1 10 2 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/42fb30b58fc3d8c00bf0d4ecb77b3fca.MP3?Expires=1792627200&Signature=aPoOElnejcYfFV1G4OFgT3AfZklw%7EBtuHKBnCVRNB8Pq6myibe-uwM2HU1RQ5yVQD2%7EVLqClYQFVvd8n12TmS6pzCjzp-yzj5pvojdNRVmfaqeGCxjC49ViUaHlGh0YPxPfJbfzQLjTAu6S3WprzQCDFhRzDuNT8cszpEjuK3UUkxoJw0zXIok1fDyK7qgBo7qv1n7Usjm-5O3nBWWkgmRCe1Xzkt3cvRkJVYZi6LV9de-xo-lyQ-BbysaNo9Geh7u6bF%7EXSaZMGTnXn0ij-uqoeCWOZbkBlamLeMndkQQZgrKy-ZDbIKx5DfDNNCKI27LdnM80eVJQYg5knxkIoLg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4784219b5eca3896ab8bb6e2ba8e5a62 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Clyde and Sue Gorsuch audio https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/05a91a0c1ca96ab48a58fa6ddd9d1a1a.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=ni-1%7Emh-qNMTx-H-N8w9UZZk3MRHj4HIyzpxT0xjQzyhQEUB1Qsn8STzdLX8JruUHel2jW3f9t9Q7JH2RATZP7jGhBtV0%7ER2BkL-H5w1pkYiGSnYm3-PFypSeZkDlDyxNIQGlkSMcLyKicIvb7jI%7EsghMwcF4NrFNBrszz1Bt8gnFU6XERVohzHRNMzv%7EABGNZttUf9K0C6XRsdcjywqMxKL4DzTpcJrkWC7%7EGk0Bmcxd-NlrK0hjXHrS917xo4wTA2DcbwaaS4e2S8MWcdF1oiJbSnWIs2TKb6O9pbgsID3CUBmhotKZQgGmRW6BIrKZmeodWHnGAAPtLpdsUcJeA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e6c9cdbcd14f08a1a09554656bb10b6a PDF Text Text Bev Pechan: This is June 11th. This is Bev Pechan. I am interviewing Clyde Gorsuch. We are going to talk about your family, your history and so forth. Gorsuch is a fairly old name in the hills is that right? Clyde Gorsuch: They were here before Custer came through with the Golden West and then they found the gold and they were kicked out. Bev Pechan: Oh ok. Clyde Gorsuch: That would have been my great- great-granddad. Bev: Did he come in with like the _________ party then? Clyde Gorsuch: No they were remount horse wranglers for the army had horses and brought in mammoth mules and horses. That's what they did. Bev: Where did your family originate from? Clyde Gorsuch: Well Illinois and back Eastern states is in general. I don't know all the history of where they came from. Then after they got everything settled then my great Granddad and his family came and another brother and when they hit the Missouri river they split and one brother went south and my Great-Granddad came out here with the family Bev Pechan: Ok and what was his name? Clyde Gorsuch: You know there was Abraham and Charles and I can't think right now. I think Abraham was my Great-Granddad. Bev Pechan: Ok and then he evidently had experience with horses before he came here. Clyde Gorsuch: I would guess. It's just all hearsay with me what all went on. Didn't pay enough attention when I was younger. Bev Pechan: A lot of the ranchers did a raise horses for the army and... Clyde Gorsuch: Well that's basically all they did when they came here. And they were in the Black Hills area and then they left and came back. Bev Pechan: And these horses do you think went to Ft. Meade maybe or do you know for sure? Clyde Gorsuch: I have no idea on that. I couldn't answer those questions. Bev Pechan: Well let's start with you. Tell me a little bit about your growing up, where and what you were interested in. �Clyde Gorsuch: Well I grew up 10 miles south of Fairburn SD. I was born in 1948 in Sept. and then January they had the big '49 blizzard. Why I lived there all of my life and I bought the place right across the road from __________ in 1971. My Dad had been renting in since 1964. And then so I've ranched. I guess that's been my life all my life what I wanted to do. Bev Pechan: Has it been with cattle and horses. Clyde Gorsuch: Mainly cattle and my dad raised purebred Herefords and then that kind of dried up and so then he just raised commercial cows and then ... well I actually started ranching in 66 when I got out of high school. So my dad was a Hereford breeder and I bought black angus heifers to start and then I raised purebred angus until 1979 and then everybody just started raising bulls and we went out and then we had dry years and then that was about the late 70's or early 80's when production credit was financing in agriculture went. Well we were not on the list but we were afraid we would be. So we started a dairy in 1981 and milked cows for 10 years. Been a rancher ever since. Bev Pechan: The dairy industry is quite a bit different than the beef industry. Clyde Gorsuch: Very interesting yeah, it’s totally 24 hour a day job, 7 days a week. We had hired men and we milked about 120 cows. Bev Pechan: And what breed of cattle were they. Clyde Gorsuch: Holstein. They were all Holstein. Bev Pechan: And then where did your milk go? Clyde Gorsuch: Black Hills milk producer here in Rapid. To get a permit you had to buy out an existing dairy to get a grade A permit and we bought out Barnie Nordstrom at Fairburn. He had milked for years and we bought out his dairy equipment and everything and then we traded beef cows for the milk cows. We milked well it was 10 years and then I got so allergic to it that the Dr. told me it was either me or the cows that go so I sold the cows and went back to beef cow business. Bev Pechan: And dairies are pretty rare out here. Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah there is no more dairies. We quit in Dec. the first week in Dec. and Ritbergers quit and sold out within a few months of when we did. Then the last in the Black Hills area was Neugebauers in Hermosa. The cost for shipping them out was so great they went out. Bev Pechan: And you are raising beef cattle now currently. Clyde Gorsuch: Right we have 200 head beef cows and 80 head of buffalo. Bev Pechan: Do you crossbreed them? �Clyde Gorsuch: No, keep straight buffalo. I don't know how that works but that is part of the problem people think their beefalo but no, they are straight buffalo. Bev Pechan: and what breed of beef cattle do you have now? Clyde Gorsuch: We have Angus and Herefords both. We cross breed. Bev Pechan: Talk a little bit about the difference in caring for and raising buffalo and cattle. Clyde Gorsuch: Well buffalo you only bring them in once a year and wean the calves off and they are very flighty. You just have to be real quiet around them and whatever. To raise buffalo to have a legal fence it has to be five wire 54 inches high. That is state law so we had to do a bunch of fencing. Basically a lot of people think that you can just turn them out and let them run and a lot of them do. We feed hay and supplement with cake and we keep salt and mineral out all the time but they aren't like it was back in the old days when they roamed for miles and miles to find their salts and their minerals. They are a confined animal and so we supplement ours and we went to Oklahoma and bought 21 head two and a half years ago and then we bought a heard in Newell from a guy who broke his leg on a motorcycle and couldn't handle them so we bought his entire herd and then we bought 11 head at a Custer State Park sale. Last year they had calves and whatever starting in January because they just left ___________ all the time and so then we wound up only having 15 or 16 calves. Those heifers that we brought in from Oklahoma were just ready to breed so this year we bred them. We have over 40 head of calves on the ground. By supplementing and caring for them they came ahead and produced. Every one of them bred back and gave us calves. And the big cows, some people think it takes more but I guess if you enjoy your business and life, you know it’s not work. But we don't do like a lot of them. We bring them in and do the branding and give them their shots and the _________ so we keep the flies. We haven't this year because it’s been too wet. And then we don't bring them back in until just about a month before we are going to sell the calves and we give them their pre-conditioning shots and then turn them back out. Get them in and wean calves and put whatever we are selling on the semis and take them to Rushville Ne. and sell them. We feed our buffalo and beef cows the same ration we just go to the elevator in Buffalo Gap and get bulk cake and put it in the caker. Now we have a hay processor that we just dump the round bales in and then go out and grind it and make a windrow so basically we take care of them every day the buffalo and the cows just the same. Bev Pechan: Do you mainly ship your young stock then or do you keep some older animals for butchering and do you butcher them on your own place or ship them or what do you do? Clyde Gorsuch: Well the only thing we butcher is for our family use. Everything we have goes to market and the buffalo, the two butcher as the meat prospector, we bring to Bruce Sanderson down here at Western Buffalo at Western Meats down here. Kim Morey: So there isn't like a feed lot for buffalo or anything like that then? Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah there's a lot .. the guy that's got Dodgetown Scott Peterson, he has a feed lot up there in the north country somewhere. Lamperts they are north of Reva right in there. They have a big �feed lot. Then there is a feed lot in Winner SD that Bruce buys his calves and puts in there. So yeah there is several around that just strictly feed the buffalo. They take the calves, buy the calves and run them right out on grass until they are coming two year old and they put them into the feedlot because it’s cheaper than running them on grass and then finishing them and whatever. But there is a lot of people that wean the calves on the buffalo in the fall and then they preg check their cows and then those cull cows they go to Bruce Anderson down here for slaughter for meat. Then they will turn their bull calves back out and run them until they come two year olds and when they get a thousand to 1100 pounds they will sell them as grass fattened buffalo. Better be careful. (laughter) Bev Pechan: What about the markets now. Beef has gone through the roof. What is the buffalo market like? Clyde Gorsuch: Just the same. The market and not the big producers don't like buffalo producers because they think that they are cutting in to their demand for beef but that's not true. The buffalo market meats is a totally different clientele of people that buy meat and so it doesn't affect the beef prices and there is a big demand but the supply is holding pretty close to it but they could always use more. Bev Pechan: How do you see that going in the future? This health food stuff. Health foods and people are wanting leaner beef and buffalo that is. Clyde Gorsuch: Now we raise Coreanas. A friend Brad Lange. He lives down to Ogalala. We had for roping steers and whatever. So we would rent them out and whatever and then when they came back after they were too big to rope, then we would run them for a year and butcher them and people loved that meat. That grass fattened meat. And it really is true. It's mighty, mighty close if you look up your stats on your fats and all of that. That grass fattened. We had people that had high blood pressure and their doctor basically told them not to eat meats but by eating the grass fattened beef well their blood pressures went down though so. That's the same with buffalo. Some doctors tell them to get buffalo but buffalo is awful high priced. Bev Pechan: Yeah are the Coreanas are they related somehow to the Longhorns. Clyde Gorsuch: No they are totally different breed Bev Pechan: But they are smaller cattle. Clyde Gorsuch: They are smaller than the longhorns and they have really got a quieter disposition but yeah they... I am sure back somewhere they are all related but there are Mexican Coreanas instead of the Texas Longhorns. They don't get as big of horns as the longhorns. Bev Pechan: And now do you still raise horses along with that? Clyde Gorsuch: No, we just have horses for ranch work. Bev Pechan: What about ATV's? �Clyde Gorsuch: We have a Polaris ranger that we used for fencing and caking and hauling the salt and mineral out. The only thing we use ATV's for is when we round up the buffalo and switch pastures and whatever because they can outrun a horse and too dangerous to put somebodies life at risk on a horse. That is where we use the ATV's. The old man I am I get to go ahead with the ranger because we go out about once a week and feed them a bag of cake and keep them friendly so when they see us they don't just take off. Then that way they will start following the rancher to the gates. And whatever then my son, he left me again. He went to Texas to work on those big windmill turbines. They string the wires after they are erected. Actually they are his buffalo but the old man will take care of them. Bev Pechan: What other changes other baseball caps and ATV's do you see in ranching compared to when you were growing up? Clyde Gorsuch: Basically, from my childhood, we didn't have pipelines and it was all strictly they built dams and dugouts for the water and so when we had dry years I can remember my Dad calling old Harry Hendrickson. He lived right down in Rapid Valley here and Harry would come with the truck and we would load up a semi load of cattle and cut down to where we had enough grass and enough water. And it might be just like today. Harry would be backed up to the shoots and it would set in and start raining but Dad would send them anyway All of this vaccinations, we never did all these vaccinations. We gave them ________ and blackleg in the spring at branding time and then in late August. Most people had _______ and that’s about the time that those switching’s at the end of August. From August to the end. Back then it was corral and rouline. And they were the two for the grubs and that came about in my lifetime as an old _______ just run everything through the gates and fences and so we started using that every year and that really helped. It took the stress off the cattle. Our market for cattle, we used to have a good sale barn right here in Rapid City. Old _______ he had that and then Jim Madden bought him out when _______ was ready to quit. It was an excellent market until 1972 during the flood and they bought them out and so then we had to go to Sturgis or somewhere else and during that time there was three brothers, the Henderson boys and Hokie, Lloyd, and Vernie and their dad had a sale barn right down there on Circle Drive right there it was a brewery where they delivered and dispensed beer out of in the old Anderson sale barn so there was two sale barns right down there on Creek Drive. `And so Vernie and Lloyd and Hokie, they were cattle buyers and so they would come out to the place and buy cattle then they had a yard just right down the creek from where the old sale barn had been and so then we would truck the cattle into there and weigh them and then they ____ neighbors, cousins and whatever, that was where they were marketed then. Now they have satellite where they pre-sell their calves for delivery time in the fall and give a weight and they buy them on that and they put them on a video and they sit there and auction them off and bid on them or they will set pounds of weight whatever they are going to have and they set the price and depending on if they are under or over then they get docked. Bev Pechan: From the comfort of your own home. Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah that is beyond me. They still have these sale barns but they got cameras in the sale barns and they can set there and watch that and bid on them cattle in sale barns at the same time. Technology has really changed the cattle market. �Bev Pechan: Do you use a lot of computerized things running the ranch. Clyde Gorsuch: No, I can turn it on and look at the weather and my kids are trying to get me to do Facebook but I am too old to think about doing all that. Bev Pechan: Well like the stock show now and the Central States Fair and so forth with their cattle shows and stuff do you think the importance of that seems to be years ago or do you think technology has taken away from that too. Clyde Gorsuch: To me the stock show is not what it used to be. It used to be when it was down at the fairgrounds in the 60's or whatever we were in the old captain glen building and it was cold and there was no heat or whatever but you would go to the Stock Show and that's what it really was. Just everyday one day Monday was Angus, Tuesday was Shorthorn, Wednesday was Hereford and whatever and Charolais when they came in and Vern Shepherd was a main instigator in all that and he was on KOTA radio and whatever but we set there in that cold old barn you know you put your coveralls on and there were very few people that came to look. There weren't any booths or anything and it was just strictly agricultural then. And then when they moved it into the Civic Center then it came in all these rodeos and trying to draw people in and that booth. You know I have not been to the stock show for maybe five or six years because it’s too big and not what I class as an actual stock show. It's more a rodeo and fun time. Bev Pechan: Talk about what life is like as a rancher or a ranching family. Clyde Gorsuch: That's all I have known all my life and we live 40 miles from Rapid City and 27 miles from Hot Springs and so whenever we are just out there and we always have a stock of food on hand if it storm or whatever we got plenty to eat and to me it is a way of life. I just love it. Bev Pechan: Existence is pretty much reliant on the weather isn't it? Clyde Gorsuch: We've been more than fortunate since '85 was the last real storm that we had that we couldn't get out and whatever. But we just don't think about it. My wife Susan here drives to the hospital every day. She works nights 7 days in a row now and then 7 off and she drives every day to work. And Laney will be 8th grade but they closed our school in Fairburn. It was 10 miles from home so now we take her 27 miles to school every day. That's just part of life. We live out there so we just do for our kids and grandkids the same now we are doing softball games on Monday night and practice on Friday nights and we love it. Bev Pechan: Now that's in Custer County right? Clyde Gorsuch: Fairburn is and she plays softball on the Hermosa team but the school, Hot Springs school is in Fall River County Bev Pechan: And were you born in a ranch family also? �Susan Gorsuch - Well my family ranched but I was born and raised here in Rapid City and my grandparents ranch was just 7 miles north of the Air Base so I grew up. That was my mom's parents. And my Dad's family, they homesteaded a place about 2 miles northeast of there. I grew up a lot in the country. But mainly I was born and raised in Rapid City. Clyde Gorsuch: Her cousin was old Rex Allen Smith. Susan Gorsuch: My Dad's cousin was Rex Allen Smith Bev Pechan: Oh really, I knew him well. Clyde Gorsuch: I figured you did Susan Gorsuch: He was a good storyteller Bev Pechan: He was a good storyteller and the books that he wrote were good too. We had him speak several times at different gatherings that we have had. Historic gatherings and things. Susan Gorsuch: He loved doing that. Absolutely loved doing it. Bev Pechan: What about Laney is it? Are you involved in 4-H? Clyde Gorsuch: No she doesn't talk much. Susan Gorsuch: She is into sports. She plays sports a lot. She plays basketball, she likes softball, she has played soccer but she is pretty athletic. The Gorsuch name, I am trying to remember, is there somebody in your family that was very musical. Play a lot of music around the area? Clyde Gorsuch: Well my dad Marvin and Uncle Perry and their brother Ed and Lloyd Gorsuch their first cousin. They sang all over the country when they were younger but they are all dead and gone now. They sang at a lot of funerals throughout the country and Lloyd played with the Hermosa Hillbillies. Bean, and his Dad and them. Lloyd played with them for years. My brother is into bluegrass now. He has played instruments guitar and all over. I am sure it was Lloyd that you... Bev Pechan: I think so I recall hearing about someone with the Gorsuch name that was really involved in music and I heard it from Lois Haley and ... Clyde Gorsuch: Yep well that would have been Lloyd. Ted Sogie, and old Al Milkey and Maynard Sogie and that would have been Old String Bean. We have known him for years and his Dad. Bev Pechan: A lot of your ranching neighbors I think were old time many generations around. Not sure who you lived close to. Hunsackers, maybe John McMahon. How far is he from you? �Clyde Gorsuch: McMahon is right down here on Spring Creek so they would be 35 miles and what was the other name. Sue Gorsuch: Hunsackers. Clyde Gorsuch: Oh well they are from Keystone but Rob lives down there. He is on part of the old Maynard ______ outfit. And now well Monte bought a piece of ground. Paul ___Downen?