WindWaterHomeKNore.pdf

7/31/2019 WindWaterHomeKNore.pdf

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WIND,WATER,HOME BY:KELSEA NORE

Ive long suspected that its the people who belong to places, not theother way around. I also think that some people can belong to a few

different places, but theres only one way a person can figure that out, so

they have to move around a lot. And you can never be sure until you cantell the stories of the place; the local legends, the haunts, schools andhomes. When you know the right names for the all the different parts of aplace. When you know the history of the older houses and buildings and

where rumors started.

If you asked, I could tell you about the Tailraces. Its the park thathovers around the edges of the power company, over by part of the canal.

On bright days, you can see the thick, dark shapes of the catfish and carpthat grow and eat enormously in the warmed, thrashing waters near the

dam. I know my way along those roads south of town, and what the packingplants look like at night. If we get lost, we can always follow the train tracksback into town.

I'll tell you about the street where Buffalo Bill Cody performed his

Wild West Show. I can show where they camped because its my backyardand we found their bones and their trash when we dug our basement. We

can go downtown and Ill take you to the courthouse and well find thesepia photographs of the countys original settlers, and then later we can

go to the cemetery to see the last piece of land they ever owned.

Their plots have sunken over time and a commemorative wrought-iron fence surrounds a few of the graves. In the fourth grade, my class tooka field trip to the cemetery to do charcoal gravestone rubbings. I found the

marker of an old woman who died the same day that I was born andconsidered, for perhaps the first time in my short existence, that I would

die someday but honestly, the thought of dying didnt scare me until Iturned sixteen.

From there, its not too far to the old movie theatre with the white

marble relief sculpture of Christopher Columbus and his famous shipscoming ashore. It hangs above the old-fashioned marquee. Ill tell you how Iremember a line of people curving all the way around the block when my

dad took me to see The Little Mermaid. I was young enough to think thatthe entire town had turned out because there were so many people on the

sidewalks.

We can go to Scotus, the Catholic High School. Its on this side oftown though closer to what used to be the center. For me, everything south


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of Highway 30 and east of 81 could be described as the streets with talltrees. The other side of town doesnt have near as much foliage. More

parks, but less shade.

We can look for the infamous Scotus ghost while were there. No

ones really sure if its a nun, a student or a little boy who haunts the mainbuilding but the lights in the Old Gym turn on at night and Ive heardstories about desks turning over on their own accord. Remind me about the

tunnels underneath the school that supposedly run all way across town tothe basement of Trinity Lutheran Church, where I took my first communion,and my last one as well. Directly across the street from that church is

where I went to high school. Its the public school but not Lakeview, thecountry school, if anyone asks you later.

You know, the entire building has been remodeled since I graduated

in 2003. It doesnt look the same as it did when I went to school there. Theoff-white linoleum floors are now carpeted. The noisy, maroon lockers were

torn out and replaced and everythingthe carpets, walls and staircasesisnow a soothing beige or timid pastel color. And yet its all astonishingly

bright.

I toured the renovations a while back and I found myself missing the

bright green tile in the bathrooms, the polished brass doorknobs, and theshadowy hallways near the auditorium The halls were dark enough and

near enough to the principals office to inspire a number of rebelliousmake-out sessions between hormonal teenagers, myself included.

Of course, the sunny new library is a huge improvement; much better

than the cavernous room I knew; the library I knew was built or repurposedto sit in the center of the school. The old library had no windows, darkwood paneling and burnt orange metal shelving andartwork and it was litby buzzing florescent lights whose once-clear plastic panes had yellowedwith age.

Overall, the school certainly looks better, more modern and clean,but I couldnt help but notice that there was a lack of something. Even thedecorations were subduedno more glittery, rah-rah banners on everyother locker. The quiet in the hallways between periods was unfamiliar.There were voices, but not the familiar echo and squeak of a sneakers andflip-flops. Everything felt softened or gauzy to me. Maybe my old highschool has a ghost as well?

Around here, I can show you where things used to be; how theBurger King was once a lonely motel with red neon lights and next door to


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it, there was a Happy Chef restaurant with a huge pot-bellied statue in theparking lot. I used to order grits whenever we came here for breakfast and

Id watch people leave the motel and think about where they were going.Over time, this same bit of land became a bagel shop and an insurance

office. Those places closed and a paycheck advance operation moved in,

which is a pretty profitable business in a blue-collar factory town like this.Eventually, though, the whole thing was torn down and they built a newWalgreens.

