Great-grandpa on grandma's side paved most of the original two lane highways up there the first time they were paved, they tell me.
Miller, Belle Fouche (sp), etc... heard a lot of town names from grandpa over the years up there. "Rapid" was of course, the "big city" to them. I've only seen Miller and Rapid. The huge gravestone with my last name on it in Miller is Grandpa's dad. He got in some kind of scandal and ex-communication from the Catholic church there after a divorce, which was taboo back then. When he died he had instructions to put him at the top of the hill with that huge headstone just to make the church mad that they didn't get any of the money.
Small town drama right there. Hoo!
Grandpa drove machinery for grandma's dad for a few summers along with other jobs. Grandma finished college (rare for rural SD females back then) and then taught school in a one-room schoolhouse.
Grandpa sat out the WWII due to a badly broken ankle that never healed right (was fused).
Ironically his best friend went and flew troop gliders into Normandy on D-Day and crashed, like many did. His crew survived, and he... broke his ankle so badly it had to be fused.
They hobbled around together whenever they got the opportunity for the rest of their lives. Both lived past 90.
"Gus" loved to talk flying when he visited Denver. He married one of his nurses at the Army hospital. Sly dog.
He didn't fly much after the war but you could tell he loved talking with me about it.
Ardith, his nurse, made him eat healthy and his favorite reason to come to Denver was that grandpa and he would make up some project that needed to get done and sneak off to "the store for parts" which was really whatever the closest diner with omelettes and fried potatoes.
Later grandpa and Gus drove trucks for Buckingham for 15 years and he and Gus team-drove for much of that.
Somewhere in there he also pulled "Gus" from a sewer they were working on once when he was overcome with "swamp gas" as they called it. Gus credited him with saving his life. Grandpa just said putting a rope around his waist and going in head-first and lifting Gus out "just had to be done." No fanfare.
After that, La Salle, CO to run a diner and then eventually Denver and another long career at the Coors porcelain plant.
I was quite surprised to end up in a co-ownership in the airplane with someone who still has lots of family up there.
79M visits South Dakota almost every year. She comes back with lots of dead bugs on her. Someone likes flying low.
Like who's fantasy wife HASN'T been arrested? 
