You Can't Ever Go Back Home...

I realize that time marches on and communities change-- for God's sake, I have a B.A. in History. My bachelor's thesis is all about how Deadwood, S.D. changed from settlement through the first 30-ish years.

But I should start by saying that I have hometowns-- Lead and Deadwood, S.D. are so intertwined that I consider them both my hometowns. I was born in Deadwood, I grew up in Lead. We banked in Lead, we'd pay the electric bill in Deadwood. Grocery shopping was in Lead, the J.C. Penney was in Deadwood. And so on.

My dad worked at the gold mine in Lead. The 'high point' of the mine was in the '70s and '80s (go back to your Econ courses-- when the economy is good, commodities such as gold do badly-- but when the economy is bad, commodities do well). By the '90s, things weren't going so well. Deadwood was really struggling. The downtown was deteriorating and there were buildings that were vacant.

Then 'You Bet!' came in and proposed bringing legalized gambling to Deadwood. It passed and Deadwood became a boomtown again. Some tourists came back and were pissed that tacky, crumbling Deadwood was gone. Other folks came for the whole Dances with Wolves/Kevin Costner connection. But there were lots of tourists.

When I was in college, Deadwood was thriving. The buildings were being refurbished and it was fun again. I worked at the Bullock Hotel in the summers. When my husband and I were engaged, we stayed at the Branch House, and we rented out the entire Bullock Hotel for our wedding guests.

So when my mom offered to take care of Mark overnight so DH and I could get away, we decided to go to Deadwood and stay at the Branch House. We drove up in the middle of the week and planned to go skiing. Due to global warming, IMO, there was no skiing. So we decided to drive up through Spearfish Canyon and hang out in Deadwood.

Ick.

I walked past about three 70-year-olds (that I swear I recognized from my time working in Deadwood during college) sticking quarters into slot machines as I went to check in. (i.e., it was REALLLLY slow.) We settled into our room and went out to dinner.

Deadwood is a carnivore's or a buffet-lover's delight-- but we didn't want anything heavy and decided to go to an old favorite, Chinatown. We asked for a table (and I failed to notice that she didn't ask us about smoking or nonsmoking) and we were seated next to a table of roughly seven people that were ALL smoking. Empty restaurant, we're seated next to the only other table there, and they are chain smoking. So we stood up, walked to the hostess, explained the situation, and requested another table. She looked absolutely shocked at our chutzpah (I forget how 'assertive' I've become in relation to how I was in high school) but reseated us. The food was okay, but it was pretty dead.

After dinner, we walked up and down Main Street. I was showing DH where different things from the Deadwood series were located in real life (i.e. the original Saloon #10 location, the 'Badlands' district, the Gem theatre). We then realized that as we walked up and down the three blocks, it was us and the old people. And one family of five. I bet we passed eight people on Main Street. Total. The casinos held chain smoking 60 and 70-year-olds.

Depressed and disappointed, we went for a drive up to Lead. It was even more buttoned-up. I thought we might get a beer at the Stamp Mill or something, but it was closed as was everything else on Main Street. (I exaggerate-- I thing Subway and the gas station formerly a Common Cents were open.) So we went to the 'Mall.'

The Lead 'Mall' consists of a grocery store, an Alco, and a bowling alley. After taking a even more depressing turn through Alco (I stood in the beauty aisle and realized that it was where I spent my adolescence dreaming being pretty and how things would be better in the future-- everything is uphill after being in the Alco beauty aisle), we went to the bowling alley.

When we walked in, I recognized roughly half of the people there. Couldn't name all of them, but I recognized them. Phil and I bowled three frames and I came to some major life realizations.

1) My life turned out okay. I'd recently been thinking that maybe it wouldn't have been so bad to not go to college so far away and settled in my hometown, married a nice local boy (there was one who would have been willing, I'm sure, from the look on his face when I introduced to my now-DH as my fiance), and had a family there. I wouldn't have been happy. I would have been scrounging by, not being able to afford necessities, and trying to scrape ahead since I didn't have the correct last name.

2) Lead and Deadwood have so much untapped potential. But they aren't cute like the towns in Colorado and they are gearing themselves toward people who like to drink and smoke and gamble. There is so much more to these towns then that.

So we finished our bowling, I paid and chatted with the cashier about Lead, and back to the Branch House we went. The highlight of the evening was watching The Family Stone on HBO. And The Family Stone is a train wreck of a movie, if that puts things into perspective.

The next morning, we ended up driving down Hwy. 385 in the Black Hills from Pluma (if you haven't driven through the Hills, you must put it on your before-you-die list, because it is awesome) down past Pactola Resevoir. Pactola is the water supply for Rapid City and it is so incredibly low that Rapid should be incredibly worried. Scary.

We then went down to Hill City. We came upon the PrairieBerry Winery and spent an enjoyable hour or so tasting and shopping. (We had fun-- the wine isn't that great, but what the heck, the tasting was free.) As we drove through Hill City, which is thriving-- fun shops downtown, lots of people out shopping-- I thought to myself that Deadwood/Lead is way off track. Hill City is much more fun than Lead/Deadwood, skanky wine and all.

So, my walk-away was that my hometown(s) is/are in trouble. I don't think that they are attracting the kind of tourists that will return again and again (70-year-olds eventually pass away) and they aren't family-friendly. Due to climate change, they don't have the snow that they used to have. And Lead is banking on a Neutrino lab that may or may not come, depending on Federal funding (and the U.S. has a big war to pay for).

I hope that the towns can ressurect themselves. But something's gotta change.