Day 94 -- Sunday, August 2

I love air-conditioning. I consider it one of mankind's greatest accomplishments. However, I've only used it on the open road four or five times during the Odyssey. Only by opening the windows and letting the wind rush in, bringing with it the smells and sounds of the countryside and voices from the land's past can one truly experience the country one is traversing.

When the windows are up, you're not traveling, you're viewing. You're not experiencing, you're watching. The landscape, as it hurries by you, is like a film. Like a movie, it can intrigue you, it can move you, it can entertain you but there remains an undeniable distance, a gulf that only be bridged by rolling down the window.

I left Denver to the west, bound for Nebraska. The countryside in eastern Colorado stands in striking contrast to the image most people hold of the state. No mountains here; they have given way to the plains, long, flat tables of waving grass and scrub brush and infinite sky. In Brush, Colorado, I left the interstate and took Highway 34 into the Cornhusker State. The further east I traveled, the more solitary my status on the road became.

This is drive time tailor-made for deep thought, perfect for problem solving, either those of the world or one's own. While I find this countryside far from boring, it is soothing and the generally unchallenging nature of the driving leaves a large percentage of one's brain cells unengaged and available for cogitation. My drive wasn't long enough to allow me to solve all the world's problems, but I did give it my best shot.

Soon after one crosses the line into Nebraska, the countryside undergoes a gradual and subtle change. This is still plains country but the use of it differs. In eastern Colorado, the land seems to be range, grasslands used for raising cattle but in western Nebraska, the land's been plowed, tilled, and seeded, with corn the popular crop of choice. Since I was a child, one of my favorite simple pleasures is watching the rows of a planted field open up before me. Do you understand what I mean? Take a field of corn - drive past it from one direction and it is only a dense expanse of green. But approach it from another angle, and at the instant one is alongside each row, it reveals itself - alternating rows of green and brown hurrying past in a rapid, rhythmic pattern. Delightful.

As I entered the town of Benkelman, I came across a sign proclaiming the little burg as the hometown of Ward Bond. I found this more than a little charming. I suspect that many Americans haven't a clue who Ward Bond is, though many of them would recognize his face. As an old movie buff, I know him well. He was in countless movies in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, but he was one of those character actors who seldom, if ever, had a sizable role. As a result, the face is familiar but the name often escapes us. I remember Bond most as the cop in It's a Wonderful Life. I was pleased to see that the people of this little burg are so proud of Bond's roots in their community; they even have a Ward Bond Memorial Park in town, complete with picnic shelter and playground.


Continue on the American Odyssey.
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