A couple of days ago my wife Brenda and I had a meeting in Aberdeen so we traveled north on highway 281 towards our destination. The landscape along this way is pretty flat with not much to see except lots of farm land. After 98 miles of driving time we came to the town of Wolsey. We joked about how many people in South Dakota probably have no idea where Wolsey even is. We joked about it for awhile and then we saw it had a population of about 459 people. I commented on what was probably not happening in Wolsey on a typical day, when all of a sudden we saw 9-10 fairly new houses on the edge of town. We were surprised with what we saw and then we felt like we needed to stop and ask some people how this happened, but we had not extra time to stop. We clearly changed our joking and started talking rather serious about what they were doing to promote housing growth that we were not. Since this was not the case, we drove on and talked some more about what kind of people must live there and what kind of leadership they must have to help make this growth happen. We tried to think about the last time we saw a new house go up in the city limits of Wagner and why it is so hard to come up with the answer. Do you know the answer to this basic question? If you do, you have a better memory than we did. We wondered what was standing in our way when we know it has been talked about a lot, but no action ever takes place. What kind of leaders need to be leading to help change this story? What ever the answer is it seems to elude us year after year. When will this change and what will it take to change the road we seem to be on?

After driving another 33 miles we came to the community of Redfield, which has a population of about 2,200 people. It is also a rural town like us and what was the first thing we noticed about driving through the town? They had the same kind of a four lane road coming through town that we presently have. Of course it is probably obvious that the discussion then turned to how Redfield is probably their road and Wagner is not. We wondered how that was possible and also why it has been such a bad topic for so many people. We joked about how everyone is probably looking forward to having two less lanes to drive on so the traffic can be so much more crowed than it is now. We joked about how much people will probably hate the change and who they will probably blame in the end when they are driving on two less lanes than we are now and then we get to enjoy this change for the next 30 plus years. We talked about the traffic flow and how enjoyable it will be and who gets the blame if it is hated once it is done and get to enjoy it for another 30 years or so. We also talked about how Sioux Falls has 41st street, which is probably the busiest street in South Dakota with a side walk running right beside the traffic and what it would take to get them to give up two lanes of traffic like we will as the reason for the change should apply for both communities. The next thing we knew we arrived in Aberdeen and on to our meeting. Our advice to anyone taking this drive is to consider using these two topics as a way to pass the time away as there is not much to see in the northland for scenery. Time passes when you are having fun.

Dana Sanderson