A Hitch In The Gitalong

For those faithful friends who keep up with this blog and send me emails, Pls be patient. My Internet connection at home has been down for a few days and shows no promise of coming back up soon. The phone company (Frontier) says my computer is the problem. My computer, however, says that the DSL modem supplied by Frontier is defective. Frontier will not replace the modem, and I cannot get on the internet. I am writing this from the library in beautiful downtown Alma while having a conversation with the Librarian, LaDonna, about the vagaries of local telephone, cable and satellite TV services. I'm going to borrow my daughter Valerie's laptop and plug it into the DSL connection. If it goes on line, then my computer is the problem. If it can't get on line, then the modem is obviously the culprit. Stay tuned for further details.

Here, There and Everywhere

The fishing from shore is slowing down as the water warms up and the fish move to cooler water in the bottom center of the lake, which is the old Republican River Channel. Even though it has been a moderate summer, the fish want cooler water, which means those fishing from boats will do much better than those (like me) who fish from the shore. My buddy, Steve, did hook up with a six pounds or so gar the other day, which we left on the bank as raccoon food. The gar is a prehistoric fish that, like alligators and crocodiles, have changed little over the past several million years. They are essentially inedible, although I've heard of a couple of hardy souls who do find some good meat on the gar. It is really an ugly fish and is generally not found in the western United States. Below is a picture of an Alligator Gar caught in Florida. While Nebraska has the Long Nosed Gar, they also have a formidable set of teeth, and you do not want to stick your fingers in its mouth to dislodge the hook. Cut the line. That thing looks like something prehistoric, that's for sure.
I read recently that a small Alligator Gar was caught in a lake in California, which has a lot of the fish and game people sweating. They hope someone put it in the lake because it got too big for their aquarium. Like the Northern Pike, if there are lots of them out there, it will turn fishing upside down in the Golden State because they feed voraciously on trout, bass, crappie and you name it.

Remember the puppy, "Prince Dude"? Well, he's growing and coming along nicely. When my daughter got him on July 4, he had just been weaned. Now is a high energy bundle of black fur that is into everything and has chewed up a couple of towels, a cell phone charger cord, and uncounted pieces of paper. This week he has been accompanying Eva and I on our morning walks and has turned the walking into an exercise in amazement at his energy level.
















The first picture shows how much he has grown in a few short weeks. In the second, I can only say that on the end of that leash is an overly exuberant black puppy. He loves to go bounding into the high growth and thrash around. He's too young to realize that there are other creatures who also like tall grass and will not appreciate his energy level. I keep expecting to see him come running from one of his tall grass forays with a badger in hot pursuit. Badgers are everywhere out here and they are nothing to mess with. Even a bear will run from a badger.
I have come to the conclusion that the way to solve this nation's energy crisis is to corral every black Labrador Retriever puppy in the country and hold them in one massive pen. The collected energy would power America for a year.

My doves have flown away. Both the little guys have reached flying age and off they went. It didn't seem long enough to me, but when I looked it up on the net I found that doves go from hatched to airborne and on their own in just two weeks. If only teenagers could grow so quick.

It appears that my walking discomfort has nothing to do with my hip. The MRI exam shows that I have a perfectly normal left hip with minimal arthritis considering my age. The same cannot be said, however, for my lower back, where the doctors believe considerable arthritis has affected a couple of nerves. I have an appointment with a neurologist on September third. Stay tuned for further results.

Birds, Cheese And Other Trivia

The two little doves are coming along just fine. Got two pretty good pictures of them today. Please understand that I do not shoo or frighten mama off the nest to get these shots. I can hear her leave the nest (probably to go food shopping) because dove wings are really noisy and whistle when they take off.














They obviously have feathers, now, and in about a month or less will be flying away to take up their own lives. Hard to believe how fast it all goes. Shouldn't be hard for them to find food around here; I see big, juicy night crawlers struggling on the ground every morning after the sprinklers have been on. It looks like paradise for the early bird. (I have grabbed a few of those worms myself on occasion so that I can bait them up on a hook and look for catfish in the river or in the lake).

