We got back from Alu's, did laundry, I accidentally gave myself a serious trim (Jo thought the timing was too coincidental and that I did it to look bad while visiting her family), and then we drove off to the Good Life. We fortified ourselves with enough audio books to make it all the way through in one go and passed into Nebraska while the sun was still in the sky - just barely.
The Big Event was Amy's wedding reception. Jo did her cousin's hair, put her's in a nice braid, and put a fishtail on Vivian while I straightened and then curled my hair. The party was in a big beautifully decorated shed (I called it a barn but Jo corrected me) with lights and a live band and a baby pool full of ice and beer and food from Six Mile Cafe. The kids ran around outside and Jo and I danced away inside. And with guests from Omaha, suddenly Nicolle's kids and I weren't the only non-white people in the county!
Eventually the evening cooled off nicely and Evan fell asleep on a couple of chairs. Vivian borrowed a flashlight and read her book while people partied on. I think we called it a night sometime before midnight and headed back to Dawson.
Over the next few days we did the usual things - drive around in the country, eat crunch cones, take the kids to the swimming pool (I hid out in the library - it was too hot to even swim :-), and engage in home improvement tasks. The old dining room floor was peeled off, a new one laid down, the side porch was jacked up and straightened, Michelle made shelves, and Jo and I disassembled a pool table. Then one morning Nicolle and Michelle showed up towing a lift. Michelle hoisted herself up in the bucket and mopped the side of the house down with bleach. Soon Jo's cousin Ralphie showed up and spent the next six hours chainsawing limbs from trees deemed dangerously close to the house, and fixing portions of the house that were too high up to get to easily. Uncle Ralph came over and took the little kids for a ride. The bigger kids and everyone else were pressed into service to load up the cut limbs into Uncle Tom's trailer. He made six trips to the burn pile at the other end of town in his tractor. Hard work and good clean country livin'.
During a drive around the farms with Uncle Tom I learned that the biggest change since Jo's grandfather started farming is probably coming in this and the next decade. The people who farm anymore are people my age and up to a couple of decades older. Their kids aren't going to farm. Uncle Tom thinks that instead of a farmer farming a few hundred acres today, in the near future one person with the help of automation will manage a few thousand acres. The same technology that is putting self driving cars on the streets is being used to build the next generation of farm machinery. And like with self driving cars, a lot of it is already out there and being used today.
We spent a day in Omaha, shopping for a bed (30 mins) at America's biggest furniture store - the Nebraska Furniture Mart - it's like the Disney World of furniture shopping), and waiting for Carol's flight from Dallas to land (10 hours). The kids liked the children's museum. We ate lunch with Omaha hipsters at a very cool place downtown. Then we watched a movie where we were the only people in a huge multiplex. Carol's flight kept getting delayed in what seemed like a comedy of airline errors. Finally we ran out of ideas and went to play at a nice big park surrounding Zorinsky Lake. On the way to the park Evan asked:
"What kind of a pohk is it?"
He's always pronounced "park" like a Bostonian: pohk. Then he answered himself by posing four more questions:
"Is it a pohk with a playground?"
"Or is it a pohk where you can walk?"
"Or is it where you can pohk your cah?"
"Or is it a pohk like a piece of pig meat?"
This kept us going till poor Carol finally landed. We drove back to Dawson and got home at midnight.
The next afternoon we drove out of town again - through Falls City for one last crunch cone and onward to Texas, stopping in Ardmore for the night and arriving in Austin the next afternoon. I opened the fridge and had to take a photo. Jo had cleaned it out while the kids and I were at Alu's. First stop - Central Market. The Shaw-Holleys came for dinner and we ran out of wine and Travis and I walked over to Rosedale Mart for more. It felt like we were really back at the White Wooden House.
The Big Event was Amy's wedding reception. Jo did her cousin's hair, put her's in a nice braid, and put a fishtail on Vivian while I straightened and then curled my hair. The party was in a big beautifully decorated shed (I called it a barn but Jo corrected me) with lights and a live band and a baby pool full of ice and beer and food from Six Mile Cafe. The kids ran around outside and Jo and I danced away inside. And with guests from Omaha, suddenly Nicolle's kids and I weren't the only non-white people in the county!
Eventually the evening cooled off nicely and Evan fell asleep on a couple of chairs. Vivian borrowed a flashlight and read her book while people partied on. I think we called it a night sometime before midnight and headed back to Dawson.
Over the next few days we did the usual things - drive around in the country, eat crunch cones, take the kids to the swimming pool (I hid out in the library - it was too hot to even swim :-), and engage in home improvement tasks. The old dining room floor was peeled off, a new one laid down, the side porch was jacked up and straightened, Michelle made shelves, and Jo and I disassembled a pool table. Then one morning Nicolle and Michelle showed up towing a lift. Michelle hoisted herself up in the bucket and mopped the side of the house down with bleach. Soon Jo's cousin Ralphie showed up and spent the next six hours chainsawing limbs from trees deemed dangerously close to the house, and fixing portions of the house that were too high up to get to easily. Uncle Ralph came over and took the little kids for a ride. The bigger kids and everyone else were pressed into service to load up the cut limbs into Uncle Tom's trailer. He made six trips to the burn pile at the other end of town in his tractor. Hard work and good clean country livin'.
Over the last half a century, small towns in places like Nebraska have shrunk. Back when, every small community had it's own school. When the students dried up, the schools in the county were consolidated in a few bigger towns like at Falls City (pop. 4200 - which itself has lost 10% of it's population since the year 2000). The school that Carol attended, and Nicolle's school in Salem, and the school in Dawson that their cousins went to and many others are boarded up and for sale. Ralphie has bought one - Honey Creek School, built in 1921. We drove by to take a look. It was off the highway about a couple of miles. The road leading to it was once paved but is slowly decomposing into gravel. Someone at some point put up an interesting mailbox with the post made from camshafts. But the building was in disrepair. Windows were boarded or smashed. The once beautiful barrel vaulted wooden roof of the stone gymnasium building next door is caving in and the gym floor, now dirt, is littered with old discarded motors and other auto parts. Ralphie has his work cut out for him if he's going to change this into a home.
During a drive around the farms with Uncle Tom I learned that the biggest change since Jo's grandfather started farming is probably coming in this and the next decade. The people who farm anymore are people my age and up to a couple of decades older. Their kids aren't going to farm. Uncle Tom thinks that instead of a farmer farming a few hundred acres today, in the near future one person with the help of automation will manage a few thousand acres. The same technology that is putting self driving cars on the streets is being used to build the next generation of farm machinery. And like with self driving cars, a lot of it is already out there and being used today.
We spent a day in Omaha, shopping for a bed (30 mins) at America's biggest furniture store - the Nebraska Furniture Mart - it's like the Disney World of furniture shopping), and waiting for Carol's flight from Dallas to land (10 hours). The kids liked the children's museum. We ate lunch with Omaha hipsters at a very cool place downtown. Then we watched a movie where we were the only people in a huge multiplex. Carol's flight kept getting delayed in what seemed like a comedy of airline errors. Finally we ran out of ideas and went to play at a nice big park surrounding Zorinsky Lake. On the way to the park Evan asked:
"What kind of a pohk is it?"
He's always pronounced "park" like a Bostonian: pohk. Then he answered himself by posing four more questions:
"Is it a pohk with a playground?"
"Or is it a pohk where you can walk?"
"Or is it where you can pohk your cah?"
"Or is it a pohk like a piece of pig meat?"
This kept us going till poor Carol finally landed. We drove back to Dawson and got home at midnight.
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