So the highways have been clear and dry. There is almost no snow left on the plains, but I did wake to a beautiful frozen-fog effect on the trees. Today I drove across Nebraska ~ from Council Bluffs IA to North Platte. I stayed my first night out on the banks of the Missouri. Well, not really. Harrah's is on the bank. It is technically a "river boar" so they have full Las Vegas gambling, complete with garish lights and a twenty-story hotel (some riverboat).
I made a point of staying in Council Bluffs, because it is a very early childhood memory, from one of the winters before Kindergarten, when my grandmother stayed with us to take care of me. I remember her referring to what sounded to me like "Consa-bluss". It was the Big City for her when she was growing up in the 1880s about fifty miles to the NE in a town called Harlan. It is not too far from Early, for you Greg Brown fans.
Anyway, I think both are very evocative names. We have a number of them, I was thinking: Blue Earth, Sleepy Eye, Good Thunder.
The land is beautiful even in winter. If I remember correctly, last year I compared Piccardy to Iowa. I was right, but it's really more like Nebraska at least the Platte River Valley where I-80 runs. Completely flat, with little groves dotting the horizon, and lots of wetlands all along the river. Just like the Somme. No gothic cathedrals in N. Platte, however, as far as I know.
There is an Episcopal Church, though. And the Baptists barely outnumber the Lutherans. My intelligence is drawn from the Ramada Inn's list of churches. There is one called, suspiciously, "Church of Jesus Christ" which I'll bet has deliberately left off the "LDS". There are also two entries for "Church of Christ", one distinguished by the perplexing qualification, "Vocal." Do you suppose the other one is manual only? Or nasal? Maybe they are mute. anyway, it almost makes me wish I were going to be here on Sunday so I could check out this "Church of Christ (Vocal)." Or maybe the non-vocal one would be more interesting.
So, tomorrow I drive away to the Mountain Time Zone (I am surprised that it is still Central, here in N. Platte) and the unbearably hip town of Boulder. My old friend there, Joe de Raismes (a real, live, French viscount) is a Sufi of many years, whose Pir required them to become Muslims. They have a little community, all of whom I have known for a long time. They never would let me attend any of their meetings, though (they are kind of like Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, as far as that's concerned). But either they have mellowed or they think my contact with Pir Vilayat has koshered me, so to speak, because they have invited me to their initiates-only Khanega tomorrow night.
That should be fun. Years ago, I introduced Joe to another old friend, a Minnesota woman. In 1966, Annie and I drove to Acapulco in my Morgan. She looked like a cross between Melina Mecouri and Julie Christi.
Then she moved to the mountains and married a Mountain Man. The last time I saw her, she was living with him in an miner's abandoned log cabin on the back of Aspen Mountain, where you had to climb up on skis. But that's another story.A Salaam Aleikum*,
Bill+
* Did you know you can be jailed in Pakistan for saying this if you're not a Muslim? Then in Tajikistan, it is the standard greeting for everybody. You want to be careful, I guess.
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