My Encounter with Benny Spies

A few weeks ago I thought it would be “fun” to take a road trip to Watertown, SD and meet up with the soon-to-be-very-famous Benny Spies, host of a new series on Sportsman Channel “Gun It! with Benny Spies.”

Traveling to South Dakota is fun for me – I love any chance I can get to return to my homeland and check out the land and people. Although the drive across western Minnesota was quite boring. And too many country music stations.

Benny Spies and me

But meeting Benny was the icing on the cake – and not at all what I expected. First, I arrived during lunch time, so the whole “where should we eat” thing was the usual to-do. I just told Benny I don’t eat sushi. I should have realized that A. there would be no such thing in Watertown and B. Benny is probably not a sushi person either. So he did what a nice gentleman from South Dakota does – he took me to his mom’s house for lunch!

I believe the chalkboard says it all

After a fantastic meal and finding out Benny’s birthday is only three days from mine (but a year apart) and that he prefers a glass of cold milk while his mom and I imbibed on a little wine…we went for a drive around Watertown, which isn’t much to say. So we did what any other person in a small town does – we went to a bar. But not just ANY bar…no sir, this is the THE bar shown on his TV series and owned by his family, which means that yes, Benny works there from time to time.

Besides being literally the smallest bar I’ve stepped foot in (all 700 sq feet of it) and one with the most unusual eating games (various pickled pig parts with a nice chalkboard of “winners” – I think that should be on the TV series sometime during the season) it was charming and fun. I give them kudos for have three large TVs – one on Weather Channel and two on, what else? Sportsman Channel.

But then Benny had a surprise for me. Actually, I was doing him a favor. You see, he had an appearance that weekend for one of his sponsors and his famous Winnebago aka “Toaster” needed to be brought to the house. So who do you suppose gets to drive it? ME!! I know many people would have PAID to drive that lunk of junk (bad brakes, expired tags?) and I got to drive it for all of five miles – never pushing past 40 mph.

And I asked Benny how or why the name “Toaster” for his ride. And he said, “Because it looks like a Toaster.” Oh, yeah, I guess it does.

It would be hard to top a day like that with Benny – unless of course he invites me out for a little pheasant hunting…

Me and Toaster for a little joy ride

(Special thanks to Francine, Benny’s mom, for the wonderful meal; for Benny’s bartender for drinking my beer because I had to drive four hours back home and to the Toaster for not dying on me in the middle of town. Oh, and to Benny for keeping the satellite radio tuned to 80’s on 8 or 90’s on 9 instead of the usual Howard Stern you listen to. Ugh.)