'City of Hustle:' New anthology explores history of Sioux Falls

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Sioux Falls is South Dakota’s largest city. It's also known as the Queen City. But a new anthology, exploring the history of Sioux Falls, offers another nickname.
Patrick Hicks is co-editor of “City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology.” And Christopher Vondracek is one of the contributing writers. The two spoke with host Cathy Wurzer.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
Patrick Hicks is co-editor of the City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology. Christopher Vondracek is one of the contributing writers. Thanks for being on the show. Patrick and Chris, how are you both?
CHRISTOPHER VONDRACEK: Excellent, thank you.
PATRICK HICKS: Thanks for having us on.
INTERVIEWER: I am glad you're here. Say, Patrick, why City of Hustle?
PATRICK HICKS: Well, the anthology started when my co-editor and I, John Lauck, we would get together, in the spring of 2019, usually on a Friday, at a bar, and we decided that there are a lot of stories in this city that people don't know. So we reached for a napkin, and we started to write down all the topics of maybe an anthology. And the book sort of grew from there, and we started to gather the writers that we knew in the city, because we've got a lot of writing talent in Sioux Falls. And the book came about really organically, and it's been really wonderful to see its reception and to see it out in the world and gaining readers now.
INTERVIEWER: I like the title. Christopher, did you have a hand in this title, the City of Hustle?
CHRISTOPHER VONDRACEK: No. I didn't. I was just a contributor. Although, I appreciate the title. I feel like that's the positive way of looking at it, of like hustling.
The more like critical way I sometimes I look at it is that Sioux Falls is right on the edge of South Dakota and Minnesota, and so sometimes its growth has been kind of spurred through an opportunism, and maybe that's just strategic. I shouldn't frame it as like being negative. Right? But they, for example, Sioux Falls growth in their late 19th century was happening largely because of the state's like fairly liberal divorce laws, which is curious. And then of course, the century later, in the '80s, the state positions itself as a home for like banking and credit institutions through some favorable regulations. So I think Patrick's is the better-- like no one's going to read City of Opportunism.
[LAUGHTER]
INTERVIEWER: But City of Hustle sounds much better, Patrick.
CHRISTOPHER VONDRACEK: Yes.
PATRICK HICKS: Yeah, and it actually comes from one of our contributors, Larry Fuller Evan Nolte and Mike Cooper. They wrote an essay called City of Hustle, and we really liked that idea. And the three of them in this essay, they argue that Sioux Falls really shouldn't exist. It's a city that has thrived basically on precisely many of the things that Christopher had mentioned, the liberal divorce laws in the late 1800s, where you could get a quickie divorce in as little as three months.
The banking industry has been pretty progressive here and even the highway interchange. Highway 29 was supposed to go up near Worthington, Minnesota, and apparently, one of the delegates in DC was good friends with Eisenhower, and he essentially said, why don't you move that west by 60 miles? And that has really changed the concept of the city, as well as gaining an airport here during World War II. And these things have developed organically, but it's really changed the character of the city in very positive ways.
INTERVIEWER: I did not know about the divorce history. That was new when I read that. That was interesting, the divorce colony, my gosh. But wasn't there a first in labor history in Sioux Falls? It was the site of the John Morel meatpacking plant. Right?
PATRICK HICKS: Yeah. That's right. The John Morel meatpacking plant, which has been renamed Smithfield, we're a hub for agriculture here. It's one reason we also have a very strong hospital system. It's a regional city, but the very first sit-down labor strike in US history happened here in Sioux Falls. But there are a bunch of surprising facts that I as an editor learned. I didn't realize that at one point in time the only city that brewed more beer than Sioux Falls was Milwaukee.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, come on. No.
PATRICK HICKS: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Really?
PATRICK HICKS: Unbelievable, right? But we can thank? prohibition for changing the course of that, I guess.
INTERVIEWER: See, Christopher, your essay is something of a mystery. You gave it kind of a general title "The New Sioux Falls." But as I read it, you got a court trail in there, Diane Sawyer, and pink slime.
CHRISTOPHER VONDRACEK: Yeah, all those things.
INTERVIEWER: You want to explain?
CHRISTOPHER VONDRACEK: OK. So I was covering the pink slime trial, in Elk Point, South Dakota, which is about an hour south of Sioux Falls, and that was in the afternoon. I'd go to the court trial, and then in the morning, I was actually substitute teaching for summer school classes, in Washington High School. Where a lot of my students who were the children of East African immigrants were actually their parents were working at the slaughterhouse there, Morels or Smithfield. And what was curious to me is, in the afternoon, when I would arrive to the court, down in Elk Point-- and I don't know if readers or listeners need a background on the trial, but essentially, a meat-producing company that's based out of South Dakota was suing ABC News for like $5.7 billion under the AG treble Defamation statute for calling their beef pink slime.
INTERVIEWER: That's right. Yes.
