Monthly Archives: October 2017

By Katie Hunhoff

South Dakotans are no-nonsense folks, so we always struggle to find supernatural tales for our October issues, but we have heard a few through the years. One of my favorite spooky stories, published in our September/October 2014 issue, is about a mysterious bright, white light in Miner County that appears out of nowhere. Locals call it the spooklight. It can be seen along a particular stretch of dirt road between Carthage and Fedora. The story’s author, Donna Palmlund, talked to family and neighbors to get their spooklight accounts.

Palmlund’s father grew up on a farm west of Spooklight Road. His grandfather would say that sometimes the spooklight was so bright they could sit inside and read by it. After the Hass family moved off the farm, a man named Joe Spader lived there. “After I moved to that farm it wasn’t long before I was aware of this light that was very peculiar,” Spader said. He described the light as looking like a bright spotlight cresting a hill and then going down the hill, but a car would never materialize. Before he heard about the spooklight, he was worried someone was trying to steal something. Another mysterious light has been seen in southeast South Dakota, looking over Nebraska’s Crazy Peak, which rises above the chalkstone bluffs on the Nebraska side of the Missouri. Sometimes the view gives South Dakotans an unexplainable light show. “I’ve seen all sorts of UFOs there in the past,” said Carvel Cooley, a longtime local historian. “It’s just lights. They don’t make any noise and they can stop, start, zap out of sight, disappear and reappear.” Although a lot of locals have seen the lights, most don’t talk about it. Some give credit for the lights to swamp gas. Others bring up the Santee Sioux legends of seeing “little people” in the neighborhood of Crazy Peak.

Another well-known eerie South Dakota spot is Sica Hollow in Roberts County. Reports of strange voices, lights flashing in creek bottoms and bubbling red bogs along the “Trail of Spirits” make Sica Hollow a spooky place to visit any time of year. Its first Indian inhabitants dubbed the forested area “sica,” meaning bad or evil.

We visited with Chris Hull several years ago. Six generations of Hull’s family have lived near Sica Hollow. He has spent countless hours hunting or camping in the forest and has seen the glowing lights. Once he also had a more mysterious experience while camping with friends. They realized they had forgotten supplies, so one friend drove home to get them.

“We were hiking and heard him yell from down in the hollow,” Hull told us. “He must have yelled five or six times. We wondered if his truck had gotten stuck and he had started walking. So we walked for a mile and got down to the bottom, but there was nothing there. We climbed a hill to search for lights and found nothing. Finally we went back to the campsite and he pulled in at the same time. He said he was at home and he had all the sleeping bags and things he’d gone to get. But all five of us heard him yelling that night.”

When the leaves fall and Halloween is close at hand, we all like a good South Dakota ghost story. If you have one to share, email me at editor@southdakotamagazine.com.

Katie Hunhoff is the editor and publisher of South Dakota Magazine, a bi-monthly publication featuring the people and places of our great state. For more information visit www.SouthDakotaMagazine.com.

Under a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Quill Corp v. North Dakota, out-of-state sellers are not required to collect or remit sales tax on purchases unless they have nexus – a physical presence – in the state the purchase is delivered to or received in. At the time the Quill ruling was issued, it primarily impacted catalog sales, since internet marketing was years away.

In 2016, South Dakota lawmakers passed Senate Bill (SB) 106, requiring out-of-state retailers to collect and remit tax on purchases shipped to customers in the state. The South Dakota Retailers Association was instrumental in the passage of SB 106. With an increasing amount of sales occurring online and going untaxed, the organization says it’s long past time for a change in how the tax is handled.

Following the passage of SB 106, the state filed a lawsuit against several online giants, and the new state law was placed on hold pending the outcome of the case. The lawsuit has been working its way through the system, and oral arguments were held before the South Dakota Supreme Court in August. As the state anticipated and hoped, the state Supreme Court ruled against the state on SB 106, paving the way for the case to potentially be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Our South Dakota retailers aren’t afraid of competition, but we believe it ought to be fair competition,” said South Dakota Retailers Association Board President Gary Cammack of Cammack Ranch Supply in Union Center. “We hope the U.S. Supreme Court will agree to hear this case. It’s a vital issue for the businesses up and down the Main Street of every town in our state.”

Cammack explained that the association first went on the record in 1937 saying tax should apply to purchases shipped from out-of-state to customers in South Dakota.

“Eighty years later, we’re getting closer to getting the situation taken care of once and for all,” he said. “We hope the Supreme Court is willing to tackle this important issue.”

SB 106 applies only to businesses whose sales in the state exceed $100,000 annually, or that make 200 or more separate transactions in the state in a year.

“Our State Legislature, the administration, the municipalities and business community have worked hard to streamline our state’s tax system to make it easier for the out-of-state companies to collect and remit tax on purchases,” Cammack noted. “And it is a tax that’s owed, one way or another. If the out-of-state companies don’t charge and remit it, then legally, customers are obligated to pay use tax on the purchase. It’s far less cumbersome to have the sellers charge the tax upfront.”

The state of South Dakota and municipalities lose an estimated $50 million annually in sales tax revenue due to these untaxed sales.

As the leaves are working on changed colors, and harvest is in full swing. The month of October is not only great for beautiful colors, tailgates and trick-or-treating, but it is a great opportunity for South Dakota pig farmers to showcase their AMAZING product during October Pork Month.

A lot of consumers are looking for a healthy protein source that offers lots of flavor and a variety of cooking methods? You’ll find some great options with pork – whether you’re making a family dinner, grilling in the backyard or planning the perfect holiday meal.

Many consumers are in search of knowledge about the different cuts of pork. A few years ago there was a makeover at the meat case with NEW pork cut names. In order to ease confusion over the various names of pork cuts, the National Pork Board and The Beef Checkoff program joined forces to make the meat case more familiar for shoppers. Several pork chop names are now aligned with beef steaks, so consumers can easily identify their favorite cut. Consumers will now find Ribeye Pork Chop bone-in or boneless instead of the Rib Chop, along with the Porterhouse Pork Chop and New York Pork Chop.

Not only are consumers looking for the perfect cut, but have several questions on meat preparation. So often you hear from a consumer that they feel pork is dry and tough, which is a result of being over cooked. But there is good news! You can have a delicious, juicy, great-tasting pork experience if you follow the current FDA guidelines which recommend cooking fresh pork to 145 degrees Fahrenheit with a three minute rest period.

Cooking to medium doneness for chops, tenderloins and roasts means just a blush of pink in the center. Cooking low and slow for ribs, loins and pork shoulder for classic fall-of-the-bone ribs and perfect pulled pork is a must!

Pork is so versatile it works with many flavors! No matter what time of the year it is, it is easy to adapt sauces, rubs and marinades to create a dynamic meal that will turn Blah into Ahh!

Over the last thirty years, pork has become leaner and contains less saturated fat. Cuts of pork that come from the loin such as chops and roasts are the leanest cuts of pork; pork tenderloin, the healthiest cut of pork, ounce for ounce, it is just as lean as a skinless chicken breast. Pork has received the American Heart Association’s Heart Healthy Checkmark, which means it can be marked and promoted as a heart-healthy product.

Pork packs nutrients in every lean serving and is a “excellent” source of protein and a “good” source of thiamin, vitamin B6, phosphorus and niacin, potassium, riboflavin and zinc.