Wendell, A Place to See

Last summer on a trip through the mid-west, I saw a great deal of prairie land, farm land, sagebrush and telephone poles; some of which was interesting and some of which was downright drab. But in all of that driving and drabness there were a few places that I just had to see. One was Mount Rushmore, and another was the Wall Drug Store. You simply do not drive through South Dakota without seeing Mount Rushmore. Hence the thousands of people who were doing the same thing. The people seemed to come from nowhere! The freeways were not jammed with people going there, but when you got there it looked like a Dallas Cowboys football game had just ended and people were everywhere! When we stopped at the famous Wall Drug it was the same story: namely, barren roads with an occasional car and then, BOOM!, right in the middle of this tiny town is a whole city of people who just have to see Wall Drug. I saw it too. But why? And, more importantly, what can we learn from it?

I have heard of Mount Rushmore since I was a small child. I grew up in a small town in North Dakota and would have considered myself highly cultured and cosmopolitan if I had been able to visit that place when I was a child. So when the opportunity arrived and I was actually driving through South Dakota there was no question that we should stop and see that icon of America. On the other hand I had no such glossy memories of youth to prompt me to visit the Wall Drug Store or the Corn Palace or any other place in the mid-west. However, while driving down that barren, almost deserted road I began to feel an urgent desire, even need, to see the Corn palace, and Wall Drug.

Curiosity can be a powerful thing. And I was curious. What made me curious? Oh, it was just little things. There was a small, almost too small, sign by the road about 75 miles from Wall Drug. It said something like: “Ice cream shop and candy store at Wall Drug”. That was it... for that mile. In another couple of miles the sign read along these lines: “Old Fashioned Cowboys at Wall Drug”. Every couple of miles for the next seventy miles there was a little sign with a little blurb, and sometimes a small picture attached to it. As we got closer, the signs got bigger and brighter so that by the time we had reached the exit, it would have seemed wrong not to turn in and see it. Like I said, curiosity can be a powerful thing.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I was amazed at what they had at Wall Drug. I had a good time. I took pictures. I bought a souvenir. And so did everyone else. Now I know why the roads were so desolate. Everyone was at Wall Drug. However, the point of this article is not to extol the virtues of Wall Drug, but to ask the obvious question: Why don't we do something like that? Simerly's, for example would be a great place to start. “If we don't have it, you don't need it.” Isn't that how the saying goes? I think there is plenty about Wendell that is worth seeing, if people only knew about it. I didn't know about the Corn Palace until I was driving by and saw a dozen, or so, signs telling me about it. But the Corn Palace is just one town's way of showing what they can do. It grew into something big for them and when you drive by you just have to see it and in so doing you support it. I think Wendell could use that kind of support.