On the Road to Sturgis SD: Gas, Beer, Raptors and John Wayne

I take Highway 34 West out of Pierre and head towards Sturgis, South Dakota. I think of my mother’s father, a highway man, who carved this prairie landscape with the asphalt I now drive on decades later. This road- a part of my DNA.

Raptor Alley is what the locals call these 175 miles that stretch from Pierre to Sturgis, SD. This name inspired by the number of birds of prey found around here, which, according to the Travel South Dakota website can be up to 50 sightings a day with a trained eye.

A crow lifts into flight off a fence post. I am in the driver’s seat, watching nature at seventy-five miles an hour.

I look at the dashboard. I need gas. A hawk dives towards the prairie grass for mice. This is a place where the fittest survive.

A sign appears on the horizon. The image of a gas pump filling up a glass of beer becomes clear moment later. The sign reads:

T-34

Diesel

Premium Gas

Ice Cold Beer

Budweiser

A man on a motorcycle completes the picture.

Get a Beer and some gas?

Toto, I am not in California anymore.

The gaslight blinks red now. I pull into T-34. I have no choice.

One gas pump sits in its gravel parking lot.

I pull up next to it, get out and look for the credit card option.

There is none.

I must go inside. I look towards the building made of aluminum siding.

One Harley is parked in front of its door. A white-haired man with a goatee stands next to the only other vehicle on the property- a Harley Davidson. His tattooed arms across his chest tight. He stares at him. His t-shirt is a picture of the American flag and text that reads:

My Rights Don’t End Where Your Feelings Begin

I smile at him. He does not smile back. I walk in.

The interior of building is a Western bar. Cattle branding symbols burned in the wood panels. The shelves are lined with top shelf booze- Jack Daniel’s, Seagram’s 7, Barcardi 151. An American flag stuck in the box with the pens next to a life-sized paper cut out of John Wayne.

The picture is from his film Hondo where he plays Hondo Lane who saves a widower and her son from Apaches.

A fragile elderly sits behind the register next to the poster.

I shove my card at him and say,

“I’d like to fill up.”

He looks at me with suspicion.

“You pay AFTER you pump round here,” are the only words he has for me.

I exit, walk past the biker again to my car. I place the pump into my car. I take a picture of the T-34 sign, so others would believe me. The biker watches me like an eagle about to feast.

I hear the pump click. My tank is full.

I walk past the biker again. He smiles. He sneers.

John Wayne greets me again as I hand the old man my card.

“Want a drink?” he asks.

I smile polite and tell him I think I’ll pass.

He places the card into a manual card reader and swipes the carbon. He hands it over for me to sign. I give it my John Doe.

“Have a good day,” I say.

The old man returns the nicety with silence.

I guess this is what John Wayne would do.

I return to my car. Again, the biker never flinches in his gaze. I’m relieved to drive away.

My attention returns to the open road. A pack of vultures feed on a carcass in a field as I head towards Belle Fouche River.

Belle Fouche is a town not far from here, which was also the setting for one of John Wayne’s last movies The Cowboys. This movie was about Wil Anderson, a man who had to train a group of schoolboys to help him run his cattle. It is one of the few movies where John Wayne dies.

Rumor has it that Wayne showed up tipsy on the day he was to shoot Anderson’s death and told Bruce Dern who played his murderer that America was going to be mad at Dern. According to legend, Dern laughed at Wayne’s claim and told him that the people in California would love him because of the scene.

A raven lands on a wire, hungry for its next attack. I am thankful my grandfather built a road out of this place known as Raptor’s Alley.