If we keep driving east, well drive by the 'new' Hy-Vee grocery storeand Ill point out the 'new' movie theatre, which is now more than fifteen

years old. I saw 'Titanic' there 4 times when I was in seventh grade. A longmovie is a good excuse for a later curfew when youre at that age.

Look around; this is what a lot of people think of as the center of

town. Im not sure if the greaser kids still cruise up and down these streetsbut it was prime territory for those slow-rolling teenagers who came in from

the little towns in the county, like Humphrey or Monroe. Which is not to saythat aimless driving wasnt a part of my formative years, because it was.

My group of friends just preferred the empty gravel roads up north to themain drag of town. More privacy up there, I guess.

Well go past the little strip-mall shop that sells adult toys andmovies out of the back, and has a display of glittery prom dresses in the

front window. Ill show you where my mom used to work and if I think youcan keep a secret, Ill tell you why she quit. Its next to one of the many gas

stations, the main office of a pig farm, and a laundromat. Its right acrossthe street from the Family Planning building, where the office is always

full but the parking lot remains empty, except for the nurses cars. Funnyhow that works.

A back road by will spit us out by the parking lot of the 'old' Wal-mart, which is near the 'old' Hy-Vee, the old Walgreens and the oldMenards. These buildings stand empty and I think theyre ugly but eitherthe corporate owners wont sell them or probably, no one knows what to dowith them, so theyll just rot here. They say that the new buildings are signsof progress. Im not sure what the old buildingsthe broken concrete andboarded windowsare signs of probably that the center of town is movingwest. No sense in over-thinking it.

Well head down 27th street, by Gerrard Park. My old babysitter livedacross the street and I remember when a little girl named Theresa fell off

the top of the Tornado Slide in the park. She was okay, it just scared her.Scared me, too. They took that slide down, I dont know when, but the park


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looks flat without it. I mean, the playground equipment that was once herewas old, even when I was a kid. It was made of wood that splintered despite

the multiple layers of colorful paint and of cast iron bars that burned yourskin in the summertime and made your hands smell like blood or pennies.

I learned all the good cuss words by reading the park benches andthe sides of the metal drums that doubled as garbage cans. The park wasalso home to the softball complex. Almost every night in the spring and

summer, there were a few games going on, so I picked up few good cursesthere, too. Theyve replaced the rusty seesaws and the oft-broken merry-go-round with one of those plastic playground castles, brightly colored, safe

and boring.

My old neighborhood is directly behind that tree line. My parentsbuilt that house over twenty-five years ago. It started out a pale yellow but

we painted it a deep turquoise, with white shutters and the front door wasthe same color as the terra cotta planters in the garden. I love that our

house was so vivid, so different from the muted blues and standard beigehouses that surrounded us. When we sold it, the new owners were quick to

paint it a sandy color, with dark red shutters. My brother and I wrote ournames in the cement by the backdoor, so no matter what, its still ourhouse.

I wont tell you the secrets of my old neighborhood, not yet anyway,

but I will tell you that both the seventh and tenth commandments werebroken, people spent more money than they had, and that I know some

kids were afraid of their fathers. I know who furtively drank in their garagesand who came home too late at night. None of the walls were thick

enough. They never are though, are they?

Yeah, I mean, I know all this now but when I was a little girl, I justknew that the cornfields were an excellent place to play hide and seek andthat the Greenes annual Fourth of July party was the best part of summer.I knew that the Mausbachs always had a cup of miniature marshmallowswaiting for me when I would visit them. Mr. Mausbach wore railroadcoveralls every day and hade a huge stained-glass window in his garage,which was salvaged from a church outside of town. He would always showus the beautiful collage of glass and color whenever we asked.

Our next-door neighbors house was as open to me as my own and Icould walk into my house and or theirs and Bev and my mother would besitting at her kitchen table or on our back porch, smoking cigarettes and

telling stories. I think thats when my parents started talking about movingor building a new house, after Bev and Bob moved.


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I know this part of town. I walked it before I could drive. You know,

we walked just about everywhere growing up. In junior high, just walkingaround was the actual activity we based our summer afternoon and

evenings upon; walking from someones house, to a park or a bowling alley

and back again. We didnt have a mall to wander through and besides, ourparents never worried too loudly, so we never had a reason to be scared.So, we loitered for fun and stayed out of trouble. Use your head was the

general rule of thumb.

I was always home by six for dinner. That was another one of the

rules. If we were late or dinner was on the table early, my dad would standon the front porch, put his thumb and finger on his bottom lip and whistle.

