Yankton, SD: Welcome to Win Country

My country 'tis of thee I made a billboard poem

Many times this summer my family and I drove between Sioux City, Iowa and Yankton, South Dakota, where there’s a lovely beach on the Missouri River. After awhile, the billboards along the route—aspirational, huckstery, terrifying—began to run together into one very American lyric. Below I’ve arranged them in a poem. Hope you dig! -d

SD’s most famous fatality marker / via SDPB

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Welcome to Win Country

It’s pretty simple.
If you’re high, just don’t drive.
Drones do it better.

Where Are You Going? Heaven or Hell?
Drive Thru Fire and Ice Lake Supply,
Ice 99¢ Limit Five.
Ask your doctor where she got her degree.

Four miles to unwrap greatness.
Climbed Everest. Blind.
Nothing can ruin the career of a good truck driver
Like a bad one. 

Welcome to Win Country!
Welcome to Correctionville.
Jog down our main street.
Bring your luck. Hope is here.

Hope allows me to dream.
The start of something you.
Breakfast your way all day.
Your right to eat and our right to farm.

Life’s richer with a Caramelicious,
Located just blocks west of the Dakota Dome.
You can’t escape rush hour traffic,
But you can escape prediabetes.

What Else is in Your Drugs?
Jerry Traufler’s Last Supper.
Get down with your blood pressure.
No one has time for the flu.

Be the big dog,
Be a Raider.
THINK! 
THINK!
THINK!
THINK!
63 people die by gun suicide every day.
Tickets for first responders.
Battles are won within.

WHY DIE?
WHY DIE?
Care. Support. Answers.
The Genuine. The Original. Overhead Door

Sacred Heart of Jesus, 
Have mercy on us.
Our bait will catch fish or die trying.