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Contraband
Contraband
My wife, Colette, and I are both teachers, so we have never broken free of the summer vacation cycle. While the window for travel is large, it is also temporally fixed. Our trips necessarily happen in the months of June, July, and August. The school year has been shifting over time, but in the early days of road tripping our sojourns occurred primarily in late July or early August. This of course means that any travel to the desert will happen during its hottest season and plagued with the constant fear that we will end up traipsing through sand dunes, stepping over bleached cow skulls as vultures circle, and forced to get water from the particular prickly saguaro because our car overheated. Our excursions to the shore already fraught with concerns of drowning, jellyfish, and riptides, are beset by evenings in the hotel accented with a bevy of specials about mako, blacktip, hammerhead, reef, goblin, tiger, bull, nurse, thresher, and great white sharks because programmer’s at the Discovery Channel think it is a good idea to schedule Shark Week at the end of July. Luckily my wife is not a swimmer and she can fulfill the first act Chief Brody role of fin spotter, and like the chief she sees sharks in every rambunctious teen splash, boat wake, and fish flop. Another interesting effect of traveling in July and August is that our first official family road trip to the Badlands of South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore happened to coincide with the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
The rally started in 1938 by a local Indian motorcycle club, the Jackpine Gypsies, and has been held every year since with some exceptions during World War II because of gas rationing. Originally the rally was focused on racing and stunts but has grown to include concerts by major acts such as Cheryl Crow, Nickleback, Willie Nelson, and Weird Al Yankovic. On the 75th anniversary in 2015 nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand people attended the event. When we were there in 2007 there were only five hundred thousand attendees.
Evan, our son, was four years old, and this was his first major road trip. We were afraid that boredom would besiege his hours in the back seat of our Kia Rio wedged between the luggage that would not quite fit in the trunk. Prior to the trip we bought him a Batman “laptop” which was basically an updated Speak ‘n Spell. We convinced ourselves that it was an educational toy, so we were actually good parents for buying it for him, but in reality it was just a pacifier. Before every new LEARNING game Batman would announce, “I am the Batman. Are you ready to accept the challenge?” This was before streaming music and phones weren’t quite smart yet, so as we drove out of range of all radio stations except those of a low watt religious nature, Batman and his constant reaffirmation of his identity was our only soundtrack.
Of course his fascination with his new toy necessitated us frequently saying, “Evan look cows.”
“Evan, a train.”
“Evan!”
And finally, “Evan look motorcycles.”
This last statement soon became ridiculously redundant since there was a pack (gaggle?) of motorcycles at nearly every mile marker. If we had smartphones we could have possibly figured out why the troop of two-wheeled transport was migrating across the high plains, but instead we were left in ignorance which was not blissful at all. It was really quite irksome.
This image is not from Sturgis, but you can see how excited we get about motorcycles
South Dakota is a nerdy little state that desperately creates architectural performance art to get the country’s attention. Most notably, Mt. Rushmore, the venerable monument to our greatest presidents and Teddy Roosevelt, was created as a tourist trap by state historian, Doane Robinson, and sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, who was fresh off his work on the monument to oppression and hatred at Stone Mountain, Georgia. About thirty years earlier residents of Mitchell, SD decided to create a gathering place where “city residents and their rural neighbors could enjoy a fall festival.” Today tourists can visit the world’s only Corn Palace and between comical alliterative pronunciations* of its name marvel at Dakotan self-expression in the many shades of kernels and learn “a-maize-ing facts, like how many nails and staples are used in the decoration process.” In 1931, four years after the first chisel took a chunk out of Mt. Rushmore and seven years before the first motorcycle rally in Sturgis, the Hustead family bought Wall Drug. Once famous for its catching jingles advertising free ice water on multiple signs along the highway it now cashes in on its history as a purveyor of frigid H20 and provides a carnival like atmosphere where visitors can sit astride oversized fiberglass jackalopes. We found a giant bust of JFK along the roadside, part of a failed attempt at a campground, and we stopped to have our photo taken with a twelve foot tall prairie dog. Of course our ultimate goal was the Badlands National Park and the aforementioned Mt. Rushmore.
*Porn Palace, okay, it was porn palace. We thought we were hilarious.
It was in the Badlands that we finally learned the source of two-wheel motorized herd migrating across the Dakota Territory. On the winding road through the park I glanced in the rearview mirror to see a Harley rider holding his right hand aloft attempting to take pictures of the landscape while weaving along the park road. We happened to pull over at the same scenic overlook/trailhead so we asked if he knew why there were so many bikers, and this is when we learned about the Sturgis Rally. Since then I can’t go a day without seeing a t-shirt faded and ripped, emblazoned with the Harley logo and the word Sturgis in an ornate script scrolled across the top. They were probably always there but had never risen to the level of conscious thought. The human mind is curious in how it can completely ignore information that it deems irrelevant and equally amazing in its ability to get excited every time it finds something that it already knows. Over ten years later and I still get a little excited every time I see one of these shirts and anticipate regaling the wearer with our tale.
