Custer, Wounded Knee and Me...

(This is a re-post of a blog from December 2008)

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, was able to pay for my education and get hands-on radio experience at the same time.  Ted and Doris Dolney owned the station and were like a second set of parents to me.  They allowed me, at various times, to program KVRA, 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

When I was in charge of station programing the bulk of available work 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.  As I said, I was a student and needed the money.

In those days the FCC required broadcasters 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 KNEW these shows were best for us all.  Up yours LBJ!!

Since South Dakota is smack dab in the heart of Sioux Indian country, one of the required programs we were asked to carry was something called "Oyate", which is Sioux for...uh...beats me.  It was a thirty minute pre-recorded show done 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 aired someplace in that wonderful 6AM until 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 a sweet deal to run these programs.  Here's how I handled it:  The radio station was located on Main street in Vermillion and sported a huge picture window that looked into the primary On-Air studio.  This allowed people passing by to look in and see the monkey...er..disc jockey doing a show.  (It was a simpler time and folks in rural America 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.  Had I been smart, I would have gone somewhere to grab 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 bore no slight resemblance to a couple of small town undertakers.  Nice guys, but goofy looking.  As luck would have it, they were always open for business on Sunday mornings starting at 6.  It was really too perfect.  I would arrive at the station just before 6, load the tape decks, push START, place the phones on hold, and 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 vigil from my perch on the bar stool closest to the door.  I'd shoot the breeze with Freddy or Duane as I enjoyed a "big red one", the always delightful tomato beer that is a favorite of most South Dakotans.  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 programing.

Though it was on the air every Sunday during my years at KVRA, I never understood a word of Oyate  and neither did Freddy or Duane.  Who spoke Lakota Sioux?! It always sounded strangely singsong 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 many 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 airing.  As you may have figured, I had been playing Oyate backwards for at least two years.  No wonder the damn thing sounded so weird!  So, here we are forty (now 50) years later and I feel just a little guilty.  I'd like to apologize to the entire Sioux Indian nation.  Hey, why didn't you guys call?? (Oh yeah, I had the phones blocked.)  Just to show you how badly I feel about this unfortunate incident, if you're ever in the San Diego (now Coeur D' Alene) area I'd like to buy you a tomato beer.   Are we cool Kemosabe?