The year is 1981. My father and my two brothers and I went on a driving tour from our home in the SF Bay Area around the Western US (dad: driving, us: touring). Our easternmost stop was Mount Rushmore, and while there we heard that there was another monument being created: an entire mountain was being carved into a monument to Lakota hero Crazy Horse. Neat!
So we went looking for it. And when we found it, it was…a mountain. No different than any other mountain. No face carved into it, no recognizable features. Just a mountain. Except, there was a hole right through it. You could see the sunlight going right through it. We were told that that hole was part of the gap between the outstretched arm of Crazy Horse and neck of his horse. But other than that, nothing.
The year is 2012. My daughter and I are driving from a family reunion in Palm Springs, California home to Minnesota (me: driving, daughter: touring). The High Desert, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and more. Near Mount Rushmore we find the still-underway Crazy Horse monument:
It’s been thirty years, and they have made some progress! (The hole in the mountain is still there, and has been serving as a quick way for sculptors to get from one side to the other.)