Love Poem: Ghosts of South Dakota Part 4
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Written by: Marycile Beer

Ghosts of South Dakota Part 4

Of course on this night we are supposed to be asleep so Santa 
could come, but we hadn't been home from Midnight Mass very long, and the 
invigorating cold was not conducive to sleep.  Even the hot chocolate did not do 
much to help sedate the excitement.
	We were hoping for sleds that year.  The snow was perfect for 
sledding especially like we did it.  We tied out sleds on behind the car or pick up 
and were pulled through the hills.  We got our sleds.  My dad and my uncle made 
them for us.
	No television and only in the late years were we allowed to use the 
radio.  Batteries were to expensive for frivolous use.  We spent many hours 
playing cards or games.
	I took time out and went to high school and college and got my 
teaching certificate.
	My aunt taught there only one year after the Federal Government 
turned the schools over to the local government.
	The last time I was back there the out buildings had been moved and 
Indian families were living in them.  The school was dirty and unkept.
	Now the school is gone.  The ancestors who once walked these 
dusty plains are gone.  The Indians who were there when I was a child are gone.
	They are Ghosts.  Ghosts whose faces can be seen in the clouds.  
Ghosts  who still chop wood on those sub zero nights.  And the drums we heard 
in the middle of the nights are still beating.  They beat as strongly as the heart 
beats in a healthy body.  The laughter of the children still echoes under the 
bridge.
	The life blood of a culture, of a nation grows thin.  The Battle of 
Wounded Knee was the last battle to be fought  between the white man and the 
Indian on the northern plains.  It's cries still echo across the land.
	My foot prints in the creek did not last any longer than those they left 
in the dust.  But in my memories, this mile and a half by three quarter mile haven 
still lives.  And will live forever as a piece of unrecorded history.