Shameful Memories, a retrospective by L. Paul Schneider

Many people have avoided our class reunions. I often wonder why, but also in my heart know why for some. School days were not pleasant for some kids. As a Clinical Psychologist, I have heard many of the stories of folks whose lives as kids were hell. Today, we hear

L. Paul Schneider

these stories on the internet and mainstream media every day. But back in our school days, those things were not talked about.

How many of our classmates were beaten regularly by a parent? How many were sexually abused by family or friends? How many were told how worthless, ugly, stupid they were? How many were neglected?

My shame comes in when I recall kids that were bullied, called names, taunted. I tried not to participate; but I did not intervene, either. Those kids have never shown up for a reunion. And as I have learned, often the bullies were themselves abused at home. Many of those kids have not shown up, either. Yeah, I can rationalize that we were “just kids”, that I was a scrawny runt, that it was “none of my business”, and that I, too, had been bullied. But that regret, guilt, and shame for that lack of courage in not standing up for those oppressed kids does haunt me.

My dad and mom had a strong value for our family of “Do the right thing.” I did let them down at times. But I also have devoted my adult life to trying to do the right thing, standing up for the oppressed, the down-trodden, the poor, the mentally ill. In many ways, I am trying to make up for my cowardice as a kid. ( Hopefully, that will reduce my sentence in Purgatory!)

If any of you who were targets of the bullying in school read this, my sincerest regrets and apologies. I do remember you, and pray for you. If you can find it in your hearts to forgive those of us who bullied or were complicit in it, I would be most grateful.

And, I would encourage you to engage in our reunions and dialogues, such as this medium. I did talk to one of my bullies at one of our reunions, not in anger, but simply brought it up. That person sincerely apologized, heartfelt. That was very healing to me, and holds a special place in my memory today. Having put closure to that dark period, I can smile now when I think of him.

As a final note on this gloomy subject, I encourage all of you to stand up for those who don’t seem to matter. The invisible ones. The persecuted ones. The helpless ones. Those without a voice, or little voice. The marginalized ones. As Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Aberdeen's Auditorium Opened November 1938

What do all of the people below and the Aberdeen CHS class of 1966 have in common?

Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gene Autry, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jesse Owens, Ted Williams, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Nat King Cole, Neil Diamond, Kingston Trio, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Dolly Parton, John Denver, REO Speedwagon, The Carpenters, Three Dog Night, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Charlie Daniels, Ricky Skaggs, Paul Revere and the Raiders, B. J. Thomas, The Lettermen, Gary Puckett and our very own "The New Group."

The opening of Aberdeen’s new auditorium in November of 1938 gave the city a place to host large gatherings for the first time in 36 years after a 1902 fire had destroyed the Grain Palace.

In 1934 the American Legion urged city officials to consider building an auditorium to make Aberdeen

Aberdeen Grain Palace 1883

more competitive as a convention site. In 1935 city officials prepared a Public Works Administration (PWA) application for an auditorium; it was denied. During the next two years, local officials worked to keep hopes for the auditorium alive. Finally, in 1937, organizers invited Aberdeen’s school officials to become involved, suggesting a new joint-use facility would provide much-needed additional space for student activities.

The school board became eager partners and agreed to sponsor a $150,000 bond issue for the project, which voters approved in a special election. Soon a second PWA application was prepared, submitted,

and approved. The auditorium project received a $135,000 grant and a $165,000 loan from the PWA.

The site for this facility was school-owned property adjacent to the high school. Site preparation began January 11, 1938. On May 31, students and school officials held an impromptu ceremony to lay the building’s cornerstone. By the following November, the auditorium was complete and ready for use. During the summer months,

workers remodeled the school’s old auditorium, which became the school library.

The Aberdeen school board planned a week-long open house to showcase the new facility. They invited people within a 50-mile radius to enjoy all the events during “Auditorium Week,” November 6-13, 1938. More than 11,000 people attended. A dedication program preceded the tour schedule to

recognize the efforts of those involved. Fifty-six years prior, in 1882, F.H. Hagerty and William Lloyd had donated a city block between South Washington and Jay Streets as the site for Aberdeen’s first schoolhouse. In 1911, Aberdeen Central High School replaced the original school on that property, which was adjacent to the new auditorium.