One of the minor league frustrations I have encountered as a result of my move to Nebraska is the lack of availability of Monterey Jack cheese, especially for sandwich slices. In L.A. every market carries Monterey Jack sliced for sandwiches on its deli racks. No such luck here. A person might find Pepper Jack or Monterey Jack mixed with Colby, but no plain Monterey Jack sandwich slices. The local grocery store carries a small, narrow block of Jack which can be sliced at home. It takes two slices side by side to fill a slice of bread. Occasionally, at a major store in Kearney, I find fairly large blocks that can make wonderful sandwich slices. The price, however, usually makes me put it down and walk away. I usually wind up putting ordinary "American" cheese slices on my sandwiches, which is somewhat less than thrilling and has all the flavor of grade school paste.

In my life, a sandwich is a small meal. I know some who are quite happy simply slapping a slice of bologna or whatever between two slices of bread. That might do in an emergency, but on a given day when I want to make a sandwich for lunch, it involves two slices of potato bread, mustard (or mayo) on one slice, and horseradish on the other. I then stack lettuce, a slice of meat, tomato, a slice of meat, onion, a slice of meat, and then the cheese. It's not really a "Dagwood" sandwich, but it gets close to that. It's delicious, filling, and easily holds me til dinnertime. Currently the lettuce, tomato and onion come from my daughter's garden. After the second frost, she will harvest the horseradish.

The weather here has not been ugly this summer. I know it has been brutally hot in L.A., but we have only had eight or nine days total of truly broiling weather. Last week we had three days of +100 degrees and 40% humidity. Those days make Nebraska the world's largest outdoor sauna. McCook, Nebraska, which is directly east and very close to the Colorado border, recorded 110 degrees last week. Ugh. But that's what air conditioners are for. It's interesting to note that most of the newer pieces of farm equipment (tractors, combines, and other man driven machinery) have enclosed cabs with air conditioning. What would the pioneers have thought?

My MRI examination scheduled for last Saturday morning didn't take place. The best laid plans....... In 2002 I had angioplasty on the major arteries leading into my legs, and the doctor inserted a stent in each artery. A stent is a small coil which forces the artery to stay wide open. Some are made of metal, some are not. If my stents are metal, I cannot have an MRI. The tremendous amount of magnetic energy used by the machine could cause problems with the stents that could kill me. So, this morning I called the office of the doctor in Pasadena who performed the vascular surgery to get information as to the material involved with the stents. Apparently it is in my file which is now in their archives. I should have the info I am looking for tomorrow or Wednesday. If they are metal, then some diagnostic tool other than MRI will have
to be used.

So life goes on. At least the fishing is still good. You betcha!

Well, my efforts to keep mama dove on her nest have played a part in a happy result. There are two little "squabs" (as baby doves are called) in the nest. While doing something on my computer, I heard the characteristic whistling of doves wings, which told me that mama had left her nest. I grabbed my camera and got the picture. First is the picture I couldn't load the other day, which shows the two eggs in the nest. Next is today's picture of the little guys.























It may take some careful study to differentiate the two young birds, their feathers aren't in yet so they kinda look like hairy blobs. I would guess that they were born just before noon today. It is now 2:00 PM Central Time. Later, I'll get a picture of mommy on the nest. I am not feeding them or anything other than just observing. Mother Nature has done a good job of keeping the species healthy and thriving for millennia - she doesn't need my help.

Zounds! I have discovered that this is "National Simplify Your Life Week". I really don't know if there is a whole lot I could do to make things simpler for me. Let's see now- I don't work any more; that's pretty good. I try to stay out of my kids lives unless they ask me in; that has worked very well. I have zero debts to pay off; that's incredible. I go fishing whenever the mood strikes me; I have died and gone to Heaven. I hope all my friends are simplifying their lives.

Every morning I read CNN, the L.A.Times and the Omaha World Herald, all on line. I am learning the sports situations here in this plains state, but had to sit back and take stock when I realized the the Omaha Royals, a triple A baseball club (that's one step down from the major leagues) is in the Pacific Coast League. Huh? Let me look outside again just to be sure, but I don't think Nebraska is anywhere close to the Pacific Coast. If it has to reach to Omaha for a team, the league is not nearly what it used to be. Of course, most of the cities that fielded teams for the PCL in the old days, now are home to major league teams.

The San Francisco Seals, the old Los Angeles Angels, and the Hollywood Stars disappeared when the Giants and the Dodgers came west in 1958. The old Triple A San Diego Padres, Oakland Oaks, and Seattle Raniers were replaced with major league teams in the 1960s. Do the Sacrament Solons and the Portland Beavers exist anymore? I'll have to look that up.

