"Look, Ma! Jews in a can!"

We arrived home alive and married.

At several points during our long weekend holiday, neither ending was a foregone conclusion.

I will say this, as I looked out the car window at long open spaces filled with a whole lot of nothing and every once in a while a lone farmhouse with smoke coming out of its chimney, I wondered how such people could live so far from civilization.

"I'd feel isolated," I said.

But as our trip continued, I felt an overwhelming sense of admiration for rural folk. No Targets, restaurants, or Drinking Liberally groups. Just mountains, cows, and horses. The people who live in South Dakota and Wyoming have a rugged self-reliance with which I can't help but be impressed.

The Crazy Horse Monument alone was worth the drive. The sculpture, jutting out the side of a mountain, is huge. It's also not even close to being done. When asked about the date of completion, the sculptor's widow (who's working on it with seven of their ten children) said the date the monument is finished isn't important. What's important, she said, is that they work on it every day and progress is made. Work is a blessing.

Well, goddamn, doesn't that just about sum up life?

Mount Rushmore sort of paled in comparison. The Crazy Horse people are all about Mount Rushmore, surprisingly so. They even took one of its sculptors to create the Crazy Horse monument and they publicize Rushmore like Crazy. No competition or bitterness between the two opposing camps - one very much a white man's masterpiece and the other documenting the abuses of the white man.

Nice to see them co-existing in peace and friendship. The point after all.

Driving to see Devil's Tower was a bit of a b*tch. The snow was thick and heavy and we were the only ones driving the forty or fifty miles off the highway to see the damn thing.

Seeing it would have been nice.

We passed one other vehicle up the road to view the mountain that drove Richard Dreyfuss crazy. A pickup truck with a driver who was wearing a cowboy hat and a smile.

"Did you see him smile at us?" I asked Husband as we drove by at a whiplash-inducing eight miles per hour.

"Yeah," Husband said. "He's thinking, 'Lunch'."

One last thought - those who rant against Big Government never drove through a blinding snowstorm with a nervous Jewish cityslicker behind the wheel. After skidding around county roads with ice at least ten inches thick, you smile pretty f*cking quick when getting to the Interstate. At least that motherf*cker's plowed.

Over a thousand miles to see three things. Here ya go.



Yes. We made it home alive and married.

Neither of which was a foregone conclusion.