The design of the theater included an ample stage area and seating for 1,600. Colors used in the décor

were ultramarine blue, brown and gray. It was equipped with a Hammond electric organ, a Steinway concert grand piano, and a projection machine. Its potential uses included general high school assemblies, dramatic productions, grand opera and other musical productions.

The auditorium/arena balconies offered seating for about 2,000 spectators, and its open floor space, when set with chairs, provided another 3,200 seats. The massive floor was ideal for basketball games, conventions, automobile and machinery exhibits, indoor circuses, and community dances.

1950 Graduation at Civic Arena

The Aberdeen-Civic Auditorium was the first facility in the country built in a city the size of Aberdeen

Civic Theater

(17,000) to serve both the schools and the community. Even after the Aberdeen Public School system built a new high school on the south edge of town many years later, the Civic Arena and Theater continue to serve Aberdeen and the surrounding communities with events, sports, and the Yeldez Shrine Circus every April.

SIX THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT: SOUTH DAKOTA

by Erin Schulte

In my five years as a New York City dweller, I've heard the following line more times than I can possibly remember: "South Dakota? I've never met anyone from South Dakota." Well, consider yourself introduced. 

There's a reason you've never met anyone from South Dakota. With about 750,000 residents, what are the odds of bumping into a native South Dakotan outside its borders -- especially in New York state, population 19 million? We're practically the human equivalent of the dodo bird.

Even within the state, running across a fellow Dakotan is not as easy as you might think -- we're the 17th largest state by land size, so there's only 10 of us for every square mile. 

Without further ado, I give you six things you should know about the bigger of the Dakotas. After all, you don't want to be one of those dunderheads who thinks Fargo is in South Dakota (it's in North Dakota) or who pronounces our state capital, Pierre, as a French-ified "Pee-ERR." It's pronounced "peer." 

Oh, jeez. I'll make it easy: We're the one with Mount Rushmore.

#1. The State Bird = Good Huntin'.

Ring Necked Pheasant

New York and Missouri have the lovely bluebird, Illinois and Ohio have the eye-catching cardinal, Kansas and Nebraska have the flute-throated meadowlark. We have the ring-necked pheasant, an import from China. And we like to blow the crap out of it. About 150,000 hunters annually shoot up about 1.3 million pheasant. Wow, that's nearly double our human population!

My dad, rightly, likes to point out that hunting brings loads of tourist dollars to the state, but all those guns can be a bit disconcerting. My boyfriend recently took his first trip to Sodak, as we sometimes call it. A New York native, he found the clutches of hunters with shotguns blasting away just feet from the highways more than a little nerve-wracking. He also was a bit wary of the fellows waving around guns in both hands at the local Wal-Mart as they showed off their wares. And darned if they didn't have a better ammo selection than they did paper towels. Michael Moore would not be pleased.

#2. South Dakota is the Sunshine State!

Mount Rushmore

Until we changed our state motto to the "Mount Rushmore State" in 1992, snowy South Dakota was known as America's "Sunshine State." It was on our state flag. It was a major state selling point. We took pride in sunshine. It's sunny, sure, but it's also freaking *cold.* Was this hilarious misnomer a ploy to attract new tax-paying citizens? Looks like it didn't work -- I think most of them went to Florida, the buggy, swampy retirement community that still probably has a better claim on that nickname. 

Maybe our Midwestern modesty runs a bit too deep, because South Dakota seems to have problems promoting itself. Before we were the Sunshine State, we were known as the "Coyote State." Now, it's true that we have coyotes. But if you're trying shine up your image, seeding potential visitors' minds with visions of getting their calves gnawed off by wild beasts is not the way to do it.

Finally, a few years ago, there was a failed movement in the state Legislature to change the nickname to the horribly milquetoast "Monument State." The idea was to acknowledge the under construction, but incredibly huge, Crazy Horse Monument, which is near Mount Rushmore and will eventually dwarf it. Nice idea in theory -- after all, the white man moved in and plopped Mount Rushmore on sacred Native American ground -- but let's not confuse potential tourists by telling them we have unspecified monuments. They might try to include the Corn Palace.

#3. You Can Leave Your Car Running Here.

If you're in Aberdeen and it's cold, go ahead and leave your keys in the ignition. Heck, leave the car running! Your engine block could freeze in the subzero winter temperatures -- which seem to last from September to mid-June. 

