When I was twelve, my family took a vacation up north to
South Dakota. The main thought was to go
see Mount Rushmore, which we did, but that wasn’t the best story to come out of
that trip. No, the best story happened,
when we went over to Montana to see the Little Bighorn Battlefield.
The Little Bighorn Battlefield, if you know your history,
was the site of Custer’s Last Stand. It
is located in the middle of nowhere just north of Garryowen, Montana. If you don’t remember the details of Custer’s
Last Stand, it was an armed engagement between the 7th Cavalry and
the combined forces of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians. The over-confident Custer took his 650 men up
against nearly 2,500 Indian braves and was badly beaten, losing over 270 men and
his own life. Despite propaganda to the
contrary, it’s historically believed that Custer’s arrogance and a series of
bad choices led to one of the worst military defeats in U.S. history.
The site itself is predominantly a large, open plain. The rolling hills are carpeted with tall prairie
grass that appears brown and gold in the summer heat. There’s a river and trees that snakes
jaggedly off to the side. To get to the
site, you must take a one-lane, gravel road from the Custer National Cemetery
to a little parking area near the monument commemorating the battle. The road winds lazily through the deep grass,
and due to the poor quality of the road and the number of cars trying to drive
down it, it took us almost 10 minutes to get from the cemetery to the monument.
We had no sooner trekked through the grass to the monument,
then my grandmother said that she didn’t feel very well. She had been having stomach issues the whole
trip, experiencing occasional bouts of diarrhea, so we decided to head back to
the restrooms at the visitor center near the cemetery. My father had just pulled the van out of the
parking lot, when my grandmother said, “You'd better hurry.” Something in the desperation or finality of
her tone made my father floor it.
So, here we were, flying back down this gravel road, passing
slower cars through the prairie grass on the side of the road, and my
grandmother starts yelling from the back of the van, “I’m not going to make
it! I’m not going to make it!” And my father starts yelling from the front
of the van, “Yes you are! Don’t you do
that in our new van!” Rocking and weaving, we made the drive
back in just under two minutes, the van skidding to a halt in front of the
restrooms. My grandmother already had
the door open before we had even stopped moving. She bolted from the van and ran toward the
restroom. Just as she got to the door, a
cleaning woman came out of the restroom, holding a mop and a roll of toilet
paper. Seeing my grandmother, she said
in a thick Mexican accent, “I’m sorry, ma’am, the restroom is closed for
cleaning.” Not even slowing down, my
grandmother shoved her out of the way, saying as she passed, “I don’t care, I’m going in
anyway!” I’m sure that poor cleaning
woman had to earn her money that day.
So, that’s it. That’s
my memory of the Little Bighorn Battlefield.
I have been there. I have seen
it. A little of it anyway. I spent about two minutes at it. Almost the same time it took for us to drive
my grandmother from the battlefield back to the restroom. And every time I think about that trip, I
hear voices echoing in my head, “I’m not going to make it!” “Yes you are!” And she did…barely.
