Further Adventures in Greater Nebraska

Saturday morning, after an organizational and political effort equalling that required for manned space flight, we headed to Norfolk, Nebraska.

"We" is my brother, his wife, their three kids, and me.  The purpose of our trip was to visit her parents and her sister's family who were visiting Norfolk from Ohio.  My brother and his family were staying through the New Year; I was coming back to Omaha on Sunday and therefore caravanned with them.

My 12-year-old nephew and a bunch of sleds joined me in the trusty Vue and the rest of the family packed into their van.  After only a couple of quick misstarts, we took off.

Immediately a minor crisis developed in the Vue:  the stereo system was dead.  (Foreshadowing:  the car started fine otherwise.)  Luckily my nephew is a resourceful young man, particularly when matters of audio electronics are involved, and he pulled out some portable speakers that he had brought - apparently for just such an occasion.  Lickety-split he had them hooked up to his iPod.  Also luckily, my nephew shares his father's eclectic and generally good taste in popular music so the iPod mix was enjoyable, featuring everything from Phillip Phillips to quasi-rap to Aerosmith.

Representatives of law enforcement will be pleased to know that the traffic education program recently provided by the State of Nebraska, County of Douglas, to my brother, was effective and we drove at exactly the speed limit for the entire two hour trip. Exactly. The. Speed. Limit.

Most of the trip looked like this:

If you put yourself in the right frame of mind, the brown/gray/black and white landscape of the midwestern winter can be pretty.  Whether this is an acquired taste, like scotch, or more along the lines of people getting better looking just before the bar closes, I will leave to your judgment, dedicated reader.

Highway 6 is the second-longest U.S. highway, running from Cape Cod to California.  My Hoosier friends will know that it runs across the top of Indiana, more or less parallel with the Indiana Toll Road (now owned by the Spanish, but only for another seventy years).  You can apparently drive Highway 6 from coast to coast, which might be a good trip sometime (although if I were doing the "old highway" theme I'd probably go old-school and follow Route 66 or Lincoln Highway), but the relevant point here is that Highway 6 runs through Omaha, where it is Dodge Street/West Dodge Road.  (Here's a city-planner-geek thing that has always fascinated me:  there is a Dodge Street and a Center Street in Omaha, each of which turns into West Dodge (or West Center) Road.  I've never known why and if anyone can clue me in, I'd appreciate it.) 

We took Highway 6 out of Omaha, which I think is sort of cool.  But the really cool thing - and yes, I understand that "cool" may be pushing it for people who aren't urban geeks - is that for this trip we also were briefly on Highway 30.  That is the third longest U.S. highway, and is the road one drives from Fort Wayne to points northwest.  (As a public service to you, my dedicated reader, I will reiterate the First Rule of Travel:  Never Take Highway 30 West of Merrillville, Indiana - and preferably not west of Valparaiso.  Despite your understandable and desparate desire to find a Better Way Around Chicago, and despite the fact that the map shows Highway 30 heading due west, appearing to avoid the Chicago spaghetti bowl, and emptying out nicely onto I-80 at Joliet, don't do it.  You're on a local street for about a thousand miles and no matter the season, the road is always under construction.  It's like meth:  it may seem like a good idea at the time, but the next thing you know you haven't slept in two weeks and your teeth have all rotted out.  Be advised.)

While we're discussing interesting infrastructure topics (look, buddy, it's interesting to ME and this is MY blog), let me jump in here with a short discussion of the correct pronounciation of Norfolk.  The town, population 24,000, is located at the North Fork of the Elkhorn River.  Its original name was submitted to whoever is in charge of these things in Washington, DC, as Norfork - sort of like North Fork, get it?  But somehow it was recorded as Norfolk.  This could have been a simple mistake, but most Nebraskans (including myself) subscribe to the theory that some pointy headed bureaucrat thought "those dumb country people certainly meant to name their town after Norfolk, Virginia, so I'll just correct their ignorance by changing the spelling."  Regardless, true Nebraskans say "Norfork."

