The Work of the Rapid City House

A success and a failure

The Failure?

It was the “Golding of America,” and we worked hard to get the first “Town Meeting” set up in Spearfish, SD. The local Lions Club was the sponsor, the Pizza Hut promised enough to feed 500 people. The local paint store gave us red, white and blue permanent paint to use on the TM stencils for the four corners of the Main Street in town. The newspaper supported the project.

Unexpectedly, the Spearfish John Birch Society decided this was the work of communists and started a publicity campaign against our efforts. We tried personal telephone calls and helpful publicity.

On the night of the event, there was an attendance of about 30 people; one or two of them were Birchers. The event went on as planned and we completed the Song, Story and Symbol exercises and decided on a project.

When it came time to eat, I collected pizza for 500! (The House froze about half of them to enjoy!)

The end result was that the Birches complained to the State Bi-Centennial Committee who rescinded our certificate of participation in South Dakota.

The only self-justification is that when you visit Spearfish today, you’ll still see the corners painted in red-white-blue Town Meeting symbols.

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The Success!

Our work with the community in North Rapid was going well. The Indian Community Center and the Anglican Episcopal Church (mostly serving the Sioux Indians) carried the ball to earn acceptance with the City of Rapid. We held several organizational meetings and built a strong plan and set the date for a symbolic start.

The Anglican priest suggested we tie this event to their mid-night New Year’s services. We’d serve a dinner before the Mass, and then about one o’clock we'd go to the Howard Johnson motel and take a symbolic jump off the diving board with the theme, “Taking the Plunge for North Rapid!”

I was assigned to contact the motel. In September, I visited the motel management who agreed for this to happen around 1 a.m. on New Year’s morning. “After all,” the manager observed, “This is a low time for the motel business, and this is one way we can support this effort.” I was delighted.

On a dark, cold, windy and snowy event night, the dinner and Midnight Mass was crowded with about 75 people. At 1 p.m. we went over to the Howard Johnson and walked down to the swimming pool to change cloths to swimming suits. THE DOORS WERE LOCKED.

On behalf of all, I went to the desk and asked the Desk Clerk for the key to the swimming pool. She replied, “You can’t have them as there are guests in most of the rooms surrounding the pool.” I argued, “This event was planned in September and permission was given then.” She argued that this was not possible.

I brazenly demanded (as a sexist), “I want to speak to the manager!”

She brazenly replied, “I AM THE MANAGER.”

In the mean time, our 13 year old son Wesley, took it upon himself to explore how to get into the pool. He went outside to discover that the pool was both an indoor and outdoor facility. There was an unlocked outside door. He opened the pool for all 75 people who had changed into their swimming suits and were gaily having a ball.

Back at the Front desk, the telephone switch board lit up like a New Year’s fireworks explosion, and my friendly manager began to speak to irate motel guests. She ordered me to follow her and off we ran to the swimming pool.

An amazing assortment of pajama-clad people were standing on the balcony surrounding the pool wondering what the hell was going on.

The manager asked all of us to get out of the pool.

I requested she allow one local resident to, ‘Take the Symbolic Dive’ on our behalf. She accepted this arrangement and graciously extended an invitation for all to return later in the afternoon for a free swim. Many of us did just that.

And so it began. . .

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