As a young teenager, I used to travel with my buds by streetcar (remember them?) to L.A.'s Wrigley Field to watch the PCL Angels play. I remember names like Cecil Garriot, Rube Novotney, Bob Muncrief, Gene Baker and of course, Steve Bilko, who could hit a fastball fifty miles but just couldn't deal with the curve ball. The Dodgers' Jim Gilliam used to call the curve ball, "Public Enemy Number One". It separated minor league hitters from the big time. Chuck Connors, of "Rifleman" fame, was a first baseman for the minor league Angels for a couple of years and at one time I had a picture of me with him taken on a "Picture Day" before the game at Wrigley Field. Over time the picture has disappeared and I sure miss it when I have moments like these.

Holy Mackerel. I just took time out to do a quick Google on Today's Pacific Coast League and it bears absolutely no resemblance to the old. Not only is Omaha in the league, but so is Memphis, New Orleans and Houston, not to mention Oklahoma City, Nashville and Albuquerque. The Albuquerque team is called the "Isotopes", probably to take advantage of its proximity to the Los Alamos atomic proving grounds. Question: After playing there for a while, do the players glow in the dark?

I don't think I want to find out.

A Couple Of Things

We all continue to grow older and consistently get messages from our body to let us know that we are not nineteen any more. My message comes loud and clear from my left hip. The morning walks by the lake with my daughter are becoming ordeals, and even the renowned "Vicodin" isn't able to do much to make things easier. As the pain from the hip has gotten worse over the past two or three years, I have become resigned to the fact that a new hip is probably somewhere in my near future. Accordingly, today I went to the see the doctor, who is conveniently located, of course, right next to Harlan County Hospital. He sent me over to the hospital for X-Rays (Long live the Curies), which took about half an hour. I then returned to his office for the diagnosis. Lo and behold! My hip does not appear to be damaged or badly arthritic. He suspects the culprit might be sciatica and that my lower back may be the cause of the pain in the hip (That's OK with me just as long as it isn't the dreaded "heartbreak of psoriasis"). In any event, I am scheduled for an MRI scan this Saturday morning. I'll get more news then. Film at eleven.

There is a bush about five feet high right by the back door to my apartment and a dove has built a nest and is doing what doves to do hatch the two little eggs in the nest. I took a picture with my digital camera of the nest, but for some reason the blog software keeps giving me error messages when I try to put it right "here" for all to see. I normally use my back door to come and go because it is closer to my car than the front door, and every time I walked out or returned and walked up to the door, the dove took off in panic. Being a little dense, it took me a while to figure that I should look and see why that dove was always there in the bush. When I saw the nest and the two little eggs, I resolved that I will use the front door (despite the outrageous inconvenience of being ten whole steps farther from my car) until the little ones are hatched, fledged and all three have moved on.

It surprises me that the nest is only about four feet from the ground. I have a window that allows me to look directly at the nest when I am sitting at my kitchen table. Every time I gently pull the curtain aside to look, mama dove stares directly at me and gets ready to take off. She is very skittish. Folks, this nest is less than three feet from the window and I am still curious as to what made her select that spot. Any house cat or raccoon would have no trouble getting to her or the eggs and with all the much, much taller trees around I just can't figure out why she chose that place.

It's tough to get a clear picture through the window since there is a second storm window and screen, both of which are pretty dirty. If I see her take off for any reason, I'm going to quickly step outside and try to clean them a bit so that I can get better pictures. The problem with a dirty window and most digital cameras is that the camera wants to focus on the window pane and its dirt and won't look beyond to the nest. I took a few shots with my good 35mm film camera which allows me to adjust the focus, but I haven't taken the film to Joe Camera to be developed yet. I sort of feel like an expectant father.

Now for a little news involving negativity and perhaps a bit of a rant.

We have lots of veterans in the area who served in the military during WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the first gulf war and now Iraq. Many independent farmers, veterans or not, cannot afford individual or family health insurance policies. Consequently, many, many veterans in rural areas such as this have for decades depended on the Veterans Administration for their medical care.