On Highway 275 (which isn't nearly as cool as U.S. 6 or U.S. 30 - sorry), we passed through a number of small towns.  Each of these has its own post office and at least one (usually more) grain elevator.  There is also a BP or Sinclair station, and at least two bars.  (I believe there is a state law that sets out these requirements.)  Scribner, population 857, is illustrative:

As you can see, Scribner also has a nice welcome sign.

It seems inevitable that highways go through the least attractive parts of town.  For instance, what you see above is what Scribner looks like from 275.  Nothing to write home about.  But if you turn one block off the highway, you see some really pretty buildings:

Of course, if the highway went by the pretty buildings, they'd probably all end up torn down.  My point is that it's worth a couple of minutes to occasionally turn off the highway and see what the rest of the town looks like.

My nephew is a self-contained kid.  He is smart, funny, fun, and really sweet.  He is not, however, what you'd call a talker.  Our conversation consisted of my rambling and his politely acknowledging what I'd said.  For some people, such a situation might have felt like a problem.  As you know, I am not one of those people.

I even told him the urban legend I'd heard, which I choose to believe is true, about the Valley Irrigation company, based in Valley, Nebraska (just west of Omaha).  As I'd heard it told, the company was near bankruptcy at one point in the 1950's or 1960's, and several investors decided that it wasn't worth the broker's commission to sell the stock, so they held onto it.  The company turned around and these guys made a ton of cash.  The moral, I guess, is that once you've hit rock bottom, sometimes it makes sense to just hang on.  An alternate lesson is that some folks are simply lucky.  My nephew listened to all of this, even appearing interested, which is a tribute to his good upbringing and excellent parents.

Regardless of the truth of the story, Valley seems to be selling a lot of irrigation equipment.

After the terrible droughts of the 1970's in Nebraska, there were basically two types of farmers:  those who had invested in irrigation, and those who were no longer farming.  In Nebraska, you were a "dry land farmer" if you didn't irrigate.  That says it all.

It may take you nearly as long to read this post as it took to drive to Norfolk, and I apologize for that.  Once we got to my in-laws' house (yeah, I know, they're not really my in-laws but just humor me), the kids went sledding on a nearby dam.  There's a funny story about my brother and his wife being featured on the front page of the Norfolk Daily News wiping out on this sled run a few years ago, but unfortunately I don't have that picture.  So you'll have to enjoy this shot instead:

After a wonderful afternoon of cooking and wine tasting, and then a delicious dinner followed by the guys doing the dishes, and a couple of episodes of Downton Abbey Sunday morning, I got in the Vue to return to Omaha.

The good news was that my stereo wasn't dead.  The battery was.  My brother and his father-in-law gave me a good jump and I promised not to stop until I got a new battery in Omaha.

My promise notwithstanding, I did make a quick stop (not turning off the engine) at a historic marker just west of Fremont, erected in 1928.  The marker both commemorated historic events and was also, apparently, historic in itself, as it was old and surrounded by a chain link fence for protection.  Regardless, the marker pointed out that this route was "An Old Indian Trail, East to West - Route of Major S.H. Long, June 7, 1820 - Part of Mormon Migration 1847 to 1864 And California Gold Rush 1849."  Some people may not know that the Mormons crossed the country through Nebraska but had to use a separate route to avoid conflict with other settlers.  They spent a terrible winter just north of Omaha, and Omaha has a Mormon Bridge across the Missouri River near where their winter encampment was located.  But I hadn't realized that, at least according to this marker, the Mormons took the same route as the Gold Rush.  That must have made for some interesting campfires.

Oh, if you're ever in Omaha in need of car service on a Sunday, I highly recommend the BP station at 79th and West Dodge Road.  Quick, friendly service and they even washed the Vue.  This place has been there since Henry Ford, I think, although it used to be an Amoco station back in the day.  The Service Center is open until 5.