Jack was right!
On New Year’s Day, I heard a story on NPR about the Crazy Horse Monument in the Black Hills. I have been aware of this project since, as a child, I began to be aware of things beyond my back yard. What South Dakotan isn’t? But one part of the story in particular caught my attention:
For years the family followed their late father’s model exactly. But Monique Ziolkowski, the sculptor’s daughter, says the seams and cracks in the rock pose new challenges.
And then the zinger that really got my attention:
The changes include more rock left in place to support the outstretched arm and the horse’s head. Teams of engineers and geologists carefully monitor each blast and help plot the way forward.
Jack was right!
So, who was Jack Zasadil? Let me back up to how I came to know about him and ultimately know him.
A college friend worked construction summers on a missile silo near Hermosa, South Dakota in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was an avid rock hound and a devotee of the Fairburn agate in particular. I am sure this is how he got to know Jack who ran a rock shop as one of his businesses. His establishment was the old sandstone bank building on the northwest corner of the old main intersection. He lived next door, immediately to the east, in the rock-faced cinder-block “house that Jack built.” You can see both buildings on Google Earth’s street view, looking not much different now than they did in 1965. His other business was building violins – fiddles. At one time he also did most of the stringed-instrument repair in the Rapid City area. He was a busy man.
I taught and lived in another small town at the edge of the Black Hills during the 1965-66 school year. Being within an hour’s drive of Hermosa, I decided one Saturday to make Jack’s acquaintance, having heard so much about him. Perhaps, I had already been introduced to him previously. I don’t remember. That afternoon, I learned most of what little I know about violin making. Jack gave me the “cook’s tour” of his shop in the old bank building. By this time, he had sold the rock business and was “fiddles only.” He had severe arthritis in his hands that interfered with the delicate work that his craft required. The cold water used in cutting and polishing rocks made the arthritis worse. Faced with a choice between violins and rocks, the rocks had to go.
There were racks of instruments, some complete, most in various stages of completion. All had an unusual feature that was his trademark and distinguished a Zasadil fiddle. Instead of a scroll, each neck ended in a little gargoyle face. I think I spotted one once on Austin City Limits. I had never realized what precise work instrument making is. A violin’s back, for example, is a complex shape that varies all over in thickness. I saw how Jack laid out a back in a one-centimeter grid. Each intersection had its correct thickness. As he scraped the back to its final shape, he was constantly measuring at each intersection with a machinist’s micrometer. Over the years, he had taken on three apprentices. “The first one was good. The second one was very good. The most recent was almost as good as I am, and that’s damned good.” Much of this came back to me several years ago when one of my students undertook (successfully) to build a violin for her Senior Project.
One morning in the spring of 1966, I opened the Rapid City Journal to a front page picture of a pair of cowboy boots. The face of the wearer was hidden by a music stand. The boots, the story explained, belonged to Jack Zasadil of Hermosa, member of the newly formed Black Hills Symphony Orchestra. Although he had played music for most of his life, only recently, at the age of 65 had he learned to read music for the express purpose of joining the BHSO.
Jack said he was born in Austria, records say 1901. He came to America shortly after cessation of Great War hostilities. He had learned his craft in the Vienna guild. He worked for a while in a violin factory in Cleveland and then headed west and ended up in the Black Hills. Among other occupations, he was a guide and outfitter. His most illustrious client was Calvin Coolidge, who was an avid fly fisherman. During the 1930s, his steadiest employment was working for Gutzon Borglum on Mt. Rushmore. It was here that he met Korczak Ziolkowski who later undertook his own project, the Crazy Horse Monument.
Jack told of his ongoing debate with Ziolkowski concerning the structural soundness of Crazy Horse’s arm, which spans a considerable distance from shoulder to where it is supported by the horse’s blowing mane. “I keep telling him that the granite is too old, too rotten, too full of fissures to support itself over that distance. Sooner or later, it will fall down. But what do I know?” And that is why, when I heard the NPR story, the first thing that popped into my head was “Jack was right!” about the arm, anyway. It sounds as if, after all these years, the family has decided to alter the design in such a way as to leave more stone under the arm for greater structural integrity.
Jack died in October, 1966, not long after I had left the area. Some years later, my friend bought “the house that Jack built” and lived there until recently.