While the train
flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and
bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the
observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep
over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many
things. We were talking about what it is like to spend one’s childhood in
little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of
climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a
brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell
of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the
whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one
who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It
was a kind of freemasonry, we said.
― Willa Cather, My Antonia
Where there is great
love, there are always miracles.
― Willa Cather
Tonight, The Drover, Omaha.
There are some things special to this town: the cobblestone streets of the Old Market, the inspired music scene, the range of funny old bars. The old steakhouses are another. Which is saying a lot, since I have been a vegetarian for most of my life.
Continue reading “Meeting Barbara Stanwyck, The Drover, Omaha”