Nebraska Notes - #5 Leaving

The eight days of lectures, writing assignments, evaluations, and readings of poetry, prose and a blue harmonica concert one rainy evening have filled my jellied brain to overflowing. It’s time to put it all to work back home in my garage office refuge, my silent place to fill pages or, at least to appear to fill pages while my dogs nap until they decide it is time for me to pay attention to them. Isn’t that why us humans exist—to pet, feed and walk these creatures we anthropomorphize?

My journey home started Saturday morning with the van which picked me up four minutes early despite the fact that it first whizzed by me while I sat at the entrance to the dorm building. I was engrossed in one of the memoir books I acquired during my stay.

The fifty some miles of space between Lincoln and Omaha (from which my plane will fly me back to Memphis), is split by the ribbon Interstate 80. It’s a lush space this morning as the sun ray’s beat down upon the verdant rolling fields of corn and soybeans.

It’s an ideal time to travel here because the spring storms bring unrepentant rains that pelt the seeded black dirt fields and tornado producing storms rip through the homes and hearts of this state’s inhabitants. Then the winter winds rip across these plains through the grayness of winter dumping snow and sleet upon the plowed under fields littered with harvest remains. This short time, the time in between these extremes, is the green time, the Willa Cather time, the time to be in Nebraska. The horizon is a sharp blue, dotted with puffy and whiskered clouds that spread across the miles of farm land. The sun is cool in the morning and in the evening, but can be piercing hot at its height in the day. It is not a heat that makes you closet yourself indoors. Rather, it is a dry heat, cooled by shade tree that beckons you to be there with it, outside to become part of its being. It is magnificent and as I travel through this space this morning at this time of year, I feel the attachment its people have to Nebraska and its passion for outdoor college baseball and football, both played in expansive open air stadiums.

I arrive at the airport, check my bag with a chatty airline customer service representative and navigate safely through the TSA security center in time to get in line for a desperately needed dark roast coffee to awaken my brain cells that were numbed by a restless night’s sleep. I’m lucky, I say to myself. The line is short. Ahead of me is only one man—in his 60’s most likely, baggy khaki shorts, wrinkled ochre polo shirt and white sensible Velcro-closing walking shoes and socks. He asks for the largest cup possible. He frowns and complains to the cashier about the size of the cup she offers, but smiles and gives her a jolly “I’ll take it” when she promises that he is welcome to all the free refills he can drink. Satisfied with her promise, he dumps a pile of nickels, dimes and pennies from a stained and worn athletic sock which he has placed on the counter. Stooped, looking intently over his glasses, he determinedly counts out the $1.93 “Let see here, 10, 20, 30….and 1, 2, 3. There you are young lady,” he says to the woman as he pushes the coins across the counter. He then scoops up the remaining coins, returning them to his sock, which he carries away along with his paper coffee cup.



I quickly give the woman who has apologized for this man’s behavior with her eyes two one dollar bills for my sacred paper coffee cup. I, the more traditional traveler, use my wallet, and not my sock to hold my money. I wonder what this man would do in a NYC deli. His waiter would have a memorable story to take to her acting class that evening.