Travel Broadens Your Horizons and diminishes Your Bank Account- by Valerie Halla

I recently started out on an overly ambitious road trip with my trusty companion, Nincompoop, my bags overstuffed with clothes and a grocery bag stocked with unhealthy snacks and sugary drinks and my new SUV gas tank full. I was ready to drive and listen to lots of 60’s and 70’s and 80’s music. I was going to visit friends and family in Southern California.

I headed out in the late afternoon a few days before Valentines Day, ready to spend one night out on the road before arriving in Palm Springs to spend three nights with my friend I had known for three decades and taught with at our kids local school. Of course my friend had been asking me for 7 years to visit her and her husband at their lovely home in a gated community. It was finally happening. I was excited to drive there the next day and made it out to the desert and their country club estates house by early afternoon.

As I drove the freeway seeing beautiful CA mountains and giant energy generating fans, I drove on the Sonny Bono Memorial Highway and exited where GPS guided me going past Gerald Ford Street and seeing signs for the Betty Ford Center and Bob Hope Road. It was like going back in time to the 1970’s.

I finally got to my friend’s community and got through security making all the right moves. All the houses looked the same. I passed lovely lawns, tennis courts, the clubhouse and greens and fountains. My friends waved at me from their front yard and helped me unload my luggage and carefully get Ninny settled in their house with dog pads in key locations around in the kitchen and my private guest bedroom and bathroom.Their house was gorgeous.

We started talking immediately. Her husband mostly just listened. We had so much fun gabbing and laughing. In the past, we had taught third grade at our local school together for years, and we both had gone through personal issues and trauma in our lives. It was a blast catching up and seeing their house and patio right on the golf course. After cleaning up, we went to the clubhouse for drinks like her husband suggested. I had a weak moment and ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, not really knowing that it contained 5 liquors and should be called Long Island Punch because it packed a punch and then some. I only drank half of my cocktail and felt like the walking dead. I’d better check my pulse when I get back. They both ordered itsy bitsy drinks so they were sober. They knew what appetizers to get which helped me since I was hungry. Actually I was more like drunk and dippy which means I was out of it. I tried to concentrate on what they were saying but my brain was misfiring— badly. I’d better check my brain when I get back.

The food helped and guzzling water eased the problem, so we went outside onto the clubhouse patio and chatted with other people who were enjoying the torch lights bordering the big patio. My short circuit of a brain started to perk up as I got into a disagreement about Canada with some older bolder guy sitting there. It was time to leave. I was drunkgry- sorta drunk and sorta angry.

Back at their house we had a great three days watching the Winter Olympics and sitting on the patio drinking coffee and tea each morning talking. Nincompoop had managed to poop on their carpet in the master bedroom and she also peed on their white tile while we were gone so I helped clean that up, apologizing profusely.

Also we two ladies went to Zumba at their gym and walked around their lovely neighborhood. We went out to their favorite restaurant one night and while her husband dog sat, we went to lunch at a Belgian restaurant for valentines day then shopping. What a fun time. Ninny started to use the pee pads thankfully.

It was hard to leave come early Sunday morning.

I said my goodbyes and put my LA hotel address into GPS and headed for my hotel to visit my son for three nights.

In LA I checked into my hotel in Korea Town, and waited for my son to pick me up. We were going to open houses for some pretty old and relatively cheap fixer upper’s. What a day! After seeing 4 dilapidated houses we went for food and then to my son’s girlfriend’s house where her Dad fixed us a sumptuous Lunar New Year Dinner and his gf gave us brownies she had baked for dessert. Her brother, wife and daughter also were there and we enjoyed getting to know them.

It was such an honor to be invited to a special dinner like that with homemade Korean dishes.

Matt drove me to my hotel, where I went to bed exhausted from the long day. The next day I drove myself and my dog about 90 minutes south on the freeways and in rain to my High School friend’s house in Mission Viejo. My friend made us a hot cup of tea and she had salmon salad sandwiches for us which were very elegant. Her table was still set beautifully from a luncheon she had that weekend for her Bible Study group. It was all done in pink with napkins folded in rose shapes. She gave me a pink cloth napkin and showed me step by step how to fold them into a rose. It was pretty easy. I forgot how to do it about five minutes later.

Then I gave her two pink candles as a gift. Perfect!

Our other high school friend came next and we sat and talked a long time then decided to call another old friend in Texas! What a flashback in our memories did that bring on. Old stories were flying like bats in a cave fire. We decided to meet up with her sometime if she ever got to California again.

My trip was great and it was tough saying goodbye to my son the next day. He took me out for breakfast and we did a couple errands together. I felt blessed to have such a good son and special friends in my life. Being 70ish can be a challenge but it’s real, much fun at times and it’s a privilege.

