Sunday, after a refreshing breakfast of Eggs Benedict, we completed the Sunday papers and trailed back over to Abigail’s to complete the move of her bedroom. By the time we found our way home for bed and rest both girls were ensconced in their new bedrooms, and Abigail had her spare knitting/project room to spend her time knitting and working from home in style.
Monday was a stay at home day, finishing shopping, mowing the lawn, getting ready for our upcoming road trip. Our friend Glenda Pierce is the current president of the Willa Cather Foundation, whose headquarters are located at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska, Willa Cather’s hometown, and the inspiration for a number of her best known novels, particularly My Antonia and O’ Pioneers.
Glenda had invited us to join her and her husband Jeff Kirkpatrick to stay at one of the Cather Homes in the area, in this case the Willa Cather Second Home, which was the home of Cather’s parents from the 1920’s until their deaths in the late 1930’s.
The Foundation acquired the home and has restored it beautifully and makes it available as a B & B and for use as a guest house.
We left around noon on Tuesday, taking a leisurely drive on state highways and county roads to the south-central Nebraska town, only some 30 miles north of the Kansas border on the banks of the Republican river. We arrived around 3:45 on a hot and sticky afternoon. We unloaded our vehicle into our first floor bedroom and then joined Glenda, Jeff, and our friend Sharon Kohout, who had driven up from Lubbock Texas, for some wine and conversation in the sitting room of the house. In the evening, we had been invited to the home of New Yorkers Jay Yost and Wade Leak for a patio dinner of lemon chicken, eggplant Parmesan, squash casserole and a cucumber and tomato salad; Mark had made a pair of baguettes this morning to contribute to the spread. All the vegetables were local produce, and we suspect the chicken might have been local also. We enjoyed the meal, followed by Glenda’s homemade carrot cake. Delicious! Jay, a Red Cloud native and Wade, from Utah, are both lawyers who live in New York, but, with their ties to Red Cloud, have invested heavily in the rehabilitation of this area. Jay is on the Board of a number of organizations in Red Cloud, and they have, since March, been living out the pandemic in this beautifully restored period home of theirs in Red Cloud rather than stay in the madness of NYC.
Wednesday we went for a walk to downtown Red Cloud (4 blocks away in this community of 1,020) and enjoyed a coffee at the Corner Nook coffee and gift shop; then back to our B & B for a breakfast of egg, ham and cheese English muffins prepared by Mark (think homemade Eggs McMuffin.) We loaded up both cars and headed south some 35 miles to our destination of Lebanon, Kansas. This village of some 100 souls is the site of the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states of the U.S.. There is a monument erected there, together with a 4-seat chapel and a recently planted Cedar of Lebanon donated by some Lebanese immigrants. With the sponsorship of the Ambassador of Lebanon, they imported a cedar tree from Lebanon and planted it, together with a plaque, at this center of the U.S. We also stopped at a roadside cemetery to view the tombstones of some of Sharon Kohout’s ancestors. This small cemetery is surrounded by standing limestone fence posts and enclosed on three sides with acres of corn, planted right to the edge, creating an air of mystery to this place. The corn here is really as high as an elephant’s eye. Our neighbor Garth Highland, a Kansas native, told us that corn is the only thing allowed to get high in Kansas. Good to know.
Always game for curiosities, we went then on a trek of gravel county roads in search of the Maharishi Yoga American University under construction here on the Great Plains. After many wrong turns and the helpful directions of a woman in a pickup truck who feared we were lost, we finally reached our destination. This collection of some 12 large buildings in every state of construction sits on a hilltop rise surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans. Only one building appeared to be complete. All others were in various stages of completion. The only sign of life was a single vehicle parked in front of the completed building. We saw no people, no workers, no saffron robed bald, barefoot people - no signs of life. Very strange vision on the prairie!
We headed back to Red Cloud for an afternoon reconnoiter, a walk to the County Courthouse across from our B & B and then a walk to the City Library. We tried to order a pizza for pick-up for dinner to be enjoyed with our previously ordered frozen daiquiris from the local wine merchant, On The Brix. This store is only open Thursday through Saturday, but the previous day, Wade called them to persuade them to prepare the order and arrange for our pick-up. Unfortunately, the pizza store, Fat Fox, is also on limited schedule. they are only open on weekdays from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM, and then also Friday and Saturday evening. We were forced to enjoy a heavy hors d’ouerves menu we all contributed to from our traveling supplies: crackers, Brie, corn salsa, hummus, and Gouda cheese slices. More wine was available and Aperol cocktails were also enjoyed.
We ended our evening by again loading into our vehicles and traveling south five miles to set up our camp chairs and view the sun setting over the Willa Cather Native Prairie right on schedule at 8:50 PM. This was quite a sight, the setting so quiet and the visuals so stunning that we sat for over 30 minutes, watching and listening to the sounds of the prairie, trying to imagine how the settlers and pioneers of this land must have marvelled at the landscape they were trying to tame.
This 810 acre native prairie is a protected site, available for walks and photographs - nothing else. This is a highly recommended destination for any one interested in the history and settlement of the plains area while wresting it away from the native tribes and wiping out the local fauna. Well worth the drive, even from Omaha. With the number of B & B lodgings in the Red Cloud area, this is a perfect short-term getaway, especially in this time of pandemic.
Thursday morning was a perfect weather day! Glenda went for a bike ride, Jeff went for a walk, Sharon, who was staying in a cottage on the Yost Farm, about a mile distant from us, drove in and parked her car in downtown, then walking to our B & B. We all congregated on the front porch for morning coffee and a quick snack of monkey bread bites. Then off on a walk to the Willa Cather National Center for a tour of the Quilt hanging, and some time in the marvelous gift shop and exhibits. This is our third trip to the center and there is always something new to view, new literature to discover and good conversation with the staff, all very knowledgeable about Cather, Central Nebraska history, and the surrounding areas.
We then walked down the block to Fat Fox pizza to place an order for our lunch, which we picked up and took back to the B & B for a leisurely lunch. Deb and Mark packed up and we were back on the road towards York by 1:00. We bid our friends safe travels and headed north to York. We quickly ran into light rain, which accompanied us most of the way into York.
We stopped at the Greenwood Cemetery in York to view the graves of Mark’s maternal ancestors, ten of whom are buried in the Doty-Tucker plot. We took photos to verify birth and death dates, and then headed back to Omaha, following the dreaded but quick I-80 roadway directly to home. We arrived at 4:45, unpacked the car and visited for a few moments with Darcy and Maria who had watched the house, cared for Harry and Sushi, and made great use of the kitchen in our absence. This was a good, safe road trip in the middle of the Pandemic, a needed break in the middle of an historic year.
Although there were less masks in evidence in the “hinterlands” we did not feel uncomfortable when masking up to enter stores, post offices of other public structures. Masks and hand sanitizers were required at the Willa Cather Center, the Webster County Courthouse, and we noted plastic shields in place at cashier points in some of the other local stores. The awareness is there, although the impact is not nearly as great in these rural areas. As usual, political views are in evidence wherever we were; the feeling of being deep in “Trump Country” was there, but there were also opposition signs noted around.
As always, mask up, wash your hands and stay safe.
