and rode through places so desolate there was actual tumbleweed rolling across the highway from one empty field to the next. Black cows, spotted horses, a fox, and some dead skunks seemed to be our only company. No street lights, no rest stops, barely any other cars. We turned off 90 and onto 18 which was even more scarily deserted (no cell phone service either)so that we could visit Pine Ridge Reservation and Wounded knee.
On December 29, 1890 the Sioux sat down with the Seventh Cavalry...it's a familiar story. You can substitute Afghan with Sioux and Seventh Cavalry with US troops and it would probably read the same. What happened that day at Wounded Knee? Some call it a cultural misunderstanding. Some call it a massacre. They were dancing the Ghost Dance. When you have nothing left: your home, your freedom, your lives have been forever compromised, at least there is faith and there is song and dance, but even that was too scary to the men with guns, because dancing is a sign of an unbroken spirit. The soldiers demanded that the Sioux relinquish their weapons. But we don't have any, answered Chief Big Foot. You've already taken them from us. Though one man did have a gun, an expensive rifle that he didn't want to give up...some accounts say several men had guns hidden beneath blankets, some accounts say there was only one, but most agree that the first to fire were the white men and the first to die were the Sioux. Over 300 women, men and children died at Wounded Knee and 25 U.S. soldiers.
After a quick tour of Martin (one laundry mat, a general store, some trailers, and a few houses) we visited the cemetery at Wounded Knee. It is in the middle of nowhere and if you didn't know it was there you would just ride right past it. There is a small church made from red wood with a black wrought iron cross above it, then a small cemetery with a chain link fence and graves marked with flowers, cut stones, and crab apples. Though clearly someone had been there to tend to the graves, it felt like a place largely forgotten by the rest of society. I am not sure what is worse, going to the slave castles at Cape Coast and finding them a perfectly preserved UNESCO sight or visiting a massacre that no one ever remembers. We said a prayer then got back in the car to drive a little further onto the reservation. The Pine Ridge, while small, has a nice new hospital, a nursing school and a Sioux college in addition to a gas station and a subway (it was nothing like Martin). Even the houses seemed new, though samey, like cookie cutter versions of one another dotted across the plain.
From there our journey got a little too exciting. Due to bad signage and an unexplained detour, we ended up, literally in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere. It was scary. There we were just driving through one lane miles of nothing, fields, but no farms, no animals even, just sky and road and endless frontiers stretching out into the horizon. At one point the road became gravel and I seriously wondered if we would ever see civilization again. There was no one else even on the road and if we did by chance pass by a house it was falling down, abandoned. One house had a grave yard of broken cars, but not a person in sight. We both said an Hallelujah when we made it to Wyoming and found a road that met up with the 90. There we had lunch then got back on the road. About 30 miles outside of Gillette it started to rain and wind so hard that it was shaking the car. And then came the slush. Needless to say we cut the drive short. We'll hit Montana tomorrow.
I keep thinking about Wounded Knee though.
No comments:
Post a Comment