Nebraska Impressions

      I have to admit to a failing.  I thought that Nebraska and much of the plains area was the place where people were from, not a place that people stayed.  I erroneously inferred that Nebraska would not be a place preferred really by anyone who could be somewhere else.  I’ve caught myself smiling the last few days as I talked to farmers, shopkeepers, museum volunteers and just folks.   Smiling because I’ve been laughing at my ignorance and smiling because I kept finding people IN LOVE with Nebraska.  Smiling because I kept seeing beautiful places and signs of prosperity.   

      I crossed most of the state on Highway 2.  The morning was foggy.  Pick-up trucks followed me or passed me.  Farmers hung around service stations exchanging a few words, joking.  Everywhere I saw evidence of work being completed before the incoming storm and frigid weather.  I had purchased a book about early Nebraska Hamilton County pioneers.  The blizzards figured prominently in many of the accounts.  Farmers would need to be a little cautious and keep an eye on the weather. They would need to have good tires, good transportation, and good snowplows.  Good humor. 

First Tire Tree I Have Ever Seen!

      As farm businesses appeared along the highway they would announce the coming of a town.

     Little towns had already begun putting up their holiday lights and barns displayed stars and wreaths.  Posters announcing Christmas events were plastered on store windows. Casual conversations would be interrupted to make plans for school concerts or parties.  I overheard talk of fundraisers to benefit the needy in their towns.  Plans and worthwhile events were afoot.  I felt comfortable in these little towns.  Impressed with the pride with which they maintained buildings and relationships.

County Building of Hamilton in Aurora

     The radio station played country and western songs, interspersed with the current prices of beef, hogs, wheat and corn (some up cents and some down dollars).  Worrisome news for some, I suppose.  One station announced that news was next and than played an advertisement for nursing homes.  That was the news!  I couldn’t seem to catch world news on any channel. 

Bessie State Native Plant Nursery/Camped Near By in a Pine Forest

     Distant relatives of mine, settled in Aurora, Nebraska.  While at the local museum, I bought a book with accounts of early settlers.  Some of the names I know.  Some of these people were in the photos that I donated to the Aurora Museum a few years ago.  I talked with a local eighty-year-old third-generation farmer.  The farmer reminisced about having to go off to war years ago.  When he came back to Aurora, one man gave him a cow, a widowed woman gave him another and a third neighbor gave him a pregnant sow.  He earned half of the sow's litter by raising it.  He was able to get on his feet and work his own farm all of his life.  He said people helped people back then. It was possible then to become a farmer or a rancher with just a little help.  He seemed to miss that kind of connection.

     Being a houser (see earlier post on housing and housers) I find that it is worthwhile to connect people to the historical record of their home.  One of the reasons that I stopped in Aurora was to try and make the information on the house photos (that I donated a few years ago) more accurate.  The extraordinary barns and simple white clapboard houses in the photos had no addresses.  With the help of the third generation farmer and museum curator we were able to put an address on a couple of the photos and determine if the buildings still existed or not.  One of the photos was of a group posing in front of a house.

 I had assumed that the house was on a corner.  The house was the town house of the farmer, John Read.  After juggling a number of plat books, phone books and ancestry data, we located the house.  I later drove by it and this is what it looks like now.

     Still standing, much smaller than I thought, not on a corner and in the middle of a porch renovation.  I already knew from real estate records that the original graceful columns were gone and had been replaced with strange lattice-like columns, but I didn’t expect to see the whole porch gone!  Houses do change.  I wonder what they will do now.  The photo with the original porch is being passed to the current owners.  Maybe they will redo the porch in the original style.  Maybe.     

     John Paul Jones, another relative, originally lived in a sod house.  He was a civil war veteran homesteading under the deal made by President Lincoln for Union soldiers.  A soldier could “prove up” a plot by building a structure on it.  He could own the land within five-years or even less with credit for the years that he had fought in the war. We have stories of that sod house. 

     Eventually John Paul could afford to have a clapboard house built on the farm.  He hired Arthur Hickman and his dad to build the house.  Arthur and John Paul's son, Walter, both must have both had an eye on Arvilla Read, daughter of the John Read mentioned above.   Walter and Arvilla eventually married and moved to Grand Junction, Colorado.  Walter became a grocer and then a postmaster.  When he died in his fifties,  Arvilla ran a boarding house for teachers.  Somehow that Nebraska builder, Arthur Hickman, now a widower heard about her, wooed her and asked her to marry him.  By this time he was a wealthy man.   Here is his former house in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I took this photo just to compare with the one I have at home.

