It's Spectra-Sonic!

In 1959, Liberty Records represented "the most EXCITING sound in the world." Said so right there on the record sleeve.

In 2016, do we get excited about anything anymore?

By the time you have porn sites cutting off access to North Carolina perverts because the smut-purveyor is morally offended that the state passed a law stating that human persons with XY chromosomes -- and a tallywhacker -- really should use the men's room and human persons with XX chromosomes -- and lacking an appendage -- really should use the ladies' room, you as a society probably have lost the emotional chops to get anything but outraged. 

I mean, when did this become a thing? And you thought this post was going to be about old records.

I'll tell you what I'm not excited about. The future. The future is going to be dreary, and joyless, and overwrought, and angry . . . and we're all going to end up killing one another. Perhaps we can stave this off a couple more years by outlawing urinals and mandating doors on bathroom stalls.

For now, I think I'll just hide out in a time when we still had something to get excited about.

I'm dreaming of a white, feathered Christmas

It may not be a Christmas miracle, but it's close enough.

This morning, I awoke to a) the white Christmas -- the very white Christmas, as it turns out -- we weren't supposed to have this year and b) an extremely excited spousal unit telling me there was a flock of turkeys in the front yard.

All told, there were seven gobblers out there. I think I'll have an extra little smile on my face this afternoon for the Making of the Christmas Gumbo.

Ho! Ho! Ho! And a very merry Christmas to one and all.

Where Jefferson met Lincoln

Welcome to the hamlet of Colo, Iowa, population 869.

Colo, about a 20-minute drive east on U.S. 30 from Ames -- itself about 25 minutes north of Des Moines -- isn't exactly a destination these days for most folks. The little Story County town isn't a real swingin' place, though you can get a mighty fine burger and perfect fries at Niland's Cafe.

But if you're a road geek (And doesn't everybody have a little road geek in him?), Colo, Iowa is something approaching a Holy Grail of geekdom. Turn off Highway 30, head north on U.S. 65 and soon enough you'll come to County Road E41. Turn left, and you find yourself at what once was the crossroads of America.


There you'll find the Colo Motel, the cafe and a filling station that hasn't filled anything up since the 1960s. Between 1913 and 1928, though, if you wanted to get from Times Square to San Francisco -- or from New Orleans to Winnipeg, Manitoba -- you'd eventually find yourself in Colo.

There's another name for County Road E41 -- the Lincoln Highway, the first cross-country road in the United States. Likewise, what now is U.S. 65 through Colo once was the Jefferson Highway, the first great north-south road in North America, starting in 1916.
 
Jefferson met Lincoln in little Colo, Iowa.

TODAY, if you want to get from the East Coast to the West, you take Interstate 80. If you want the scenic route, you take Highway 30, which now runs about a mile south of this stretch of the old Lincoln Highway.

If you're headed north to Winnipeg, you'll need to head over to I-29, a couple of hours west.

Once upon a time, however, Colo was the crossroads of North America.

Now, Niland's Cafe is, in addition to that of a home-cooked meal, the home of a small museum dedicated to the Jefferson and Lincoln Highways. And the old gas station has been left more or less untouched since pumping its last tankful, except for the addition of three restored vintage pumps out front and some general sprucing up.

Last week, after wandering around Ames on a roundabout journey back to Omaha from the Iowa State Fair, a stop at the crossroads was a must. I live less than a mile from the Lincoln Highway's old route through Omaha. In Baton Rouge, I once lived on Jefferson Highway. The Jefferson Highway, which in many places has kept its name after it lost its official status.

Given my journey in life, it was only fitting to pay homage to the Crossroads.

Yo' mama's a tagger

When your mother can't resist tagging an overpass, you know something is seriously up with the universe.

This is the overpass at Cass Street on the Keystone Trail in west-central Omaha. Obviously Mom has found the sweet spot where nagging, unauthorized public art and exercise intersect.

In the public-policy arena, perhaps it's time the Omaha City Council considers cracking down on spray-paint sales to middle-age women.

This was the week that was

Enough said.

It's that time of year

It's fall on the Great Plains, so that means it's grasshopper time in these parts. They're everywhere.

As in EVERYWHERE.

In exchange for a tip on where to find some juicy feed corn still in the fields, this little feller agreed to pose for some photographs.

 Am I a bad person for telling him all Omaha's best corn is in the middle of Dodge Street?
 

Summer's last gasp

 Iowa State Fair, August 2014

 

The state fair season is winding down and football has returned to the prairies, fields and Norman Rockwell towns of the Midwest. The rituals of its people point to the changing of its seasons, and we know the trees and shrubbery will, soon enough, will break out into a riotous festival of color, as if the Almighty were looking down upon his Technicolor palette and saying to LeRoy Neiman "You never could top me, could you?"

Then the leaves will exhaust the last of their color and blanket the earth for nature's long winter slumber. And we will settle in, bundle up and dream dreams of springtime.

Thus is the circle game of life.

Trainspotting

Kansas City's Union Station, Aug. 15, 2014

Tag the Bridge. Tag It Nice.