CHRISTOPHER VONDRACEK: Right. Exactly. Yes, and essentially, what was interesting to me is that I sat in that-- I was working as a journalist, and I was sitting next to a reporter from The Argus Leader, the Sioux Falls newspaper. And he actually told me that the paper was only sending a reporter down once every other day, because there just wasn't that much interest for that trial in Sioux Falls, which struck me as very interesting. But having lived in Sioux Falls, I noticed, I observed a real push to try to distance the-- distance itself from its agrarian past.
And it's not really an agrarian past, as Patrick said. Smithfield is still one of the largest pork producer in slaughterhouses or pork-processing facilities in the country. But I felt like there was this disconnect between the roots of the city and that agrarian economy, and sometimes some of the health care economy and sometimes more the movers and shakers, folks in Sioux Falls, their idea of what the city was about. So my essay, I hope-- I don't know if that comes across, Cathy, or not, but I'm hoping to try to bridge those two concepts. And to me the new Sioux Falls is more of an aspirational term about how the city can embrace both hemispheres.
INTERVIEWER: As you both know, history changes depending on the perspective of the storyteller. Right? So whose story did you want to or were you able to capture with this anthology, Patrick?
PATRICK HICKS: Yeah. It was very important to my co-editor, John Lauck and I, we wanted to capture the totality of the city in so much as you can in an anthology. So we were very intentional about reaching out to a variety of different communities that represent my fellow citizens here, the Latino community, the Jewish community. We had a very thriving Syrian Muslim community at the turn of the 20th century, which was news to me. And Sioux Falls was one of the Cities that opened its arms and welcomed the Lost Boys.
You might remember, in the late 1990s, there was the genocide in Sudan, and Sioux Falls was one of the places that really welcomed these so-called Lost Boys. So we were very intentional about tapping into the variety of different communities. And it's not accidental that our very opening chapters talk about the Native influence, because clearly, people have been living here before Sioux Falls even got its name.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, and I have to say, going through some of the stories, of course, I love-- I love, love, love stories that make you say really? I didn't know that. The lost history stories, right?
A, I didn't know about the brewing beer in Sioux Falls. That was big. That was strange, and I didn't know that. What was Joyland Park? Can you explain that to people, Joyland Park?
PATRICK HICKS: Sure thing. Well, I was down at our historical society, about two years ago, while we were fishing for ideas, basically, for the anthology. And they had a display on Joyland Park, which I'd never heard of before.
And it was a permanent sort of amusement park that survived up until the depression. And it was just this whimsical thing for kids, with a small little roller coaster and a very tiny little Ferris wheel. And it's in a part of Sioux Falls now that you would never assume that that once existed in.
And equally, we did something similar with we found where the first airfield was and found out that Charles Lindbergh landed there. And so it was really fun to unpack and to watch history blossom forth in this anthology. As an editor, I certainly learned so very much about this city that I've called my home for 20 years now.
INTERVIEWER: Christopher, did you think that the voice of Sioux Falls is represented in this anthology? Does that make sense, when I say the voice?
CHRISTOPHER VONDRACEK: Oh, yeah. No. Yeah, totally, and there are so many voices of Sioux Falls and of South Dakota I think that Patrick spoke to eloquently. One thing that I always noticed about the voice of Sioux Falls, particularly growing up in Minnesota, is when you cross the interstate, all of a sudden, these billboards start shouting at you about the Zoo and like Sioux Falls is the largest city in the state.
And I feel as if what I oftentimes get from Sioux Falls and from South Dakota, it's like encapsulated by that billboard that says-- at Wall Drug, there's like a 75-foot dinosaur. It's like wholly accurate. Right? It's not like overstating it. It's not understating it. It's just like, by the way, if you're interested in the large, green dinosaur, you can see that at Wall Drug. And I feel like there's something about that honesty and humility that is in Sioux Falls, and I think that this collection of essays does capture that.
INTERVIEWER: OK. We have a minute left. Christopher, what is your favorite thing to do or place to go in Sioux Falls?
CHRISTOPHER VONDRACEK: Oh, that'd be MB Haskets. It's the cafe downtown, Phillips Avenue. We used to live, my wife and I used to live across the street from it, and we used to think that it was like the opening to Beauty and the Beast, when everyone sees like the baker and the farmer and the wave. We kind of felt that in downtown Sioux Falls.
INTERVIEWER: And Patrick, same question.
PATRICK HICKS: Oh, walking up and down Phillips Avenue, which is the chic, really happening street, with lots of storefronts. And it looks absolutely gorgeous in winter, when they decorate it out, and I love going to Zandbroz Variety Bookstore.
INTERVIEWER: All right. I'm going to have to go to Sioux Falls. I appreciate your time. Good work, both of you. Thank you so much.
PATRICK HICKS: Thanks for having us on, Cathy. Patrick Hicks is co-editor. Christopher Vondracek is a contributing writer for City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology. You can find the book at the publisher's website, beltpublishing.com. It's a great read. Check it out, especially you Sioux Falls residents. Thanks for listening to Minnesota Now, here on NPR News.
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