Happy 4th of July

I have one day to report on. It's enough news to make the rest of the week look like a cake walk.

Al & I and the kids spent the 4th of July in Crawford, Nebraska, about 90 miles north & west of here. We started out early, the kids were in the car by 0740 and we followed Laura, as she's traveled that set of roads many a time, having lived there.

It was cloudy and cold, misty and heavy laden with fog at some points. The drive was not promising, but the weather man assured us of a sunny 75 degree day in the north. We got into town about 1/2 hour before the parade started, and now that Mark's parents just bought a house in town, we pulled in the alley and brought our chairs to the front yard, prime spot on the parade route!

Eden began to cry about 10 minutes outside of town, and having been at the race track the night before until 11:00p.m., I figured she was tired. Wrong. She ran into the bathroom at the Elder Douthit's and went strait to the toilet, where she sat for 15 minutes. She then came out and curled up on my lap where she promptly threw up and started crying again. Guess those 3 sneaked cup cakes yesterday finally made it out. We watched the parade, Eden on my lap, beginning to feel better, and Lars fast asleep on his daddy's lap.

Towards lunch, Eden was feeling a bit better, Lars was awake and the sun came out and dried up all the rain, and the itsy bitsy spider was never actually heard from.

Lunch was a mighty spread and kids were in abundace. Eden's new buddy, Drew, a cousin to Lexi & Kyra, took on the role of Father Chicken to Lars, hauling after him where ever he wandered. Eden followed along much of the time, confiscating Drew's motorcycle toy.

After lunch, we drove 3 miles out of town to Ft. Robinson, a large fort which served as one of the many forts in this area during the American Indian and Government battles for rights and land. Crazy Horse was killed in this fort 101 years to the day before I was born.

Then it was a drive around the town and out into the country. Now, here's where things get very interesting. Western Nebraskan's idea of 'country' and my idea of 'country' are, as I was about to find out, very different.

When Mark (who is only a few years older then us) talks about growing up on the ranch, going to a one room school house until high school and then going to board with an old woman in town because they lived too far out, I thought, "ok, that's different." Laura, too, talks about living there right after they were married, and the ranch is 20 miles out of town and all that, I think, "oh, that would be nice to see."

We turned off the highway and went a few miles on a partly washed out dirt road with nothing but buttes and prairie grass in sight. Then, we reached the top of a hill and the end of the county, where I took a deep breath and knew that my life might end at any moment and that nobody would ever find me and my body would rot away in the safety of my new big white Ford because this was, in my respectful opinion, the end of the earth.

But oh no, it gets better. By now, both kids are asleep and, as my husband said it to Laura, "we'd better get there quick b/c I don't think my wife can stand to be much longer without oxygen". Suddenly, I had a striking headache and began praying while Laura drove along, care free and chatting away, as if this is just a normal part of life.

A monster truck with the best shocks in the world wouldn't have been a match for that road. It was 20 miles (not 20 mintues) of a one lane dirt road, mud, twist and turns, gullied out swathes of gravel, a few trees, no houses, no vehicles, no sign of life what-so-ever, unless you count the antelope along the way, and, no joke, not one, but TWO wood plank bridges to drive across. And I'm not talking about a cute, well maintained covered bridge in Frankenmuth, Mi, but an old fashioned, hand built and still a necessity to have wood bridge. Like, when the bridge goes out, you're stuck on the other side until you get out and re-build it.

We passed a clump of 3 mailboxes (yes, they have 'neighbors', though I never saw anything that would prove that), where they get mail delivered 3 times a week, barring snow/ice/rain or any other natural weather event. Since the mail carriers routes are about 200 miles per day, this delivery system pleases everybody!

Laura assures me that they have one channel on the TV, and that, most of the time, the telephone lines are working. Unless of course there is a flag in the road, indicating that the lines have washed up and not to run over them or you'll be without. She tells me they have running water and flush toilets, as well as modern electrictiy. I tell her that I will believe it when I see it.

At last, we reach the end of the road. Literally, the road goes no further. Two houses, a barn and a couple out buildings stand before us. One house is Mark's parents and the other was his grandma's house before she died a few years back. Grandma's is rented out to hunters now for their wild west adventures, and lots of dead animals hang on the walls. The other one is still much lived in, as they just moved to town a month ago.

A threashing machine sat high on a hill and lots of tractors and ranching/farming equipment and 4 wheelers are in close proximity in the big barn. What used to be a large vegetable garden lines the property and the flowers are all in bloom. The tour of the house includes the basement, which is where the grandparent's first moved in the 1940's. When the war began, they were unable to get building supplies, so they lived in the basement until the end of the war, when they could build the upstairs. The concrete steps say 1946. The rest of the house is spacious with rooms and a pantry to fill with food for when they would be unable to get to town, a common occurance, I can imagine.

As we were walking around, it began to sprinkle and I began to panic. I was not about to get stranded out here, so we loaded up and headed back to town.

Buttes lined one direction, but were lacking trees from a huge fire in 1989, which is a whole nother story in itself, since the ranchers fight their own wild fires on 4 wheeler with shovels. The expanse is hard to imagine if you've never seen it or lived with it. It's quiet is deafing. There is nothing around. It's miles and miles of nothing but God's land to ranch and farm if you can.

The area is rich with history if you're blessed enough to know some of the natives and talk to them about how they got there, what prompted them to bushwack a path for miles and then decide, "That's far enough, I think I'll build a house and a barn and get married and have a family and ranch the land." It's the kind of west we play about back in the city, before we knew it actually existed in something other than story books.

We made it back to town. I took some Aleve and went to sit on the back deck. I would have loved a stiff drink to calm my nerves, but being on pavement helped quite a bit.

After a quick walking tour of the church in town, which originally sat at Fort Robinson for the soldiers and their families, we said our good-byes and headed back to Bridgeport, a town of 1500, which, at this point in the day, was the biggest metropolis I had seen and I was suddenly quite content living here...

Another history lesson for me and, since I was without my camera, a place I'm going to have to go back and visit.

Thanks for a wonderful visit and an even more amazing true story to tell the folks back home. Truly though, you can't believe it until you see it. And no camera can show you the experience, believe me!