By Jonathan Tolstedt
Once a year, in the small town of Burke, South Dakota, something phenomenal happens. For the past 67 years, Burke resident Thomas Wiegers has awoken at 5:30 in the morning on the 14th of May and made his way down the long dirt road that is the drive to his humble country home. After this relatively short 300-yard trek, Ol’ Tom, as the town folk like to call him, comes to County Road 18, which would take him into main street if he turns left. But Ol’ Tom turns right instead. He has turned right every May 14 since 1937. Turning right takes him to the town of Pierre, South Dakota, which is the state capital. The only problem is, Pierre isn’t a half-mile walk like the main street of Burke would have been. Pierre is 63 miles straight north.
On May 14, 1937, Tommy Wiegers celebrated his 17th birthday. Tommy woke up at 5:30, as he did every morning, to do the chores. His father greeted him at the breakfast table, and gently chided him for sleeping in so late. Tommy’s father, Karl, rarely slept in past 4:00 in the morning. He was a quiet man who studied faces in much the same way that a geologist studies a rock formation. Each line or crease on a face told Karl a bit of that person’s history. Karl offered Tommy a cup of coffee, but did not wish Tommy a happy birthday. The two men finished their coffee without another word, and then left the house to attend to the chores.
This was the way it was between Karl and Tommy. Karl never offered a compliment or congratulations to his son, but also rarely scolded him. There was an unspoken agreement between the two. The fact that Tommy deeply respected his father, and that Karl loved his son beyond anything else in the world, was never spoken. It never needed to be.
When they reached the edge of the farmyard, the two men parted ways. Tommy went into the barn to milk the three cows the Wiegers owned; Karl grabbed a rusty old Fordsun toolbox and headed behind the barn to work on the tractor, which had broken down the previous afternoon. Before he disappeared around the corner, Karl flashed his son a rare but genuine smile. It was the best birthday present Tommy could have asked for. It was also the last time he would see his father alive.
Tommy finished milking the cows and walked out of the barn about 45 minutes later. He hadn’t heard his father for some time. Although that was not unusual, he had half expected the tractor to be running already. He decided to check on his father to see if he needed any help.
As he rounded the corner of the barn, Tommy was horrified to find his father pinned underneath the right rear wheel of the tractor. The 1934 John Deere Model A tractor that Karl had purchased used the year before was not equipped with rubber tires. The wheels were all metal and studded with sharp protrusions to give traction in the soil. The tractor had fallen off a log that Karl had been using to prop up the rear of the tractor, and the wheel landed squarely on his chest. The angular protrusions on the wheel and stabbed through Karl’s chest, and the weight of the tractor had crushed his thin body. He had obviously died almost instantaneously.
A single tear ran down Tommy’s cheek, but he did not scream. Even though his logical mind told him that his father was dead, Tommy did not want to disappoint him by reacting emotionally. He turned and walked toward the house.
About 10 feet away from the house, Tommy stopped. There was no one inside, he knew; Tommy and Karl had lived alone since Gretchen had died of pneumonia three years earlier. The farm would not have telephone service for another 15 years. There was nothing in the house that would help him. He turned and started jogging down the long gravel road that lead out to the highway.
When he reached the blacktop, Tommy saw a truck coming from the south, from Burke. The truck was moving quickly, and Tommy had little time to react. He waved frantically at the truck as it drove by. The truck driver honked and waved at Tommy, but did not slow down. As the truck shot past him, heading north, Tommy chased after it, screaming, but the truck driver never saw him. Tommy tripped and fell, landing roughly on the hard surface of the road. He lay there for a long time, breathing heavily and sobbing.
He finally pulled himself up and stood on the now deserted highway. He looked south, toward Burke, where he saw a flurry of distant activity. He could be there in five or ten minutes if he walked fast. They would be able to help him there. They would know what to do.
But Tommy didn’t want help, he realized. His father was dead, and he was alone in the world. If he walked into Burke, he would have to deal with people, all those well-intentioned people who would drive him crazy with their kindness. He didn’t want that. He just wanted to run away.
Tommy turned around and faced north. He could no longer see the truck that had driven past him. There were just miles and miles of black road, stretching over the horizon. Tommy started to jog.
Tommy stumbled into the state capital around 2:30 the following morning. He had jogged the entire 63 miles to Pierre, only stopping occasionally out of exhaustion. Numerous vehicles had passed him on the way, some of which had stopped to ask if he needed help. He shook his head when they stopped to ask, and the drivers invariably shrugged and drove off, letting the strange young man be.
He collapsed in front of the Governor’s Motel, which sat on the edge of town where County Road 18 met Highway 21. He was found a few minutes later by the owner of the hotel, Mr. Allen Barber, who had been awoken by a dog, an apparent stray who now stood a few feet away from Tommy, growling and barking at this intrusion on his nighttime activities. Blood was dripping slowly from Tommy’s left shoe.
Mr. Barber called the police, and a police car soon arrived to take Tommy to the hospital. Tommy was unconscious the entire time, and remained that way until the afternoon of the following day. When the police asked him what had happened, he said simply that the last thing he remembered was standing on County Road 18, just outside his farmstead. He didn’t even know where he was. Only near the end of the conversation with the police did he mention the accident that had killed his father. It was then that the police found out that Tommy had run all the way from Burke.
A few months later, Tommy returned to the farmstead he had inherited, where he aged from Tommy to Tom and finally to Ol’ Tom, that “crazy son of a bitch” who lives out on 18. But he never really recovered from that day in 1937.
On May 14, 1938, his eighteenth birthday, he found himself halfway to Pierre before he realized what he was doing. He made it to the Governor’s Motel by 11:00 that night, where Mr. Barber simply shook his head in disbelief and poured him a cup of coffee, while Mrs. Barber got a pail of water for him to soak his feet in. Tom stayed at the motel that night as Mr. Barber’s guest, and the motel manager drove him back to Burke the next morning. In 1939, Mr. Barber greeted him at the edge of town just after 10:00 with a small welcoming committee of local people, including the doctor who had cared for him two years earlier.
Mr. Barber and Tom grew to be close friends, even though they only saw each other once a year. Mr. Barber died in 1953, but not before saying goodbye to Tom. Mr. Barber had been suffering from lung cancer, and knew his time was limited. In many ways, Mr. Barber had been a kind of father figure to Tom, and having the chance to say goodbye to Mr. Barber meant a lot to him.
Tom Wiegers’ following grew, and by the beginning of the 1980s, over three hundred people greeted him as he jogged up to the Governor’s Motel. In 1996, on Tom’s 76th birthday, the Governor of South Dakota greeted him personally.
On May 14, 2004, Tom Wiegers ran up to the Governor’s Motel just after midnight as a crowd of nearly 500 watched. Tom Wiegers was celebrating his 84th and final birthday. Spectators who were interviewed by police that morning said that Tom had looked good as he ran toward the crowd. He had remained physically fit into his old age, and constantly amazed the small battalion of doctors who were part of the crowd that welcomed him each year.
That evening, however, was different. The crowd cheered as he approached. Tom smiled broadly as he ran into the crowd, where he stopped and held up his hands to silence them. The cheering died down slowly, and the crowd stared eagerly at him. “Thank you,” Tom said in a quiet voice. “Thank you, and goodbye.”
With a final smile, Tom Wiegers collapsed. He was dead before he hit the ground. Like his father who had preceded him in death 67 years earlier, Tom Wiegers left the world with few words with which to remember him. But, also like his father, Tom Wiegers left an impact on those he left behind that will never be forgotten.
Copyright 2004 © Jonathan Tolstedt