Huskers of Corn

"Traveling about, I early learned the difference between an American and the Americans. They are so far apart that they might be opposites." ---Steinbeck

This was the day I traveled from my new friend Kansas to its Northern neighbor, a place I have held suspect since end of the 1997 football season, and maybe since Springsteen wrote about it when I was in college. The refrain I hold for Kansas comes from a fluffy John Denver song, where he sings,
"Gold is just a windy Kansas wheat field, blue is just a Kansas summer sky." ---Denver

The repeating lyrics in my head for Nebraska are a little different:

I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir, and ten innocent people died.
From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska with a sawed-off .410 on my lap
Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path.
I can't say that I'm sorry for the things that we done
At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun.
---Springsteen

Bashing Nebraska, or Lincoln, is not my intent. Steinbeck treated the state as the hole in the donut of his journey: Northern North Dakota outbound and Texas inbound. And Bruce's song talks of an American, not the the Americans. His is a stark story of Starkweather (a man who based his life on a James Dean character....just lonely and sad, until ten innocent people died. 40 years later, another killer blamed his own rampage on the Boss's song. As Johnny Cash would sing, "will the Circle be unbroken")? Yes, I am listening to a lot of old music on the road.

Anyway, I left you in Lawrence. I had the chance to have lunch with a first cousin-once removed, my dad's cousin Michael. He moved to Manhattan, KS shortly after we moved to the US, and taught computer science there for 30 years. He is a kind and generous man with a kind and generous wife, doing well with challenges that age can bring. And it so often brings it to 1/2 before the other. I guess I had seen him since England, but remember him only from Uncle Tony's house days before we sailed (I was smitten by his 8 year old daughter, probably in the way only a 6 year old boy could be.....unaware of the delicacies of family relationships, yet it clearly left a mark).

Manhattan left me thinking it is a town with great pride, or a great identity crisis. The name and logo of K-State absolutely everywhere. (like WAY more than Ann Arbor is Maize and Blue). A nice campus, but with far less of its own character (beyond logos) than the others I have known. With the name "State," and the agricultural focus, I probably (and unfortunately) apply my own MSU judgments to the place.

North out of there on route 77, which should take me all the way to Lincoln. Except in this part of the world a detour is really a detour. 15 miles east, 15 mile north and 15 miles west is what it means to go around the block. This led me over an area named Blue Valley. Deep in corn country I was skeptical. Without the detour, I never would have crossed the mile-wide river and wet lands that earned the valley its name.

I liked northern Kansas. They seems to borrow New Hampshire's motto. "Live free or die" trickled all the way down to the marking of passing zones on these byways. Better to meet an F-350 diesel grill-to-grill than to have felt the imposition of governmental restraint on my right to pass cars, by god. I also loved the "Legends of Country" radio station I found. All Waylon, and Willie and the Boys stuff. Took me back to when I hated country, and made me wonder why.

In Northern Kansas I passed by Marysville and fired up what would become my four-state obsession with coal . I crossed a bridge over eight tracks and saw eight coal trains as long as you could see (my later obsession informs me they were 1.3 miles a piece) . In Lincoln, that observation was multiplied three-fold, as 25 tracks became the staging area for the fuel to my home, my lights, my I-Pod. Over the next few days I watched a hundred trains pull that fuel down from the Hills to the Plains. The routine so complete that each train had two engines in front and one behind, that each was made of mostly clean cars, that all were all 1.3 miles long, and that the loading had left each pile of coal identical. Rising a foot or two beyond the hopper,the coal grew from back to front, then dipped and rose again. It struck me how much the load in each car resembled the back of a bison: curved, humped, rising, brooding or charging. I thought this strange picture of the Range also completed an imagined circle. I was able to think the herds were still represented here; we still slaughter them and they still feed us, but how the world has changed.

I crossed into Nebraska near Beatrice, and fatigue, and the arrival of long, east-facing shadows left me ready to sneak into a bar. I was able to leave Luci in the shaded car, and to have beer. I had that beer with Schroeder at Poo's Palace. A man as proud of his 3rd cousin connection to the Silver Spoons star Ricky Schroeder as he was to be a "DIE-rect DEE-cedent" of Abraham Lincoln. And on the wife's side, related to Raymond Burr as well. For all his near fame and distant fortune, I liked the polite, honest man, and the respectful way he addressed an issue. I referred to the to the town name as as BEE-u-truss, and he said "pardon me, but here we say it, "Bee-A-truss. It's German." He wasn't offended, but didn't want me to say it wrong to the wrong fella. As I would soon learn, many western towns are pronounced differently from how they appear.

