Veblen, South Dakota (arrival)

I almost don’t want to title this blog “Veblen, SD”.  It is the town I grew up in (except for that month in 1984) and just one blog with that name seemed painfully inadequate.  Still, as I’ve been documenting the journey taken back then, each destination was mentioned in the title.  So, rather than change it now, I’ll press on.

My mom wanted to get an early start in Big Springs, Nebraska.  I’ve never been much of an early riser, and even in 1984 I was tough to wake up.  My mom was able to get me up and at ‘em, and back to the eatery by the hotel where we had supper.  I’m pretty sure I had some kind of cereal there, and my mind tells me it was either Special K or Rice Krispies.  I’m not sure what my mom ate, but I’m guessing it consisted mostly of a cigarette and black coffee.  I don’t remember much of what she ate on the trip at all, and that probably isn’t too surprising.  What kids make a note of what their parents eat?  I was so very tired, and I didn’t want to be up and at ‘em at 5:30 AM.  My mom was eager to get going, and she told me I could sleep in the truck as we drove East.  So, I arranged the seat-belt in such a way that I could get some sleep.  I must have slept most of the morning, but it wasn’t a restful sleep.  What seemed like every few seconds, a semi truck shot past us.  My mom isn’t exactly a slow driver, but she’s no lead-foot either.  For a few hours, I would sleep and occasionally open my eyes to watch a truck fly by, and usually gone before I could see what it was carrying or what was written on the side.  It was on that drive that I think I most wanted to be a truck driver.  They seemed to be moving so much faster than we were, and they had someplace to go that may have been totally new to them.  This drive was nothing new to me, as the rest of the way was already road I knew.  My wife hates the fact I’m always looking for new ways to go places, or that sometimes I want to take a bit of a scenic route.  She’s all about getting from point to point quickly, where I like to see things I’ve never seen before on the drive.  That might be the topic for another blog another day.

I gave up trying to sleep around 9 AM or so, and not too long after that we rolled into North Platte.  I double checked the map, and told my mom what road we needed to get on to head North to South Dakota.  The drive North was a lot more scenic than the previous several hours on the Interstate.  I remember quite a few more trees popping up, and some twists in the road.  My mom’s mood had changed slightly as well.  Rather than being worn down and pensive, she seemed happier and more focused on the destination.  Once we crossed into South Dakota, my navigation had its first challenge.

We drove North to Interstate 90, and then we had to drive Eastward again.  My mom was suddenly annoyed with me, as she thought we were much closer to Pierre than I had let on.  I insisted this is exactly the way my brother had taken us, and that Pierre wasn’t that close to Nebraska (the town is practically in the middle of the state).  This back and forth went on for a few miles, until we hit the Pierre exit.  She thought that Pierre was going to be right off the exit, but we still had 30 miles of driving before then.  She was mad at me, but I insisted on pleading my case.  Eventually, she dropped it and said something to the effect of “well I just misunderstood you” or something like that.  30 miles of grassland and a few hills later, we pulled into Pierre, South Dakota once again, and I talked her into stopping at the Red Owl Superstore.

The Red Owl Superstore is one of my favorite places of all time to go to.  Some of my first memories of wide aisles of toys, Charles Schulz books on the shelf, and elevator rides were at the Red Owl Superstore in Pierre.  It seemed to have everything that Stavig’s in Sisseton didn’t, and it had an elevator, which gave me that big city feeling.  Every trip to Pierre when my brother lived there wound up at the Red Owl Superstore at some point.  I still have my die-cast Millennium Falcon that my parents bought me, along with a few Peanuts books.  The store is still there, but since Red Owl faded away it has become a store called Dakotamart.  I’ve been there a few times, and it’s mostly the same.  It doesn’t seem as impressive or magical anymore, but it still demands I go to it every time I’m in Pierre.

Anyway, back in September of 1984 I was in the Red Owl superstore, and I was looking for a new Star Wars figure.  I was all about Star Wars action figures then, but I should have seen the end of that hobby coming fast.  Jedi had been out for a year, and it wasn’t the same since most of the bad guys were dead, and the rebels had won.  I didn’t find any Star Wars figures, but I found something better.  Something I didn’t know I wanted, but I knew I wanted it when i saw it.  There, on the shelf, were Optimus Prime and Megatron.  I’d seen a few commercials for this new Transformers line here and there, but I’d never seen them in a store, and they looked so freakin’ cool it hurt.  I wanted both, but I couldn’t have both.  It turned out that at twenty dollars a robot, my mom didn’t have the resources to buy me either.  I was usually a pro at twisting my mom’s arm into buying me toys, but she just didn’t have the money.  I remember going back and looking at her, but her tired face kept telling me no, even though I knew deep down she wanted to say yes.  I wonder if she was thinking about the past month of uprooting ourselves only to try to replant ourselves back in Veblen after giving up on New Mexico.  Maybe I’m just assigning what I’d like to think she was thinking at the time.  I think a more realistic thought in her mind was “hurry up, I want to go home.”  So, Optimus Prime and Megatron would have to wait to come home with me.  I’ll never know what became of the two in Pierre, but I found mine in Wahpeton, North Dakota and Sisseton, South Dakota.  My mom was willing to buy me an action figure, since she had about five dollars to spare.  There were no Star Wars figures in stock, but there was one action figure of equal size left.  All alone, on the shelf by my mom, was Cobra Commander from the G.I. Joe line, in all his original chrome dome glory.  Anyone who knows me knows that while a big Transformer fan, I’m more a G.I. Joe fan.  I started my G.I. Joe collection about a year or so later, thanks to WGN showing “The Revenge of Cobra” and my luck in finding a Zartan figure.  I decided that I’d rather go home with nothing if I couldn’t get Optimus or Megatron, so Cobra Commander didn’t find a home that day.  I eventually found several Cobra Commanders for my collection, but no original ones until I got a lucky bid in on eBay about six years ago.

