*** Her Dad, Walter Bangert, (in the photos).... had been a farmer, worked a service station and spent most of his career operating a patrol in this southeastern corner of South Dakota. As I hear the stories of weather and flooding across our region, I think of Grandpa Bangert. Stories, he would tell, of the winter of 49 and emergencies that he would be called out on play over in my mind.
*** One story that he enjoyed telling is when he and another county employee went down along the Missouri River bottoms and were asked to drain flooded areas. They went out in a boat with a load of dynamite and a potato planter. As they paddled their way across flood waters, they calculated where a trench was needed. They would take the potato planter and plunge it into the water and mud and then proceed to drop a stick of dynamite in the hole. They did this in a long line and then would go to the beginning where they would detonate the first of the line and in rapid fire succession the exploding dynamite would lay back a wall of water and mud thus forming a trench to drain the backed up water. Grandpa, well into his nineties, would conclude his story with a smirk and comment, "That was fun!"