We went on to enjoy our vacation stopping at several of the tourist traps I mentioned earlier, checking out the Crazy Horse Memorial created as an apology for desecrating sacred land with sculptures of white dudes. We even ventured into Wyoming to see the Close Encounters landing pad. I was disappointed to find out that you could not buy mashed potato sculptures of the monument signed by electrical lineman and amateur sculpture, Roy Neary. Most of my knowledge of history and geography can be traced to the Speilbergian oeuvre. Sturgis was on the way back to our hotel so we stopped to peruse the feather and leather adorned roach clips being sold under eagle emblazoned tents by women clad in black halter tops and strategically snipped t-shirts.
We didn’t purchase any items at the festival but our car was riding a few centimeters closer to the asphalt burdened with souvenirs, Junior Ranger badges, and pamphlets to commemorate our journey. This was really our first family road trip vacation and we were navigating using printouts from MapQuest and a Rand McNally Atlas, so we were just retracing our revolutions. No reason to stop other than for gas, food, and lodging. We had been here before. Later we would learn to plan a loop trail that would allow for the vacation to continue even on its last leg, but for now we were settled into the monotony of the Interstate and the lack of anticipation.
It was during one particularly long stretch that I decided that our red Kia Rio could probably pass the unending convoy of semis and RVs. Having successfully pulled off this maneuver, I settled back into the right lane and continue. A few minutes later the flash of blue and red lights punctured the gauze of black asphalt monotony. I pulled over to the shoulder and extracted my wallet. When the officer came to my window, I had my license and proof of insurance ready. Batman exclaimed, “Are you ready to accept the challenge?” I thought I was.
The trooper was very polite, but he asked me to step out of the car and join him in the front seat of his squad car. I have been pulled over multiple times since I first got my license for drag racing, speeding, and multiple rolling stop signs, but I have never been asked to sit in the squad car except for the time I was suspected of arson and was in possession of a four pack of Bartles & James wild berry wine coolers. That time I was placed in the back seat and hauled into the station. Now I was in the front seat as the officer ran my plates. While he was waiting for the information he started a casual conversation about why we were in the South Dakota. I should have known he was trying to get me to let down my guard, but since I had no reason for being guarded I explained that we were returning from our family vacation to the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore. Since I have created an entire website for my travel writing it is probably obvious that I love telling stories. If I could have broken out the Kodak Carousel 4200 Slide Projector, I definitely would have.
The call came back that my car and I were clean, so he started discussing how fast I was going claiming that I was zipping by all of the other traffic on the highway. I knew this could not possibly be true because Colette had not said anything. I can always rely on her to point out all of the flaws in my driving performance. I am not complaining. It has helped me avoid thousands of citations over the years, but the point is that the officers account of what happened contradicted her assessment, so it could not possibly be true. Of course the front seat of a police car is not the place to argue about such things.
His debate tactics were a bit unorthodox though. As I was about to protest, he said, “Do you have any contraband in the car?” Contraband? This is not a word that I use on a regular basis. As a teacher you would think that I would have used it at some point when discussing student behavior, but I have not. As far as I can tell it is a term only used by authoritarians, and I am definitely not one of those. I guess if I harkened back to the wine cooler arson incident, it may have made sense, but honestly I was just confused. What could he be talking about? I began scrolling through an inventory of everything in the car. Empty McDonald’s cups under the seats, receipts crammed in the door pocket, dirty laundry in the suit cases, Junior Ranger badges in the glove box, stale coffee in the travel mug, a wallet of CDs including Kanye West’s Graduation and Icky Thump by The White Stripes, none of this seemed overly contraband like.
But then deep in the recesses of my mind I realized what he was talking about. If my life was a film this would be the point when the camera would cut to the trunk of the red Kia Rio and employ some Chroma key magic to reveal the hand full of rocks we had liberated from the Badlands. There are signs everywhere in the park stating that we should not take anything and to not stray from the boardwalks that also serve as a resting place for rattlesnakes. The snake sign was more diligently highlighted by Colette since rattlesnakes are the sharks of the desert. We collectively decided however that absconding with a couple of rocks was well within the spirit of the regulation. The NPS website only list laws for unmanned aerial vehicles and firearms, but if you visit the site for the Petrified Forest they specifically state that there is a minimum of a $325 dollar fine for the removal of rocks or other materials which does not bode well for my grandmother’s estate. I have a distinct memory of a large chunk of petrified wood with green felt covering the bottom being used as a doorstop in her house. There are multiple retailers in and around the park where you may legally obtain a sizable chunk of stone, but knowing Grandma Margie the odds of cash being exchanged for something that is freely available on the ground seems unlikely.
While the thought of snitching on my grandma and outing her as an interstate mineral smuggler did cross my mind while I was in the front seat of the patrol car in order to ameliorate the severity of our crime, I was saved from the protracted legal battle and uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinners when the officer kindly said, “With the rally in Sturgis we have a lot of people selling drugs here this time of year.”
“I’m traveling with my family in a KIA RIO.”
“You’d be surprised by who is selling marijuana up here.”
“I guess I would, but I am definitely not.”
He then handed me a $200 dollar ticket for speeding (still cheaper than the rock thieving fine) and told me I could continue our journey home. “Drive safely,” he said, “you want your family to get home alive.”
I was so relieved that I would not be spending years in a National Park prison somewhere deep below the Grand Tetons, that I happily accepted the ticket.
I was the Batman and I had defeated the challenge.
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