Head down for a January Budweiser binge at your local bar (many of which, by the way, are decorated by the aforementioned pheasants, dead and stuffed and perched on the walls), and you may be greeted by a parking lot full of Ford F-150s and Chevy pickups, engines belching steamily in the night. If anyone took off with your car down the main drag and the local cop saw you weren't driving it, you'd have it back to you in no time. 

Of course, this trust is sometimes broken. One time, a patient at the local alcohol-treatment center walked off the property, four blocks from our house, looking for passage to Sioux Falls, (pop. 150,000) the largest city in South Dakota. He stepped into my dad's 1967 Olds Cutlass -- "Old Blue," parked in its usual spot in the driveway, keys trustingly dangling from the ignition -- and rolled off. The poor schmuck drove 25 miles to Sioux Falls, where a family friend spotted the old beater and called the police. The suspect was long gone ... but he left his driver's license on the seat.

#4. Hot Dish and Bars Are An Essential Part of the Social Scene Here, Too.

Hot Dish

In New York, "hot dish and bars" means "Page Six and happy hour," but in South Dakota, we're talkin' "tator tots and brownies." Winter padding is necessary in South Dakota and social gatherings revolve around pans of hot, gooey food. (Lane Bryant is fashionable!)

Hot dish and bars are two staples of South Dakota eatin'. As the name 'hot dish' would imply, this is simply a hot dish of food. And the most popular one is "Tator Tot Hot Dish" (say that a million times fast) a layered pan full of beef, frozen vegetable cubes, potatoes and mushroom soup. (You can find the approximate recipe anywhere.) Bars are pretty much any dessert you can cut into a bar, like a brownie. Methodists bring them to church meetings and eat them off of paper napkins with nonalcoholic punch. Bars come in several varieties, most with some brownie-like combination of chocolate, marshmallow and nuts.

#5. Some of Us Are Stuck in a Time Warp.

If you think daylight savings time is a pain in the ass, try being a resident of Fort Pierre, S.D. (Say it with me: Fort PEER.)

Fort Pierre, a bedroom community to neighbor and state capital Pierre, is just west of the Missouri River, which divides Central Time and Mountain Time. That means the poor stiffs who live in Fort Pierre, three miles from Pierre, have to wake up an extra hour early to go to work. 

When it's 7 a.m. at home, it's already 8 a.m. at the office. Talk about a crap way to start your morning! I guess they make up for it when they leave work at 5 p.m. and get home, by the clock, an hour before they left. 

Of course, the time warp allows for goofy scheduling. Have an appointment at 8 a.m. in Pierre and at 8 a.m. in Fort Pierre? No problem! You can do both. Gotta meet the mistress at 7 p.m. on Saturday but that's when your wife's birthday party starts? No sweat. 

All in all, though, the Pierre/Fort Pierre area is a tough place to make appointments.

#6. Farmers Are Smarter Than You. By a Mile.

Lest I've given the impression that South Dakotans are a bunch of dumb, gun-toting, Bud-swilling, childishly trusting rubes, let me set things straight. Farmers, who make up a good portion of my family and home-state neighbors, are smarter than you, no matter what you think of their voting habits. 

Do you know the first thing about playing the futures markets for corn, hog bellies or soybeans? Can you wear the hats of a banker, a CPA, a scientist, a meteorologist, a marketing genius, a handyman, an electrician *and* a blue-collar soil tiller? Do you know how to check the acidity of soil or pull calves from a cow's uterus? Got $250,000 to shell out for a combine you'll use for a month? Want to work from 6 a.m. until midnight to pay for it?

For an average family to survive, they've got to farm about 1,500 acres of corn, which costs about $2,500 an acre. Adding it up, that's like $4 MILLION to get your farm up and running, only to be at the mercy of hail, early frost, commodities prices and plagues of hungry bugs. Keep this in mind the next time you're enjoying a big cube of tofu, all you emaciated, non-hot-dish eating New Yorkers.

Aberdeen, the Town in a Frog Pond.

The people of Aberdeen have built a monument to Andrew Melgaard, who gave the city a beautiful park. They dedicated another to Father Robert Haire, appropriately commemorating him as a "Friend of Humanity." They plan to memorialize L. Frank Baum, whose Dorothy of Emerald City fame was probably conceived here. There is even a monument to the municipal mules, Maude and

Charles H. Prior

Kate, recognizing their thirty-one years of valiant service to the city. There is no monument to Charles H. Prior, who had a more profound influence on the community, though he never lived here. 