______ had it. It borders us he lives in Hermosa and Marty (good thing I'm old I don't remember). He has bought part of the old Clyde Smith place. Was called the Post place and he bought that and him and his wife lived there and they bought the buildings just northeast of Buffalo Gap that was `the old Jimmy Daniels place. So basically they are just ___________? Bev Pechan: What's left of Fairburn as a town? Clyde Gorsuch: Well we have a brand new church that is just about completed. There is a post office and there is right at a hundred people live there now. Bev Pechan: Are more people moving back to the area? Clyde Gorsuch: Right but there's just not enough water there on that Hermosa pipeline until we get.. there's not enough taps. There's a lot of people that would like to come in but otherwise they have to drill a well and it’s just French Creek water so.... Bev Pechan: Is that the Southern Hills water loop? Clyde Gorsuch: No it is the Hermosa water. It comes out of the old missile base down there. South of Hermosa, the wells that were down there. And they did drill another well there too and it was put in 1974 or 1975. It goes down east of Hermosa too but that was put in way back in the 1970's. It was before I married you. It was early 70's. So old Ray Hillenbrandt, he was a very big supporter of that and funded a lot of that line so that it came through. Bev Pechan: Ray Hillenbrandt is owner of Prairie Edge Clyde Gorsuch: and Triple 7 Ranch. He's got it all now. He came in here in 1973. Kim Morey: How's the water treating you this year? Clyde Gorsuch: There’s water everywhere Kim Morey: You're still loving it. Sue Gorsuch: We don't ever get mad at the water. Clyde Gorsuch: We haven't had any flooding at our place. �Sue Gorsuch: In fact our creek hasn't even run yet. Clyde Gorsuch: Its South Fork of French Creek. Sue Gorsuch: French Creek is running but our south part is not running yet. I swore up and down when I first married him that it never ran. He says oh it always runs. Well for 7 years it never ran. Clyde Gorsuch: She was a jinx to us. Sue Gorsuch: I said maybe we shouldn't have gotten married. The first time it ran I went down there are took 3 reel of film so I had something to remember it. Oh my gosh the creek actually runs. It was running over the road. Bev Pechan: Do you see a lot of mosquitos? Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah we got a lot of mosquitos. Bev Pechan: What about West Nile are you concerned about that Clyde Gorsuch: No, we don't have crows and stuff like that there that carry the virus. We vaccinated a time or two the horses. I guess if we get it we get it. You know but it’s live and let live. Bev Pechan: You said the crows are the ones Clyde Gorsuch: They are basically the type of bird that carries it. Bev Pechan: Let’s talk about your prairie dog town. Clyde Gorsuch: You don't wanna. I will probably get upset. We get rid of them and they come back and the state helps. We were totally rid of them and then they started getting plague around all over and so they started moving in in the middle of the winter. And it’s just been a fight. I think when we poisoned them and whatever all we do is fertilize them because the last two years we can't even catch up. Then when we did income tax, the poison and the baits and all the things we done, we spent over 2300 dollars trying to control them and the guys were shooting all the time and we still have prairie dogs. Bev Pechan: and they move in off the government lands, private lands? Clyde Gorsuch: Government lands, private lands the just reservation out of the park. They are just moving constantly But they are getting smart enough that they are getting bait shy and you know they been here since prehistoric days so they are evolving and whatever. Kim Morey: Do the buffalo stand up to them better. I know the big problem with the cattle is stepping in the holes �Clyde Gorsuch: Nah that ain’t no problem the only time you have a problem with that is if you are moving them and they start to run or something. All the years we have had them we only had a calf break a leg. They dodge the holes. There's a lot of this stuff people talk about. A horse boy they watch. Just don't fight your horse. They will miss the holes. We always tell them guys oh you shouldn't be trying to get rid of them. Well my comeback is if you get a virus in your computer and it’s taking a third of your business what do you do? We get rid of it. Well why can't we make tree huggers think all these things are cute. Well it’s cutting into our production. We've got one pasture that we have not had cattle in for two or three years because there is nothing there. The prairie dogs we poison. It's a bad situation. We do have a lot of nice people come and shoot prairie dogs. We make a lot of nice friends but it is not worth the production loss and we don't charge them. Just come and have fun. Bev Pechan: What about ferrets? Are there many if any? Clyde: I don't see many. They aren't in our area anyway. Bev: Do they have any other natural enemies? Clyde: Coyotes and eagles but there is always one a chirping they signal a person. But no, they don't ________Coyotes is the only ... I am sure once in a while I am sure they get them but not very often. Bev: How many times a year do they.....? Clyde: They have about one litter a year Sue Gorsuch: They are big litters. Clyde Gorsuch: If it’s going to be a good year they have great big litters and... Bev Pechan: How many are we talking about? Clyde Gorsuch: Well it will be up to 15 on a hole. Bev Pechan: Wow Clyde Gorsuch: And see now the government and the state lands you can't shoot until you have a season on them. You can't shoot until after the 15th of June because they don't want you to shoot the babies. Well that's when everybody comes to shoot the babies because they get in a whole lot more shooting on the private land. But they start their breeding season in January and they have the little ones start coming out in middle April and into May is when they come out. Bev: Do you lose many if any calves to wolves and coyotes. Clyde Gorsuch: No we don't have any problem that way. �Sue Gorsuch: We did sheep when we had sheep. We lost quite a few sheep to coyotes. We don't seem... I haven't seen a wolf. Bev Pechan: There have been some spotted I guess.... Sue Gorsuch: I know they released some years ago and so I know they are out there. Bev: And mountain lions don't come to your area very often. Clyde: Well they travel through but they got ___ for us one year because we could never find them. But I mean yeah no we don't see them very often either. It is rare to see one. You will see a track around a dam or something once in a while. Bev Pechan: Antelope do they come and feed? Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah we have antelope off and on but antelope numbers are really down. We used to just have them by the hundreds and now only in the last few years have you seen antelope. You know it’s kind of nice to see them. But I am not sorry the whole great big bunch doesn't come in the wintertime on the hayfields. Bev Pechan: What do you suppose the cause is for their demise? Clyde Gorsuch: Weather and they figured those storms there that one two years ago when we had that big October storm they were just like the cattle they weren't prepared for winter hair and they lost a lot of antelope due to that. They got wet and chilled down just like the beef cows did. Bev Pechan: How did you come through that storm? Clyde Gorsuch: We lost one cow. We were very fortunate but we had cattle come from all the way from Fairburn down to... and we caught them on the ridge right there. We live up on a ridge and we took off with a tractor and hay on the bale feeder on the back and a pickup with cake and we held cattle up and we rode for 5 days gathering cattle for the neighbors and whatever. That had come from all over. Well Mt. Rushmore Angus their yearling heifers come two year olds to calve, they wound up on our place and so Shane Lyon worked for them and we got them held up and fed them hay. Then the next morning after it settled down, he came over and we horseback and moved them back into the pasture and then Travis and Harold Beasley had I don't know how many of theirs came just drifted in. We hadn't got the round bales picked up out of the field and it was lucky a lot of the cattle stopped right in our hayfield on that but boy it was terrible the amount of cattle that was just dead. But yeah we rode and rode and dumped them into our pastures and then cause they had other places to be gathering and whatever and we had cattle to get. So we just dumped them into ours when we would find them and so just neighborly work you just... that is what ranching is about being good Samaritans and helping your neighbors you know so... �Sue Gorsuch: Well he doesn't tell everything but he is a heck of a planner and when he heard that storm was coming he brought pretty much all our cows in. Well you put a lot of hay out. Clyde: No I didn't. Not that one in Oct. They were on the north side of the road in _____ Place and Chance and I were building that new buffalo fence so they went through the fence up on the flat and went down over the hill. It's just a sheer drop off. You know it's grassed over and whatever but it is a heck of a windbreak and they just got in underneath that hill and they just stayed under the hill. So we found all our cows just right under the hill but one old cow she was by the snow fence and she just couldn't take it but no, we didn't lose..... Sue Gorsuch: Well he normally if he knows a storms coming he will put a lot of hay out and by a lot of hay I mean by the number of cows we have he put 11 or 12 bales out and unroll them so the cows could just lay down bed down be bedded down before the storm hits and then they are there. Everyone worries about getting them watered. You don't worry about getting them watered. You don't worry about a cow getting water. She will stay there as long as she is protected and she has something to eat. She can eat a little bit of snow. That doesn't bother her. But he does a lot of pre-planning most of the time that he puts a lot of hay out for the cows to try and keep them in a good area and he will put it where it's the best protection he's got wherever pasture it’s at and take care of the cattle that way. Bev Pechan: Ok, and now I want to ask you when you live on a ranch do you I'd imagine if you are working pretty steady like you are. You have your own garden? Sue Gorsuch: No I am not a gardener. He is. I kill things. We actually had put a garden out two years in a row and we lost it both years because we ran out of water to water it. We barely had enough water to drink and we had enough water to do our laundry and that was it so we let the garden die. And I think that's the last time we had a garden. It's been a few years. Clyde Gorsuch: That was when we had one of them long dry spells and we just didn't have... but our well has never gone dry since. Bev Pechan: Is that a concern in a normal year, can you expect reasonable water down there or is the area kind of drying up overall? Do you think? Clyde Gorsuch: Normal years if we get a spring snowstorm it will run off and fill our dams to where there is water enough for the year but we are like the other guys in 1983 we put in a bunch of pipeline and then we have added to it so we do have water if the dams... you know we get good enough moisture for grass. But we don't have water in the dams and dugouts. We have water. Bev Pechan: Where does the water come in through the pipeline? Clyde Gorsuch: Our well up on top of the hill. It is our own private water. �Sue Gorsuch: We aren't on a pipeline. Bev Pechan: Ok what other things when you ranch ... you are pretty much depending on nature. What other things are your concerns? Clyde Gorsuch: Well you hope you get your hay up before you have a hailstorm, and take care of the pasture. And you are always at the mercy of everybody. You sell everything at wholesale and buy everything at retail plus you know. That's really a big concern. The gas and diesel prices you know had really hit us hard. And you gotta contain, cut down so you don't use so much. But really there isn't a lot of ways to cut down because you have to feed every day, check water, cut ice do whatever. You have to put your hay up and I guess you could buy it but it is cost prohibitive for us. Most people figure 20 acres to the animal unit but we've got so much good hay ground that we are getting buy with about 10 acres to the cow because we feed later in the spring and then we have native grass but then we also have tame grass that back in the 1960's when they had the soil bank they pay you to plant it back and just leave it lay idle and so then and the place______________ Moyer place and they put it in the soil bank for 10 years so we can run on that tame grass and let the native grasses get going and last year we ran 122 cows on 320 acres from the middle of April until we sold the calves the first week in November. It just kept raining enough you know but we had clover as high as that door there then so then we didn't cut any of it but we probably had one of the best hay years ever. We filled hay yards and then fed out of them all winter and we had two fields that bales hadn't been picked up cause we didn't have anywhere to go with them and this is a bad problem to have you know. We filled our hay pens up again but now we got this year’s hay crop but now where are we going to store it. That is really a bad problem. Sue Gorsuch: But we'll take it. Was it two years ago, He sold with all the drought down in Texas, he sold a lot of hay. No, three years ago. Clyde: Well we have sharecropped that we do with Jack Weltie and I sold that part, his half and then we didn't realize we were going to have that tough of winter and we sold the whole hayfield off and just kept our share and whatever Sue Gorsuch: We had to buy hay. Clyde Gorsuch: It comes to haunt you. We just sell the landlords share anymore and keep it but you learn. You know I knew better but that was so.... Bev Pechan: And these bales weigh how much? Clyde Gorsuch: Our bales now we bought a new baler now after 43 years. We bought an 04 Case IH baler and they weigh 1250 pounds. Our other baler they weigh about a thousand. We do upgrade but we hadn't. Our baler was 43 years and our tractor upgrade was 35 years. You know we go... and the hardest part of feeding last winter was adjusting the temperature on the heater in this tractor. You know you are used to riding out there in the open. Bev Pechan: You have air conditioning right too? �Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah you can't open a window. They make them for all these new EPA laws. You can't have windows that open because you get this respiratory stuff like I got my throat quits and what not. So it's a sealed cab. It's just as quiet as riding in a pickup. You got your radio, air conditioning, and all this electronic stuff in them just like the cars you know. That's why we got the new bailer because we got the new tractor and it didn't like our old bailer because it was too modern a tractor and that's true and so the next week we had to go get a bailer and we found one in North Dakota. And we went to Beech North Dakota and bought the tractor and then we went to Bowman and bought the bailer because we could get so much better deal then we could here. Sue Gorsuch: We probably saved 10-15 thousand dollars by doing that for Rapid City, for that area. Clyde Gorsuch: And then we got an old 966 International we bought years and years ago. It’s a good tractor but the hydraulics got tired so I got on the internet and found one in Oklahoma and of course it didn't get delivered. The trucks weren't rolling right so we were done haying by the time they got here. That's if you were asking about the computer age and our ranching. That's as far as I can go. Sue Gorsuch: We are teaching him how to do Facebook now. Clyde Gorsuch: But it's a slow process. Bev Pechan: Ok moving to the next question. Talk about the evolution in pickup trucks. Clyde Gorsuch: Well I grew up, the first pickup I learned to drive was a '49 GMC. A little old dinky short box on it or whatever. And then Dad bought a.... that would been in the 50's. I was little bitty. He bought a '53 Ford pickup but it had an automatic transmission. It was a trial deal and it didn't work for feeding because you couldn't put it in super low and pitch the hay off so then he traded that off into a 1958 Ford pickup. Had a long wide box and it was boy a up and coming. It even had a radio in it somebody had bought boy that was fancy. And so then we had a good year and then in 1960 he bought a brand new car and he gave 1257 dollars for that car. We got a telephone. All of this happened in August. Golden West brought in telephone instead of the old wind up grinder telephone. That was in 1960. Then he had alfalfa seed, we used to get alfalfa seed and he was a pretty good operator and so then in 1962 he bought a brand new