Before the expansion of modern agribusiness, family farms dominated American agriculture and commercially viable communities provided merchandise and services within a convenient travel distance for the local farmers. On the farms, work filled the daylight hours. Therefore, as a convenience for their patrons, businesses in towns stayed open late into the evening to allow shopping after the completion of the daily farm routine. Even though each town set their own schedule, often communities, including Bradley, South Dakota, chose to remain open for business on both Wednesday and Saturday evenings.
In the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression of the 1930s, South Dakota prairies thirsted for moisture, wetlands dried up, and months of toil in the fields yielded meager returns. Although the weather mocked the farmers, as dark clouds gathered and even sent out …show more content…
At each church, as groundwork for their shenanigans, they secured one end of a sufficiently long rope to the bell clapper and tossed the other end out of the steeple to the ground. The boys launched their stunt by ringing one of the bells from a hidden vantage point on the ground. Trying their best to control outbursts of laughter, they watched as the local law enforcement officers raced to the scene and entered an empty church in pursuit of the perpetrators. Once the officers engaged in an inspection of the first church, the boys rang the other bell. Consequently, the perplexed officers hastened to the second church where they made another futile search. The amused pranksters kept the enforcement officials on the run by ringing alternate bells. This lasted until the officers discovered one of the ropes and the boys scurried into the darkness of the