      Arvilla and Arthur moved away from Lincoln to Pasadena, California.  We have a narrative of the two of them flying to Hawaii on one of the first commercial  Pan-Am flights with a group of expats called the “Nebraska Club”.  The flight was twelve hours long with "a pilot that looked like Lindy".

     I tell you these details to help you understand why I thought everyone was trying to get out of Nebraska and they never went back.

Main Hall 

    The Nebraska State Capitol makes it clear that Nebraska expects to have people around for at least 500 years.  The architect was told to use materials that make the building last that long!  Those columns are marble from Italy and all of the floors are stone.

Gloria and I

     

      I toured the capitol building of Nebraska.  Wow!  Talk about state pride.  The building is stunning.  Gloria gave me a tour.  I talked both with her and one of the maintenance men, who took our picture.  Both were natives, long time employees of the state and proud of their home state. 

Floor Detail Designed By a Woman Working with the Architect

     In Nebraska City I stopped for coffee and a cruise through town.  When I entered the coffee shop there was a large table of ladies all talking back and forth like they did this every day or every week.  They were the only customers at the moment.  The shop owner asked where I was from.  I guess it was rather obvious that I was new in town or I would have been sitting at that table with the local women already.  After small talk, she just gifted me the Nov./Dec. issue of the Nebraska Magazine (value $5.95).   I liked Nebraska.  I liked the small town hospitality.  I hope that I get back some day.

Just Carhenge

     On a recommendation of my sister's friend, Doug, I stopped at Carhenge.  The farmer who began this is adding new variations off to one side.  Worth a stop near Alliance, Nebraska.

Natural Light at Sundown!

New Endeavor

Twenty-Four Hours

The clock began late one night:

      As I stepped from the car the night sky reached from horizon to horizon like an upside down bowl filled with inky blackness. There were so many stars that you couldn’t have fit a spoon between them.  Stretch your arms out wide palms up and imagine holding millions and millions of stars.  The stars are so dense that you can’t pick out any familiar star formation, not even the Big Dipper.  This is the night sky at North Shelton State Park, Colorado.  This is the night sky that I remember as a child on trips crossing Nevada.  Nice to know this sky is still there.

 

The sound of geese settling on the unseen lake as night fell predicted an early rising.

My favorite chocolate pot.

    

    The first flock of geese flying low overhead hadn’t even had time for the last goose to slide into his place in the formation when another flock followed.  I made a pot of hot chocolate spiced with chili and unwrapped an L-pod (oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly bar homemade from Colorado Springs) and settled-in to watch the flocks.

      For an hour they rose from just over a low hill heading out wave after wave.  Their honking was interspersed with the sound of distant gunshot.  Anyone who missed getting their goose on that morning had to have their eyes closed and their trigger finger frozen.  The temperature hovered at freezing.  For me a good start to an extraordinary day.

       The highlight of the day’s agenda was to be Mt. Rushmore.  I had charted a course along narrow by-roads with time to stop here and there.  I slipped into the Central Time Zone and changed my car clock before realizing I had edged back into Pacific Time.  Hour lost and hour gained. 

     Glad I had that hour back when I came across a tractor and tractor parts lot.

                          

     Gary had been a part’s guy.  He loved cars and tractors.  If he spotted an old tractor he would often know its brand and year.  He told with a laugh of having to resist purchasing a tractor at an auction once.      

      

     He was a city guy with no place for a tractor like this one.

 



     Now if Gary had been with me we would have been here for hours.  He would have appreciated the orderly array, the ease at which one could find a part in its proper row and the pleasing color combinations.

    The pack of llama guards would have generated a laugh.  This llama appeared to try to disguise himself as himself as a tractor part.

     With good thoughts of Gary swirling around in my head I returned to the highway slipping between a couple of cattle trucks.  I just caught the proprietor’s sign out of the corner of my eye as I increased to  traffic speed.  Really?  Did I see it right?

     I drove about five miles before deciding to return and get a photo of the sign.  A good sign in more ways than one.

     In the small town of Chadron pup and I stopped at Finnegan’s Park to eat a spinach salad with cranberry-jalapeno chutney prepared by my sister.  (That sweet sister in the last post.)  Before cruising from town I spotted a sign directing me to an espresso shop.  Charmed by the original metal ceiling, intricate tile floors and warm feeling I vowed to return the next day to write on the blog.  I did and stayed a few hours.

Bean Broker Coffee House Makes You Think About Living in Chadron

     As I approached Hot Springs, South Dakota, I decided to detour slightly to find the Evans Hot Springs where I hoped to end the day.  The posted hours gave me until 8 o’clock.  With these hours I had time to take the back roads to Mt. Rushmore.  Lucky I did.  Coming around a corner here was a small herd of buffalo on the road.  I don’t know what they were licking from the road, but they were intent.

