custer
battlefield
The
Native Americans called this place the "Greasy Grass"--- American history refers
to it as the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn--- today, it's officially
called Custer Battlefield National Monument. I call it "The Farthest Place
From Anywhere Else I Have Ever Been." This has got to be one of the most
remote and barren places for which any army ever fought and died... and
the only thing there, or anywhere near there, to this day is.... them.
My
traveling buddy (eight at the time) and I spent Father's Day, 1991, in
an abysmal excuse for a motel just down the hill, off to the right of this
photo. It stood on the spot from where Crazy Horse supposedly launched
his final attack against the Seventh Cavalry. I fought my own battle there,
against an airborne assault of Miller moths, which swarmed in our room
like WWII dive bombers. The kid hid under the covers while Dad heroically
fought the moths with a twisted up towel for the better part of an hour.
Every Father's Day, we get a big laugh thinking of the ridiculous sight
this was.
While
it was still light, I went outside and sat on the trunk of my car drinking
beer and staring up the hill at the marker where George Custer fell (It's
the one painted black on the face, above, center) and the markers for all
the others who died with him. I wished I could have asked them all, "What
in the hell were you doing here, in this god-forsaken place? What was WRONG
with you?"
All text and photographs
1997,
Randal P. Dean
E-mail me at
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