The problem is that the VA, due to never ending budget cuts, keeps closing hospitals, which creates incredible hardships for the veterans. There is a VA clinic in Holdrege, 24 miles north. There is a VA hospital in Grand Island, Nebraska, which is 100 miles to the east, but it has been downgraded to a convalescent center and clinic. There is a VA hospital in Lincoln, a three hour drive, but it has been downgraded to a clinic, which amazes me since it is a city of 300,000. Even minor surgery for a veteran in this area requires a four hour drive to Omaha or a six hour drive to Denver. Heart surgery may require a nine hour drive to Minneapolis. Local veterans returning from Iraq with major injuries requiring significant follow-up care are in for a world of frustration in the rural areas of America.

When a man or woman goes into the service, he or she gives the government a blank check on life and limb. In my case, I served three years in the army during the Korean conflict but I did not go into combat, and I don't use the VA, thanks to Medicare and Medicare Advantage insurance plans. But I am hearing more and more anger and bitterness from young and old veterans in this area about the sad state of VA medical care availability and the government that now seems to no longer place a priority on the promises that helped to make veterans proud to serve their country.

Hurricane Dolly In Nebraska?

Yes, that's true. What's left of hurricane Dolly, which ripped through Texas and Northern Mexico, did a sharp right turn and headed north. Now downgraded to heavy thunderstorm status, its remnants have taken dead aim at Alma and will pass through here in the next twelve hours or so. I intend to be sound asleep, but with the windows open for the cool night air, it might wake me up, who knows.

This is my neighbor, Steve, who is usually my fishing partner, with a couple of largemouth bass he caught at the lake. Unfortunately, I didn't get any keepers that morning. Minimum size limit here is 15 inches for largemouth and 18 inches for walleye.

It is said that in the world of fishing, 10% of the fishermen catch 80% of the fish. Steve is in the 10%. I am not. Most people around here agree that he is the most knowledgeable shore fisherman in town. Since I don't have access to a boat (rental is $150.00 per day), learning where and how to fish from the lake shore is what I need, so I generally fish with Steve. My specialty seems to be centered on catching fish one half inch shorter than the limit.

Ah, well. Since I support the belief that every moment spent fishing adds an equal amount of time to the length of a person's life, I am not discouraged by my inability to drag in keepers like Steve does.
This, of course is the walkway where my daughter and I go walking next to the lake. That tree limb bridging the path doesn't belong there. It is the unfortunate victim of some really high winds that came roaring through here a couple of weeks ago. The city was inclined to simply leave it as is until a second windstorm zeroed in on Alma.

Yep, down came the limb even lower. When my daughter, Eva (who is 5' 1"), can't walk under it, it's too low. The next day the limb was gone and the trail was back to normal.

This is one of the little meadows along the trail. Notice how the lowest tree branches on the trees in the background all seem to be the same height from the ground? That's courtesy of the local deer population which keeps it trimmed as high as deer can reach as they feed off the new and tender green growth. Maybe we should look at the deer as mother nature's gardeners.

After a lifetime in Southern California where everything turns brown in the summer, the green here can seem overly intense. Even in so-called drought years, there is enough summer rain here to keep things bright green. It's a big, big change. When I explain to the local people that when the end of May rolls around in L.A., there will be no rain until late November or early December, they seem at a loss to fully digest that piece of information.

Eva is quite proud of the fence surrounding the vegetable garden at her house, which she and her fella put up to keep the deer out. Unfortunately, one night the determined deer knocked one side of the fence down and feasted on the tender new growth. An angry Eva, who is not a hunter, nonetheless said, "I don't care how many kiddies love him. If I catch Bambi, I'm serving him for dinner."

Such is life on the prairie.

Family Royalty?

It seems our extended family has expanded in the person of one puppy. Last Friday, while enjoying the festivities in the park after the Fourth of July Parade, my oldest, Eva Marie, saw a town resident sitting under a tree keeping watch over a large, topless cardboard box. As we walked by, Eva spotted a writhing mass of black furred puppies within the box, so, of course, she reached in picked one up. It was a fait accompli. There was no way a woman who loves animals the way she does was going to put that young canine back in the box and walk away. Asking her to think twice before taking it would be like asking a Saudi Sheik to consider not selling oil.

