George, I think perhaps that's true - you do in in the distance. I think that's a rather perceptive observation.

However, AT as distance you do not live:-)

George, that was so nice of you to show them the roads to really see the true Nebraska. When i travel i use secondary roads as much as possible. The small towns, the old houses,the friendly people,the mom and pop cafes,the farms, are always a delight everywhere and the true America.
vickie

George, I remember the first time I drove across Nebraska & the feeling of vast spaces was what I really remember about the place.

And good fo you for showing them the back roads. I prefer them over the interstate almost any day of the week. In my years of traveling I've found that almost every little town has something of interest for the visitor to either enjoy or learn something from or both.

You do live in the distance Gandle. Perhaps I have an idea of what they were referring to. The landscape around Devils Tower and the badlands with their dramatic form have something to anchor your mind to. I remember reading accounts of pioneer women, who when faced with the vastness and nothingness of the midwestern prairie with nothing to anchor the nothingness - refused to step one foot into the sea that was the prairie. It's a psychologically daunting landscape.

Have you read "Prairy Erth" by William Least Heat Moon? If not, try to pick up a copy. It's a map, through space and time, of Chase County, Kansas. Although that's a state away I'm sure you'll recognize some of the people and the stories. Heat Moon literally walked every inch of the county, not only in the present but by digging through the county records he also takes you on a trip through the past. He calls it a "deep map".

The land on which you were born and raised sometimes holds a magic power in your mind. Some friends and I were talking about this the other day and concluded that you usually don't feel totally comfortable in another place. The whole time I lived in Texas I yearned to see a tree - a real tree, a huge oak or graceful elm. The place where I lived was carpeted only with short, scrubby trees and a continuous blanket of brush and tumbleweed. It felt like an alien landscape to me.

I suppose if you've been long gone from your roots it doesn't bother you any longer. But I bet a trip back home would stir some feelings.

Andie - I think you remember the beauty of Oak Park, even though Hemingway referred to it as the "town of broad lawns and narrow minds". The beautiful trees arching over the streets and boulevards, and the distinctive vintage brick apartment blocks with their central courtyards are icons. The town has not only held up well, it's thrived and reinvented itself many times over since you left. Fields is gone and the Wieboldt's building was torn down, but the park across from those stores where I spent many a morning in the shelter waiting for a bus, still stands and looks just the same.

Fortunately my stepfather was a "back roads guy". He hated the interstate, although that meant it would take us forever to get anywhere. Like you said the back roads are home to the cafes and my stepfather was always in search of the perfect piece of pie. We'd stop mid-morning for coffee and pie, lunch with pie and mid-afternoon break with more coffee and pie.

Kudos to you for providing them with the interesting route, it's something they will remember!

What a poetic description! Many people live their whole lives without seeing 360* of unpeopled flat horizon with no landmarks. My sister has a 270* view of this from her house... nothing but cows and grass until the earth curves out of view...

Oddly, my dad has a really hard time when he visits my other sister in CT. He gets claustrophobic when he gets out of the cities because "Connecticut has too many "darn" trees! A guy can't see where a guy's going!" He feels a palpable uneasiness when the horizon is obscured. He's willing to accept this temporarily in a city, but once he gets outside the limits, he needs his "distance." I don't think he'd fare any better in corn country...

Suzanne, I have everything that William Least-Heat Moon ever wrote. These people took secondary roads through the sand hills and wound up in the Devils gulch area near Arnold NE. His remark, "Don't tell everyone about this area or there will be hundreds from the cities trying to buy and build there." I doubt that, there are no amenities that anyone from the populated areas would be used to, closest Pizza Hut about 60 miles, closest Walmart perhaps 80 miles or more, plus I don't think any rancher would stand for development on their land.

The Great Plains were known as the American Desert & were just about the last of the frontier settled by Anglos. I have several great books about frontier women, the best of which is a book titled Frontier Women by Joanna Stratton. As a history student at, I think, Harvard, she was cleaning out her recently deceased grandmother's attic & found a whole file cabinet full of primary documents - letters & diaries - that her grandmother had compiled apparently with a mind to writing a boon on the experience of pioneer women on the plains. She turned the documents into he PhD thesis & it was then published as a book about 20 years ago. The strength of those women were amazing. One image has always stuck in my mind. A woman along with her children in one of these sod houses with her husband out hunting. It's winter, the wind is howling and she hears the wolves coming closer and closer until they are literally at the door. They were certainly made of sterner stuff than I.

One of my everlasting frustrations here is that when folks I know go to America, they inevitably go to New York, Orlando and Los Angeles,and that's it. Those with more time add maybe Las Vegas, very maybe Niagra Falls, once in a great while San Fransisco....then come home and report on "America". Although those places are fantastic in their own right (esp. SF), I have learned to refrain from saying, "but what about all the places in between?!?" That's America, for me, where it takes four days to cross a state, where a random turn reveals paradise, where American food really does exist as local specialties. I try to point those with some imagination to the places they would surely miss, try to cajole them into at least getting off the highway, and I unabashedly tell stories of autumn trees, mountain ranges, prairie history, anything that will allow their perceptions to break out of shopping malls and fast food as the American experience. Israel is so very tiny (you can fit three pre-67 Israels into Lake Michigan), so the vastness is usually what blows their minds!!

After DD reached school age, I went back to work part-time and saved enough for us to drive -slowly- across the US. "In the distance" is such an apt phrase. This child of mine, whose life 'til then was in the short, steep, tree-covered hills of northern Virginia stood on at the top of one of Nebraska's rises and stared and stared across the wide open miles of blue sky. Finally she said, "This like looking into forever, isn't it?"

What a great quote from your daughter, Meldy.

Jaz--I understand exactly what your father feels when he visits CT. I was raised in Iowa and Wisconsin (lived 12 years in Madison, in fact). When I first moved to Massachusetts, the lack of horizon was one of the first things I noticed. And when I fly back into Milwaukee, the presence of the horizon and space and the ability to predict the weather b/c you can see the sky are the first things I notice. Everythings seems so decompressed, and I feel like I can take a deep breath. It IS like looking into forever. What a wise daughter you have, Meldy.