From there we are on to Lincoln, where I spent a couple of nights. Falsely worried about civilization (laundry, internet) as I moved on, and ready for a slower day, I set up camp. As you may guess, it wouldn't be a place I would favor again with extra time, but it was fine.

Lincoln is home to 222,000 souls, the seat of government and the largest campus. I had been told O Street was the place to hang out, and it was happening, but I found smaller, nicer joints on P Street or on the edge of town. Also on O street, if you wander East to the Wonder Bar, you may wonder where you've gone. It quickly loses the college feel, and doesn't hold out a welcoming hand to strangers. The place I went the first night, in search of food, but missed the closing of the kitchen, was Bison Witches.

On O Street the bartenders where male models or members of the Cornhusker demo squad. Either way, they weren't making it in the world on their brain power. Here on P Street, they were engaging and informed. The manager stopped by, perhaps not his first stop of the night, and when I inquired about buying a tee-shirt, he sent the bartender for one of the ones they had made for their softball team, and gave it to me for free. I went back the next night for food, hung out with a great young couple (he teaches 4th grade and hopes to coach, she sells drugs. Oh, sorry, she reps pharmaceuticals), and ate a fantastic beef and brie half sandwich. One beer, one margarita and too much food? $6.50. The couple wanted to make Lincoln my favorite place. They helped me to like them a lot and the bar a lot, but couldn't put all of Lincoln on their shoulders.

The next day, after chores, I headed out and had the obligatory runza for lunch. It is the national dish of the Big Red Nation. I thought it was like some one tried to make a Cornish Pasty after looking at a picture of one. Ground beef, cubed potatoes, diced onion and too much salt and thyme baked inside little more than a hot dog bun. Not horrible, but not good enough to taste for several hours, and that was its impact on me.

My journey will get me one day soon to Oahu. If you see Captain Cook's first map, he spells it Wahoo. Imagine my luck in finding that spelling just 30 miles north of Lincoln.. Hey, they have a Grand Island, NE which, like Mt Pleasant MI, is neither. Perhaps they also had a Hawaiian island hidden there. Not exactly. We got there as the shadows again provided safety for Luci in the car, and I headed into Chez Place, which bragged of the "coldest beer on the block." Loud music and three young guys playing a video game, I drank my beer and explored the town. Not too much to see. An aging corn town, but 30 miles from Lincoln and about the same from Omaha, it seems hopeful of a future as a bedroom community, especially if the occupants of that bed work in each of the two cities.

Anyway, I stopped back in Chez Place and the place was transformed, maybe even transported. Local hero, and QB of UN, Omaha, Zach Miller had just been married to his sweetheart, and the guests all had an hour to kill while the family took photos and the steamboat roast rested. Well of course they all wanted the coldest beer on the block, so here they were. A great crowd of mostly young, well dressed folks all in a good mood. The one guy my age was rugged, trim and handsome in black jeans and shirt, a pin stripe black jacket, boots and a chain on his wallet. It sounds like I'm funnin' him, but he pulled it off neatly, and was with his wife, whom I suspect once sat atop a float in this town. A beautiful young woman named Tara, fresh with her MSW thought she wanted to follow Janis's career, and took the time to tell me of the day ("oh that detour? We just went around the barricade. the wedding party is in a stretch Hummer, after all"). Her significant other, together with old buddies, stopped by long enough to convince himself of my harmlessness, and went back to Jose Cuervo.

Back in town, I took Luci again for a walk on the Campus. Large, and largely car free, built of brick in a consistent style and with some green space, she thought it pee-worthy. But this night the lights were on at the Shrine of St Tom......yes, a game afoot at Memorial Stadium, and in July no less. It was the high school all-star game, with the teams wearing the home and away Husker uniforms. It was the second half and I walked in for free. I am adolescently proud that it took me less than 10 seconds to start a fight over the 1997 national championship. "Huh, that's odd, they listed 1997 on your Wall of Champions. Well, that can't be right," I said Columbo-like. Just a few quick points:
1. They are happy to have a share of the title. Similar to the false mother's reaction to Solomon's offer to split the baby.
2. Their only argument: "We would have kicked your ass." Nice work. Pick the one totally unprovable fact and rest everything on it.
3. When in Lincoln, or perhaps the whole state, avoid saying, "Tom Osborne is a whore." I was warned in Lawrence about that. In the future I will heed such warnings.
4. On the mighty football statue in front of the stadium, they have roughly cemented plaques to the smooth brass, each representing the championship years. 1997 is around the corner, missed by most. I believe that if I traveled with hammer and chisel, I would have that with me today. I asked a Nebraska fan in South Dakota if he thought that would be a misdemeanor or a felony, he calmly replied, "a capital offense."

Time to leave Lincoln. Where is my .410?