Jim Anderson ’63

The Murdo Auditorium which later would be called the Harold Thune Auditorium, saw its first game in November of 1954. As a result, the grade basketball teams inherited the old gym along with the boys’ and men’s locker rooms. Now anyone who had the opportunity or misfortune to visit or use that locker room or gym came away knowing they had walked on sacred ground where Murdo legends had dressed, showered, and perfected their athletic skills.

Bill Sorensen, classmate 1953-1961

Dingy, dark, and dank is an apt description. A single bench for seating was separated from the tiny dark green wooden lockers by what seemed like a foot and a half wide space. The one exit guaranteed a traffic jam that had kids moving sideways attempting to pass from one end to the other. A couple of light bulbs with very low wattage extending from the ceiling provided poor illumination. The shower at the far end had one dim light and two shower heads. Wooden slats separated your feet from the cement and the water drained into a simple pit. With no ventilation the humidity from sweat, showers, and wet towels combined combined to provide a distinct unpleasant odor. Although it was a perfect petri dish for mold growth, I think the only sickness was caused by inhalation of bacteria and viruses we spread among ourselves. It may not have been optimal, but I don’t recall many complaints. In retrospect, it is fun to reminisce knowing parents today would sue over those conditions we accepted as normal.

By Billy Francis ’62

When I was a senior in 1962, Murdo had an outstanding Basketball team. We won the district championship and the regional tournament before going on to the State B in Sioux Falls. Our top 5 players were Obie Brunskill, Willard Bordeaux, Roger Strait, Gordon Niedan, and Chris Anderson.

Our star defensive players and top scorers all year were Obie and Willard. I had the job of guarding Willard in practice and he kept me on my heels. If he wanted to make a basket, he found a way.

We went into our first game with Pine Ridge handicapped. Willard had injured his ankle during the Regionals and it wasn’t doing well. Obie had to take up the slack which was exhausting. Often times, you could count on one of them to steal the ball before the other team made it back down the court. They were good.

Nevertheless, Murdo hung on thanks to Chris, Roger, and Gordon. Though he didn’t score much, Obie had a brilliant defensive game. Murdo managed an 11 point lead at the end of the 3rd quarter. Some of the Pine Ridge fans admitted defeat early and started to leave.

And then Pine Ridge had a 16 point outburst in the 4th quarter. At the end of regulation time, the game was tied 47-47 so it went into overtime. Willard who only made an unheard of 2 points the whole game, fouled out in the 4th quarter. His injury was a huge factor in the overall scheme of things.

Pine Ridge dominated in the overtime. Obie fouled out when our only hope was to send  Pine Ridge to the free throw line in an attempt to get the ball back. He told me he was so exhausted he couldn’t see the difference in the colors of the uniforms and therefore, made some bad passes. It didn’t help that Pine Ridge made 8 of 10 free throws. The game ended Pine Ridge 55 and Murdo 51.

It was a tough loss for the Murdo Coyotes. Pine Ridge went on to win the tournament.

Jim Anderson, ’63

Mrs. Sorensen taught English at MHS for several years beginning in 1937, with a few years off to raise 2 children. Superintendent Gordon Diedtrich convinced her to come back to MHS in the fall of 1957 where she taught until moving to Presho after the 1961 school year.

It was early in my freshman year (1959) when Mrs. Sorensen stopped by my study hall desk shortly before school dismissed for the day. “Jimmy,” she said. “I think you would find this book interesting. She handed me Jim Bridger, Mountain Man by Stanley Vestal. I did find the book to my liking and thanks to Mrs. Sorensen and my mother, who when I had the mumps, had me read the condensed version of The Day Lincoln was shot, by Jim Bishop, I have been an avid reader ever since.

Maybe she saw some potential in the scrawny kid who lived across the alley from her home on Main Street, and who played with her son, Billy. I still recall visiting with her in the fall of 1963 as I was headed to college. I can still see that “You’ll find out soon enough smile on her face” as I told her I had everything all figured out-there was not much more anyone could teach me.

I recall a few of the highlights of the 2 years our class had Mrs. Sorensen for English. One “pop quiz” stands out because it was given the morning after we played basketball at Martin, which required us to leave immediately after school and arrive back in Murdo late. We had been assigned to read the first 25 pages of Ivanhoe. It was after midnight when I quickly read these pages. Our English class was the first class of the morning of the same day. We heard these dreaded instructions as soon as we walked into the classroom that morning. “Put your books away, take out a piece of paper, your name at the top-question number one. I got a few points that day but I could never catch up with those 2 Kinsley girls who also happened to be in my class. Mrs. Sorensen had us memorize Portia’s “Quality of Mercy” speech from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countryman, lend me your ears” speech from  Julius Ceasar. I can still recite the last few lines of Thanatopsis, but I think it was where to put those commas in those compound sentences that gave me nightmares. And let’s not even talk about conjugating verbs or diagramming sentences. And I still remember my research paper on South Dakota’s ring necked pheasant.

