OUR COOL TOWN

My crowd didn’t see “the cool” in our youth, but photographer Bill Goehring did. His new book reminds us of what we had all along in Wessington Springs.

  • NYLA THORTON Nyla Thorton and her husband, Chuck, ran Thorton Drug. Grown-ups went there for various sundries. I knew it as the home of the town’s only comic book rack, a squeaking totem of adventure freshened every month. You could also order Nintendo games through the store, and time has never moved more slowly than when my buddies and I waited for a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
    NYLA THORTON Nyla Thorton and her husband, Chuck, ran Thorton Drug. Grown-ups went there for various sundries. I knew it as the home of the town’s only comic book rack, a squeaking totem of adventure freshened every month. You could also order Nintendo games through the store, and time has never moved more slowly than when my buddies and I waited for a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
  • THREE GUYS ON TAILGATE Country wisdom is sometimes best when shared with a round of beer on an open tailgate.
    THREE GUYS ON TAILGATE Country wisdom is sometimes best when shared with a round of beer on an open tailgate.
  • TOM DEAN I only knew his last name because his sons were two of my best friends. To most of the town, he’s “Dr. Tom,” the patron saint of medicine in Wessington Springs. The nephew of longtime Springs doctor Roscoe Dean (a former personal health adviser to the late Gov. Frank Farrar), Dr. Tom started his Wessington Springs career on Aug. 1, 1978, and healed generations of area residents until his retirement 43 years later.
    TOM DEAN I only knew his last name because his sons were two of my best friends. To most of the town, he’s “Dr. Tom,” the patron saint of medicine in Wessington Springs. The nephew of longtime Springs doctor Roscoe Dean (a former personal health adviser to the late Gov. Frank Farrar), Dr. Tom started his Wessington Springs career on Aug. 1, 1978, and healed generations of area residents until his retirement 43 years later.
Re-published in the True Dakotan with permission from South Dakota Magazine, Austin Kaus and Bill Goehring We didn’t know Wessington Springs was cool. As teenagers we tried our best to juice it up with fireworks pranks, screeching tires and late-night electric guitar solos. Bill Goehring knew better. Rather than annoy the residents of our sleepy town, Goehring pointed a camera their way in the…

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