And after passing The Crazy Horse mountain sculpture one comes up the backside of Mt. Rushmore.

     This view doesn’t come into sight until you pull into the parking lot in line to pay the $11 for the private lot.  The fee helps pay for the six-level parking garage.  Only a handful of vehicles graced the lot at 4 o’clock on the first day of December.  I arrived in time to get the last light of the day.  

   

     How did the sculptor capture the glint in the eye?  Can you guess who it is?

     I had time to see a movie, tour the museum and have dinner at Mt. Rushmore.  Traveling this time of year is wonderful.  At first I was the only customer in the café.  The manager asked where I was from and called to the chef to come visit.  The chef was from Tri-Cities, Washington, which is a mere sixty miles from my hometown!  I stood at the serving counter eating a hot dog and bowl of vegetables as we chatted.  The young chef came for the summer for fun and decided to stay for the winter.  As I finished my hotdog, the next customer arrived and the gregarious manager again asked where she was from.  Walla Walla!  Now really, three Washingtonians below the stony glare of George himself!  What odds?

     The day wasn’t over.  Ms. Congenial GPS directed me through an unmarked shortcut back towards Hot Springs.  I stopped at the KOA campground close to Hot Springs.  This was my intended stop for the night.  I just wanted to look around before heading in to the soaking pools.  The campground was open just like the one the night before.  However, I think that campgrounds that are open in the winter need to clarify OPEN.  Maybe they should just say in their website they are “O”.  As in “Oh, there is no electricity."  "Oh, no showers."  "Oh, no restrooms unlocked."  "Oh, no lights.”  I filled out the pay form and decided to carry it with me just incase I saw something better.  (Actually, it was so dark here I couldn’t see anything but the pay box under the only light.)

     The Evan’s Hot Springs has been sold to the city.  It is a city treasure.  The pool’s floor is covered with smooth river rocks.  Rings hang from the ceiling for swinging out into the pool and there is a huge slide.  Two Jacuzzi soaking tubs, a sauna and a stream room are tucked into a corner.  I asked if there was a senior rate and instead got the day’s special of half price!  A half hour of lap swimming and a few soaks erased the bone weary aches.  Falling into conversation with a local family completed the experience.  We all left at closing.  As I took pup for a little stroll under the lights before heading to the blacken campground, my new friends Monika, her dad and baby Mika began to drive off, stopped, reversed slowly, rolled down the window and asked if I wouldn’t like to stay with them for the night.  Pup at the dad’s and me at Monika’s.  “It would be warmer and more comfortable.” Monica said encouragingly.  So ended my twenty-four hour day.

(Post script).  I had a good evening talking with Monika and her dad gave pup the royal treatment and gave me directions to a few highlights of the area.  Thank you both.  I slept well on that comfortable couch.  The next morning I took a detour to see the local lakes and drove around this charming little town.  I’ll be back for sure.  Twenty-four hours wasn’t enough hours.  

Cold Brook Lake near town

Downtown Hot Springs, South Dakota with Evans Hotel on the Right

       

                            

    

Sisters

Walking in Garden of the Gods

     When I young I kicked a hole in my sister’s door with my Oxford shoes.  Those were great shoes.  I’m surprised we were allowed to wear them to school.  My best friend, Diana, was visiting with my sister in Judith's room.  They wouldn’t let me in.  So I gave the door just one good kick.  Now I wasn’t a child prone to violence, so the hole took me by surprise.  Tough shoes those Oxfords.  As a fair consequence, my dad decided to take the door with the hole in it and give it to me.  After an hour or so exchanging doors my dad found out that her door didn’t fit my doorframe. That was when I got the only spank of my life. 

      So visiting my sister for the past few weeks was quite nice.  No need to kick doors anymore!  It is lovely to know that your big sister can become a good friend.  We had a lovely time.  Her friends were all so gracious.  Ralph and Carol shared a dinner and an evening of stimulating conversation, Rick and Leslie gave me a photo highlight of their trip to Montreal along with an orientation and maps, and Doug and Vianna included us in their family Thanksgiving.  Doug directed me to see Carhenge and the Fur Trader’s museum (both on my list for today).  Dennis shared hilarious stories of being on the road and having his truck burst into flames and offered to assist if I needed anything within a thousand miles.  Buffy came to dinner and reminded me that my sister chooses friends well. 

     Good visit all around.  Thanks Judith for everything... good food and good company.  Even my dog became nose touching friends with her cat.  Lucy watched us from her window as we left.  I think that she was smiling.