Charles Francis’42 from Murdo Man, the memories of Charles Gordon Francis

An extremely important teacher in my high school years was Marge Swanson (later Sorensen). She pounded away teaching Shakespeare to a mostly unresponsive class and was equally energetic in all her English classes. She talked me into writing a sports column for the student section of the MURDO COYOTE (The town’s weekly newspaper) and she forced me to enter the school’s annual declamatory (oratorty) contest. I memorized a speech by Wendell Wilkie, a Republican presidential candidate, titled “Men Like War.” Compared to the piano concert debacle many years earlier, my rendition of Wilkie’s speech was an even greater disaster. I got stage fright, forgot line after line, and had to be constantly prompted from off stage by Miss Swanson. Who ever would have guessed that I would spend the later part of my life helping professional speech writers prepare material for their bosses. And to think it all started with a Murdo English teacher named Marge Swanson.

This blog is about people in their 70’s but it’s really for anyone and everyone. This lesson I learned was a grand lesson no matter how old you are.

I’ve heard the saying, “There’s no fool like an old fool.” That really is a mean thing to say. I have great respect for seniors. They have lived through a lot. However, I did feel like a fool going on that grueling hike in Kauai last December. Now I get it. Old fools should know better. I did not. I learned a solid lesson.

On a recent trip to Kauai, I made it the four miles to hell and back on a strenuous hike my two sons and one of their girlfriends agreed was the most difficult hike they’ve ever done.

As I wrote before, I was sweaty, wobbly and downright scared as we went over boulders, through red volcanic mud and intermittent steps built for Shrek or the Hulk to climb. They were higher above my step up than three normal height steps are. My knees were challenged. My knees were shaking and quivering at each section we went down. It made me think, “I cannot do this.” I was fast losing any confidence I had four hours ago when we first started the hike. So I kept going.

It came time to head back down the mountain. All my weaknesses and doubts came down on me like an avalanche. My two sons helped me and held onto my arms for two hours as we walked and slipped and slid down to the parking lot. The ocean views, thick vegetation and horizon over the Pacific to our left were a great consolation.

I was thankful to be down off that trail, thankful for my strong kind sons and thankful this old 70ish gal figured out what the saying meant. Fools can still learn from their mistakes. Thank goodness.

Walt Anderson ’62

With Murdo’s impressive runner-up showing in the 1937 State “B” basketball tournament an easy remembrance for many hoop fans, many of the alumni may have forgotten that Murdo qualified for the State Tournament held in Mitchell, SD in 1935. Unlike 1937 though, the old “one class” system was in effect, and Murdo’s competition included Mitchell (eventual champion), Sioux Falls Washington, Yankton (consolation), Webster, McBride, Miller (runner up), and Lake Preston. Murdo’s team during the year included Seniors Greg “Pete” Brunskill, Gib Thune, Keith Lange, “Speck” Muck, Ken Karns, and Les Lange, Juniors, Curt England and Walt Anderson, and Sophomores, Bill Francis, Harold Thune, Roland Myers, Ellis Beckwith, Hugh Guthrie, and Bert Wendt. The Coyotes of 1935 finished the State Tournament in sixth place winning one game and losing two.

GLORIOUS Mud, Gregg Brunskill ’59

During my father’s and mother’s time at Murdo High School, basketball was the main sport and the gymnasium was located in the high school basement. There was little room for spectators so the local town fathers decided to build a big auditorium. I suspect this was done with local labor and goods and services donated by town businesses. My father brought his John Deere tractor with the farmland hay fork to help lift packets of asbestos shingles up on the huge curved roof. And of course the local ladies groups would organize lunch for the working men, served in the hot sun on the gravel pad beside the new auditorium grounds, served on 4×8 sheets of plywood supported by alfalfa hay bales. These ladies groups were pretty dawned fierce once they figured out a project. They helped put on dramatic plays and musical productions in the schools, expanded and stocked the high school library and raised money for uniforms for the high school band. It was the sort of town where your first grade teacher could stand at the exit of our high school graduation, greet us by name and give us a pencil kit present in a zippered plastic bag.

The typing classroom had dozens of ancient typewriters that went “ding” at the carriage return and on the classroom walls were formal photographs of Murdo High School graduation classes back to the 1920s, including my father and mother, aunts and uncles. Whenever I had a term paper to write, my mother would drive to the biggest nearby library in Pierre and return with a trunk full of books on the subject; for example, C. W. Ceram’s book on archeology, which I read more than once.

