Pastor Kirk Wise stood at the door of the Spearfish Lake First Baptist Church, shaking hands with the parishioners as they came out of the service.

It was a rewarding experience. He’d preached a great sermon, and he knew it, one that ought to win him the job.

Wise was a very devout, very fundamentalist young man, fairly recently out of a good Baptist college, who hardly even realized any more that he was attracted to the pulpit because preachers seemed to work even less than school teachers, and hard work was something he tried to avoid. He hadn’t landed a church yet, but he had been at Spearfish Lake First Baptist for six weeks now, and he had the feeling that the board was getting ready to jump, so had laid on a good performance this Sunday.

He had been surprised the Thursday before, when the ladies of the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club had received his little talk so warmly, especially since the Woman’s Club was mostly Methodists and Presbyterians. Perhaps Spearfish Lake was ready for a real revival, he thought, and he could be the one to lead it. A good record here, and who knew? He could wind up with a big church eventually, one with a congregation big enough to burp up a good salary, and pastoral assistants to do the work.

He’d taken his talk on “The New Immorality” that he had given off the cuff to the Woman’s Club and expanded it and added more good Baptist hellfire and brimstone, and it seemed to have worked; he kept hearing, “Great sermon, pastor.” and “Fine job, son.” and “You’ll go far, young man.” Good Baptists, these people, he thought.

The late Sunday morning after-church crowd at Rick’s Café was largely different from the one that assembled there every weekday morning. While a group of Baptist ladies sat around the big table where the men normally had breakfast, five of the seven members of the Board of the Spearfish Lake First Baptist Church found a quiet booth near the back of the room. Four of them, Dan Evachevski, Howard Meyers, Roger Augsberg and Mark Gravengood squeezed into the booth, while a fifth, Bill Caserowski, found a loose chair and set it at the end. Sharon served each of them coffee, and went off to service another table.

“I don’t know,” Board President Meyers started. “Damn kid shooting his mouth off is going to get us in trouble.”

“Hell of a sermon,” Dan Evachevski commented. “But he don’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”

Caserowski shook his head. “Heard he gave the same sermon to the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club.”

Mark Gravengood, the youngster on the board, nodded. “Two strikes right there.”

“Yeah,” Augsberg added. “The Colonel hears about this, he’s gonna be pissed.”

A silence fell over the table for a moment, before Meyers spoke again. “We don’t need the Colonel pissed off at us right now. Remember what he did to the Methodists.”

“Yeah,” Augsberg said. “The board members couldn’t get a loan, couldn’t get their checks cashed, couldn’t even get the stores to cash their paychecks because everybody knew they’d be held up at the bank.”

“That was years ago,” Gravengood protested.

Meyers shook his head. “Just because the Colonel hasn’t had to uncork on anybody in years doesn’t mean he won’t if he feels like it.”

“I mean, it’s not like we’re against the Colonel, or his people,” Gravengood protested.

“There ain’t no call for him to go spouting off about the people out to Turtle Lake like that,” Caserowski commented. “I mean, we know they’re all good people, like Dan’s kid there. There ain’t nobody in this town who wouldn’t trust Gil Evachevski with their lives or their kids.”

Gil’s father nodded. “Hope Gil doesn’t hear about that sermon, or our young pastor is going to be talking in a real high voice.”

Meyers said. “Den of snakes. Pit of immorality. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, homosexuality. I mean, we all know better than that. I mean, hell, Dan and I were there when the Colonel married Helga, and we seen better with our own eyes.”

“The Turtle Lake Club’s been out there thirty years,” Augsberg said. “I ain’t never heard of no young girls from town going out there and getting pregnant and dope addicted in no all-night sex orgy, like he said.”

“Never have, either,” Meyers agreed. “And if there ever had been, Virginia would have heard about it, and I would know.”

Dan Evachevski nodded. “If Gil ever heard of anything like that out there, there’d be blood, guts, and feathers all over a couple square miles of woods.”

“I remember when I was back in school with Gil, and all the kids all kind of giggled at Barb over what went on out there,” Augsberg said. “That was before we knew better. I also remember Gil had to put a couple of kids in the hospital so they’d understand that kind of thing isn’t nice.”

“Yeah,” Evachevski said. “Remember that loudmouth kid from Blair back during that football game in, oh, I guess it must have been about ’50?”

“Still walks with a limp,” Augsberg agreed.

“The kid is full of shit from the word go,” Caserowski agreed. “He preaches good, but he’s too damn dangerous. I say he goes.”

“Damn right,” Augsberg said. “It’s not so much that I’m scared of what the Colonel would do, or what Gil would say to me, but if he’s that bad on something we know better about, then how bad could he be on something we don’t know about?”

“You’re right,” Gravengood agreed. “Course, last week, I said he goes, too, after that shit he said about Vietnam vets.”