I sometimes wonder if other neighborhood families used Dads whistle astheir time to come home signal as well. We could hear that whistle over

half a mile away (hand to God, it was loud). I think that even if I heard itnow, Id stop whatever I was doing and head toward home.

Speaking of dinner, I bet youre probably pretty hungry by now, so

lets head up Howard Boulevard, past my dads office. Well head backtoward downtown so we can eat at Dusters, this towns premier fancyrestaurant. The building was once a car factory. You can see by the ornate

wheels carved into the front of the building. They used to build Model-Tshere, a long time ago. The man who owns Dorothy Lynch Salad Dressing

owns this restaurant, too.

I worked here as a hostess in high school and when I wore theuniform, middle-aged women and teenagers ran the restaurant. I actually

know quite a few dishwashers who ended up as pretty decent sous chefs onaccount of working here. It was a great job for a high school kid. A niceenough place to look respectable on resumes, but we managed to have ourfun, too. Food fights are that much more entertaining when youre wearingan oversized tuxedo shirt, bowtie, a high-waisted skirt and pantyhose.

Theres a mural in the big dining room thats supposed to tell thestory of the area and the only part I really like is the sad expression of theIndian on his horse, looking out and seeing trains, covered wagons and abig plume of black smoke. A herd of bison crosses over the train tracks,narrowly avoiding an old car rumbling down an unpaved road. They brewtheir own beer here, but if you want to have a drink, we ought to go toGlurs Tavern.

Glurs is certifiably the oldest bar west of the Mississippi River. Itsone of those bits of history that come with a plaque on the wall. The light


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that shines out of the dirty windows always attracts college students, homeon winter break, to come inside where high school rivalries and

relationships will never end. The girls suck in their stomachs while theydrink Captain and Diet Coke, and the boys slosh their warm tap beer on

themselves and everyone wonders whos looking at them and why. Every

year, fewer people from your class show up. Theyve moved on, stayedhome or dont have a reason to come back anymore. It happens.

Its sort of strange drinking in an actual bar, to be honest. In highschool, someone would get his or her hands on a twelve-pack or a handle ofcheap rum and wed park on the roadside or in a pasture and wed drink.

Mostly though, parties were held in someones basement the weekend theirparents were out of town, or at the familys summer cabin. I know, I know

we were stupid. And ever worse is the fact that we knew better than todrink and drive. We played the odds and didnt always win.

My friends and I experienced mortality often and early. Its sad (and

really, its so strange) to tell you this but I learned that a classmatesfuneral was about as regular as the prom while I was growing up. Car

accidents and the like took about three kids each year, routinely. Moreoften they were Columbus High or Scotus kids, but Lakeview wasntimmune either.

Some of our losses were easily blamed on booze or drugs but just as

many were those incomprehensibly random accidents that resulted inempty desks on Monday mornings. Its not easy to explain what that many

funerals will do to you as a kid and I think theres a threat in speaking tooplainly about lost friends. I know a lot of people wholl only speak in low

tones when they reminisce, as if theyre afraid of reminding fate what itscapable of doing.

Anyway, I guess well head up 18th Avenue before sundown and passby the small airport and Ketter Soccer Fields; itll give us time to talk aboutwhat youve seen, and what you havent seen yet. Like Lake North andthose country roads I mentioned earlier, where my friends and I passed thetime as teenagers.

Wed listened to our stereos and talk about things that our parentscouldnt overhear. We smoked filched cigarettes, among other things. Wecalled it up North because it was and because it felt like we weredetached from down there. Its the only explanation anyone can agreeupon. We can cut back into town down 48th Avenue, the road that lies in

between the new hospital and my parents new house.


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The house looks like it was built backwards but someday, theyll puta road to the north, and then people will stop asking why the front porch

faces a little patch of wild prairie. We have a big yard, which my dadspends a lot of time mowing in the spring and summer. My mom has it

decorated with a strange variety of lawn ornamentstheres a ceramic

giraffe that peeks out the trees and a six-foot-tall Statue of Liberty statuethat stands quietly by the daffodils. There are gargoyles at every gutterdrain and a few cement pixies in the lawn.

Theres a few cornfields near our property line and if you wake upvery early in the morning, you can catch a glimpse of the whitetail deer

warily eyeing the small garden lanterns that make ring like bells wheneverthe wind blows. And the wind is always blowing here.