Ford pickup and it was that unibody and that pickup cost 1800 dollars. And then but he had to order the radio in it to get it and he bought the pickup off the lot from Trask Ford in Custer. That is where he bought the car too. And then you know well he drove that pickup I don't know for how long then I don't remember. Then in 1970 he bought a new. But they were all two wheel drive pickups. And in 1970 he bought another brand new half ton Ford pickup with a positive traction lock in rear end in it boy that was the real deal to him you know. And then that pickup I know it you know I mean cause you knew how many man thats a lot of money 2200 dollars for a pickup. It was talked about for months you know. Well then I started in the business and whatever and needed a pickup. I didn't own a vehicle until 1972. Nov. of 1971 would have been. Uncle Ed would have bought new '71 Ford pickup 4 wheel drive and he had a '68 3/4 ton and I bought that. That was the first 4 wheel drive we'd had. So then I'd drove that pickup for 10 years and then in January of '78 I bought a brand new half ton pickup and just paid cash for it. That was before I was married I had money you know I had money but then by July that pickup, it was made in Canada and that was a lemon. Boy I, it just fell apart. So I bought �a brand new 3/4 ton. It was the 13th of July when I bought it and it had 13 stamped all over it. That was the best Ford pickup I'd ever owned. But that pickup cost 7800 dollars. And now my gosh you know. But now we went now we drive we drive crew cab pickups and super cab pickups and whatever you know that all evolved and whatever but they sure aren't tough like they used to be and hold up. Bev Pechan: They don't. Clyde Gorsuch: No, no. Sue Gorsuch: He used to pull semis out. When they were stuck with his '78. Clyde Gorsuch: It had a 5th wheel ball and wrapped the chain up around it so he had traction. Sue Gorsuch: ohhhh you can't pull me out... ohhh yes, he can. Clyde Gorsuch: But I mean it just. You talk about pickups. We've got a one ton dually we bought it used. It's a 2000 Ford F-350 with a 73 power stroke and an automatic 4-door with dual flatbed on it. We pull a bigger trailer with that. We have a 6-8 or 7 wide 32 foot gooseneck. We bought it in Amarillo Texas and went over into Oklahoma and bought them Buffalo and hauled them home but my Uncle and old Harry Hendrickson down here they had semi's and boy they thought they had something and their semi's well Raymond’s and of course this was my Dad's oldest brother had a semi that was 22 foot. It was an old International truck. That was a big truck. Our regular stock trailer is 20 foot but our big trailer is 32 foot. And we pull it with just a little old pickup. That is how far evolution has come. In 1973 I bought the first gooseneck and I bought it from Frank Packet, Crawford Nebraska. And I brought it in and they just very unheard of. And I brought that home from down there and took the title to the Treasurer’s office and Donna Palmer was the Treasurer and she said I have no idea how to license this trailer so we will give you a license plate but we will have to get in contact with Pierre how to license this horse trailer. They were that new a thiing. They had never been in South Dakota. Bev Pechan: And now a person can expect to buy a pickup for what? Clyde Gorsuch: 50-60 thousand dollars a lot of these guys pay for them. Sue Gorsuch: More than what he paid for his ranch. Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah in '71 I bought my place a thousand acres, 50 dollars an acre. It was the highest priced piece of ground. Got it on contract for deed for 20 years. Ten thousand dollars down and 6% interest. Boy that was a stretch now to think we were going to make it. Now they go buy vehicles that cost that much and pay on them. I don't think they ever pay them off. Just keep trading. Bev Pechan: Is there anything you're planning to add or do different in the next few years. Clyde Gorsuch: Just survive like I've done all my life. Bev Pechan: Ok but you say you like the life and so you really kind of want to keep doing what you are �doing. Clyde Gorsuch: Well you know all the old guys get to my age they retire from their job when they start getting their monthly poverty social security check you know. Well they all quit working in town and they come out and they buy up all these places you know to be hobby farmers and whatever. Well you know I've been in it since 1966 and I'm not going to retire because I enjoy every day of my life. Get up in the morning and you don't know what miracle thing you are going to see when you get up, you don’t know what neighbors going to call and say can you help me brand these calves cause I can't find nobody else and drive 60-70 miles to somebodies place to and she thinks we are just having a party but we do but we work while we are doing it you know but I mean you know it’s just a life that is hard to explain once it gets in your blood you can't get rid of it. Bev Pechan: It's a way of life. Sue Gorsuch: Well his job is so diversified. I mean you can. Like he said you get up in the morning. You have plans what you are going to do the next day but they're usually blown out of the water and you change at the drop of a hat you change up what you are going to do like today he was going to go do stuff. Well it rained all night long. It was raining beautifully this morning. He said well I guess I will just go to town with you instead of wanting to do anything else. So I work in town. I have to be to work at a certain time. I go in at a certain time. I may get off a little bit later it depends. But mine is so time controlled. His is whatever he can do or needs to do. He does it. And he can do 15 other jobs other than what he actually planned for that day. It needs to be done and it needs to be done now. So he interrupts his work what he had planned to do that. So that was really hard for me to understand when we firsts got married. I wasn't bringing a paycheck in I didn't understand that. I am not contributing to the household but I was because I was out helping him in the field. Whether we rode out and worked the cattle or put up hay or whatever I was out with him doing that. Kim Morey: Can I take us a really different direction? Clyde Gorsuch: Sure Kim Morey: I think it probably wasn't a real near neighbor of yours but there was the Titan site down past Hermosa. Do you recollect anything of that in your growing up? Clyde Gorsuch: Oh yeah that's right Wes Harrison owns all the way around that right there and yeah when that came in well it created a lot of jobs for the community and my Dad's brother Perry he worked there he was a welder and his son Larry. He moved back and they helped construct that. And then Wayne Carol had a cleaning business here in Rapid City and he was raised about 5 miles from where we lived and he had this cleaning business and he got a contract to go in there and keep that whole missile base clean and whatever while they were building it A lot of the neighbors My old uncle Ed included and old Bob Carol old Barnie Nordstrom all they worked for Wayne cleaning that and they had a white glove deal you know where it had to be spotless all the time while they were building on that. And it was a major impact on that. It saved a lot of people’s bacon when they came and they go up there and work. A �lot of them work nights in cleaning. Bev Pechan: That was about 1960? Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah it was in there in the 1960's. Well it would have been... Kim Morey: Late 50's maybe? Clyde Gorsuch: Well, no it was in the 1960's. Cause they built 79. They had to have 79 completed before they could haul missiles in see that road 79 that road was one of the highest compacted roads in the United States because that was the transportation where they hauled the missiles into and all the way up through those in the north country and whatever. But so the highway went in in the 60's so it would have been 62/63 somewhere around in there when they was building all those. Kim Morey: Yeah they didn't keep it running too terribly long did they? It was early 70's when it went out. It was a minuteman was what that one down here was. And the others were Titan that came in later. But that's where this Hermosa water line. But then when they dismantled that and had to fill those things we'd go in there and cut that iron out and boy there was a mechanism underneath that ground. It was like a city under there you know. It was quite a deal. Bev Pechan: Is there anything left of it do you know? Clyde Gorsuch: No it's all been filled in and they had to dig down and tear out the command centers those big cement rooms and whatever to make them so there was nothing left. Bev Pechan: I remember hearing about another. They were going to build a military base by Hermosa too do you remember anything about that? It lost out to Colorado. Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah that was before my time. Bev Pechan: Yeah I think it was in the 1940's. Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah I had heard about it but see then when they put these missile bases in then they buried and there are very few people who know this but it goes just 3 1/2 miles west of us and they crossed our lower pasture but they buried a trunk line from Ellsworth AFB to the missile Site and then it went all the way to Guernsey Wyoming where that big National Guard Camp is and then it went on and it went all the way to Colorado Springs and so if somewhere that was knocked out or whatever they could still maintain that missile site from Colorado Springs was the main headquarters for that. There's gateposts there and that's where that line went but that was well I was in grade school when that went in. You know that was before all this microwave towers and all that was about there was a big trunk line buried. Bev Pechan: I didn't know that. Is it still there? Clyde Gorsuch: Still under there yep. They have never torn it out. �Bev Pechan: I wonder if anyone remembers that besides you. Kim Morey: There was quite an industry digging the cable out from the Minuteman. They took those down when cable got so expensive. Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah I don't know her cousin Robert Gr____ and his boys they tore out a bunch of it. But I don't know why they never tore this one out. But it's still in there. Kim Morey: Old enough they probably didn't think about it. Clyde Gorsuch: Well very few people knew about it. Somewhere on a map I am sure there’s.... Kim Morey: Your family ranch north of the base? And you grew up in Rapid? Sue Gorsuch: Yes Bev Pechan: What was your family name? Sue Gorsuch: Smith (laughter) (Not understandable) Clyde Gorsuch: Well her mom…. Sue Gorsuch: My mom's side was Keffeler. Bev Pechan: Ok came from Sturgis Sue Gorsuch: She came from Sturgis area. My Grandmother bought the land just north of the base after my mom left home. I mean after mom was out and married I believe. And so mom never grew up there she grew up in Sturgis. And how did the two families manage to live within two miles of each other is amazing. Because they didn't know. You know when she bought the place that that was my dad's place. That his folk’s home stead was right there. She just happened to buy it. My grandmother was a schoolteacher and that's what she bought the land with was her school teaching money. Bev Pechan: Yeah you could still afford to do that then. Sue Gorsuch: Yep, My grand-dad was a combiner. He had three combines. He custom combined all over mostly up in the Sturgis area. In fact he died doing that. Had a stroke after he had run to Rapid to get parts. They found him in the pickup passed out and he lived a week later and died. Born and raised in Rapid but I still had country ties. And I am kind of the black sheep of the family because I always wanted to be in the country. My brother's in Illinois my sisters both live in Rapid. But none of them are much into the ranching side. Well one of my sisters did buy some of my... we had an auction in 2013 and sold all of our grandparents land so she bought some of that and the piece she bought was one of the old homesteads east of Sturgis. �Clyde Gorsuch: Well it was the original Keffeler homestead that she got. She wanted the one out north of the base but it was getting mighty spendy and she didn't get it bought but she did buy the piece east of Sturgis. Bev Pechan: Before the Buffalo Chip. And you talked about the _______ horses earlier and I have always been kind of interested in that. Knowing the horses were in the area. I was the museum director at Ft. Meade for several years and horses have always been a passion of mine and we tried to learn a little bit more about the ___________ program because it did have some program there. I know a lot of times I know they have two stallions there and they placed a lot of horses with the ranchers and bought the stock back then and so forth. There's just a lot of names I am missing. That history I would like to know more about and then when they got rid of the horses I think it was in 1942. They got motorcycles. And all the horses when to Ft. Robinson. Maybe it was 1944. '44 I think. I heard stories about these fellows that had these horses for so long it was like getting rid of a member of the family. Some of them were able to buy but most of them they took them out and shot them because they were surplus. Sue Gorsuch: Ranching is not easy. Because a lot of people they raise their cattle and they have names for them. We have names for them too but probably not ones we are going to record. I have a little red cow that I call Little Red. She hasn't calved yet and she is about this wide and she is waddling pretty hard. She hasn't calved yet. Bev Pechan: First calf? Sue Gorsuch: Yep and we've got a Corianas cow that we kind of ran shares with Brad Lang and our daughter and our adopted daughters all loved this cow. She was pretty tame. She got horns on her probably about this wide. Just the sweetest thing. So we had to buy Sweetie from Brad. So we still have Sweetie. Ever since she had bull calves up until we bought her and she has had heifer calf ever since. Bev Pechan. Really that's interesting. All those animals you do get attached to certain ones I guess. Sue Gorsuch: Well you do but you know we've got a buffalo that was bottle raised and his name is Buddy Bev Pechan: Buddy the Buffalo there's a children's book if I ever heard one. Sue Gorsuch: Is he five now? Clyde Gorsuch: Five or six. Sue Gorsuch: Five or six. Well I got a picture on my phone. I will show it to you. Our son Chance is 6 ft. 4. And this picture looks like this buffalo is little bitty. When I walked up to this buffalo across the fence mind you. I don't get in with them. I'm not that stupid. This buffalo, his hump is taller than my head. Clyde took a picture when Chance met Buddy out in the pasture. He was right up with him. He is just a sweet thing. But he is getting a little ornery. I mean you go to try and pet him and he will shake his head at you and you have to be really careful because they can break your arm if you have it the wrong way �above or below the fence. He has knocked my arm a couple times so I am kind of leery about petting him anymore. Clyde Gorsuch: But he will make awful good eating. Sue Gorsuch: But he sure loves his treats and I go feed him every once in a while and give him a treat but he is going to have to go soon. I told him. Cake, he gets cake and I told Clyde you have to tell me when you are going to take Buddy cause I have to say goodbye but I can say goodbye because that's what we do. We raise buffalo or beef for meet. That's passion that's what we do, that's what we raise them for. A lot of people they can't eat their own meat. Kim Morey: Buffalo fence, do you have to keep after it, does it require a lot of repair? Clyde Gorsuch: It does because when they decide to go through it they go through it. But once they get located in a spot they are pretty well content but if the bulls get to or boss cow or something they will put something through the fence but really it isn't that much harder to contain them than beef cows. But they just are so big that they just.... Kim Morey: Fencing for cows is quite a bit easier to mend I would assume. Clyde Gorsuch: Well it’s different. You used to put just three wire fence and it was pretty low now cows have gotten taller and taller so they will try to jump ___ style so we always try to put it up high enough so cows don't go over it and horses are the worst thing on fences than cows ever was. And if get a breachy cow they just go to town cause there is no need to fight to get that cow back to train and everything else to go. Bev Pechan: Well anything else that I haven't asked you about that you would like to contribute that comes to mind. Clyde Gorsuch: Well ____ down there in ____ neat lady I like her but I'm with this guy in Custer county but she was ... this one boy had died man started working there and he started talking about how he didn't know anything about the town and so right out here on the I told him well this used to be Rapid Hide Metal and there wasn't any town around there and then she said well started asking questions well the old highway before they build the new one came in right over the top of the hill where A-l Auto is, came down through that valley and the reason A-l auto was up there was when Johnson was president well it had to be did Johnson clean up the act well that was Jalopy jungle and it belonged was owned by a guy by the last name Bierbaum. And so he had to move. It was right there where Motion Unlimited is but it was on the East side of the highway and so then they moved it up on top of the hill up there and then when he quit well A-l auto bought them out and then the only thing he was the first thing and now Mainline Construction is there but there wasn’t anything there until you came and that was England Cat and they rented machinery and worked on all the CATS. And then you came on up and that is where Rapid City Hide and Metal is where oh good Lord can't even think of the name. Pacific Steel is. Where there wasn't a whole lot there till then they built the gasification plant there to try and make gas out of the late night coal and then 79 came right on up into town and the only thing that was there �was their products. Its Mathis and Linweld now? And on the north side of them was a house mover. That old guy had a house moving business there. And then that was 79 and that went by the School of Mines and right on the corner where the Corner Pantry is that was Sooper Dooper all my life and there wasn't anything where Thrift Center and all of that was just open vacant fields. And then... Sue Gorsuch: They still had the stock yards though didn't they? Clyde Gorsuch: Well the sale barn, yeah the stuff was down there by creek drive and whatever but yeah the Rapid city sale barn and it was kind of out of town and whatever and Schlining Ford was right there by the sale barn and then she didn't even know about where the Salvation army is that was Robbinsdale area that was a drive inn theatre right there and she didn't know that. Sue Gorsuch: Yeah I did. Clyde Gorsuch: No Rose and she was and then on the north side of town there was the Pines drive inn and she didn't know that either. Warren __________ was a brother in law to Biernbaum? his sister Alma married Biernbaum and they came from Fairburn and that was... and another thing I don't know if you know or not but Warren Lamb had a logging thing that came out of the Black Hills down there just above started up there on the dry Creek where it hits right above on the ridge there by the Coolidge Inn used to be a zoo there. Well Warren Lamb was logged all that country and they had a railroad that came down right through my Dad's right where he was born and raised there on Dry Creek and they gave him a load of logs every year for their wood. And it came on in to Fairburn to the depot and there was a third rail that ran all the way from Fairburn to Rapid City that they carried the logs in and Warren Lamb was right out there on and there sawmill was up there where Black Hills Pack used to be. It was... the only reason they quit logging was they had a big flood on dry creek and washed the trestle out and old Vern Smith from Fairburn was the engineer and he stopped to pick a family up that was flooding and the brakeman was riding out on the cowcatcher and the tracks was still across but the trestle was gone and they didn't know it and nosedived the train off and into there and they all five crawl up. There's pictures of it in the Fairburn museum in Fairburn. Yeah there was and they moved the Catholic Church from Fairburn up here to Rapid and there were quite a few buildings moved out of Fairburn up here into Rapid City in the old days. But that was still going on in the 50’s but when they was still moving them up here. Kim Morey: Now is there an old hall? Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah the old Oddfellows Hall there is. Kim Morey: See I think we are taking the old bead board out of there for the McGillycuddy house. Clyde Gorsuch: Boy I would hate to be the one to go in there. Sue Gorsuch: Oh my gosh. Clyde Gorsuch: It's really in bad shape. They bought the old Guy Kimball the old hotel that guy Johnny Ring blowed in here from Oklahoma and he bought that and he started restoring the hotel and got it on �historical site and so now some guys bought it now Johnny dead he died of cancer but they started tearing lumber off of that old Oddfellows hall so it’s just a weaving there and them poles. Sue Gorsuch: I would really hate to go in that building. That building is literally... Clyde Gorsuch: So is the board upstairs or downstairs? Kim Morey: You know I am not that familiar with it. I might have that... I know there's an old building down in Fairburn that they are taking down that had a lot of bead board in it. But I haven't been down to do that. That task hasn't rolled around to me so somebody else has been going down there. Sue Gorsuch: I'd be busy. (laughter) Kim Morey: As a matter of fact. Because I am here. Some of the other folks are there. I think that is where they are getting it. Bev Pechan: Well I think we can wrap this up and if you think of anything else that you would like to add. Clyde Gorsuch. There is a lot of history in this country that is going to go by the wayside. Just taping this there were so many times that we would have picnics and whatever the kids all though I was a snob. You know but I would go sit and listen to the old cowboys. You know that's where I got my influence in my life and old Harvey Bell, Arch Harris, Thee Rasmussin?, and Lon Ayers and they were a lot of that history. It was interesting. Bev Pechan: Have you ever written any of it down? Clyde Gorsuch: I forgot more of it than most people every heard. Cause they didn't sit and listen to those old guys. Bev Pechan: Well at the time I don't think you think it’s important until you get a little older and realize that somebody needed to keep those stories. Clyde Gorsuch: Well one story old Sam Bell and Lon Ayers were best of friends and they lived down French Creek and they were both pranksters. They love to have fun and they would ride and had the cattle out and meet on a ridge and smoke Bull Durham’s until it got dark and then they'd go home. Well Sam Bell died before Lon did so they had him up there at Fairburn cemetery and they was all around there and whatever and it’s a rocky hill it’s a gravel pit and we dug many by hand. So they were all there and Lon went over and there was a great big rock and he rolled it off in the grave and it hit the casket and he said "There you old son of a bitch see if you can dig your way out from that one". They were the best of friends. He just was lost without him. Bev Pechan: Did it break the casket? �Clyde Gorsuch: No it didn't break the casket? That's just the kind of stuff that goes on in the ranching community. Town people just don't know what they have missed in life. Bev Pechan: They don't understand it right. You ever tried your hand at cowboy poetry? Clyde Gorsuch: No, my wife, you heard her laugh. Sue Gorsuch: He does this he starts saying stuff and then he rambles off. When I first met him I just sat there looking at him saying who are you talking about now. Well he would talk about three days all at one time and you would have to learn to bounce from one to the next to the next to the next. It took me a long time to understand what he was saying. And I would finally say ok you are talking about so... now you are talking about ...... But he would do that. He would take a breath and go off on a tangent. It’s hard to follow him sometimes. Clyde Gorsuch: Well I guess one interesting aspect of the thing is too is in 1924 they needed a church in Fairburn. So my granddad Will Gorsuch and be a great uncle Luke Gorsuch they decided it was time to build a church so they went around the community and got enough and they dug the basement and they framed it up and poured 18- 24 inch walls. So then they didn't have money enough to build the top so then the UNW came in to place and the women had pie socials and all that. Libby Williams worked in you know so they went and got but they didn't get enough money so they went to the Methodist conference and they got five thousand dollars to build the church. Well that was 1924 that they started and they completed it in 1926. Well Dean Johnson has helped me straighten walls and there was no studs to hold the walls. They put a new wall above it to get that space in there well it would collapse in from moisture or whatever and Dean and I straightened them all up. Well they condemned our church. So two years ago they put me on as a head to find out about restoring the old building. Sue Gorsuch: I think you better say three years ago. Clyde Gorsuch. Well three years. Whatever. Well I worked at it. Well it was cost prohibitive. We were up to 480,000 dollars before you could even blink an eye. So we went about it and we got a new church. Well I was fortunate enough to be in the lead position. I got a lot of cussing. I still get a lot of cussing. But we built a brand new church there in Fairburn. But it started out way back in the 20's when they did it now we got to build a brand new church and the community now is in there really helping to get it finished up but I mean that is how history that is how one family you know Betty _______ well she is in there her Grandmother was Libby Williams. You know her and her sister Maribelle Curtsy and whatever you know we’ve been living here all the time and whatever so. You know it's funny how you stay in one region so long but I am staying poor I can't get out of here so I have to stay and be part of the community. Then in 2001 we started a project and went through rural development and we built a brand new beautiful fire hall a 50 X 100 with a 30 x 34 meeting room and it’s open for community building and whatever too. We've got extra money by allowing it to be that. So we went from a 3 bay fire hall with _______________Smith and all them guys started back in the 40's and then we were able to contribute to our community by doing we had to do so many hours of work on it personally in a month so we have a beautiful fire hall and so we used to be very musical in our church and we had Susie McIntyre down there two times 1:29:39 �and one year we got to do it in the fire hall because we had too many people to get into the church. Sue Gorsuch: There was standing room, I mean they were backed out, in fact people came in and they just left because there wasn't enough room. Bev Pechan: Susie is Reba McEntire's sister right? Clyde Gorsuch: She is a gospel singer. Her and her husband Mark. But I mean yeah there is a lot of things that happen in small communities that people don't know actually happen. We've got the only fire hall anywhere I know that's got a mural with buffalo and a burned out fire and picture of the town on the other wall and whatever that my cousin. Mostly _____ to paint on it and her daughter Callie you know and it’s really unique to have it in there you know and now they have bountiful baskets. Every other Friday they come in and deliver that produce you get on the internet and order that produce then Rhonda Woods lives here. She moved into the development down there. That's the growth in ______. That's another part of history you know to where it has really changed in the size of our community to have developments and whatever. But we don't get any of them into our fire department or our church much because they just live there and work and commute and have their friends and whatever and family in Rapid and bed and breakfast community. Bev Pechan: It's almost like two different worlds. And I think that people who come from the cities and everything when they get out here are just stunned by actually the openness. Some of them are even afraid. Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah we had one guy come prairie dog hunting from New Jersey. Well he came by himself the first time. And he was... he had never been anywhere like that so he took pictures panorama or whatever you call them damn things and it was so fascinating to him that he took pictures and brought it two years later when him and his son came back. We don't think of it. We just think of the beauty of it you know and from our house from our coffee room we can see the Black Hills on the west and we look across and there's Red Shirt table there's a water tower right there on Red Shirt table you know we can see the vastness the difference and we've had friends that come and we had friends down at Wanblee and we'd go down there and where prejudice starts is at home you know and we would go down to Richard and Marge’s and the kids would go to school on Monday and yeah you was rez hopping. Well I don't know we went to Richard and Marge’s. They didn't have any idea it you know our kids well we grew with them and went to school. They are just the nicest people. Some of my best friends are out there. So to us there's no difference. So these people came from Washington State. Really nice people so they wanted to go. Richard had this fantastic stud horse and we were, I had to go down there so they went and Paula could not wait she had to leave before her husband and I did because she wasn't going to be caught on the reservation_______that never even I mean that you talk about differentiating between people. We never even growing up with the Slaws and the Cuny’s and all of them you know they are just our best friends. Bev Pechan: Yeah you hear so much about that from the people that have grown up here in that era and I know I worked __________. I don't know if you've seen the book on Buffalo Gap that he wrote a few years ago and I helped him on that book but that was what he said and he grew up with. Well he �ranched together and the kids played together. And he remembered hearing stories about No Water was the chief who had a wife that Crazy Horse stole. And then No Water found Crazy Horse and got his wife back and shot Crazy Horse in the face and he had that scar for years and years. It was all part of .. and of course he was a kid he didn't ask all the questions but he had some of that history you know. This really is the last frontier. Clyde Gorsuch: Well it was like Dad's old cousin Rex Smith he had all these old stories about Strong Holton all that stuff down there you know and I sit there and listen to it a time or two and I said Rex that ain't true. Sue Gorsuch: And it really upset Rex. Clyde Gorsuch: And it upset him but see I Well Allen Cuny has where that ____ is and whatever and I have rode that pasture many times and heart that story direct right there from you know and some of the people the old timers that were on there you know but just there you go another thing it’s just all the hearsay is handed down somebody adds something to it you know and whatever but then again I should have had a tape along. Bev Pechan: You don't think of it at the time Clyde Gorsuch: No. Was that the book Pat Cuny and Tommy Norman and them wrote. Bev Pechan: Yes, Buffalo Gap Frontier. Clyde Gorsuch: Yeah they were two of our best friends. Old Pat was a good old boy Bev Pechan: And it’s a good thing _____ decided to write that book because I think within a couple years after it came out they were both gone. Clyde Gorsuch: It was less than a year that Pat died. Then Tommy Norman Bev Pechan: Then Tommy Norman was about a year or so later. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Clyde and Sue Gorsuch transcript Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rapid City Public Library Description An account of the resource Oral Histories recorded for the Rapid City Oral History Project by Rapid City Public Library Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Clyde Gorsuch Sue Gorsuch Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bev Pechan Kim Morey Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:45:14 Location The location of the interview Rapid City Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview: Clyde and Sue Gorsuch Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06-11-2015 Subject The topic of the resource 1972 Flood, buffalo, Black Hills, Blizzard of 1949, farming, Fairburn, Hermosa Hillbillies, local history, Minuteman Missile sites, prairie dogs, ranching, Rapid City, South Dakota Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource signed release to Rapid City Oral History Project on file. Description An account of the resource Clyde and Sue Gorsuch talk with Bev Pechan and Kim Morey about growing up in the Black Hills area. They discuss how their families acquired their land in the area as well as what it takes to run their ranching operation on a day to day basis. The couple then cover the changes they've seen from when they were younger to what they face today. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://catalog.rapidcitylibrary.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=289877 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rapid City Public Library Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rapid City Oral History Project Language A language of the resource en Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Rapid City (S.D.), Fairburn (S.D.), Hermosa (S.D.) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rapid City Public Library Historic Rapid City Rapid City Library Foundation 1972 Flood Black Hills Blizzard of 1949 Buffalo Fairburn Farming Hermosa Hillbillies Local History Minuteman Missile Program Minuteman Missile Site Prairie Dogs Ranching Rapid City South Dakota https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/af8c9511830c1aec1203045ec416d8e6.MP3?Expires=1792627200&Signature=fkmMoWMXffhhbRH4xI65Ty-DuUSg-YdUQVrvyDR56hbJAbZ1mHaGIY62xkRH9ogqf2MKhehtuJ2ENqVzrvfYVsdCpAiSOKzOwf-tqmxOMBN8nOsStphT4nOtrbdr2qtnxSk5FtUSb9TvqDyfkpeV%7ENstRJz42UFXw9ohi2MpL469YaMWoV-ovwMFIW41UR7Lbg74313llh2gYMxKb8HKIAovaelHUzVURhslK-SVjSz%7EAp8SvVtZTEfGVJ2xqDDyxkd0mcXXzH8qhhgOyB%7EBwKuZ-IvHhjy-7QRsmpVYyAOwqR3hCsfzhqpymmBdwx-dvY3mXzp6UJe1b0z3E3bnSw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e366c1298ca73abfe07f775a23bbd7b6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Duhamel audio pt. 1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/bea10563f7d2d8bdfdc51451aeeeed80.MP3?Expires=1792627200&Signature=f1j8hHEcQwOqFOeVOHSUCZ-kh49uvlEN5V9hm0bDOxWtzoJegex6KjY2LmR6vccG5JTyDTd7jNWcISIIerhZ4pAhT4L4HbqjDIlFA8krWLqvBJyf605dbubCG-JofmXgspvhhwn0tE2mCJbJtAe0FpOP8xjLUTPWBeyVtE4RJQ-v9cCbuGzYzehfF0jUGCE8pkiPCYInZoayhOxYtwB6LbeVA4-BmliZQeDdJQtT1xyq2cBkTKWU-mTXIcKRMKNnLFPRKEcCCRYheFBYXXbcFNP%7E493uBDsDOnR-aD7EFoi6sM6iMqtY19FDvpjJxF-hBQNkU-H-BZmKNRErbArt4A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM a47ebb7193e2be8fa53d51ca381b22e5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Duhamel audio pt. 2 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/a6ffa41cdfb11848251ca516a83d2383.