This is the culprit. According to the guy with the box, the mother is a Greyhound and the father is a "traveling man", but most probably a horny black Labrador Retriever that roams the local neighborhoods. My daughter and my 16 year old granddaughter have agreed that his name shall be "Prince Dude". We can guess as to which of the two girls came up that name. So far, I think his handle ought to be "Sir Piddlesalot".

It's hard to see any Greyhound in Prince Dude, and my suspicion so far is that this character's temperament will prove to all black Lab, which means my daughter's household is in for a wild ride.
Of course, not all members of my daughter's household are thrilled by Prince Dude's arrival. This is Abbie, who has pretty much ruled the house for several years. Cats, generally, allow people to feed and house them, and will often react with utter disdain toward unapproved changes in living conditions. So far she has not attacked "The Dudester", but she has shown off her most dramatic hiss when the puppy's curiosity has brought him too close. I think that, in time, the two will learn to get along. It's been my observation that once a cat and a dog hammer out a working relationship, it will be hard for the dog to stretch out and sleep without the cat deciding it needs the dog's body warmth for its own nap.

Many years ago, the family acquired a snow white Samoyed, appropriately named "Sam", whose biggest problem in life seemed to be that the standard twenty-four hour day did not offer enough time to get in all the naps that he needed. His response was to leave great lumps of white hair on the carpet when the nap ended and he walked elsewhere to take another nap. Now, we had a Siamese cat at the time, who for three days after Sam's arrival, refused to let her feet touch the floor. She traveled by jumping from one piece of furniture to another when Sam was around. But within a few weeks, it was a common sight to see Sam snoring on the living room floor and the cat curled up literally in the armpits of his two front legs getting all the body warmth possible for a serious feline snooze.

There is an animal that Eva is not sure she loves, and that is the deer. Every summer Eva keeps quite a garden in her backyard and canning its output is the reason for its existence. She was a little tardy in getting her fence put up around the garden this year and the deer came in at night and feasted on her cucumbers and a couple of other newly sprouted vegetables. It's too late in the season to re-plant the cucumbers from seed, so she's looking for starter plants at some of the local sources. These were pickling cucumbers, not the type you use for salads, but the type you turn into dill pickles or bread and butter pickles. The deer also got to one of the horseradish plants, but we're hoping enough of its greenery is left for it to bounce back. The row of broccoli was a total loss, though, and they had a pretty good time with some of the lettuce. I guess deer can be picky eaters because they absolutely ignored the carrots.

For the many, many people in rural areas who plant such gardens, deer, rabbits, moles and similar critters are an ongoing frustration.

It's The Library's fault.

Darn, I let this blog go a long time again without a post. It's not my fault, really. If the Alma Public Library wasn't so darned good, I would have all the time in the world for updating the blog. I've been doing a lot of fishing lately (and a lot of catching), and when I get home I am really tired, too tired to be creative with the blog. So, I grab one of my books from the library and read for awhile. Being a good obsessive compulsive person, once I start a book, nothing else in the world exists until it's finished. Once I've finished the book, it's time to go fishing again, and when I get home I am really tired, and the circle keeps going. So you can see that if the library didn't supply every book I want, I would be posting a lot more regularly. You certainly didn't expect me to take responsibility for the results of my own procrastinations did you?

The Alma Library really is remarkable. It has a terrific stock of the most popular mystery writers, and every Thursday, UPS delivers the latest new books for its shelves. I am a freak for books by Janet Evanovich, and her latest book in the Stephanie Plum series, "Fearless Fourteen" was delivered to the library on June 17. To my horror, I discovered I was number three on the list of Alma citizens waiting for its arrival. Reader number two turned the book in yesterday and I took possession (for a maximum of two weeks) today. Evanovich books are fast reads, so I'll probably finish it and turn it back to the library tomorrow, after I go fishing in the early morning. Do you detect a vicious cycle here?

