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Bob Natchke, AKA Dakota Slim, in Newcastle, Wyoming.
Impromptu cowboy poetry session starts Day 2 of the heartland journey
Update June 8 — The video is now up, be sure to take a look.
By Bob Berwyn
NEWCASTLE, WYO. — Dakota Slim lives on the hill above Newcastle, Wyoming, up on Musser Road, where his big living room picture window frames Elk Mountain and the Black Hills.
“The sun comes up over there, you know,” he says, pointing east, toward the wide-open vista of the crumpled high plains landscape.
The rummages in the back of his Ford Explorer to show me the walking stick he made out a diamond willow branch that grows in the Upper Missouri River Country.
He says his wife is housebound with MS, but that he still comes down the road nearly every day to look for coins, aluminum cans and other bits of roadside flotsam. Mostly, he’s just looking to meet people when he swings by the Fountain Inn Motel, a popular stopping point for people headed to the Black Hills.
“It’s easy to make money in America — all you have to is pick it,” he says with a wry grin.
After I admire his walking stick, he tells me he’s a cowboy poet, and before I even ask, the first verse spills out, a ditty about meeting a rodeo princess at the stock show in Rapid City.
Filed under: Travel Tagged: | Road Trip USA
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Love that poem and the poet.
Love that cowboy poetry!
Great character who cleans up the countryside to recycle the rubbish. Does amusing poetry as well…
hello! my regards to you all – soad from libya .
I do love him, too….truly. He is my uncle and he keeps us all entertained.