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=GwFPNu1PUG%7EbESEEFW2yGBBmYhswO9qlPTJjD35JS3pVI65QJUUTATzXEx%7EgzWj%7EqPEMN7APrRrbAjBxpw--zKwoErIYYysgA%7E%7EPt2rhuIXrxD16gUR7YytFTDlOTZr1VXupZdjBkJyiA59Ctalfh3c-RafTyBegijbU1vokwEuU0R0wjKTsbV105qhBKqmNrcKJgH7Lu%7EopUn0Qydu45HZqAv4YsRI2ZdYot9FWiWOGPFGPZib9Hq4lf8RNCah-jZmP4Nk-z7xKfpQ-2ahUcYCkdjfJCQpVJemZjlh0CF5bpPTaHr0t2EgQ7gFEADspSv256OyEEptQyRIlkAQKww__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3b07361363369ee715bb8cfa202b5426 PDF Text Text Kim: The first Peter Duhamel came here from Canada. Bill: My great-grandfather. Kim: Your great-grandfather. Bill: It was about 1857, we think. Kim: Yeah. I remember that when he came, according to the book, he had just almost pocket change and he was a young man. He came from Canada and cut wood and was pretty industrious but that he almost had (incomprehensible) as Hugh Glass. I mean, he lived off the land in the wintertime. He ate wolves and whatever he could catch. Bill: The big problem was that wolves didn't eat him. Kim: Yes. Yeah. Bill: Actually, there's an interesting story there, about Peter Duhamel, or Pierre, 'cause he was born in Quebec, outside of Montreal. Probably...I've seen different places, 1838, 1940. My belief is its 1840, because we have a newspaper article that my sister Peggy got. She went up there to try to trace the family in Quebec. There's a story written about 1906 in French, and they're talking about the...I don't remember now...six brothers or five brothers, and he was like the third brother in that story. In fact, I've got...she made a plaque of the newspaper deal, at least the part of it that referred. It didn't matter if you worked backwards from that date, at its age it would've been 1840. That's why I believe that's probably it, but the thing is, he died in 1927, and in this last probably 10-12 years, he was an invalid. What people had, you know, a hundred years ago or so, is a good question. His first wife had died and so he remarried and he lived on 3rd and Kansas City St., and so when people came over to dinner, she'd say, "Well, she's fixing dinner. Go down and talk to Peter," or Pierre. There was a fellow who was a bookkeeper for the Duhamel Company. If you give me a minute, I can tell you his last name, because his grandson was connected with the School of Mines and still lives in Rapid City. But he used to go down and visit. Before he was the bookkeeper for the Duhamel Company, which owned this building and the store in those days, he'd been a reporter for the Spearfish 'Queen City Mail'. So when Peter died in 1927, he sat down and wrote some of the stories down. It's about...I've seen the manuscript...probably �60-80 pages long, typewriter, double-spaced. So I was out visiting my Grandma (Maybe?), that would be Peter's daughter-in-law, and this is about 1969. She lived out in the country by the cave, and I was telling her I wished I'd paid more attention and listened to some of the stories she told me when I was little. When I was a kid, I didn't listen to a lot of things. It came in one ear and went out another. Essentially, she went over to a desk she had and pulled open a drawer, and she had this manuscript. She said, "You could take this and read it, but I want it back." It's been a little mouse-chewed and there is a hole through the middle. Very brittle paper but had been rolled up, so if you held it, it rolled back up. I looked at it, and I had my secretary lay out an early, oh, what they called an IBM-something. It was an IBM electric typewriter and they had mag cards next to it, and you could type on the deal and on the typewriter to start on a mag card, so that you could make duplicates. Copies. So she went through the manuscript and retyped it. Occasionally she'd have to ask me, when we hit the hole, she couldn't figure out what word fit in there, you know. If I read the (incomprehensible), just what I thought there would be, 'cause it went all the way through the manuscript. Did that, and I made copies for the rest of the family and then gave it back to my grandmother. She died, then, two years later, in 1971, and nobody ever saw that manuscript again. I said, "Golly, if I hadn't gotten that, that whole story would've been lost." The deal, we sent to the South Dakota museum down in Pierre, you know, so they've got the full deal. That was the basis for the first two chapters of the Duhamel book. Kim: Okay. Bill: See, 'cause you know, they could dust quite a bit out of that. The longer length was this other article. Why do I always have a party at the Galit's house? Oh, ten, fifteen years ago. This fellow...oh, I can't think of his name now...he said, "You're my grandfather who has the same last name that wrote the story about old Peter Duhamel." I said, "Yes, I've seen it." He gave me a copy of the manuscript that he had found in there. It wasn't identical, but it was pretty close. It was a draft. The difference would be negligible. It turns out that I always thought I was fortunate that I got this from my grandmother but probably would've had another copy. But this was long after the Duhamel book had been printed. That was printed in '93. So forgive me time. Usually, about ten minutes from now, I'll think of the guy's name. Kim: Do you have plans to do anything with that manuscript? Bill: We just gave it to the state. It's in the library down in Pierre. Kim: Oh. �Bill: That's where it is. They all had access to it. If you read the first two chapters of the Duhamel book, which I think are the most interesting part of the book, that's my own bias, they were condensed from that. But the longer deal is there. Kim: Yeah, I know when he was writing that book, he actually went to Sioux City and spent some time there to absorb the kinds of feelings that your grandfather could have had, you know, weather-wise. Bill: Sioux City was a very small, little town, back in those days. You know, a few shacks, I think, down there. Kim: But it was a key jumping-off spot. Bill: Oh yeah. Kim: A lot of people going west. Kim: But did we say...I know that it's in the book, but for the recording, when did he arrive in the Black Hills? Bill: We believe, you know, and again, theorists sometimes get, but I think it was the summer of 1857. Then they went through the winter, and they drew straws and he lost and got the short straw. He ended up having to stay out here, 'cause they had furs that they were taking down the river to Sioux City, and he worked for Pierre Choteau in St. Louis. Was a (incomprehensible). If you know anything about St. Louis' history, Pierre Choteau was very big in the early 1800's in St. Louis. That's where Fort Pierre was really named after: Pierre Choteau. In fact, when I was in school in Saint Louis, they had Choteau Palace, which has different name now. It was a big old mansion, down there off of...this was the block of spring, the block behind Lindeau, which was a major East-West Street. So he didn't have a pistol or any firearms and he had to stay with the furs through the winter. In the book, they talk about how, you know, he's in a little tent and he'd hear the wolves outside, you know. He was worried about the wolves getting him, and he didn't have anything to go hunting with, so I think he had a knife and probably made some spears, you know, some things. That's an interesting story, and probably more details in the manuscript. �I should ask if you want that. My sector could probably dig it out and copy it. The full manuscript, because nobody gave it down to Pierre. I'd say the original, but we don't have it here. Kim: That way we could read that and mark it up and wouldn't have to worry about handling the original. But he was very young when he came here. Bill: Yeah, he was a teenager. He was about 17, we think. Kim: Yeah. I was thinking maybe even younger than that. Bill: He was like third. They were all boys, and he was like third or fourth. The custom was, you know, the oldest boy would get the farm, which they all chose--because the farm, basically, up in Quebec, would be a pile of dirt with rocks on it, you know, it was not the prosperous butcher. It's not like an Iowa farm. Kim: Right. Bill: And so he got enough money from his dad. He said, "Well, I'm going to be gone," and he took a train down to the Ohio River and then went by steamboat down the Ohio, around, up through St. Louis, caught on with Pierre Choteau, came up the river to Sioux City, and then from there, he started tracking around here. There was about six or seven young, French teenagers from Quebec in that group. Kim: And he didn't speak English? Bill: No. No, he didn't. In fact, even when he died, his first language was French, his second language was Lakota. Kim: Ah. Bill: Third language was English. They always spoke this kind of broken English with a terrible accent, but I mean you could understand him. He felt my dad was stupid because I was his grandson who could not �speak French. He called him Francois. "You're stupid! Can't speak Francois." It isn't anything about my dad, but this is on the side. As a kid during World War II, I could remember my dad...well, Pierre's my great-grandfather. His son, Alex, spoke Lakota, and then my dad and his brother, Peter, also spoke Lakota. Well, during the war, I could remember that when the police would pick up a Native American, for some kind of problem, and they couldn't speak English, (in those days, there were a lot more that couldn't speak English than today), they would call my dad to go down and talk to him and find out what his side of the story was. Then my dad would tell them, and then he'd tell the Native American what the...he was kind of the intermediate. I don't know he did it all the time, but I do remember that happening during the war, you know, so this would be early, mid-40s. Kim: Okay. Bill: I don't know any Lakota. It got lost with me. Kim: Then going back, your grandfather, if I remember right, wound up in Denver when Denver was a pretty young city. Bill: Oh, well actually, my great-grandfather, Peter, did. Kim: Peter, yeah. Bill: See, the other thing is, of that group of French boys, most of them intermarried the Indian women. He was probably the only one that didn't, and he went down to Denver and married a German woman, Katherine, but I can't remember what the German name was, who worked as a teenager on the Union Pacific Railroad. She was like a maid or something on the train, you know, she pulled the beds and cleaned up and everything. Then they settled in Denver. Denver, at that time, was a very, very small town. Peter, basically, was a fur trader, and he'd leave Denver to come on up into Wyoming and the Rockies and then over through the Dakotas. Then he'd take his furs...this is as he's older now, must've been a teenager more, he'd take it over into Ft. Pierre and send it down the river to Chateau. But then he'd, for the winter, he'd go back to Denver. See, every time he came back, there was a new baby, 'cause I think, again, there probably were seven children in that family, two boys and the rest were girls. The story, if you read it very carefully, about 1880, he had kind of a ranch or farm, whatever you want to be it, cattle, outside of Longmont, which is what, 30 miles from Denver? It's northeast. He and Alex...the story is, he and Alex, I can't believe the two of them, there had to be some other people too, drove a herd of about 800 head of cattle from Longmont up here to...they settled down on Battle Creek, south of Rapid City. I've got to go ask Ray Hillenbrand, because I'm virtually certain, because one of the �Peters...see, there's Peter, Pierre, the first one, but I had an Uncle Peter, and a brother Peter, and I've got a grand-nephew Peter. So Peter Duhamel runs all the way through the family, establishing who is who. Alex would've been a very young boy, I'm guessing 10, about 10. I don't remember exactly. He was older than my grandma, maybe. That was his wife. I can't remember how much longer and older. I could probably go out to the cemetery and find that one, 'cause I know where they all...My dad took me around. There's family in different sections of the cemetery, out there, but I know about where they all are. They settled on Battle Creek and _____, south of Rapid City. Well, they had a daughter. I can't remember. Her name was Katherine? Or was it Margarete? Margarete was another daughter. Anyway, they married John Horgan, and so that was the Horgan ranch, down there, which Emma and Amber set. I'm positive, since their mother was a Duhamel, that that really was the old, original Duhamel ranch, down there. That's the 777 that Ray Hillenbrand bought from the Horgan's, probably late 80's is a guess? I remember that they converted it to a Buffalo ranch. I remember Amber said that he spent most of his life on a horse, following the rear-end of a cow around. He was just glad to sell out and get out of the business. Emma was on the first national bank-board. Emma's was a little bit more proper. Amber's was a little bit more fun. Kim: I want to stay in that same time-frame for a minute. The other thing that I read about Pierre Duhamel at that time was that he had a wood contract. He was cutting wood for someone and drove, actually, one of the very first herd of cattle, if not the first herd of cattle, into Rapid City, from what I understand from working with Dale and other things that I'd read was that he had a knack for...He built his herd by trading, and he would find oxen that were lame and would sear their hoofs with a branding iron or a hot iron and make them sound again, and then he'd trade them and trade them for cattle. Slowly, that's how he built his herd. Bill: That was down at...see, the wood contract, basically, you know, 'cause he's a settler, he's starving to death as a kid out here, he was down at Ft. Laramie, and that was on the Oregon Trail, down there. He was buying the lame oxen, you know, from the settlers coming up, because they said, "its crazy old Frenchmen. They're going to die anyway." The Indians that showed him how to cure by burning the hoofs, whatever, and I have no idea what the disease was. I don't remember quite...the wood contract, that's what he was doing down there, just trying to get wood for the soldiers, but then he was using that to buy cattle. Kim: I think they were lame, probably, from travel. �Bill: Yeah, but the Indians showed him how to handle it, and he'd buy it and did something with hot irons. Yeah, he'd sear the bottoms of the hooves and it made them sound again. So that was pretty inventive. Kim: That's what I was saying, that could be pretty hazardous, too. Bill: Yeah. Bill: It might be, who knows? Kim: One of those... Bill: 'Cause you know Peter, Pierre, there, this is him up there. He was the president of the Pennington County Bank, which is where Neugebauers is now, if you look at the building at the top. That's the building after the first one burned down, but you can see the vault behind him. I've got the big picture of that in my office, but he was not 5-foot tall. Kim: Yeah, I know what you mean. Small. Bill: He's probably about 4'11 and very thin. Those days, you didn't eat a lot, just survived. But in fact, in the family, whenever there's somebody that's shorter, you say, "Oh, it's the Duhamel side of the family coming up." But Peter Heffron, he runs Sitting Bull Cave, and in family, he would be short. He's probably not that short. Peter might be 5'6, 5'7 or something like that, but say, "Well, it's the Duhamel side." My dad was only about 5'4. Kim: Oh, was he? Bill: Yeah. One sister's 5'4 and one sister is 5'2. Peggy, who's dead now. So there's a short side of the family, and then my mother was tall and that was the tall side of the family. �Kim: Okay. When he was in the bank, then he also got down to the cattle business here. Bill: Yeah, he was on the cattle business, actually, before the bank. Kim: Partnership with Quinn, and who was the other partner in that? I know they went to South America by cattle. Bill: Well, they went down to Cuba... Kim: Cuba... Bill: ...and lost their shirt. They were going to go to the cattle business. This was after early 1900's. About early 1905, is my guess. My dad said they went down there and they figured, you know, this was after the Spanish-American war. The United States was in Cuba, and they're going to make their fortune down there in cattle, 'cause there's no blizzards or anything, it turned out. There were other things that killed cattle that they'd never seen, up in this country. My dad said they're just lucky to get out with anything, 'cause they just...It wasn't the people, it was just the disease. They didn't know enough about how to handle it. That was in Cuba. I never heard that they went into South America, there's Cuba. Kim: Okay. I knew it was one of those countries. Bill: He did go down...Now, as I recall, he sold out of the cattle business. There's different versions. I think my dad always talked about the blizzard of '88. Somehow, if you read March or September, they talk about the blizzard of '86. Maybe there were two blizzards, who knows? Kim: I think '88... Bill: That's the one that my dad always talked about. �Kim: was the bad one. That was the one they called 'the Children's blizzard', where a lot of them never got home from school. Bill: But apparently he had had the cattle sold out before then and went back to Quebec. He kept word up there, 'cause he said, you know, he's used to being out here in the prairie or the pioneers and the frontier, and so he came back but he got out before, so he didn't lose the cattle. Then he came back and he went down to Texas. Again, this is based on what my dad had told me. I don't think this is in the book. But he got some longhorns and picked them up, basically, on handshakes. They had a big drought down there, drove them up, and unfortunately, longhorns had too much grow into the horns and not enough into the meat. They didn't do too well. I don't even know in Texas. Probably have the ceremonial ones or they didn't even have longhorns. I don't know, but anyway, my dad told me that he did it on a handshake and then went down later and paid them all off, you know. He said he'd come back. But that was the old days, when your word was good, you know, you just know your leases. Kim: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. What about the store? Bill: The Duhamel store? Kim: Yeah. Bill: Okay. The Duhamel store started as a hardware store over on St. Joe's Street, over where the beauty college is, between 6th and 7th Street on the south side. It was Ackerman & Duhamel. Again, I know some of the Ackerman's, but I don't know what the relationship all the Ackerman's. I guess that's something you could run down, too. And then Pierre, Alex, and probably Joe, was another brother, bought out and they changed it to Duhamel's. That was 1902. Then they built this building, which was built...probably took a year and a half, two years to build this building. My dad said he and his brother, Peter, who was older, used to play in this building when they were building it. You know, they'd be running around up on the nails and the planks and stuff. Then they moved over here sometime. There was a plaque down in the corner of the building and somebody went back and checked the...they looked and the Rapid City Journal couldn't find anything but I think they found the Gate City Guide and they got some information out of that, way back. In fact, you may have even helped on that when they were doing that plaque. �Kim: No, not that, but I know some of the research I've done in the past, I've run across big ads that ran in the Journal, you know, for singles. It was like china and clothing and dry goods. Major, major department store. Bill: Yeah, it really was a major department store Kim: Plus the (can't make out) division and so forth. Bill: In fact, back in October of 1929...Occasionally in a book, you'll see a picture of going out of business, of the Duhamel liquidation. What it was, back in '29, now Peter had died, and so Alex was not the business man that his father was. So they decided to get out of the store, and they signed the contract with Sears to sell the store and building to Sears. They sent it back by train to Chicago, where Sears Headquarters was, for them to sign it. Well, while in transit, the Great Crash occurred at the end of October, and Sears refused to sign it, at that point. 'Cause I asked my dad, I said, "What's the science liquidation, going out of business sale and everything?" 