The library (actually the Hoesch Memorial Library) doesn't carry much in the way of science fiction, and I am a lifelong sci-fi fan. I'm talking hard core science fiction here, not the "Sword and Sorcery" stuff that seems to be rage these days or some of the silly mutation creature flicks turned out by the sci-fi channel. However, the state of Nebraska has an inter-library loan system that is so efficient that it took me awhile to get used to it. I can come up with some pretty arcane sci-fi books that you think would be hard to find, but every time I hand in a request, giving them the author and title, the book is ready for me to pick up within 48 hours. The library charges 1.50 per book for the service, and it is cheap at many times that price. Going on-line I regularly prowl the selections available at the biggest sci-fi publishers (Baen Books, Tor and others) and have yet to find one they couldn't come up with. At the Baen website, I ran across an author I was not familiar with, Margaret Ball, whose latest sci-fi work was "Disappearing Act". The short synopsis on the website made it sound interesting, so I put in the request, and sure enough, 48 hours later I got the telephone call that the book was in Alma and waiting for me. And it turned out to be a very good story, so I'll look for more of her work. And so it goes.

The turnout for the Fourth Of July celebration in Alma was stupendous. With Harlan Lake being 108% of capacity, with a downtown parade in Alma followed by food concessions and arts and crafts displays in the park, with a huge fireworks display over the lake in the evening, with the new Super 8 Motel now open and running, and with many people looking to beat the high cost of travel by staying as local as possible, this place was jumping. Remember, Harlan County Lake is no small pond. It currently is approximately ten miles long and about a mile and a half to two miles wide. It has three major harbors and several smaller boat launch areas. Fishing boats and jet skis were everywhere. I believe the fishing people were ready to exterminate the jet skiers, who often showed an incredible lack of consideration of the rights of others, but mostly a good time was had by all.

The people who run the lake, the Army Corps Of Engineers, estimated the numbers of visitors to the lake this weekend at more than 52,000 people. Holey Moley, Captain Marvel, that's a lot of people to show up in a town with a permanent population of 1,242. The stores, including our only supermarket, were mostly crowded. Yes, they were all open on the holiday, anxious to let those visitors come in and leave some of their money in Alma. All the eating places were jammed all weekend, but Friday the Fourth was a nightmare if you wanted to sit down and buy a meal. Wow, what a crowd.

I was able to beat the crowds Friday night for the big fireworks show. At the corner just outside my front door, I set up my folding chair and I had an unobstructed view of the display. My apartment is less that one fourth of a mile from the lakeshore, so it was like being right there at the launch point. I watched the rocket trail as it lifted skyward, then oohed and aahhed at the brilliant showers of color and sound. All the festivites and the crowds made it a perfect way to celebrate our nation's birth.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about our newest family member, "Prince Dude".

Why All The Water?

I watched a TV news item on how the levels of Lake Meade and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River, are at dangerously low levels due to an eight year drought. If it gets any lower on Powell, it may not be able to run the turbines that produce so much power for the western states. The largest lake in Nebraska, Lake Mconaughy on the North Platte River near Ogallala, suffers the same condition. The areas where it originates in Wyoming have seen considerably less rain than normal and the lake is only 40% full. It's a sad situation.

Harlan County Lake in Alma, Nebraska, though, is higher than it has been in more than twenty years. It is filled by the Republican River, which flows (naturally) through Republican Valley and meets the dam built in 1954 by the Army Corps of Engineers at Republican City (population 199).

I took this picture while fishing on the river yesterday (no fish, no joy). The Republican River is certainly not the Colorado, but it is a nice local waterway. It is as narrow as 20 feet and as wide as 200 feet, and at its deepest is probably 6-8 feet. It is carrying more water right now than most locals have seen in many, many years. One fella was telling me that less than five years ago during the summer, the river was dry - Not a drop of water in it.

Why we have all the water is not clear to me yet, but between last year and this year additional rain on the river course has taken Harlan County Lake to dramatically higher levels. It's a delight to the local businesses because the word is out and we can expect lots of tourist money to be spent in the area this coming summer. While other lakes are shrinking, Harlan County Lake is growing in size. Currently the lake is about nine miles long and at its widest point is about two miles wide. It's a big lake.

If you have Google Earth on your computer, ask it to take you to Alma, Nebraska. You will see the lake and your first reaction may not be positive. That is because the pictures of the lake have not been updated in four to five years. What you will see is how low the lake was at that time. It was low, really low. If you look at the picture on Google Earth, you can see a road on the left that leaves Alma and crosses the river. That road is highway 183 and it's really a long bridge over the the river and over a large dry area where the lake used to be. Today, the lake is back and extends well to the left of the bridge.