Harold Peck ’34

One year dad (Otto Peck) took the local bakery in for a debt on the flour bill, so we operated it for about a year before we could sell it. That was my first year in high school (1930) so I could not participate in athletics that year. I had to deliver bread before and after school.

Athletically, I played football and basketball in high school. As to football, I had been practicing with the backfield, but in the first game I played in, we were playing Pierre and I had to play in the line. I was much smaller than the opposing lineman so the only way I could stop him was to lie down and trip him as he went by. After that I became a regular lineman. Presto was our big rival. There were usually more fights on the sidelines by the spectators than there were on the field.

Murdo was always basketball town. In 1933 the boy’s BB team had won the district tournament and was scheduled to go to Rapid City the the regional when Roosevelt closed all the banks. Dad (Otto Peck) always carried a lot of money in cash, so he financed the team to the tourney. Earlier in the season we were scheduled to play Pine Ridge Indian School which was also undefeated. Since most of the area wanted Murdo to lose, it was agreed to play the game on a neutral floor. The game was held at the Philip auditorium. Most of the people at the game wanted Murdo to be defeated. At that time Les Lange and Carl Lathrop were the best shots. We surprised everyone and won the game easily.

Bill Sorensen grades ’53 to ’61

I completed elementary school in Murdo and vividly remember my first day. Mrs. Sandy was my teacher and by morning recess, I was the only student unable to complete the assignment to draw a butterfly from the picture provided. Consequently, I was not allowed to participate in recess. I remember the frustration but much to my relief Mrs. Sandy left the room.  Immediately I moved to one of the large windows illuminated brightly by the sun and traced the damn butterfly. At noon Sheila Penticoff and I were walking home and I happily commented that the day had passed so fast but was devastated when she informed me school would continue in the afternoon. I was almost in denial until my mother, who could not contain her laughter told me the awful truth. At 1 p.m. Mrs. Sandy was reading On the Banks of Plum Creek. It was inevitable that the word “but” would be read and upon it happening, Sheila and I burst out laughing. It seemed extremely odd to me that the other classmates were not joining us. Mrs. Sandy made it abundantly clear that this type of behavior would not be tolerated. Her tone of voice totally convinced me of her sincerity. Better days were ahead.

Ralph Thomas ’67

The 1964 Senior class play: The Antics of Andrew

One spring morning in 1964 Gloria Thomas woke with hundreds of red bumps all over her body.  Her mom, Ethel said, “You have the measles and you can’t go to school.”  Gloria replied, “But I have to go, the senior class play is today and I’m a vital part of it.” Gloria stayed home.  Mrs. Peters, (the play director) was notified.  She immediately went into hiding for three hours, and assumed the role.  She performed admirably in the matinee and evening performances and saved the play with an A+ performance.  When Gloria returned to school the next week several classmates (names redacted)

jokingly accused her of trying to sabotage the senior  class play. 

Jim Anderson ’63

I attended Margaret Lathrop’s funeral in Aberdeen in 1999.  She taught in the Murdo schools from 1963 to 1984.  One of those attending the funeral was Willard Ellis who was the Murdo superintendent from 1953 to 1956 and who I knew faintly from my grade school days.  I had assumed he had died years before.  As I recall, when Mr. Ellis entered the grade school building, there was probably some disciplining of some student to be carried out.  Mr. Ellis became principal at Aberdeen Central after moving from Murdo.  One of my good friends in Eureka, an Aberdeen Central grad, said yes, he got acquainted with Willard Ellis as a student and not in a very friendly way.

Greg J. Brunskill ’59 from Glorious Mud

The high school band played concerts on the porch of the Jones County courthouse in the summertime.  The poet laureate of South Dakota, Badger  Clark, came to our town school in a black cape, high lace boots and a high-crowned hat to recite his prairie/cowboy poems.  I can  still remember the “clank, clank, clank” of the metal chains rattling on the big steel A-frame of the flagpole and the playground swings at the grade school.  At recess, we would play “pom, pom, pull away” and sometimes the big kids would run right over the little kids. 

Paul Anderson ’32, As I remember it.

My brother Walter ( Paul Anderson’s brother Walter) went back to high school in the fall of 1934.  By this time they had started dormitories for the country students.  The first year the boys slept in one upstairs room of the old grade school and ate meals in the old annex building.  He told some wild stories about 15 boys sleeping in one big room.  By then he was the biggest boy there, and quite often was the “peacemaker” and “rules maker.”  Walter was playing guard or tackle on one of Murdo’s best 11-man football teams in the fall of 1934.  He was on the 2nd team in basketball when Murdo beat Rapid City in the region and went to the state tourney in Mitchell.  He and two other boys hooked the freight to Mitchell for the tournament, sleeping in the depot at nights.  When they hooked the train coming home, the boxcars were all shut, so they rode the coal car—some very black, cold, boys when they got to Murdo.