“Dan, how about you?” Meyers asked.

“He’s a nice kid,” Evachevski said. “I say we give him a chance to get out of town before Gil finds out about his sermon today.”

“That’s got my vote,” Meyers agreed. “I suppose we ought to call a formal board meeting, but with our other two members out of town, anyway, it wouldn’t come out any different. Let’s finish our coffee and go tell the kid to pack his bags.”

A chorus of assenting sounds came from around the table. “Somebody better tell the Colonel what we done, just so he don’t go off half-cocked,” Caserowski said.

“I’ll see Gil over coffee tomorrow morning, probably,” Meyers said. “I can tell him, and he can tell the Colonel.”

“We need to do better than that,” the elder Evachevski said. “I’ll take a run out to the club this afternoon and have a talk with him. I don’t mind, and I don’t get to see the grandkids much in the summer, anyway.”

“I bet you don’t mind the view, either,” Caserowski smirked.

“Oh, some of them gals is pretty good-looking,” Evachevski said. “But look at it this way. Look around this room, and imagine everyone here with their clothes off. How many people are worth looking at?”

All four of the other men craned their necks around, imaginations working. “Three, maybe four, counting Sharon,” Augsberg commented.

“Same thing out there,” Evachevski said.

“I’ve often thought we ought to run a church camp out there some weekend,” Meyers said. “It’d set some people to thinking. Think what a baptism would be like.”

“Nice to think about,” Augsberg agreed. “It’d shake people up, get them thinking, but it’d never happen.”

All of a sudden, Gravengood broke out in a loud laugh. “What’s so funny?” Meyers asked.

“A lot of things,” the young man said. “I know that Wise guy thought he was going to get a job with his sermon today, but he’s getting himself booted in the ass instead. How long has it been since the Colonel has had to get down on somebody’s ass over the West Turtle Lake Club?”

They looked at each other before Meyers ventured an educated guess: “Well, if you count out Donna Clark and the Woman’s Club, probably ten years.”

Gravengood smiled. “How long has it been since Gil Evachevski hit anybody?”

It was Dan’s turn for an opinion. “Actually, unless he did something in the army I didn’t hear about, and there’s a lot that he did in the army that I’ve never heard about, it’s not since high school.”

“Right,” Gravengood said, smiling wider. “We know they’d do something if they had to, but they never have to, and do you know why?”

“Why?” someone asked.

“Because we do it for them,” Gravengood said, draining his coffee. “They expect it of us, and we expect it of us, too.”

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, August 13, 1975

Church News

BAPTIST CHURCH STILL LOOKING FOR PASTOR

Howard Meyers, President of the Board of Spearfish Lake First Baptist Church, said this week that the church is still looking for a new pastor.

Meyers said that the Rev. Kirk Wise, who has been supplying the pulpit for the past several weeks, has decided to move on to other things.

The church has been without a pastor since this spring, when the former pastor, Rev. Joe Fry, moved to Anchorage, Alaska.

Meyers said that the pulpit will be serviced this weekend by Rev. F. W. Ashtenfelter of Camden, a retired pastor who summers in the Spearfish Lake area.

Once time and tranquilizers had somewhat settled Donna Clark down, she more or less forgave Wayne Clark for going to his son’s wedding at the West Turtle Lake Club.

Getting Wayne and Barbara and the Evachevski boy out there had obviously been some devious plot of Garth Matson’s, she decided, a devious plot that had been aimed directly at her. And successful, too.

Donna wasn’t sure how she was going to live it down. Supposedly, she was in the Camden hospital for appendicitis, but they don’t lock the belly surgery wards.

She decided that Wayne had clearly been suckered into going to the wedding, and taking Barbara with him, just like Garth had wanted, just like Garth had suckered Wayne into almost giving him the land for that nudist camp.

Wayne obviously was too weak to strike back, or didn’t care to strike back, so it was up to her.

To give Donna the credit due her, her first thoughts were for her children, rather than for simple revenge. How could their minds not be twisted, what with having to live with people like their father and stepmother?

She was barely back in Spearfish Lake before she had a talk with her lawyer, old Charles Macklin, who had represented her in the divorce battle of 1943 and the custody battle of 1946.

“Don’t try it,” Macklin suggested. “I’m perfectly willing to reopen a custody hearing if you are, but I’d advise you not to, because the first thing that Garth will bring up will be your stay in the psychiatric ward down in Camden. On that alone, he could get temporary full custody, and he’s got money enough to keep continuances going from now until Frank comes of age.”

“But what about that nudist camp?” she whined. “Certainly the immorality of that has to count for something.”

“I’m sure the court would take that into consideration,” Macklin said. “We might be able to get an order enjoining taking the children there, but that’s the absolute best we can hope for. I’ll give it to you straight, Donna. You stand to lose more than you stand to gain.”