That part of the lake is now a large, shallow estuary and has attracted some wildlife I did not expect to see here. How in the world did pelicans find their way to Nebraska? How did all the seagulls get here? They are here in significant numbers, so it's not just a wayward bird or so that got lost. I want to fish that estuary area because it looks like prime territory for catfish and largemouth bass, but it takes a boat to get there and I have yet to acquire one.

The gulls and pelicans give the boat fishermen a road map to where the fish are. Out on the deepest pars of the lake, large schools of baitfish (shad) are continually on the move. The birds follow the schools and grab what they can near the surface. That tips off the boats filled with anglers to head that way. Where the bait fish are, so are the bass, walleye, wipers, white bass and other fish.

What it boils down to is that whatever Mother Nature is doing to the Republican River is fine with me and most of the other people in the area. It will probably also help our relations with Kansas which continually files lawsuits demanding we quit using so much water from the river. Just as California, Arizona and Nevada fight over water rights to the Colorado River, so do Nebraska and Kansas wage litigation war over the Republican. Ah, Well.

Computer Crash.

When I crash a computer, I don't mess around. I am finally up and running again after a week of no joy. For any tech types reading this, I finally gave up trying to fix the computer. I re-partitioned, re-formatted and re-installed everything. I thank my stars that I have learned to back-up my computer at the end of every month. It could have been worse, but it was still a monumental pain in the @*$!. Ultimately, all went well, except during the process of reloading programs I ran into some "slight" problems and wound up cursing Microsoft in general and Bill Gates in particular and finally subscribed them both to several interesting new hells of my own creation.

In Alma, Nebraska, of course, spring has sprung. From snow flurries at the first of the month, we are now seeing greenery everywhere. Fishing is good, walking is good, life is good, and today it is eighty degrees.

I saw a big difference last night between rural Nebraska and Los Angeles. Alma High School had its annual junior/senior prom. My granddaughter, a junior, dropped by in her gown and brought her date along, a young man named Adam. Since facilities are limited, a formal dinner was held at the auditorium downtown and the dance was held in the Alma High School gymnasium later. Lots of adults gather downtown to see what kind of vehicles bring the kids to the dinner. Now, in California, we all know that the kids rent limos these days. There was just one stretch limo here, an SUV that seemed to have fifty kids in it (probably only about twelve), but aside from that the methods of arrival could only have happened in a farming community. How about big John Deere tractors cleaned and polished beyond belief, with even the tires gleaming a glossy black. I liked the big, big crew cab pickup truck that must have been polished for three days to get that kind of a gleam and the tractor cab from an eighteen wheeler that could only have been cleaned and polished by a team of workers. I think I saw everything except a riding lawn mower used to transport the various and gorgeous young ladies to the dinner. I hope the kids remember it as a special evening.

To satisfy my never ending curiosity, I attended an auction at the cattle sale barn last Tuesday. It was, indeed, an education. The local ranchers bring cattle to the sale barn in Alma once a week and every Tuesday, they are auctioned off. Most of the animals for sale were cows, as opposed to bulls, and were brought individually into an indoor pen about thirty feet square with entrance and exit gates controlled by two men. I immediately noticed that on every side of the pen was a protective barrier like we see in bull-fighting rings for the matadors to seek safety behind. I soon found out why. The cows were brought in one at a time and the auctioneer began his rapid fire routine. As each animal enters the pen, it steps on a part of the floor that is really a scale covered with dirt. The weight then pops up on a large LED display for all to see. The lowest I saw was about 900 pounds and heaviest was just over 1700. Sale prices ran from slightly less than fifty dollars per hundred weight to almost seventy dollars.

Many, many of the cows were really hard to handle and entered the pen with one object in mind: To hurt someone, anyone, as soon as they could. The two men in the pen were well experienced and didn't hesitate to get behind the safety barriers when circumstances looked dangerous. It was explained to me later that the bad attitude of those cows was exactly why they were up for sale to the feed lots: The ranchers don't particularly want dangerous cows in their pastures. It's no fun, they say to drive out to the far reaches of the ranch to repair a fence or check out a calf born the night before and wind up running for your life as you try to work. The cattle brought to the sale barn normally go straight to the feed lots to fatten up and soon after appear as the Thursday beef special at your local market.

