“Give me a ride in your car, car!”---Woody Guthrie
Honesty is the best policy 99% of the time. Not so much, perhaps, in transactions involving rental cars. The rent-a-car business was once a leaser’s delight, nice new vehicles readily available wherever you went, and cheap. You could even pick the auto manufacturer, model of the car you wanted and have your choice of ebony, mauve or eggshell. It was a buyer’s market. Enter Covid, stage left.
Suddenly, everybody stayed home, rentals languished and Misters Hertz and Avis began selling off their fleets. They figured they’d slowly build them back when the storm was over. Nobody expected an enormous groundswell of vacationers to rise up as soon as they felt safe, the result being a shortage of vehicles. You want a sedan? Forget about it, we’ve got a pickup or a hatchback, take your pick. Too small or too big? Sorry….next in line?
It also became impossible to rent a vehicle in Seattle and leave it in, say, Portland. No deal, Lucille, not for any price. Now, I am as honest as the next guy, probably more so, but sometimes life demands chicanery. In the Orlando airport, late at night, I required a rental for the trip home to Fairfield. There were two men in line ahead of me. The first sought a car to drive to and leave at Daytona. “Unavailable,” said the National man. The second was going to Cape Kennedy and flying home from there. “Can’t help you,” said the counterman.
Now, I am no genius but I can usually see which way the ball is rolling. “Need one for the day, bring it back tomorrow,” I told the guardian of the vault. “Sign here,” said he. I left the car at the Ocala airport the next day. The oversold agent there was giddy to have it. No penalty came of my transgression.
I was hoping this sort of thing had subsided in the last year, but when I tried to reserve a car in Rapid City to leave in Kalispell, I heard the old refrain: “Got nuthin’.” After two tries, I rented whatever I could get with more than four cylinders to be returned to the airport of origin. It turned out to be a large Chevy Equinox, not my first choice, but acceptable. There wasn’t much discussion at 4 a.m. when I returned the car to the sleepy Kalispell airport and left the key in the requisite box with a brief note about a family emergency. So far, no repercussions, and I don’t expect any. Could be once the car is released, the renter is only legally bound to return it in the contracted time to a National corral. Could be I’m deadass wrong and my Discover bill will reflect the painful truth. Either way, mission accomplished. And that Equinox wasn’t bad at all.
A note of caution. It’s probably not a good idea to rent a car and leave it somewhere the rental car company you got it from has no office. You have not actually returned the car and Officer Friendly may come knocking at your door. I did this once, leaving a car in Key West, where National had no office yet. I tucked in into Mr. Hertz’s lot and left a nice note. National called me the next day with hurt feelings because they had to send somebody down from Miami to pick up the car. Happily, we worked out a suitable settlement fee. I did give the negotiator some unasked for advice. “If you want to play with the big boys,” I preached, “you gotta have an office in places like Key West.” Three months later, they did. They even wrote and told me.
By the way, I thought you might like to know I’ve whipped up a new line for police emergencies. When the cops come knocking, I’ll say, “I beg your pardon—you can’t put an 82-year-old man in jail!” I’ll let you know how it works out. I can’t help being optimistic.
Are There Any Rapids In Rapid City?
In a word, no. There is a modest limestone spring stream that passes through the city, but who wants to name their town Superficial Stream? Founders have made this mistake before in Possum Trot, Kentucky and Toad Suck Ferry, Arkansas. Imagine the stadium announcer in Possum Trot screaming, “Here come the Fighting Possums!!” The other team would be rolling on the field, laughing. Or what about the dignified, tuxedoed Master of Ceremonies introducing the Toad Suck Ferry Symphony Orchestra? Did somebody snicker? Sometimes you have to fib a little when naming a town. That’s still no excuse for Upper Snodsbury, England or Havre de Grace, Maryland. Please, a little humility.
We had images of Rapid City as an arid, flat, boring tract of land inhabited by militia neophytes and maldressed goobers, placed there as a convenient base camp for visitors to Mount Rushmore. In reality, Rapid City is a very pleasant town of 74,000 average Joes surrounded by rolling hills and pretty country. The first guy we met was the rental car man, a recent immigrant from Hawaii. “Isn’t this supposed to work the other way"?” I asked him. “Native South Dakotan aspires to future in glamorous Waikiki?”
The man smiled weakly. “My father was from this area before he went to the islands. He always wanted to come back. If you think California real estate is outrageous, try buying something in Hawaii. In South Dakota, you can actually afford to buy your own home.” Point taken. When we were in Honolulu in 1970, a lonely shack by the railroad track cost $400,000. Now you couldn’t buy one for a sack of teenage kidneys.