This is central Nebraska, where you can feel even a small breeze for

about ten miles after it comes fromwell, wherever wind comes from.There are small, noisy creeks and crickets that chirp in time with the rustle

of the leaves on the cottonwood trees, which can grow to incredibleheights, even during a dry season. There are the cornfields and other

crops, soybeans I guess. Children staring out of car windows arehypnotized by the flickering repetition of the carefully planted rows and Ithink they dream about water.

Why water? Im not sure. When I think about growing up here, in

Columbus, for some reason Im struck by the sensation of being parched.Like I was always thirsty and had cracked lips and a dry throat, all that. Its

like my memories are looking at all the small lakes and the ponds and thePlatte and the Loup Rivers and I know that I could never drink that water,

cause drinking that water would make me sick. But it could also cool medown on a hot summer day, or clean me off if I was dirty.

Which reminds me, theres one more place I want to show you, downby the river. Some people call it the Black Bridge, but Ive always called itthe Train Bridge. You wont see it from the either highway and it didntbuckle or break in the flood of 1947 or when the waters rose again in 1993.The bridge is pretty hidden and its fairly small on anyones scale. Fromwhat I understand, it was built in 1913 and that cast-iron bridge must bearthe weight of over twenty trains a day, probably more. Theres graffiti allover the cement pillars embedded into the sandy riverbank.

In bright green paint, someone has declared that he will love Sara4EVER, and hardly an inch away, in blue, is what I think is Saras reply: U

BROKE MY . UR A DICK! Beneath the bridge, there are more honesttributes to love (R.I.P. MARTY) and well also find an odd mixture of


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emotion and philosophy, of pride (NATE WAS HERE) and apathy (I DONTKNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFEAND I DONT CARE). I think it all

forms a rather incredible mural when you stand back and look at it. Thesmeared remnants of small fires, the beer cans, the litter and cigarette

butts and the footprints blend into with the colorful graffiti and make for a

nice contrast against the dark geometric patterns on the bridge. Thatswhat I see, anyway.

If youre quick, and I promise you, we wont get hurt, we can hidebeneath the tracks and wait for train to come. Dont look at me that way Ipromise, its safe. Sort of. Well run down the workmans walk and down

the trestles. Well have to jump onto a concrete ledge and then duckthrough a small opening. Thats it. Well be beneath the train tracks.

You can look up and see the sunlight falling through the wooden

railroad ties. Theres enough room down there to stretch out if you want to,or even to run around. Ill point out the perfectly round pebbles that are

thrown through the trestles. It must be gravel or even bits of coal, carvedand smooth by the high pressure of the trains. Youll hear the train before

it comes and it will make your heart speed up. This is what happens:

The bridge starts to shake, just a small vibration at first, and then

the whistle shrieks again. Dust and soot fall on your shoulders and shakesinto your eyes. Right before you can think of something to say, the train is

overhead. The noise is just incredible. You look up and you can see thewheels churning. You might even think about touching themtheyre that

closebut you wont; you cant move. Youll laugh out loud so you can rivalthe sound above your head and youll grab my arm. Youll scream because

for the first time in your life you can make a big, terrible noise and no onewill hear it. If the train is long enough, the rhythm will start to make sense,and youll see the pattern in the flickering light of the ties and between therailcars but right before you figure it out, the train will be gone.

In those few seconds after the train is gone theres a silence andits the most perfect example of quiet that youll ever know. Its like theinsects dont dare to move, the birds are still, and that town I just showedyou doesnt exist anymore. The industrial authority of the train has stunnedeven the sheer, angry force of nature. But it wont last very longthishushonly a few seconds and then the world will burst open with its noiseagain. Ill leave you alone for a few seconds to make sure theres not againtrain coming.

Is it what you expected? Is there anything more I can tell you? Didyou come here with me expecting statistics or museum placards? I cant


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claim any ownership to such things, and frankly theyre nothing butfootnotes in my story.

I know that I belong to this place, despite my adolescent desire to

cut ties. I've moved away but I often stop and wonder how much of me was

created back there and how much I really know; how much Ive merelyimagined. Please know that I accept my Midwestern naivet, but that thisseemingly innocent glance is not without nuance, or even jest. Dont ever

think that Ive been crippled by my upbringing and ignore the fact that onefoot drags.

Give me the benefit of my doubts; I know the world is taller thanthree stories. I know that theres clean water to drink. But let me be

immersed and lost in this flat and rich expanse. Ive traveled beyond theseplains and I have seen wonderful things but you must understand that this

is where I learned to see the world. I will trust my perceptions. I will carrythem with me.

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