Chasing America and Identity: My Road Trip to Nebraska and South Dakota (Part 4)
Four men on the rocks, please
This is part 4 of a six-part series. Read part 1, part 2, part 3.
A few miles past the South Dakota border, I stopped for gas at a mom-and-pop station attached to a convenience store and not associated with any major oil brand. I still had over half a tank in the Subaru, but the stretches of empty landscape were so frequent and so long that it felt safest to refill often. The pump was ancient — I had to read the instructions on it to understand that in order to dispense gas, I had to flip a switch after removing the nozzle — and it took several minutes to fill the quarter tank I needed. “It’s 53 years old,” the owner, a benevolent large man with a long white beard told me. “They’re asking me for $65,000 to replace it.” He sat by what looked like an old-school credit card machine and other yellowish relics from the past.
The leisurely pace of the pump had annoyed me at first. It was windy and chilly, despite the clear blue sky — the wait was uncomfortable to bear. Then I started to walk around and observe my surroundings more mindfully: the old red-and-blue Standard gas sign; the rusty pastel-colored Dodge trucks parked to the side of the convenience shop, making reality of many Western movie scenes; the specks of dust fluttered around by the relentless gusts of wind. And I thought that pump should stay as is. To the rushed driver, it’ll stand as a reminder to slow down.
Several attractions are built around Mount Rushmore: the village of Keystone, a Far West tourist playground of sorts; a presidential wax museum, advertised on a giant billboard featuring a young white boy at the White House podium alongside the call-to-action “Be the President!” (the marketing team must have missed the diversity, equity and inclusion training); an imposing display of the 56 flags of all states and territories of the United States paving the way to the main monument viewpoint. For all the fanfare, a visit to the national memorial climaxes into a remarkably uncomplicated action: looking at the faces of four influential United States presidents carved in rock. Once you get there, it’s a bit awkward, if not unsettling, to realize that there is nothing else to do with the monument besides staring at it. Mount Rushmore is sculpted stillness that begs for beholder stillness. Except the latter is hard to come by in 21st-century human beings — most of the visitors around me came, took a few pictures, and left within minutes.
I added intention and purpose to my visit to Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt by reading the customary handout narrating the history of the monument. I learned that in 1937, a bill was introduced in Congress to propose adding the head of women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony. The proposal — supported by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt — was rejected after new legislation required that federal funding for Mount Rushmore only be allocated to sculptures that were already in progress. Moreover, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, adding Anthony’s head “didn’t fit [the] artistic vision” of monument designer Gutzon Borglum. Well, too bad.
It comes as no shock that women were not part of the original, early-20th-century vision for a monument to American democracy. If the monument is to only include presidents, it would still be justified a full century later (that’s shocking for other reasons, but alas). But for an absence so obvious, one that in many ways haunts the country, there was no reckoning of it either — and that surprised me. I browsed the shelves of the Mount Rushmore bookstore, quasi-solely featuring profiles of notable American men. On one bottom shelf, I caught a slim publication called “Women Making History: The 19th Amendment,” produced by the National Park Service on the 100th anniversary of the legislation that granted women the right to vote. “Finally something about women,” I joked with the female cashier as I swiped my credit card to purchase it. “I know,” she replied with a knowing look.
Part of me had hoped that 21st-century United States would recognize in an iconic, world-famous sculpture like Mount Rushmore an educational opportunity to acknowledge, address, and explain female absence in the (literal) face of male presence: Dear visitor, enjoy the imposing beauty of this homage to four men who laid the strong democratic foundations of this country. Their impact on the common good was such that they deserve the supreme honor of immortality through art. But please remember: only men are sculpted on this mountain because at the times when they lived, women were structurally denied opportunities to reach such a level of accomplishment, recognition, and impact on the nation. Let’s take a moment to appreciate that, talk about why it is, and make space to tell untold stories of women contemporary to the four presidents. I wager that Mount Rushmore could halve the space of its sprawling gift shop — there appears to be no limit to human creation when it comes to refrigerator magnets — and add an exhibit or other educational experience on the topic of women’s participation in American political life, which is as hard to discuss as it is to sidestep.
“Come back in two years,” a Mount Rushmore employee named Abby told me that night over drinks in Custer, the small Black Hills town 20 miles southwest of Mount Rushmore where I spent my second night on the road. Abby hinted at something being in the works at Mount Rushmore to recognize women. I’ll be happy to see. I believe that approaching the study of history with a focus on presence — who did, who wrote, who founded, who accomplished, who was elected, which is how I always studied history, a darling subject of mine, in Italy — critically ignores the truth of why certain sections of the population could not do, write, found, accomplish, be elected, etc. And that is simply not educational.
I talked to Abby at the tail end of a long night at The Saloon, the oldest bar in Custer, where from the vantage point of the bar counter I bonded with many local characters over one too many drinks. Among them was Rodney, a Vietnam veteran with four marriages under his belt. Rodney practices mindfulness meditation every day, is averse to Covid-19 vaccinations, and disapproves of Mount Rushmore, because the United States government stole the Black Hills land where it is located from its rightful native owners. (This happened in 1877 following the discovery of gold in the land. The government seized the land in breach of an 1868 treaty that had given the indigenous Lakota tribe exclusive use of it.)
I also met Terry, a local farmer whose glass was consistently refilled of whiskey and soda over the course of several hours. That might explain why he kept telling other patrons that I was from Ireland — just another European country starting with an I, let’s give it to him. Terry owns multiple guns. He said resolutely that all the mass shootings plaguing his country are “terrible, terrible,” but restricting access to firearms is not the answer. At one point Terry bought me a drink. When I attempted to return the favor, he objected vigorously: “You’ve just lost your job,” he said. “You don’t have to get us drinks.” It didn’t seem relevant, let alone tactful, to tell Terry that where I have lived in the United States, his one drink would’ve cost me double what The Saloon was charging, or that the layoff had not denied me the ability to treat others, or that Google was going to deposit in my bank account severance equivalent to six months of paychecks. Money had little to do with the authenticity of Terry’s generosity.
I met Lori and Chris, who had driven their RV to Custer from Nebraska for the weekend (it was a Saturday). Chris was thin, with a long gray beard and a black cowboy hat covering a balding head. He drank stout, didn’t speak much, and stared at me with a mischievous smile as Lori, who is Mexican-American, told me about one of their three sons who lives in Boulder, like me, and works as a hairdresser, like her. It was just around six in the evening, and all signs pointed to a long afternoon of drinking for the Nebraska couple: Questions were re-asked, words were slurred, steps were stumbled. I asked Chris to watch my handbag while I went to the bathroom, and joked to please not steal the green card in it. “Oh, I’m good,” he drunkenly grinned.
Finally, with Abby, I also met her husband Tim. The two found each other working at Mount Rushmore. Tim is a Custer native. Abby moved there from Illinois, 90 miles outside Chicago. They looked so white American to me, and I created a fantasy about them in my head, informed by present drinks and past movies. They’d probably had dinner at an early American time, in their American-looking ranch-style house surrounded by brown crops. Being Saturday night, they had decided to hit the bar in town for a couple of drinks, nothing crazy. Tim was having one of those all-American bottles of Bud Light. They’d go home soon thereafter, in relative sobriety, enjoying the peace of worriless Saturday-into-Sunday sleep before waking up and cooking a traditional American breakfast of eggs and bacon, or maybe pancakes and maple syrup. In this mental image of them — however inaccurate — and in Abby’s pale-green Patagonia fleece, pink cheeks and kind, dimpled smile, I found small-town calm, coziness and comfort.
Continue to part 5: Nothing exceptional about American exceptionalism
