Lack of Decorum

 Lack of Decorum  

The phrase “lack of decorum” gets bandied about occasionally in politics whenever someone has gotten miffed about the opposition’s behavior. They just didn’t do it right! Many examples of the problem can be found. The best (or maybe it’s the worst) case of it happened in 1985 at a black tie affair of the Washington Press Club dinner and centers on two people John Riggins, a star football player and Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman Supreme Court justice.

Riggins was invited to the dinner by People magazine because of his stellar performances on the football field, even to the point of earning Most Valuable Player in Super Bowl XVII. For whatever reasons, he’d been drinking heavily that day besides not eating. He was seated at the same table as Justice O’Connor, and in the course of the evening told her to

“loosen up, Sandy baby. You’re too tight.” He then proceeded to fall asleep under their table. It must have worked on his conscience, because the next time they met he gave her a dozen roses. He did exhibit a lack of decorum.

We recently returned from the 37th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora. Its founder Bill Lowman has persisted all these years in successfully rounding up participants. I make no claims about being a cowboy but do like the poetry and songs that come from that thinking and even try a hand at writing some myself. Consequently, we’ve attended to participate a few times.

One of the pieces I wrote and recited concerned a real life occurrence and is a good example of a lack of decorum. It happened this way. My wife is a west river girl born and raised among cowboys and individualists who thrive in that rugged yet beautiful environment. One of her family’s neighbors was a man named Dan Panko, a state representative.

The family got to know big, burly, cigar-smoking man well since he’d occasionally drive in the yard to sit and visit. As for his legislative stance he had a pet peeve with which he felt needed action. He wanted funding for a bounty on rattlesnakes. We’re talking about that area around Sioux and Grant countries where one is often cautioned to watch for snakes.

In 1941, his colleagues wouldn’t even consider the bill for his cause. But he wasn’t about to accept defeat. I wrote, “The only way you could dilute/ the danger lurking in those buttes/ was pass a bounty, but they wouldn’t budge./ As for Panko we’ll see that they misjudged/ the resolve be brought to this debate.”

He went home for some snake hunting which was easy to do in the winter months because the cold, lethargic snakes were balled up in dens. He put about fifty of them in a box and took them to the capitol and dumped them out on the floor. “Such a commotion you never saw/ as when the snakes began to thaw/ and crawl about in the warmth of that room.”

With only one dissenting vote, 110-1, his efforts paid off. A bill appropriated $10,000 to be paid out at the rate of 25 cents per tail. Panko’s break from standard behavior, that is lack of decorum, brought results. By the way, his ploy made news around the country. A headline in an Oregon newspaper read, “Legislators Are Rattled.”

Another of my poems titled “The Stockyards Hotel” dealt with memories. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen cattle cars rolling on the tracks. Until about 1950 a stockyards stood along the tracks in Sheldon where farmers could load livestock into slatted cars for shipping to market. But about this time another group of inhabitants found shelter here. Itinerant workers, bums, tramps, hoboes, whatever they were called hitched rides on the trains to come to work in the grain fields at harvest time.

As the poem goes, “This was just what the ladies feared/ each day this time of year./ They’d cry, those bums/ pull my carrots and dig my spuds/ and steal overalls off the line./ One gal got so doggone mad/ she chased them down the street/ waving her broom/ and screaming their doom/ til they escaped to their dens/ in the shipping pens/ to hide til the coast was clear.”

Territorial and early statehood history has long been a favorite of mine. One of the biggest personalities to wield oversized control of people and events in this period was Alexander McKenzie. As he became an established figure in Dakota Territory, he discovered his position of power lay with employer the Northern Pacific Railroad through which he pulled off a big example of getting his way through a lack of decorum.

The territorial capital at Yankton sat in the far southeastern part of the territory and proved too far removed from the activity occurring farther north. The rail line stretched across the state by now and the railroad wanted the capital city of the territory moved north to Bismarck. Yankton was not going to give up without a fight, though. In the territorial legislature, a bill passed whereby a law described how a new capital city was to be chosen. In the process, Yankton thought they would be able to pull the strings that would keep it there.

The governor at the time, Nehemiah Ordway, appointed a nine member commission to do the choosing and were to meet within 30 days, specifically in Yankton. While there, they were to organize and elect officers, after which they would select the capital. McKenzie and eight other cohorts made up the commission. Not wanting to meet in Yankton but required to, they knew they could come under extreme pressure from Yankton city leaders.

McKenzie devised the plan of tricking Yankton’s leaders by hiring a train locomotive pulling one passenger car in which the commissioners were seated. Early in the morning while Yankton still slept, the train slowly rolled into town, within the city limits a meeting was called to order, they conducted the necessary official business, and then chugged away and into the countryside. The letter of the law had been obeyed, and the commissioners could now choose Bismarck. Lack of decorum? I’d say so.