Looking back now, it is a bit odd that on my way back home, I had a chance to prematurely embrace the two toy and cartoon lines that I would be a fan of to this day, and that my enjoyment in making up stories for them would allow me to eventually make up stories for role playing games, which led me to making some of my best friends, which led me to come out of my shell more, which led me to take chances…which in a way led me to meeting my wife.  Maybe that’s taking it a bit too far, but for the sake of making that trip to the Red Owl Superstore overly important, I’ll say it isn’t.

The drive from Pierre to Veblen was a total blur.  My mom and I were ready to put an end to this month long experiment.  I wanted to get back to my friends in school, and I’m sure my mom wanted to get back to her boyfriend (and soon my step-dad).  Our house was being looked after by a dear old friend, and I was already dealing with the fact I’d never see my cat again.  We took her out to a farm because she couldn’t go with us, and she’d ran off sometime between us leaving and my mom deciding to come back.  Part of me wondered if anything in Veblen had changed, but nothing in Veblen ever changed back then.  We rolled into our old driveway, keyed into our old house, and decided to unpack the next day.  Just like that, we were back and like we had never left.  It was almost more like a vacation than a move, but it was no vacation.  It was an experience I’ll never forget, but one I didn’t think about much for a long time.

Now that I’ve recounted the journey to and from Farmington, New Mexico, there’s the matter of what to do with this blog.  I’ll work on that for the epilogue, as I hope to do one more blog about going back to school, and how things did change in the following weeks, months and years.  Plus, I’m hoping to find time to reread everything I’ve posted in the last few months, and figure out how to bring this story to a proper close.

things left unsaid, places not visited, and in between a grocery store

Over the weekend Kate and I went to visit my mom in Veblen, and while the thought of asking her about Farmington was in my mind, it wasn’t coming out of my mouth. It was the first visit in months, and before I went home I made my first visit to my father’s grave in at least a year, and my first visit to my grandparent’s grave in at least five years. It left me in a melancholy mood for the majority of the visit (more on that is at the bottom of this post). Asking about Farmington didn’t seem like a major priority, so I decided to skip it on this visit. Mom is a feisty 75 year old, so I’m hoping she makes it a long time yet.

Since I didn’t get any further insight on Farmington from her, I go back to the visitor guide. Page twelve is a throwaway transition page to “local attractions”. I don’t remember seeing many of those in the month I spent in New Mexico. In fact, the only attraction I remember is a grocery store. I don’t remember what it was called, or where it was, but it was very different than what I’d grown up with. Nelson’s Grocery (now Grobe’s Grocery) in Veblen was all of maybe five short isles to walk through. Gordon Nelson was always a friendly face, and all of the cashiers knew everybody by name. On the occasion we bought groceries in Sisseton, Britton or Lidgerwood to visit a Supervalu, Red Owl or Jack and Jill, the store grew by leaps and bounds, mainly in the produce section. This grocery store I remember because it blew my mind. I think every grocery store in Veblen, Britton, Sisseton and Lidgerwood could have fit in it, maybe with some Tetris-style stacking. The shelves were metal, and they sprawled up to a very high ceiling. I could be wrong, but I remember the floors and walls and ceiling either being a dark blue, gray or even black color. They had every kind of cereal I could imagine, and a bunch I’d never heard of. Even the part of the store that had toilet paper had stacks upon stacks of the stuff. I can’t remember the toilet paper section at the Veblen store even having more than two kinds. My sister-in-law took my mom and I to this store, and it was almost too much for my small-town brain to take in. While I was taken in by the size of the store and the heights of its ceiling (and stacks) my mom’s attention diverted to the prices. She couldn’t stop talking about getting four big bags of groceries for twenty-five dollars. I don’t think those four big bags lasted us the rest of our stay, but I don’t remember going to the store any other day during my stay. I found reminders of that store several years later in Wahpeton, North Dakota (and also Aberdeen, South Dakota) and a chain called Econo-foods. Those stores also had the idea of tall ceilings and a lot of stacking (and probably still do, but I’ve not been to one in years). I sometimes would find myself wandering around the Econo-foods in Wahpeton for no reason, other than it reminded me of the day a grocery store blew my mind.

Page thirteen begins to break down all the local attractions, none of which I saw while living in Farmington. If I had my current brain then and had still missed them all, I’d be really cross. Instead, I understand that at the time I probably wasn’t interested and I wouldn’t have appreciated things like the Angel Peak Scenic Area, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Shiprock Pinnacle, Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, Mesa Verde National Park, Monument Valley, and of course the Four Corners Monument (which takes us through page twenty-three). My brain was content to live in a Lucasfilm world of its own design, along with adjusting to a state that might as well have been a planet that the Millennium Falcon crashed on. If I ever have the means and time to visit Farmington again properly, I think I’ll need at least a week if not two to see everything that was just a hop, skip and a jump outside my doorstep. Maybe I could do a second thirty days in New Mexico?

Lord and lottery willing maybe. I just hope I can find that grocery store, or at least where it used to be.