Paranoia was heavy upon Donna that summer; she was sure that Macklin had sold out, and in fact thought he had to have sold her out in ’46.

She got another lawyer, and when that one gave her essentially the same advice, got another one, from down in Camden who didn’t have any connections in Spearfish Lake at all. He was an expensive one, and though the suit was filed in December of ’48, it was the summer of ’49 before the issue was more or less settled, at least as far as the court was concerned, when the original custody agreement was left unchanged, and Donna was left several thousand dollars poorer.

The courts failing to have seen the dispute her way, Donna realized that her only recourse was to teach her children right from wrong.

In Barbara’s case, it did not take much teaching; she had been uncomfortable the few times she had visited the West Turtle Lake Club, and did not really care to go out there again; she had gone the last time only on account of the wedding, and, in fact, it was to be her last ever visit there.

Barbara was fifteen that summer and was going out steadily with the Evachevski boy, who seemed good for her; she would much rather spend what free time she could get hanging out with her friends or with him, and she was a busy girl at school. She seemed safe.

Frank was a different story. He was still young enough to get a wrong impression from the kinds of things that Garth and Helga were teaching him when they had him to themselves, and Donna dedicated herself to ridding him of their influence when she had the chance.

While Garth chose not to make an issue about attendance at the West Turtle Lake Club for Barbara, he and Helga felt that it was good for the boy to confront the issue at an early age, at least so he would be able to make up his own mind about how he intended to run his life. The unintended result of this was that Frank had to endure three or four hours of lectures from his mother for each hour he spent at the West Turtle Lake Club.

The main strategy that Donna settled upon that would at least keep Frank away from the club most of the time was to send him far away to camp, a camp that lasted all summer, the only time when the weather was warm enough for the West Turtle Lake Club to be open.

Garth was naturally opposed, but conceded that it couldn’t really hurt the boy; at least time that the kid spent at camp was time that he was not spending listening to his mother. In the summer of ’49, when he was nine, Frank went to spend the summer away at camp for the first time. He hated it and was tremendously homesick, and he was very glad to get back to Garth and Helga in the late summer, and threw a tantrum when told he had to spend the weekend with his mother, the mother who had sent him away.

It was one of the last tantrums he threw with her over the subject of summer camp, though; she threw a tantrum right back that made him realize that there were worse things than homesickness.

Even though both Frank and Garth protested annually, from age nine to age seventeen, Frank spent his summers at far-away summer camps, on Wayne Clark’s money, wishing he was at home playing with his friends and enjoying being out of school. In his college years, he still went to the camps, but as a counselor, deciding that being away from his mother beat listening to her.

The unintended consequence of Donna’s summer-camp plan was that Frank spent a much greater percentage of time with his father than he did with her, and he grew fairly close to his father as a result.

In spite of his mother’s sending him to camp every summer, he had spent the odd weekend at the West Turtle Lake Club. He learned early on not to mention the visits to his mother, but her influence did have the effect of taking away most of the fun he might have had, turning it into a chore. Was it any wonder that his favorite activity there of his youth was to go off by himself and hunt for lost golf balls?

But in the summer of ’49, most of that was still in the future. Garth and Helga had three children by then, and their final one, Phil, was on the way. Garth was content to spend as much time at the club as he could, while Helga lived out there for the summer for the first time, leaving Garth to commute back and forth.

With the children out of the way for the moment, and Helga not in town, Donna Clark could devote herself to trying to get back at her ex-husband, and had figured that the indirect approach through the Methodist Church and the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club, along with other such things was the best one. One relatively minor item she accomplished that summer was to have two members of the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club blackballed, the two who had the audacity to invite Helga Matson to speak to the club while Donna had been in the hospital.

Recognizing that one of Garth Matson’s strengths in controlling the town was his political contacts, she decided to get a few of her own. In the spring, she was the first woman ever to run for the Spearfish Lake City Council; she lost the race badly, and blamed Garth for it, though he had nothing to do with it; the whispering campaign about her hospital stay “Do you really want a certified nut on city council?” started by the two former members of the Woman’s Club was sufficient to settle the issue.

That didn’t make her quit, though.

Nothing made her quit. Spearfish Lake had not heard the last of her.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, June 11, 1951

EVACHEVSKI, MEYERS TO SCHOOL BOARD

Voters in the annual June school election named Daniel Evachevski and Howard Meyers to two open seats on the board of the Spearfish Lake Area Schools.

A third aspirant for a seat on the Board, Mrs. Wayne Clark, ran well behind the winners, in a campaign marked by charges of the school library allowing “smut” such as “Tom Sawyer” on school bookshelves.

Final results in the balloting were: Evachevski, 817; Meyers, 781, and Clark 483.

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