'Cause they believed, you know, they had a deal, and they'd signed the contract, but by the time it got back to Chicago, the Crash had occurred and Sears hit now. The store was in serious financial problems in the early '30s, then, and partially because my grandfather, Alex, was extending credit to everybody. Nobody had any money, and then he asked my mother, who then would be his daughter-in-law and was my dad's wife and they had two young children, Peggy and Peter. Peggy was born in '30 and Peter in '31. This would've been about '32 or '33. If she could come in and help. She was kind of a self-taught bookkeeper. She worked over on 7th Street for Hugh's Grocery Store, which...God. I met him. He retired out in California and I met him in the early '60s. He died out there. He's someplace down there where today is Silicone Valley. I can't remember his first name. She was about 14 and she worked there in the grocery store. Somebody showed her how to keep the books and then, basically, she just kind of did that. So she came in here to keep the books and found out that the bookkeeper was embezzling. Kim: Oh. Bill: She caught that, fired him, and basically, they ended up writing over $500,000 in bad debts off on the credit 'cause people didn't have the money to pay. They're buying harnesses and things like that. Fact, that old harness there we found in the basement. That was used at Mt. Rushmore. All the work that Gutzon Borglum did, all that leather work, was done down in the basement. That picture of Gutzon, there, that was done in the leather shop in the Duhamel store. Kim: Oh, where he was coming down the mountainside? �Bill: Yeah. Kim: Really? Bill: Yeah. Basically, they were just the old...you see the harnesses that they modified? Kim: Yeah. Hmmm Bill: They put boards in. They just notched the boards, you know, and so they weren't sitting on the leather strap. You're sitting on the board held in by the leather strap. I wish it would've had a fit, back today. Kim: Yeah, for sure. Bill: So what she finally did is she subdivided the building, because they had like a plumbing shop, a tin shop, they didn't have rattlesnakes. They had pet and things. The rattlesnakes were more for a tourist attraction than anything else. They had a few in the front window there on 6th St. They'd be in there, where people would go by and look through the window at them. The leather shop. It basically was general department stores, is what it was in those days. So what she did is, like Pete Melgrand was the manager of the plumbing shop, which I think also was down in the basement. So, she said, you know, "I'll sell you the business and then you rent from me." That's what she did. They had furniture, and the furniture, Sue and Tobin came in from Sharon, I think, someplace eastern South Dakota. They came in and set up. Where the quilt shop is today, that was Sue and Tobin, and then eventually they went over to build over by the Rose Market on St. Joe, there, west of, as we say, 8th Street. By subdividing it, that's how they pulled the building, basically the company, out of the red. On Fridays, they would leave $10 in the till for change. They'd take probably about $10 out to live on, and everything else in the cash register they took over to our doll at the bank, 'cause he had the mortgage on the building. My mother said, you know, he couldn't afford clothes anytime he wanted because they were basically behind, legally. She asked him about that and he says, "Helen, you're paying and most of the people aren't. I could probably foreclose the whole town and what do I have? A bunch of empty buildings." He said, "The fact that you're in here..." It took her 'till, I think she said about 1937 before she got the building paid off and they got out of debt, because in the early 70s, they were basically not in actual bankruptcy, but technically, they couldn't cover it. There's an interesting story there on the Pennington County Bank, probably since I've signed a lease here, I've got to be a little discreet, but the bank examiner came in. This was after the �crash. Examined the bank. It closed up 'cause they were supposedly in liquid. So, you know, most banks, especially in those days, they didn't have enough money to cover everything, so they had to foreclose everything they could. The people in the money had money in the bank, God I think maybe 82 cents or 94 cents on the dollar, eventually. I think a year or so. You know, as they liquidated things and got out. Now, the stockholders, like the Duhamel family, they lost everything. They got nothing. The bank examiner then went on the steps to make it that. To protect myself, I should probably leave it there. Kim: Was Pete Lenway involved in any of those operations? Bill: Not that I know of. Now, they knew Pete Lenway well, but I've never heard that Pete was involved with them or not. Kim: Okay. Kim: Do you have a family story of how you got into the saddle business? Bill: No, but they were in the saddle business, my recollection is, from 1902. I think maybe they were just servicing, finding work for the ranchers. You know, they needed tack, they needed saddles, they just didn't... Kim: Harnesses. Bill: Harnesses. They just kind of get into them. The saddles, I know. I took my dad, one time, to auction down at the Civic Center. They were auctioning off Duhamel saddles, and he looked at me and he says, "If I'd known the value of these things, I would've kept a couple dozen of them." Kim: Well, anything with the 'Duhamel' name on it at the auction is highly priced. I know they had some little kids vests that I've seen go to auctions and _____________and things like that. �Bill: This kid that used to stamp the _________down in the basement of the store that my dad and I used to go out to the 4-H, out to the fairgrounds, and when the 4-H people came in, we'd just give them out, you know. They were advertised more than anything, you know. I hadn't seen one of those in 60, probably close to 70 years. Maybe not quite close to 70, 'cause the late '40s, I remember doing that. I think the last one I saw at the auction went for what, $125. Kim: Is that's what's in the bottom right corner? Bill: Yeah, that's what. That's what. In fact, if you go down to the Coolidge statue, if you look at the back, there's the...Duhamel mark is on that. Kim: On the bronze? Bill: On the bronze. Kim: Oh, really? How cool. Bill: The Boy Scouts raised the money and gave that the Cal Coolidge. It's the Duhamel symbol. I don't know the history from there, but whoever did that statue traced it in the silver in Wyoming, someplace. Kim: John Lopez did the statue. Bill: Okay, well he went over there, found the deal, he took pictures, looked at it, and he saw the Duhamel mark that's down, back there. If you go down and look at whose statue, it's down there. It's on the back there. That was down at the basement of the Duhamel building, here. Kim: So it was just serving the market need, then, that they started making tack and saddles came in. �Bill: I think so, because I'm not sure they...they hired Mother Bakers, you know, because I don't know that Pierre or Alex knew anything at all. They were both cattlemen. Primarily, Pierre, and I say Pierre, we call him Peter, but just to distinguish from...he basically made his money in cattle, back in the open ranges. One of his classic sayings, this I get from my dad, 'cause he was dead long before I was born, was, "The only good sheep man is the dead one." 'Cause they had the open range, and when the sheep men came in, they started, you know, fencing it off, and that...so Grandma Maymies, that's my grandmother, her older sister, Maggie, married...well, he was Norwegian but he shortened his name. It's over in Wyoming. (Incomprehensible) thinks he got into sheep-ranching. So, my dad and his brother, when they were little, went down in the mountains by Laramie and spent summers with sheep, up in the mountains. So here's Pierre, who hated sheep-men, and his grandsons are working as shearing sheep, down in the mountains, there. Can't remember his name, but his name is on Independence Rock, over in Wyoming. You know where Independence Rock is? Kim: I've been by that. Bill: There's a bronze plaque. He was the Speaker of the Wyoming House, and they had a dedication back in the 20s. You know, they had the governor, but they had his name. My dad, when we’re driving by, one time, he said, "Let's go read the Independence Rock," and showed me. "There," he said, "that would be your great-uncle." The thing is, somehow, there's some relation between him being Speaker at the Wyoming House and Two-Pot-Dome. Again, that gets very vague, but we're talking about the early 20's and their whole thing over there, and the family that spent a whole lot of oil stock, floating through the family for years and years. I still have some. That came down from my great-aunt to her sister to her sister, it was my grandmother. Then my mother stepped in and said, "For God's sakes, don't pass that to butter myself," because you know, the government could come in, in those days, they'd just take a big whack around the state taxes and said, "Skip it and send it on to your grandkids," which would be my brother and both sisters and I. It was basically Standard Oil, 'cause right now I've got British Petroleum and Exxon stock, but if you trace back, I think they go up to that old Standard Oil, back there in the 20s. You know, 'cause then they had the trusts, the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, tried to break up Standard Oil. That was the real target. It took a while to get there, but that was breezy, that one, because British Petroleum, I think, Standard went into them and went into Exxon. Anyway, that all came from them. I've still got a sizeable chunk of stock, there, if I did. And this is after been passed down four, five times. Kim: That's interesting. I want to know about, and I'm not sure which sequence this goes into, but the Indian dancers in front of the store. The store, when it was more of a...well I remember first coming here in the 60s, and that was the first place we ever went, because I just loved that store. Bill: Although, when you were there, they didn't do the Indian dances. �Kim: No, no. They hadn't by that time, but it was, you know, you had Pendleton blankets that smelled like leather, and Billy Latin was working in there. Bill: Yep. He's my cousin. Kim: Was he? I didn't know that. Bill: Yeah. He was my mother's nephew. Kim: Okay. You just felt like you were home. I lived in Minnesota at that time, so this was all great to me and I always loved cowboys and Indians and all that. So then there was another story that had to do with the cave. Didn't Jacques Cousteau come here looking for blind fish? Bill: It was Jacques Cousteau’s son, but I can tell you that story's true. Peggy was appalled over that one. But let me go back on the Indian dancing. Probably, again, you know, the Duhamel's basically, partially because old Peter knew all these French families. You know, they intermarried. So, you know, they got along and they spoke Lakota, you know, and my dad, back in the '20's, used to go out in the Duhamel store wholesale, like camp stoves, and they went out around Western South Dakota, selling to little trading posts. You know, they'd wholesale stuff and then they'd sell it. In fact, he said down there, I think it was at Mission, he said he used to deal with the barkers and they always had this string of little kids around there. One of them, I doubt he was bald, my dad didn't know which one. He just said, you know. I know up at Red Owl... Kim: That is the __________of the TV personality? Bill: Yep. Up at Red Owl, I think the Kovarik’s were up there. They had a little store, and he used to go in there, you know, said, "Oh, yeah, I know those people." The fact is, he said he used to drive an old Model T around here in the '20's, so he'd be in his 20's, born in 1902. He said the first thing you learned was when it rained, you stopped, 'cause he said you weren't going to go anyplace because they didn't have gravel. If they're lucky, they had kind of a dirt trail, but he said once it got muddy, it's as if that old gumbo just came up. If you didn't stop, you're going to get caked in it and you're never going to go. He said he always would just kind of look around, seek out someplace, and he'd just take off and walk crosscountry. In those days, you opened there door, and, "Come on in, have something to eat." He'd visit �with them until it stopped and things dried up, then he'd go back in his car. He just drove all over in Western South Dakota, so he knew everybody. Because of the relationship, you know, with his grandfather, he really got along very well. He also could speak Lakota with all the Indians, although he felt closer to Rosebud in Cheyenne than Pine Ridge. He, for some reason, was more over that area. I think that's where most of the Frenchmen ended up, over there. Oh, the Indian deal. Okay, but because he knew all the Indian families, a lot of times, especially in the '30's, they were pretty well destitute. Actually, they were always destitute, but more destitute, I guess you'd say. So they opened the cave, the Sitting Bull Cave, which is South of town. It was _____________They owned that land and they clearcutted. Once they'd clear-cut the lumber, they had no use for it, and somebody told my Uncle Peter that there was a cave there. This had probably been late '20's, early '30's, and Peter and somebody else went out there. They went in, and there's a little hole they go in and then it drops off, and they took lanyards and ropes and went in and let themselves down into there. That's the original entrance to the cave. The cave now, they had a line through that, to get down to it. It's still awfully steep. So in the '30's, there was the beginning of the tourism in the Black Hills. Pretty skimpy, but you know, by today's standards it's nothing. In fact, my dad used to talk about the Bumblebee Highway. I think that was US 14. Kim: Black and yellow trail? Bill: Yeah, black and yellow. But they used the symbol of the bee and he said, you know, he used to go back and try to help promote that as a _________. You know, from, he said Milwaukee but in fact 14, today, comes out of Chicago. 14 went on up to Minneapolis and they came home from Minneapolis. Well, 16, stayed south, and then they'd now be at Wall. The old days, I think they had a place called Phillip Junction. It's where the Esquire corners went like that. So I think as a church promotion, and also to provide jobs for some of the friends from the reservations that had come up here for the summer, they set up an Indian camp, up south of town, where the cave is, but it's down in one of those valleys. Again, since we're recording, we do have to be careful about the valley, but there was a camp down in the valley, we'll just say that. They set up the Indian pageant, and they had that round building up there, which is now on the Historic Register as an example of a round barn. We never thought of it as a red barn, but anyway, that's a Public Classified thing. The Historic Register in it had the doors open up like that and then they'd hook it up so you'd hold them up so you could get air through. They had little bleachers, and that's a pretty small building. I can't imagine that many people, but they used to have Indian dances up there. So then they would come to town, and at night, guessing 6, 6:30, 7. In the fifties, I think it was about 7:00, but I think it's earlier when they had the pageant. This is in the thirties. They would have it out on the sidewalk, in front of the Duhamel store on 6th Street. Then my dad would, and actually my Uncle Peter was much more closely identified with the Native Americans. In fact, other than long, red hair, he kept on like the women out in the West, who identified as black, you know, 'cause if he didn't have the red hair, they would've though he was a Native American. But anyway, he would stand up on a little stool. Both MC'd the Indian dances, but also, invite the men, get on the wall. They had the story of Custer's last stand, and there was a painting, a very early one, so just like stick-men figures. Then they'd tell the story, and that's how they got the people in the store. Then they'd also say, tonight at 7 or 8 o'clock, whatever it was, a reasonable time, they'd have the Indian pageant out at 9 miles south of town, 9 miles to the Alex Johnson. It's up there in the hill. Then they discontinued the...actually, Peter died, I think, in August of '41. My grandfather, I think, died in December of '41. I can't remember which died first. I think Peter died first. He was only, like 41. Peter, my dad's brother, this is the Second Peter, �see that's why these Peter's get all mixed up. So my dad ended up doing that, since his brother was dead, and a carnival...what do you call those guys, they stand up, the honkers? Kim: Barker. Bill: Barker? Yeah. He explained to my dad how he was doing it wrong and he showed him how to do this, where you kind of talk out of the side of your mouth and bellow out. You could hear him all over the street. Like shouts and everything. So they stopped during the war, and then after the war, you started...in my recollection, they went into the early '50s, 'cause as a kid, I remember I got to pass the hat. What you did, you'd have all the people round, pass the hat around, people put money in, and then I would just take it and split it up equally among whoever of the dancers showed up. There was some consternation, because the women got the same amount as the men, which defied a number of people. Some of the men thought they were fancier dancers and they had fancy stuff, and they should be paid more, but that's not the way it went. By today's standards, it's worth a lot of money, but in those days, you know, they give you 10 bucks a night for probably 20 minutes' work. In fact, I think they used to have some wagons, horse-drawn wagons, and I'm almost...well, they used to use them in the parades. Oh, the guy that just died out by the airport. The guy that drove across...Stover? You know, the Story place, right at the base of the airport, Highway 44. He drove his pickup across an ice pond, and it collapsed and he didn't get out. Kim: Oh, I remember reading about that. Bill: He got some of those old wagons. He fixed them up, and they just gave them to him. I just remember that. They'd be all on their Regalia, they'd go through town on them. I'm trying to think of what they actually drove out to the cave. I don't think...'cause they had cars by then, and I don't think they'd take horses 5 miles out of town on the highway. 