Custer, Wounded Knee and Me...

In the late 1960's I was a student at the University of South Dakota.
I was a broadcasting major and, thanks to a job as a disc jockey at KVRA radio in Vermillion, I was able to pay for my education and get hands-on experience on the radio at the same time. Ted and Doris Dolney owned KVRA and were like a second set of parents to me. They allowed me to program the radio station, host the morning show and indulge in flights of fancy that would have most likely gotten my ass canned anyplace else. I owe them big time.


Wet Vermillion

Dry Vermillion

Because I was in charge of station programming, the

bulk of available hours were hogged by yours truly. Most of the other guys at the station were students too, but I had been there the longest and was the closest to Ted and Doris. This meant that most weeks I worked seven days. Like I said, I was a student and I needed the money.

In those days the FCC required radio stations to carry a lot of "public service" shows designed for the betterment of their communities of license. It was all boring crap that NObody wanted to hear, but the government thought was good for us all. HA! Up yours LBJ!

Since South Dakota is smack dab in the heart of Sioux Indian country, one of the programs we were asked to carry was called "Oyate", which is Sioux for...Uh...Beats me?

Anyway, we were required to run all thirty minutes of the pre-recorded show which was entirely in the language of the Lakota Sioux.

Naturally I scheduled the show to run in what we radio types referred to as the Sunday morning ghetto. It ran someplace in that wonderful 6AM to 10AM corral between the Back to God Hour and some Baptist thing. Who knew? Nobody was listening on a Sunday morning, not even me.

It was really a sweet deal. Here's how it worked:

The radio station was located on Main street in Vermillion and had a huge picture window into the primary On-Air studio. This allowed people walking or driving by to look in and see the disc jockey doing his show. (It was a simpler time and folks were easily entertained.) There were, in addition to the usual microphones and turntables, a couple of large reel to reel tape recorders that were used for the playback of shows like Oyate. It was necessary to merely slap the tape onto the recorder; hit PLAY and the announcer on duty could exit the studio. An easy way for a guy to turn a buck on a Sunday morning. If I had been smart I would have gone somewhere for a snooze every Sunday after starting the tapes. BUT Nooooo.

Vermillion, being in South Dakota, had about nine million bars lining Main street. In fact there were two saloons directly across the street from KVRA. One of them, "Our Place", was owned by two guys named Freddy and Duane who looked like two escapees from the Planet of the Apes movies. Nice guys...but goofy looking. As luck would have it, they were always open on Sunday mornings beginning at 6.

It was really too perfect. I would arrive at the station just before 6, load the tape recorders, push "start", place the phones on HOLD, and then mosey across the street to greet either Freddy or Duane as they opened their swinging doors. It was easy to watch the tapes roll and the phones flash in our "Window on Main Street" as I kept watch from my perch on the stool closest to the door of the bar. I'd shoot the breeze with Freddy or Duane as I enjoyed a "big red one", the always big in South Dakota...tomato beer. Sometimes I even shot some pool. The boys always had the radio behind the bar tuned to KVRA so that I could closely monitor our very fine Sunday morning programming.

The Oyate show was on every Sunday during my years at KVRA. I never understood a word of it and neither did Freddy or Duane. Hell, who spoke Lakota Sioux?? It always sounded really strange to me.

Years after I was long gone from the frozen and dusty plain of South Dakota I discovered that Oyate had always been shipped to us "tails out". For you non broadcast types, that was how lots of reel tapes were shipped in those days. Some engineer had figured out that tapes lasted longer if they were sent out backwards and required a re-wind before playing.

I had been playing Oyate backwards for at least two years. No wonder the damn thing sounded so sing song!

So, here we are forty years later... I'd like to apologize to the entire Sioux Indian nation. Hey, why didn't any of you guys call?? (Oh yeah, I had the phones blocked.)

In fact, if you're ever in the San Diego area, I'd like to buy you a tomato beer...

Kemosabe?