In late nineteenth century America, railroad companies founded most new communities as each rushed to lay track faster than its competitors. They expected to profit both from the freight and passenger traffic these towns would generate, and from the sale and lease of prime city lots. A new end-of-the-line community was certain to be a boom town, at least until the tracks moved onward. When there were no automobiles, trucks, airplanes, interstate highways, or even paved roads, railways had the economic impact that all combined have today. 

In 1880, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad was building its Hastings and Dakota Division westward through this east-central section of what was then essentially unpopulated Dakota Territory. At the same time, they were building their James River Division to run north and south through the same area. The pace was frantic.

The Milwaukee's original plan for its Hastings & Dakota Division would have taken it from Ortonville on the Minnesota border, west to Bristol or Andover, then northwest to Columbia and Bismarck. Columbia, founded in 1879, was the first town in Brown County. Superbly sited on the James and Elm Rivers, it was developing rapidly. In 1880 it became the county seat and had a post office and a mail route to Jamestown. Columbians were busy building hotels.  A new dam on the James River would provide a lake for recreation and transportation and power for a flour mill. Steamboats would soon begin paddling to Ludden and points north on a regular schedule. 

Columbians had hopes that their city would become the territorial capitol. All they lacked was a railroad, and they were certain they would get it. But when Prior, the superintendent of the Minneapolis office of the Milwaukee, contacted the city leaders about right-of-way and property considerations, they made demands that he felt were unacceptably expensive. He changed the route, and grade construction then proceeded west from Bristol until, after angling slightly north, it stopped in August in the middle of a dry slough (Aberdeen). It was here that Prior planned to build a city. 

It is unlikely Prior knew his new town site was subject to annual flooding. In the fall of 1880, he was preoccupied with labor problems, but even from his office in Minneapolis, he could see the advantages of the site just by looking at a map. It looked good for freight and passenger business. The new Milwaukee tracks would bisect the planned Chicago and North Western line

At a point almost equidistant from the grandly platted new towns of Rudolph and Ordway. It looked good for community development: the North Western's managers had been expecting to benefit from a new city where grade stakes indicated their line would intersect the Milwaukee's James River Division. Prior's revised plan would spoil their hopes. Acting as town site agent for the railway, Prior and his wife Delia bought a half-section of land for $380 on November 10, 1880.  He platted the city of Aberdeen on a portion of this property, and the Watertown Land Office registered the plat on January 3, 1881. 

As superintendent of all Milwaukee operations west of the Mississippi, Prior was an enormously powerful man.  In military terms, he was equivalent to a general. As town site agent, he extended that power and increased his wealth. The railroads had learned that once their construction plans were known, speculators purchased all the best town site property. To keep the Milwaukee's plans secret, Prior purchased land for town sites in his own name. He resold it in his own name and presumably passed a portion of the proceeds to top executives, who did not want profits to flow to stockholders unnecessarily. It is likely that Prior supervised the selection, purchase, and platting of all the Milwaukee town sites in Minnesota and Dakota west of the Mississippi and east of the Missouri. He named most of them, including Prior Lake, Minnesota. He named Aberdeen to honor his boss, Alexander Mitchell, for his birthplace in Scotland. Prior, who was born in Connecticut, was responsible for importing all those Massachusetts and Connecticut village names: Webster, Bristol, Andover, Ipswich, Groton, Westport, and others. 

Prior planned the location of the new city's depot along the end of the grade and centered its main street just to the west of the depot. Then he subdivided sixteen blocks of the property, and in June contracted with Mr. Samuel Jumper to begin selling lots. The tracks and first construction train would not arrive until July 6, but before then, impatient speculators walked or rode from as far as Watertown, eager to be among the first buyers. 

Unfortunately, after a winter of deep snows and a late spring thaw, many lots on Main Street (Prior had named it First Street) were under water. George B. Daly, Columbia's first school teacher and later an Aberdeen newspaper publisher, recalled that rival towns "were in great glee over the town in the frog pond. Related to today's landmarks, the "frog pond" consisted of a large body of water west of the Milwaukee depot with several tributaries, including one that cut across Main Street near Second Avenue and extended to the comer of Third Avenue and Lincoln Street.

Railroad Map at Statehood

Excerpts from “The Town in a Frog Pond”, by Don Artz