16 was very narrow and very hilly, back in those days. I had a good friend of mine, broke his back in a car accident down there, coming down that hill from the cave. If you look on the side, you can see where the old Highway 16 used to be. You can see the cuts. It's grown-over with grass, but if you look carefully, you can see contours. They didn't have the earth work equipment, so those days, you went over hills, not through hills. Sharp curves. Kim: Do you know, I've heard that Sitting Bull actually hunted in that area. How did the cave get its name? Bill: Really, I think, they took it after the old Chief Sitting Bull. But in fact, and the lore for the tourist, I think they said that Sitting Bull was there. Personally, I doubt that, but John Sitting Bull, I can't �remember, this was in the book. John Sitting Bull was a good friend of theirs. I don't think he was a grandson, I think he might've been a nephew or something. He was out there, and he's the one that, strictly speaking, that's where the name came from, was from John. Kim: Oh, alright. Bill: I heard a great story one time. I don't know if all of it's true, I like to think at least part of it is. There was a couple of, three men, I guess. They were from Minnesota. They were trappers, and they were out in the area in the 1870's, and the story is they were in that area where the cave is, and were captured by Sitting Bull because they were heading west towards the Big Barn. Asked them where they were from, and they were thinking really fast on their feet, and I think they said Fort Abercrombie or something like that. So the story was that Sitting Bull said, "Well, I caught you. Can't let you go, but go with us. I'm headed toward Canada myself, later on, and we'll just take you up there and let you go," and so forth. Then, when the Custer battle took place, these men were in Sitting Bull's camp, reportedly, and saw everything that happened. Got away during the night, when they were all celebrating and everything. So they would've been eyewitnesses to the whole massacre. I'd been trying to track it down. I found newspaper accounts of it, and I really think part of it, at least, is true, because when he got to, I guess it was Fort Abercrombie and then he ended up at Fort Snowing, and told the story to military authorities, he told things that if he wasn't there, couldn't have been known. His name was Ridgley. Bill: Okay. I have not heard the story. I have no doubt that Sitting Bull was in this area. Well, there was actually, at the valley where the cave is, I... Kim: No, I didn't either, but that was the story I heard that was how he wound up making his way there. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Duhamel transcript pt. 1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/0525ee69ad89e657e26a8223834125c1.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=D-TyksCLa%7EBcVW43yCyItqVQHwndXx982zqyWw3G4I8gdkTNJiWW8ISrI35a6eiSshD7ILHGWnuui0izmmya-BasfasOfOpU4MoQRhMInCzkeNYkpU2XeDej-xTjiKOfsLND1V7raJH9Sx2yWDvpamjpVPHC4mx41gPUI1irb953Eh1mE9cOQPujauz8gvDJv5%7EX6WfXcJTweeQZmIvyuwu2WEC96tf0892HcEU1xvQQOrTKaIulPjqrz2g1FoFOtR4Y-BGURLQTdHkXo2qmgSOLtFPHJgR1yddEoB0VKTzv0AMy-BsRz1CI4X0lr3dhfoQ%7E%7EI-vRxD7JWqbckDgoQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 30bbb87de87e0e59bf1ec1ff6eb0f7b3 PDF Text Text Bill Duhamel: Earl was a young man. My grandmother, Mayme, told me this story, and I can't tell you the exact time. It'd be back in the '30s, probably late '30s. Do you happen to know what year Earl was born? Kim Morey: No. Bill Duhamel: I don't, but anyway, the cave used to have a wooden teepee at the top, which was the ticket office. That's where my grandma, Mayme, used to be. She is, she's there with my dad. Then they had the round building, which was the...and then they had a wooden building, which was the store, and they had little..._______ is a strong term. They had kind of like a buffet, and they had pop and snacks and things in the little old gift shop, up there. So, some tourist drove in and said to my grandma, "There's a rattlesnake on the road when we came off Highway 16, coming up to the top, there. There's a rattlesnake in the road." So my grandma, Mayme, says to Earl, "Go out there and kill the damn rattlesnake." So Earl went down, and he didn't kill the rattlesnake. Instead, he captured it, and he put it in a wooden box and got just regular screen and put it over the top. Then he figured out, I think it was a nickel, he'd say to tourists, "If you want to see a live rattlesnake, give me a nickel." He'd go over there and he'd kick the box, and he'd start rattling and they'd look through the screen at it. He was fascinated by how the tourists were fascinated by reptiles, by snakes, you know. That was long before Reptile Gardens, and I'm positive, and Johnny's probably heard that story, but my grandma Mayme told me that. This was back, well before the war, so probably guessing '37, '38. The cave, I think, started in '34, I think. I think that is what actually owned the land beforehand, before they got everything going and they started running tourists. Kim Morey: Do you know, were people coming through here on the way to Yellowstone? Bill Duhamel: Yeah. The Black Hills was just a place for Chicago and Milwaukee, going through Yellowstone. Then Mt. Rushmore was the attraction... Kim Morey: Later. Bill Duhamel: ...that started pulling them off, you know, and I told people, I said, "In the long run, wait 'till Crazy Horse gets done." Now, I'm probably not going to see it when it's done, but I said, "That's just going to dwarf Rushmore." 'Cause, you know, I've seen pictures of Borglum's stone mountain, and everybody was always talking about that, and I thought, "That's nothing compared to Rushmore," so it's just, you know. In fact, I was thinking that environmental deal that Korczak would have to go through today. He'd never get it done. Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: The cave, basically, down at the bottom, there was a place where, you know, it's a live cave, and in especially wet years, it drips. The water goes down there, but there's a place, they call it 'the Diamond Lake', which would be...this table's probably bigger than the Diamond Lake, down there. It probably, might've been all of 3 feet deep at the time. It was kind of a diamond shape, and was probably three-fourths of the table. My dad would go out and buy goldfish at the beginning of the season, and dump 4-5 of them in the deal. Well, after a while, they kind of bleached, and it just went white. They weren't very big, and they never survived more than a year. He'd feed them when nobody was around, and I said, "They're the blind fish." So this wasn't Jaques-Gusteau but his son. He was caught falling off, after Jacques, I think it died. So he contacted, or whoever sent the police, contacted my sister, Peggy, �who's always worried about what other people thought, and said, "We've heard about this cave with the blind fish in the lake and we want to come down, with our scuba deal, and take a look at this." I think it was just horrifying. First of all, they're just goldfish, dumped in every, probably late-winter or so. Then secondly, I mean the police, saying, "Can I come down with the scuba deal?" That's the true story of the...in fact, the other interesting thing, probably, down in the Journey Museum, they have the famed, 'Duhamel Indian Collection?' Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: Well, there's two version of the famed Indian Collection. The one that, as a kid, I could remember, probably started before I was born, back in the '30s, but my dad knew most of the old Indian families around the region, and he said a lot of them were from down in Rosebud. The money, they would bring hand-made moccasins or leggings, something, and sell it to my dad. Basically, you know, they weren't looking for handouts. They (were) proud, you know, and said, "Look, I want to sell this to you." At the time, downstairs in my mother's office, she was the bookkeeper, she set up the top, and then my dad (incomprehensible) would be down by the cash register. Afterwards, each time, my mother comes stomping down the stairs, says, "Goddamn it, Bob, I told you! Don't want any more of that crap! Stop giving them the money!" They put some up on the side of the walls in the store, you know, some of the bigger pieces. Well, they used to sell trucks, at the Duhamel store, so in '85, when they went to close the store, after, roughly, 80 years, I said something to Bill Blanton. I said, "There's a lot of this stuff." He said, "Bill! We've got 7 trunks full of it, up in the attic!" Up above here. This is 7'3. There's an attic above the third floor, and it's dry up there. He said, "Yeah, we should fill a trunk up." Then I'd haul it up, stick it up there, then get another truck. All it was, is my dad was just giving ten, twenty dollars, whatever, you know, and he'd (say), "Bad idea." He wasn't collecting anything. He just knew that they needed money, and made a deal, turned up there. I remember, my mother was just furious. Always mad, because, "You haven't got money for that crap," you know. So then, when Art McCoy wanted to get the Journey, he came in and said that, you know, he'd like to get that in the new museum, which wasn't named the Journey Museum, just the new museum. So they did, and they had a guy up in Piedmont. Kim Morey: Jim Aplan. Bill Duhamel: Yeah. He did the appraisal, and I think he appraised it about $500,000, and they just donated it to the city. If they hauled it all back to New York, they probably would've appraised several million, you know, in New York. But you know, we didn't care, 'cause all it was, was a tax deduction. Yeah. That's about all it amounted to. Then you take a lesser deduction. You take it all in one year. You spread it over 5 years, you took more, but if you died, then you couldn't get it, you know. I asked my mother, "What do you want to do?" She says, "Oh, hell, I'll live more than 5 years. Take the spread it over 5 years." So they took $100,000 a year with their tax return, as deduction. That was the famed Duhamel collection, so I've always used that. Kim Morey: That's interesting. Bill Duhamel: My dad's name, you know, is Francis Alexander, F.A. Duhamel, but he had an aunt Francis, my grandmother's sister, was Francis, and he thought 'Francis' was a girl's name, and so he had his first cousin, Paul Bebeau, who said, "Well, get another name. Bard!" That's where he got 'Bard.' Then he had, if you look out here, on the picture out here, it's also on the cover of the Duhamel book, a little, turquoise tie, you know, that says 'Bard.' He has several of those, and basically, that's where it came from. Well, so most people didn't know the journal gets all mixed-up as to what his name was. They �have F.A. Duhamel, you know, 'cause he never went by...he signed the checks and things, F.A. Duhamel. The more interesting thing about it is, Paul Bebeau, his cousin, was a fireman. He was older than my dad, but he was a fireman in the Rapid City Fire Department. If you go over to the old firehouse, there's two plaques on the wall. One is Paul Bebeau, and he was killed, fighting a fire down here, by the railroad tracks. Then the bystanders called him, but he couldn't hear a thing in the fire, and the turned and the walls collapsed. The bricks came down on top of him. Kim Morey: Oh, gosh. Bill Duhamel: But he's one of the two firemen that died, back in the early days of Rapid City, and the plaque is still over there, on the firehouse wall. Kim Morey: Do you remember anything about, you had been too young, but remember, they had already been talking about the Pageant of America. Bill Duhamel: That one had...that was already built. Can you tell me any more about it? 'Cause it doesn't ring a bell to me. Kim Morey: Well, it was back in the late '20s, when they were starting Rushmore, and Rapid City, at that time, really wanted to get on the bandwagon and promote tourism, because Rushmore would bring a lot of people, here. So, at that time, they didn't have a Chamber of Commerce, they had a Commercial Club, I think it was. There were two things that they did that just totally amuse me. One was this Pageant of America. They though if they could have this tableau when people got here, before they got to Rushmore, and they would start with Louis and Clark, and the earliest history of the frontier. Then they would have all these actors, and everybody in Rapid City would have some role to play. They'd have a cottage industry and they'd have people making costumes, and these people would wear costumes to work, and they were supposed to be given, like, an hour off a day to go out and just troll around town. Bill Duhamel: I haven't heard that story. Kim Morey: Yeah, and it's up on Skyline Drive. They actually started an amphitheater, for it. Bill Duhamel: There was an amphitheater? Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: I remember just the amphitheater, but I've never heard the rest of the story. Kim Morey: Yeah, well that was it, and of course, it just ran into...they actually raised quite a bit of money, back east, but it just all kind of disappeared, you know. Bill Duhamel: I do remember, you know, there was a bunch of really big promoters, and I remember, after the war, they were trying to get the United Nations to come out. Kim Morey: You talked about that with Jung today, and that was his grandfather. �Bill Duhamel: Yeah, he was one of the early promoters. She had a tour bus, you know, it was a big convertible. Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: And they'd go around the hills, you know. In fact, Chuck Laws used to drive that. Kim Morey: Well, and the other thing they did, that just amazed me, and this was in the '30s, was that Al Capone was in a little bit of trouble in Chicago, and they wanted to get him out of Illinois, and so they heard, here, that he liked to fish, and they thought, "Wow, if we could get Al Capone in Rapid City, and people see him walking on the street, how great would that be?" They actually wrote him a letter. Bill Duhamel: I haven't heard that one. Kim Morey: And didn't know how to how to find him, but they addressed it to Mr. Scarface in Chicago, and he did get the letter. The governor, at that time, I can't remember who he was, and he said, "Over my dead body is he coming to South Dakota." But they actually did that, to promote tourism. They thought that would be a good deal. Bill Duhamel: There was something...you didn't talk about Bronco's being involved in the guy that parachuted on the top of... Kim Morey: George Hopkins. Yeah, we talked about that, a little bit. Bill Duhamel: Yeah, 'cause Bronco's B was one of the groups behind...I think they were the JZ's or something. That was what year? About '38, 39? Before the war. Kim Morey: I wanted to say it was a little bit later. I'm thinking...'42 sticks in my mind, somehow, but I don't know. Bill Duhamel: I don't think it was during the war, 'cause during the war, they... Kim Morey: Might've been earlier. Bill Duhamel: I think it was before the war, but Earl was involved in the planning. Those are the promoters, and I mean, anything to get anything. Kim Morey: Right.Yeah. A little history on that. I thought I'd like to put some together, someday, 'cause Bill Quothy has a lot of pictures, that Bruce Al took, of that incident. Bill Duhamel: Oh, was he? 'Cause I guess, I... Kim Morey: Yeah. He was stuck up there. Bill Duhamel: My brother stopped and visited with Bill, one time. Bill's older than my brother, but my brother was born here in '31, and he was here more of the '30s, '40s, then he was gone. He's a retired surgeon, now. He's back, either outside of Detroit or in Florida, so he's very dogmatic. Not always correct, but very dogmatic. Well, there were just a lot of things that happened here, and I think, maybe �we won't have time today, but the broadcasting, we haven't talked about any of the broadcasting. KOBH and KOD. Kim Morey :Yeah. Considering the hour, that's something we probably...I know your schedule is tough, but that's something I'd really like to... Bill Duhamel: Needs a separate timeslot. Kim Morey: Right. Well, that, and after talking for an hour and a half or so, you tend to get a little bit tired. Bill Duhamel: Well, see, the big thing is, is you've just got to give me the triggers. Kim Morey: Right. Bill Duhamel: You know, the triggers, I can tell stories, and just...There is one interesting story, which I did insist is in the Duhamel book. My grandma Mayme was in Owens, and her dad, Tom, their parents were from Ireland, and they had deliveries stapled up in Sturgis. This was about 1880, could've been 1879. Probably about the cemetery. Probably get the year he died, but lightning hit the livery barn in Sturgis, and it caught fire. He ran in and out of the stable to get the horses out, and the next day, he keeled over, dead, and they said he had a heart attack. Probably, with hindsight, he had smoke inhalation, running in and out of that deal, you know? It just got in his lungs. So, his widow had four kids, probably 10 to 5, roughly that age. And so basically, in those days, now, there's no social security, there's no pension, no nothing, and so she went down and homesteaded on what's north of New Underwood, the creek that runs along there. Is that Box Elder Creek? Kim Morey: Box Elder Creek. Bill Duhamel: The thing is, it was a stagecoach stop between Ft. Pierre and Sturgis, and Tom was the only boy. He would run out, when the stagecoach came in, and unhitch it, and then hitch up a new team, and you know, then he'd take the horses and brush and dry them off. Then, they took care of them, you know, so that the stagecoach, either way, would pick it up, there. This would be my great-grandmother; she would cook meals, and then sell them to the passengers, you know, some would want them, some wouldn't. They knew roughly about the time, but I know there was a daily station, so I don't know about that. That's how she survived. So then, the thing is, when South Dakota became a state, you had to refile for the land, but you had to live on it. There was a hired hand, and my grandma told me the story, I do not know his name, who'd lived there, you know, and helped. So he rode into Sturgis, because they're in Meade County, to file on the land, since he lived on the place, and take it. One of the neighbors, he told somebody, one of the neighbors saw him and he was just sauntering in from out there in Sturgis, said, "I'm going in to file on the land, you know, since South Dakota's a state, and you claim it." So the neighbor went and told my great-grandma. This is Mayme's mother, 'cause she's a widow. So she hitched up a puck-board, and Grandma Mayme was with her, and she about killed the horse but whipped it, all the way to get to Sturgis. She caught him, just at the end of Sturgis, and he didn't know she was coming. Grandma Mayme said he just went right by, and there's a little bridge over a creek, or something, a little wooden deal. She went over it and kind of ran him off the side, there, went in and filed on it. That ranch...Diadia. Diadia Owens, was her name. Back in the early 1900's, she sold that to the Miller's. It was Walter Dale's dad. So she had me take her out there, this was about '69, �she died on February 9, '81, no, '71, and she was 97. Good story, found out how old she was. But anyway, she wanted to see the place, and she told me, "That's where I met Walter Dale, the first time." Walter Dale, I remember his dad had bought this from Diadia Owens, and you know, like 19'2, 19'4, I don't know. I can't tell you when. Then she told me this story, you know, about how they got this deal. My grandmother probably got married into Alex in the late 1890s, in there. Then Walter Dale, you know, that's the first time I met him, long before he's even in the legislature, and that story, I just said, "I want that in there," you know, just because I thought it was an interesting story about the early days. You know, the widow who survived with four little kids, and the oldest girl, Maggie, she's probably the oldest of the children, is the one that married...I can't think of the name. He was the Teapot Dome guy, over there. Okay. So what else, besides the broadcasting, would you be interested in? Kim Morey: Well, I think it sounds like we're just kind of getting started on the family stories, so I think we could talk more about the developing of the store. Bill Duhamel: It's too bad you're not a few years earlier, when Bill Whiten was still alive. He died of pancreatic--no, not pancreatic--prostate cancer. Then Dorothy just died a year and a half ago. Kim Morey: I did a story on him for the Rapid City Journal, several years ago. Bill Duhamel: Was he still alive, then? 