It was an easy drive to our nine-story Rushmore Hotel in downtown R.C., the only town in the USA home to metal sculptures of the first 42 presidents. We’re not sure whether they ran out of street corners or deigned not to waste the bronze on the rest of them, but 42 it is. We meandered a little, had dinner and checked the next day’s route, which passed through what looked like a little whistle-stop named Hill City. Turned out the hills were alive with the sounds of tourists, not to mention the vroooms! of bikers warming up for August’s infamous motorcycle rally at nearby Sturgis. In case you’re a collector of arcane information, there is a Harley-Davidson shop in every town in South Dakota with a population of more than six. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The Four Amigos
The park surrounding Mount Rushmore is well-thought-out and of suitable size. There are a couple of trails on which to shake a leg and obtain unique photo angles of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and (Teddy) Roosevelt. A pedestrian mall leads to the mountain sculptures and there is a fair-sized outdoor auditorium on a lower level for ranger talks, meetings of large delegations and dubious militia shenanigans. A sign near the stairway to the area disclaims the park’s approval of some of the things that go on down there but also reminds us the U.S.A. is still a free country and we have to let the shitkickers and headbangers have their fun, too.
The magnitude of the carving on the mountain is impressive. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, was the son of Danish immigrants. He had in mind the three earlier presidents but added Roosevelt at the behest of Calvin Coolidge, who insisted that at least one Democrat be represented. Borglum’s original design had the sculpture extending down to the subjects’ waists, but after 14 years he needed a trip to the beach.
As Universal is to Disney, just down the road from Mount Rushmore is the Crazy Horse Memorial Gold Mine. It’s not really a gold mine unless you’re one of the owners of the property sucking in $30 a carload and another six bucks to take a tram to the bottom of a mountain featuring an incomplete sculpture of the famous Lakota warrior. The statue has been languishing there for seventy (count ‘em—70) years, the drawing card for what might be called Tontoland, several buildings full of old Native American treasures and endless retail merchandise celebrating Indian life and lore.
Siobhan asked our defensive bus driver, cleverly disguised as Wilford Brimley, if the natives saw any money from this colossal enterprise which feasted on their accomplishments. After much huffing and puffing, the answer turned out to be not much. After that, she wasn’t in a mood to hang around and watch the movie.
The Ziolkowski family, descendants of the original sculptor, Korczak, claim to have donated $500,000 to Native American students over the years but the Indians point to millions of dollars in profits. They feel that the deal made by their forebear, Henry Standing Bear, required the Ziolkowskis to finish the sculpture with the proceeds from the park enterprises and 70 years seems like a reasonable enough time to do it. The Ziolkowskis brought a note from their mother saying the dog ate their homework, but they’d get right on it. Hello in there, profiteers---it only took 100 years to create Chicago.
The Devil Made Us Do It
We’ve always known the Devil’s Tower was sitting out there in lonely Wyoming, we just never got around to seeing it. Like Rushmore, it was at the western end of a little-used trail with no frills and little local razzmatazz. When the U.S. Army built a large base on top to accommodate an alien parlay in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we thought the moviemakers were kidding. The Tower looked far too small for something like that. Well, guess again—the thing’s a monster, far bigger than it appears in photos and videos. It beat the hell out of a half-finished sculpture of Crazy Horse, even with the free, autographed picture of Jay Silverheels.
A shaded trail at the base allowed for a nice little hike around the monument, which impressed from every angle. A park requirement to register with the rangers if you wanted to climb on the boulders below the Tower was largely ignored by hikers, a couple of whom took to actually climbing the perfectly vertical monument. They were about 25% of the way up and struggling mightily when we got bored and moved on.
How was Devil’s Tower formed? Well, geologists will give you a lot of mumbo-jumbo about rain, snow, oxidation and sedimentary rock but what really happened was revealed by the elders of the Kiowa and Lakota tribes. Apparently, a group of girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed atop a rock and fell to their knees and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit caused the rock to rise from the ground to the heavens, leaving the bears dazed and confused. Seriously irked at this disappointing turn of fate, the bears left deep claw marks, which remain today, on the sides of the monument while futilely trying to climb it. When the girls finally reached the sky, they were turned into the stars of the Pleiades. Nice!
Who needs Mother Goose when you’ve got the Kiowas?
That’s all, folks….
