Nebraska

Year of First Visit – 1979
Point of Entry – I-80 near Omaha

It's perhaps a testament to my small-town upbringing that my formative memories of Nebraska are urban and cosmopolitan.

I've always been attracted to big cities. By the time I was nine I'd been around Detroit and Kansas City a couple of times. We'd driven through a few others, though mostly via the outer freeways through the surrounding sprawl.



But my brother started graduate school at UNO and that meant going to Omaha for a visit. We drove through downtown. His apartment was near the city center so we actually stayed in the city.

We took Dodge Street out to Westroads Mall. I had never experienced anything like either of them.

Yes, for me Nebraska was cutting edge urban life. Had I written the Broadway musical, the song would have been Everything's Up To Date in East Nebraska!

A couple years later my brother took a job nearly half way across the state in Ord. I remember pulling off the main road (which had corn growing right up to the white line marking the shoulder)and walking into a restaurant for lunch on our way there. We could tell everyone was looking at us a little funny while we read the menus. Few minutes later a woman at the table next to us leaned over and said, "No one else here will ask, but we're all wondering who you are and where you're headed."



We were in Ord for its festival celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding. Included was an Antique Car Show at which my parents saw a car just like the one they used to have. We're all glad they're now called "classic" car shows rather than labeling the vehicles as "antique."

My wife and I went to Bellevue for a job interview and we later had an interview in central Kansas which meant a drive back through Nebraska to our apartment in Iowa. Other than that, I didn't return to Nebraska for nearly 20 years.

On that trip we were driving from the South Dakota Badlands to Denver. We had a leisurely Sunday drive through the western part of the state that day, including a stopover at Scotts Bluff.



Urban or rural, recent or distant, all my memories of Nebraska are pleasant. Pleasant people. Pleasant places. Pleasant times. I can see how someone could lead a most contented life there.