I was wrong to disrespect the Cornhusker State.
In the post announcing my grand, cross-country American adventure at 250, I wrote that, after emerging from the Rocky Mountains, I would be “booking it through Nebraska as fast as possible.” For this, I must apologize.
My statement was partly practical. After twelve days of driving through the American West, we needed to get home to Des Moines and rest. I have driven the interstate between Denver and Des Moines many times. It’s certainly possible to complete in a day, and I didn’t remember there being much interesting to see.
I must admit, however, that my comment was also motivated by petty animus. To be fair, Nebraska started it. We Iowans don’t think about Nebraska much at all, but apparently they think about us all the time. Whenever I have introduced myself to a Nebraskan and told them where I grew up — without fail — the next words out of their mouth are, “Iowa has bad corn.” (Ben Sasse once told me this to my face. I responded on the spot, “The international markets would disagree.”)
So forgive me, I was a tad prejudiced against Nebraska. My first minutes back there corroborated my bias. I had just finished with Colorado’s alpine heavens, for goodness’ sake, and now I was supposed to look at identical, flat fields of corn and soybeans for the next seven hours? Oh, and don’t forget the sweet scent of Nebraska’s cattle industry. The best that Nebraska’s roadside welcome sign could advertise is that the state is the “Home of Arbor Day.” Of course you are.
Here’s a piece of advice: If you want your state to be associated with the “good life,” you don’t (a) say it out loud in the first place, and (b) write it in all-lowercase letters if you do.
So yeah, Nebraska wasn’t quite doing it for me. But then, I saw it. And I drove straight to it. That’s right — for the first time in my life, I visited . . . a Runza.
I ordered precisely as I was told I had to: an original Runza sandwich with “frings” (fries and onion rings in one), plus two cups of dipping ranch. What I received was a Hot Pocket filled with ground beef.
And it was right then and there that I couldn’t help but fall in love with Nebraska. This is its iconic food? The one you have to try? I felt for Nebraska the same way I feel for a child who ties his shoes together and thinks that’s how it’s supposed to go, or for the New York Mets. The pleasures of life cannot get any simpler than in Nebraska.
But I tasted the Runza. And you know what? I ate one and a half. Because it was, indeed, pretty darn good.
We drove onward to Omaha, stopping at the elegant Holy Family Shrine just a few miles and a dirt road off I-80. The Catholic shrine was closed for the evening, but we caught a peek from outside before someone shooed us away.
And how can you not adore those handsome, rolling fields as the sun descends?
Oh, wait a moment. Those photos were taken just over the Missouri River. I thought the farmland had gotten more beautiful all of a sudden — what with those actual hills formed by windblown glacial dust, yielding the richest soil in the world. You know what that means!
No kidding, I cranked AC/DC for the last two hours on the way home. Because Iowa deserved it.
To be serious, though: Nebraska is a wonderful, peaceful place full of upstanding people, dutifully performing the hard work to feed the rest of us. It made me feel like I was back home before I truly was. Even sticking to the interstate, I could appreciate how much “good life” surrounded me.
Unfortunately, the greatest thing Nebraska has ever produced — not a cornstalk or a soybean — wasn’t in the state when I was passing through. She’s off in Washington, D.C., pouring her mind and soul into her studies all day every day, getting even smarter than me than she already was. Every minute that I drive east from California, it seems as though I’m driving to a job. Really, I’m driving to her.
This is an installment in a cross-country road-trip adventure.