'Cause he could tell you... Kim Morey : Oh yeah, he was alive. Bill Duhamel: 'Cause he came to the store in '35, from down in Crawford. He was raised on a ranch, down there. His mother was my mother's oldest sister. Then he left. Right after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Marines. Was injured in Pearl Harbor, not during the attack but in a trading deal. Injured his back and the rest of his life, he had to wear a brace. He said he felt good there, riding a horse. So every Sunday, if he could, when he could, he'd get out and ride. Kim Morey: That store was his life, I remember at different times. Bill Duhamel: That's it. Bill Duhamel's beloved people sued. He was Bill Duhamel. Kim Morey: Oh, I see. Bill Duhamel: Those people see, that's Bill Duhamel. He's Bill Blanton, but in fact, you know, his mother, or his aunt, and he called my dad his uncle, you know, so I had an uncle. That's how the story closed, 'cause he came to me and he was turning around 70, he said, "I'm going to be 70, here in a year or two, and I'd like to retire. And so, give you a year or two notice, and see if anybody in the family wants to take over and run the store." 'Cause my mother got into broadcasting, that time, and we had a big family meeting, and I said, "Look, I don't know anything about retail, and I'm busy up here, so I don't have time to do it." It turned out, nobody else did, and so that's the story, and they had the big auction in '85 and they closed the store. I hated to see it go, but the store wasn't making money. My mother had me take her out to Kmart, probably in the late '70s, and she walked around. My mother was the buyer in the store, in the early years, and she said, "Kmart is selling things cheaper than I can buy them, wholesale." And she said, "You know, we rely on service loyalty. In the long run, price will win. We cannot survive." That was just part of the thing that led to...Bill wanted to retire, then the store closed. �Retailing's a rough business. I mean, you see Macy's going into bankruptcy. I mean, if Sears was in trouble, I mean it just goes on and on. Kim Morey: Yeah, loyalty isn't there, anymore. It seems to be gone, forever. Bill Duhamel: The way she, at the store, she had a very good...she could buy right, but also, she had a sense of taste. She's the one that brought Pendleton in, but a part of the deal, when she brought it in, is, "I'll have an exclusive in Rapid City." And she said, "I'll use the radio and the TV to advertise it," and she made a deal with American Tourister, and what's the other old luggage? Kim Morey: Samsonite. Bill Duhamel: Samsonite. She was the only one in town, but later on, you know, little by little, she lost all the exclusives. Rapid City grew, and her volume wasn't that big, anymore. At the time, you know, when she was opening it up, at that time she did a lot of stuff. She just brought things in. She'd go to Chicago or New York as a buyer, and could spot things, and then would make a deal. Kim Morey: That's what Kay did, up at Mt. Rushmore, too. Bill Duhamel: Yeah. In fact, Kay said that my mother helped her, 'cause my mother's older than Kay. My mother was born 19'4, and Kay, I'd guess at least 10, maybe 20 years younger. But Kay said, when she was married to Carl, that my mother would give them a lot of advice on the retail in the stores and what to buy, and stuff. I thought Kay did a good job, up there. Kim Morey: Beautiful place. Bill Duhamel: On the stuff that she did, you know. It's not all the t-shirts and junk that's there now, but that's... Kim Morey: It sure represents South Dakota, though. You were just probably came out of there, and it looks a little different, these days. Bill Duhamel: But you see, a lot of these people I knew, just kind of passing. Kay was always cordial. You know, it's just like, well, Markham Reedy. Do you know anything about who Markham Reedy was? He came out here later, but he was the IRS guy in town. I knew him as Mister, and his wife, I should know this one too. Anyway, I called them Mr. and Mrs. Reedy, and they lived a block away from me. I grew up on the corner of 8th and Columbus St., which is where the bank is, now, the community bank. There used to be two little houses, there. Anyway, they had one child, who is now my wife. In fact...Jenny would kill me if I can't tell you her mother's name...'Cause I always knew her as Mrs. Reedy. Now, she knew who I was, but you know...So, growing up, you know, in fact, when I came back...Now I was gone for 15 years...I don't want to get in too far. When I came back, people knew the name, but they kind of forgot who I was, because my brother and both sisters were both redheads, and I had dark hair. I had the color of hair that fleet has. Mine started turning gray, like my dad's, when I was 21. They just couldn't place me, 'cause they thought of the Duhamel kids as the redheads. Here's this kid, with...who's been gone for 15 years. I remember, I knew Art Dahl, and a lot of those old timers, you know, but they were kind of...we're talking about two generations older, but I was just kind of 'around them', you know, what you'd call 'good friends' with them. �Kim Morey: That's another thing that I'd like to touch on, I think, when we get together again, is some of those people you did meet, and what you remembered about them. Bill Duhamel: Well, let me tell you. I do have one good story, for you. This is, oh, I can't tell you when, but my dad, they decided, was going to get the Black Elk award, you know, for tourism, promotion tourism. In the 20s and 30s, he really worked hard on that. So they said, at first they were going to surprise him, so they said, "We'd like to get a video of him." So on New Year's Day, I had Helene, and we had a family dinner, over at the house. So I said, well, Helene said, "I'd like to record some of your reminisces about the family and that." So she asked him how he'd met my mother, you know, a little bit of that. Then I said, "See, you're pretty good friends with Black Elk." Said, "Oh, yeah!" he says. "Yeah." And so he starts talking about Black Elk. Kim Morey: Are you talking about Ben or the older...? Bill Duhamel: Nick. Kim Morey: Nick is the older... Bill Duhamel: Nick is the older one. But what it was, see, he's talking about Nick, we knew, and that's Ben's dad, and he was the spiritual. The thing is, and he's going on and on about Nick, what a great man he was, and Nick was out at the cave and the deals with his wife, and Ben was out there, too. So when I finally figure out he's talking about Nick, I switched. I said, "Tell us about Ben." Says, "Ben! Good old Indian. Got in the fire water a little too much, but he says he took care of his parents as they got old, you know." You know, 'cause Nick was going blind, and he says, "He did take care of them, but I didn't think that for the Black Elk award that he'd be qualified to hand them out. He got fire water a little too much." There's another Ben Black Elk story, too. Ben Embrose-Horgan, his mother was a Duhamel, was my dad's first cousin, and Embrose was probably 7-8 months older than my dad, and Ben was probably a year, year and a half older, but growing up, they knew each other. So Embrose, you know, had the ranch down there, which is now the Triple 7. One day, he's out riding, you know, and checking the cattle, and he says, "Somebody cut the barbed wire fence. You can see from the tracks. They took our cow and a calf." So he goes back in, gets on the phone, rings it up there in the party blind, calls the sheriff over from Custer County. Says, "Somebody stole a cow and calf from me." So, the sheriff drives across, through the park, over to the ranch, and Embrose has a horse saddled, and they go out and they start following the tracks. They come along, and it's Ben! Ben has the cow and calf. Embrose says, "Ben! What the hell are you doing? If you had asked me, I would've given it to you!" He says, "Embrose, I knew that! That's why I took them!" Then the sheriff said, "What are you gonna do?" Embrose said, "Well, I'm not going to prosecute Ben. As far as I'm certain, there he is! The sheriff's furious. He drove across the mail to get there and then rode out, 'cause out there, and I can't remember whether my dad told me that or Embrose told me that. One of them told me that. I used to see Embrose over all kinds of places. Embrose was full of fun. Emmett was the straight-laced one. Kim Morey: Was it true Ben Black had a wig? Bill Duhamel: Don't think so. Remember, when you used to be up at Mt. Rushmore, if he had his damn good one, you know, 'cause the way his hair is pulled down. Kim Morey: Yeah. Right. �Bill Duhamel: I don't know, and my dad never mentioned it. Kim Morey: Okay. I had heard that. Bill Duhamel: But, you know, when Eileen was a little girl, we were out visiting, she might have been 3. We were up at Mt. Rushmore, and Ben was up there, and I said, "Let's go up and see the Indian there and talk to him. She goes up, and Ben says, "What's your name?" She says, "Eileen Duhamel." So he sits down on the_____, you know, on one of the _____, and puts her on his lap, and he starts telling stories. After it, she says, "He knows grandpa! He knows grandpa!" I said, "Of course he knows grandpa!" See, I didn't say who he was, in that. She was very impressed. This had to be about '65, and she was born in about '62. May have just been '66, 'cause she would've been 3. She's probably 4, but she was just impressed about the nice Indian and that, and how he knew Grandpa Bud. Kim Morey: When Telstar came on the scene in the early '60s, Ben Black Elk was the first face on Telstar to go around the world, imagine that. Bill Duhamel: I could believe that. You know, there's a whole another story about 'cue the buffalo', that's related to that. Kim Morey: I haven't heard that one. Bill Duhamel: You have or haven't? Kim Morey: No. Bill Duhamel: It's a true story. This is a true story. Mike, the guy I had lunch with, was there, but they were doing the Telstar, and the thing is, they had a very tight window, because they weren't using the satellite on the first one, it just went around the world. So they picked something up, and they had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, from Salt Lake, up at Mt. Rushmore, sing. I don't know if it was 'America the Beautiful' or what it was. CBS was in here, and they had the buffalo, down at Custer State Park, and they wanted to show the Buffalo. They were going to have the stampede, you know, they're coming over the hill. They went through our control room, up here, you know, this whole thing, 'cause this is where the...and they had to use AT&T microwave, 'cause they didn't have satellites, and they didn't have cable, or anything yet. So the guy in New York says to the control room, up here, "Okay, cue the buffalo!" Fortunately, the buffalo, they had it running. I think they only had about a 24-minute window in which they could hit the satellite, while it was going by. They had them running, and it wasn't much after that, the buffalo came over the hill, and that was the famous saying. That's been in several books. Kim Morey: I hadn't heard that one. Bill Duhamel: Bret Bandeheist, about the story of "cue the buffalo." Moni was probably just in the camera, was up in the studio, at the time. Kim: It's kind of like, "Cue the thunderstorm." Bill Duhamel: I remember the story. This was in the Rapid City Journal, years ago. I can't remember. It was the farmer from Iowa that stopped in Custer State Park and wanted to get a picture of the buffalo, but is facing the wrong way for the sun, so he goes up and slaps it on the butt, you know, to get its �attention. The turn. Now, he's probably used to a cow. The buffalo spun and hooked him in the belly, with his horn. Kim Morey: Oh wow. Bill Duhamel: He didn't die, but they called him into the hospital, 'cause the horn would've been a neat incision, but it just...we always joke about the Iowa farmer. Get the buffalo's attention, he did that. I remember that story in the Journal. I came back in '67, so it would've been after '67. Kim Morey: I remember it was in the 90s, there were two people killed, one summer, down in the park, that got too close and just thought they were big cows. Bill Duhamel: Well, sometimes, they're pretty peaceful. You're always very respectful around the buffalo. Kim Morey: Yeah. When the tail comes up, it's time to go. Bill Duhamel: In fact, my brother went to Georgetown, Undergraduate, and there's one of the bridges, I think it's in Rock Creek Park, and they have the buffalo statue, by the end of the bridge. But the tail's up. My brother said, "There's either two things. The tails up, either it's gonna charge or it's gonna do something else." Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: He just made the joke about...and then, the people back at Washington had no idea what he was talking about, but the Buffalo with the tail up, back there. Kim Morey: Crazy stories. Bill Duhamel: Well, there probably are. Just a lot of them. Most of these stories would be, basically, something that somebody told me. It's like, Ben Black Elk. I believe it's true. I've had my dad being halfIrish, taking a good story and making it better. Kim Morey: Well, see that your schedule is going to allow enough time. Kim Duhamel: Oh, contact Sharon again. Bill Duhamel: Yeah. Sharon's around. Sharon disappears. She was my secretary for 26 years, and then decided that she wanted to retire, just 'cause she turned 70. I said, "That's no big reason." So she both here, and she has a place, a small fixer-upper in Phoenix, that her daughter's a flight attendant. Basically, they bought this place really cheap, when the prices were low. So she went down there, and then she's got it all fixed up. Her daughter stays there quite a bit when she flies through. She's not based there. She's based out of Charlotte. But Mason's headquarters are down in Phoenix, and she's like the number 4 flight attendant, in terms of seniority, so therefore, she's a mucky bucket among the flight attendant, whatever that's worth. Then she kind of got bored, and I think, also, the 150 degree summer days. George is still here. George has his horses. So anyway, she came back, so I made a deal with her, that if she comes back for a couple of weeks, like during the winter, I'll pay a round trip on the Allegiant, and then she catches me up. She knows where everything is, and then I call her up. If I'm looking for �something, she tells me, "Second cabinet, third drawer from the top, three-fourths of the way back." She knows exactly where everything is. Kim Morey: Oh wow, that's scary. Bill Duhamel: So she's cutting back for the summer, and she'll be with me, probably, the early fall. Then I think, you know. She and her daughter travel a lot, too. Kim Morey: Okay. So I can...I should be able... Bill Duhamel: Set something up for her. Yeah. Kim Morey: Yeah. Okay. Bill Duhamel: She's easier to get ahold of than I am. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Duhamel transcript pt. 2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rapid City Public Library Description An account of the resource Oral Histories recorded for the Rapid City Oral History Project by Rapid City Public Library Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bill Duhamel Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Kim Morey Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 53:56 Location The location of the interview Rapid City Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview: Bill Duhamel Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06-24-2015 Subject The topic of the resource banking, Black Elk, Black Hills, buffalo, cowboys, Duhamel family, Duhamel Saddle Makers, Duhamel store, fur trading, Journey Museum, Lakota, Independence Rock, news broadcasting, Pierre Choteau, ranching, Rapid City, Sitting Bull Crystal Cavern, South Dakota, South Dakota State Library, World War II Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource signed release to Rapid City Oral History Project on file. Description An account of the resource The Duhamel family has a long history in the Black Hills dating back to Bill's great-grandfather's arrival in 1857. Bill Duhamel shares many stories with a sense of humor. Topics include Duhamel Trading Post, Sitting Bull Crystal Cave and numerous family relationships with others in the community. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://catalog.rapidcitylibrary.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=289847 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rapid City Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rapid City Public Library Language A language of the resource en Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rapid City Public Library Historic Rapid City Rapid City Library Foundation Banking Black Elk Black Hills Buffalo Cowboy Duhamel Family Duhamel Saddle Makers Duhamel Store Fur Trading Independence Rock Journey Museum Lakota News Broadcasting Pierre Choteau Ranching Rapid City Sitting Bull Crystal Cavern South Dakota South Dakota State Library World War II