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5 days ago | 
agupdate.com | Terry Woster
When spring arrived on our farm, my dad found all sorts of excuses to get in the pickup and drive around the land. I’m talking about real spring here, not an arbitrary date on the calendar. I’m talking about the time of year when you start feeling the freshness in the breeze, with barely a lingering bite of winter’s last storm.
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5 days ago | 
mitchellrepublic.com | Terry Woster
Someday, perhaps, people may forget the 1993 airplane crash that killed Gov. George Mickelson and seven other South Dakotans. Someday, perhaps, the horrific events of April 19, 1993, may be remembered only in the history books. Today, for those of us who were alive 32 years ago, is not that someday. Mickelson and seven other men died in the crash of a state airplane flying home from an economic development trip to Cincinnati. The aircraft developed engine trouble and crashed in eastern Iowa.
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1 week ago | 
mitchellrepublic.com | Terry Woster
South Dakota’s Legislature celebrated its 100th session last Saturday, and I missed it. That might seem strange for someone who, as a newspaper reporter and later a state-agency information officer, witnessed 45 of those 100 sessions. I started in 1970 and stayed so long that before I retired, I had covered a couple of generations of lawmakers from the same family. If that sounds like I was the house guest who gets invited for an evening and won’t leave, well, maybe so.
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1 week ago | 
mitchellrepublic.com | Terry Woster
Almost 40 years ago, my news editor assigned me a story on the future of South Dakota’s smallest towns. The year was 1988. I worked for the Sioux Falls newspaper. The top editor at the time liked to look forward, “over the horizon to what’s next,’’ he called it. He had been studying U.S. Census reports on South Dakota to see what the past and present might tell readers about the future. He tentatively concluded that a significant number of small towns in South Dakota faced a bleak future.
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2 weeks ago | 
mitchellrepublic.com | Terry Woster
Years ago, I wrote a column calling myself mediocre in physical education in grade school. A former teacher set me straight in a hand-written letter. I like to tell that story because of what it says about teachers. I wasn’t gifted at soccer or basketball. I loathed boxing and I ran for my life during dodgeball. Even so, my old teacher’s letter said I was decent in PE. Ken Kessinger wrote the letter.
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2 weeks ago | 
siouxfallslive.com | Terry Woster
The era of rock and roll turned 70 a couple of weeks ago, if some music historians are to be believed. I was 11 years when the rock and roll era was born. The date? March 19, 1955, according to Thecurrent.org. It’s as good a date as any. That’s the day the movie “Blackboard Jungle’’ opened, with Glenn Ford in the starring role. As the pre-movie credits rolled, “Rock Around the Clock’’ played, fading as the actual film started. Bill Haley and His Comets performed the song.
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2 weeks ago | 
mitchellrepublic.com | Terry Woster
The era of rock and roll turned 70 a couple of weeks ago, if some music historians are to be believed. I was 11 years when the rock and roll era was born. The date? March 19, 1955, according to Thecurrent.org. It’s as good a date as any. That’s the day the movie “Blackboard Jungle’’ opened, with Glenn Ford in the starring role. As the pre-movie credits rolled, “Rock Around the Clock’’ played, fading as the actual film started. Bill Haley and His Comets performed the song.
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3 weeks ago | 
agupdate.com | Terry Woster
Before cell phones, anyone who traveled for their job became familiar with the location of every pay telephone in their territory. On the road, a pay phone kept reporters like me in touch with the newsroom during the workday. On the road at night, a guy could use a motel phone, right there on the nightstand by the bed.
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3 weeks ago | 
mitchellrepublic.com | Terry Woster
As I walked through the state Capitol one afternoon years ago, a legislator stopped me and asked, “Are you the one who keeps all those windows in your house clean?’’Odd question, but OK. I was asked — and I asked — many odd questions during my news reporting days. Until that moment, no one had asked me about window cleaning. I confessed that the clean windows in our house were Nancy’s work, not mine. I helped sometimes, but she was the one who made sure our family could see outside.
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3 weeks ago | 
mitchellrepublic.com | Terry Woster
Nancy and I looked so long for just the right house in Pierre that, when we found it, we moved in and didn’t leave for 43 years. If we hadn’t asked her dad to help us find a house, we would have bought one months before we did. And we would have made a mistake. We looked at six or seven that were decent, attractive and almost good enough. Each time we thought we had found a home, my father-in-law, Paul, visited, toured the place and rejected it on our behalf.
