Sometimes it’s the little things that make a vacation amazing. On our first morning in the Black Hills, we decided to tour Wind Cave National Park. But first — breakfast. We headed into Custer, which not only was the closest town, but was on the way. We headed down the main street and looked for “a bakery or something.” Almost immediately we saw this place.
It didn’t look like much inside. There was a bakery counter filled with doughnuts and other pastries, several of which we subsequently tried and all of which were good except the hubcap-sized cinnamon rolls which were just average. The maple-glazed doughnuts were a particular favorite. The walls of the restaurant were painted beef-Stroganoff beige and there wasn’t much in the way of decoration. The booths in the front room were packed, so we were stuck at a small table in an even-less-fancy back room. I ordered the “special” — which happened to be the breakfast I always order in restaurants, bacon, hash browns and eggs easy-over.
Everything was perfect. Even the toast was fresh-baked and very tasty. We ended up going here six times during the six days we were in the area.
Wednesday — breakfast
Thursday — I drove in and picked up pastries that we ate in our room. Then our friends came and we headed back over for lunch.
Saturday — The four of us ate breakfast here.
Sunday — My wife and I ate breakfast here.
Monday — The four of us ate breakfast here before we headed back to Illinois.
We had the same waitress for several of the breakfasts. We ordered the same meal, but with different combinations of items and different ways of preparing them, but she got them all right without making a mistake. By the last morning, she had memorized our preferences. We felt like regulars.
There was a sign over the door informing us that this was the very location of a saloon where James “Fly Speck Billy” Fowler murdered Abe Barnes.
I asked the waitress how Fowler got the nickname of “Fly Speck,” but she didn’t know. So when I got home, I looked it up on the Internet and discovered this:
James Fowler became known as Fly Speck Billy because of his freckles. He was lynched as a result of a series of poor choices, alcohol and bad timing. He’d begged a ride on Abe Barnes’ freight train from Sydney, Nebraska, to Custer, in 1876. When he got to town, he got drunk, borrowed Barnes’ revolver and when Barnes refused to get up from his card game to drink with him, shot him in the back, killing him.
Fly Speck Billy tried to escape, but a man standing by the door banged him on the head with a chair, and Billy collapsed into the arms of Sheriff Code, who was just walking into the saloon. Vigilantes later that night jumped Code and his deputies, took Fly Speck Billy up on what is now known as Pageant Hill south of Custer and lynched him.
I can’t help wondering if his nickname helped point him toward a life of crime.
The seven miles from our lodge to Custer were interesting too. Almost every time we made the trip, a herd of deer ran across the road in front of the car. When they weren’t running across the road, they were grazing in the front yard of a house.
And there was a herd of longhorns in a pasture a bit closer to the lodge.
The scenery wasn’t bad either. The red trees on the mountains are pines killed by a pine beetle infestation. Apparently they have no way to stop the critters from killing the trees, but thinning the forests helps some. We saw a lot of red pine groves and a lot of cut lumber.