In Nebraska, even the taggers are Nice. Maybe this Nice graffiti on Omaha's Keystone Trail can be part of the next "Visit Nebraska. Visit Nice" television commercial.

Or not.

Whatever.

Visit Favog. Visit Apathy.

Saturday in the Old Market, Omaha

Give me a camera and Omaha's Old Market downtown . . . and I'll go shutterbug nuts.

Which I did Saturday evening.

You see, the Old Market is photogenic. This scene is

just east of the Jackson Street Tavern, where

we had a tasty supper and drinks.

In this instance, the Market also is quite blue.
I guess you could call this scene outside
J's on Jackson something of a Blue Light Special.

This photo is best enjoyed with a cold cerveza.

And we leave you with some of the Omaha skyline

after dark. Y'all come see us, now, y'hear?

July 3, Omaha, Nebraska

Nebraska.

This picture pretty much sums up who we Nebraskans are.

The photo, by Omaha World-Herald photographer Kent Sievers, ran on the front of today's Midlands section with this story.

To summarize, I think a catchphrase of Nebraska native Larry the Cable Guy will work pretty well -- "Git 'r done."  I don't care who you are, what Nebraskans have done in the wake of a swirling monster's rampage through a small town is inspiring.

Particularly this guy in the wheelchair.

Git 'r done, indeed.

Things CDs suck at

OK, I totally bought this LP at the thrift store because of the album cover.

Because CD packaging is really, really bad at this sort of artistic coolness.

IT'S A 1972 release, "Bandstand," from the British progressive rockers Family. If the music is half as good as the album cover, you'll be hearing it on 3 Chords & the Truth.

Also file under "Things a Digital Download Can't Do at All."

That's it for now. Peace. Out.

Because bird brain

Who's afraid of the phony owl?

Phony owl?

Phony owl?

Who's afraid of the phony owl?

Tra la la la la.

Honk if you love the water

If it's June in Omaha, you'll find Canada geese nearly anyplace it's wet.

In this case, that would be the Little Papillion Creek along the Keystone Trail, where this caught my eye on my daily walk. It looks like the waterfowl are having themselves a little community swim.

I'll honk to that. Or they will. Somebody.

How high was the water, Mama?

A lot more than 5 feet high and rising.

In fact, it was about this high in Omaha's Little Papillion Creek last week after the big storm.

Let's just say that anyone who might have been tempted to do a little urban whitewater -- OK, muddy brown water -- rafting in the wake of the June 3 deluge would have been making a big mistake if they had succumbed to the urge. They likely would have . . . succumbed.

You don't want to get hit by a giant, fast-moving limb. Is what I'm getting at.

No shelter at all

This was the view Friday of the homeless camp just off Omaha's Keystone Trail.

Sometimes, a crude shelter is no shelter at all -- no good against the cold and worthless in the snow. It looks like whoever was camped here is long gone . . . thankfully.

THE HIGH on Friday was 13. That was a big improvement over Thursday, which started out at 10 below.

If this is all the shelter you have, there's a word to describe you. That would be "dead."

Still, consider there are folks out there . . . in the cold. In rough camps not much better than this. It's what they call "home."

Ours is a society of cracks, through which "the least of these" fall, much like the snow through the gaps in this lean-to.

Lord, have mercy.

Frozen in time

When it's this cold, "frozen in time" isn't just 

another expression. Just so you know.

Disappearing in plain sight

This is the Keystone Trail, right in the middle of the middle of Omaha.

You'll find yuppies and bobos and DINKs and hipsters and bikers and joggers and slackers and workers and old folks up and down its paved pathway beside the Little Papillion Creek whenever the weather isn't totally unfortunate.

Sometimes, you'll find idiots like me there even when the weather is unreasonably unfortunate. Not today, however. Too much snow, too damned windy and cold.

Some things . . . some folks whom you might find there, you'd probably rather pretend aren't there -- there right under our reasonably affluent noses. But evidence is evidence.

Like this. Right under our noses.

IT'S QUITE easy today to routinely ignore what's right under our noses. In our society, we all live in our own little worlds, and we all live by those whose worlds are a lot like our own.

No longer are we forced to exist cheek and jowl with the great unwashed, so we don't.

And they become invisible, even when they're in plain sight. Or, as the case may be, tucked just into the tree line.

Would that all our failures were as out of sight and out of mind as the homeless, some of whom -- beset by mental illness, addiction or whatever -- never come in out of the cold. Even when it's snowy and 10 below, like it is this harsh February night in Omaha.

I hope whomever this encampment belongs to gave in to the siren song of central heating at a local shelter. A lean-to this crude can't keep out the snow, much less the subzero cold.

MAYBE WE fail to notice what's right under our noses -- or pretend we don't notice what's right under our noses -- because we're just overwhelmed. We are so overwhelmed by our own problems and clutter and, yes, demons that we figure we can't afford the luxury of contemplating or acknowledging those whose problems and clutter and demons have left them wandering through the Nebraska deep freeze.

As opposed to merely being distracted and stressed out.

Me, I don't know. I'm just spitballing here.

Whatever is the case, the evidence is clear that none are so blind as those who will not see. "Those," of course, being you. And you. And you.

And, by God, me.