Nebraska, of course, is known for its corn production, but cattle ranching is a huge business in this state. It is not rare to go to lunch at a local eatery (Bugbee's in Alma, for instance) and watch some ranch workers walk in wearing beat up stetson hats, cowboy boots and spurs. A lot of them work all day on horseback, and taking off the spurs is just too much hassle when they go to lunch. My oldest daughter is dating a fella who owns a small ranch (fifty head of cattle normally) and is a member of the local cattlemen's association. They had their annual dinner a week ago at "The Station", a local upscale restaurant and bar, and she said she has never been served a steak that big in her life. She also says she ate it - all of it. I think it's state policy to deport all vegetarians to other parts of the country. Beef is where its at in Nebraska.

A source of concern for cattle ranchers is the "globalization" of the meat packing plants. Swift and Co., a grand old name in meat packing, was purchased last year by a company from Brazil. That company is now looking at buying the next two largest meat packers in the U.S., which has all kinds of negative implications for the small ranchers. They fear the "chickenization" of the beef industry. Just as chickens are now produced primarily under direct contract to the meat processors for various fast food franchises, some can see that before long most ranches might produce their cattle on contracts from packing plants, and the thought does not set well with them. Only time will tell.

All I can say is , "Wow"!

Some friends took me to the Rowe Wildlife Sanctuary on the Platte River to see the Sandhill Cranes. I was literally astonished at what I saw.

First off, my friends' daughter, Keanna, is an employee of the sanctuary and often appears on local TV to promote the work there. She, of course, gave us the guided tour and even arranged to have us participate in a catered dinner with the staff.

We were there for the evening "show" when the cranes return to the Platte to rest for the night after having spent the day foraging in the fields for food. These cranes are heading north to Canada, Alaska and Siberia to nest and raise the next crop of young Sandhills (For whatever reason, newly hatched cranes are called "colts"). They stop at the Platte for about a month to "refuel" and gain strength for the rest of their journey, increasing their body weight by about 18%, according to Keanna. It is the sheer numbers of these cranes, though, that absolutely boggled my mind.


On a fifty mile stretch of the Platte there are currently 400,000 Sandhill Cranes. We were told that is approximately 80% of all the cranes in the world. They leave the Platte at daylight each day to forage in the fields and return at dusk to the safety of the river. During the day, the cranes search the fields for leftover corn from the harvest. I have read that they are doing the farmers a favor by eating that corn: If left to sprout, the seeds produce inferior and unwanted corn. The cranes also pick through the available "cow pies" looking for undigested goodies. That's not my idea of a great meal, but if it works for the cranes, so be it.

Using 50X binoculars in the fading light, I was looking down the river at an area about the size of four or five football fields packed with cranes. I asked Keanna how many she thought were in that area and she said, "Oh, about 40,000". We are not talking little canaries or sparrows here, folks, these are pretty big birds. They stand almost three feet tall and weigh about 9 pounds on the average. Holey Moley (As Captain Marvel used to say), that's a lot of big birds in one small area.

They are easily spooked, and for those in the prepared "blinds", no flash photography is permitted. Noise is kept to a minimum. Keanna told us she regularly relieves people in the blinds of cellophane packages of munchies. The noise of opening the package will send the cranes flying. In the photo above, something has frightened the birds and they are taking to the safety of the skies.

The prohibition of flash photography means that pictures will normally be taken with 35mm film rated at 800 ASA or higher. Except for costly high end products, most digital cameras cannot compensate for the low light of dusk and dawn when the cranes are most at rest. using 800 ASA film out here means a trip to Kearney (60 miles) to a professional camera store, as you won't normally find it at Wal-Mart or Target.

With its shallow waters and hundreds of islets, the Platte is an ideal haven for waterfowl. Predators, particularly coyotes, find it very difficult to sneak up on them when wading through water is involved. Wile E. Coyote would get no meals here, even with the help of products from the Acme people.

Counting cranes, geese, ducks and all other types of migrating waterfowl, authorities estimate that 14 to 16 million birds pass through the migration skyway in mid-America each year. For more than a month I could see flocks overhead every day winging their way north. In the fall, I expect I'll see them heading south.

The Sandhills Cranes generally winter in southern New Mexico and southwestern Texas in marshes and estuaries. Life is not necessarily secure there, however, as those states allow hunters to take the cranes as allowable game. Nebraska is the only state in the union that forbids the hunting of cranes, and that is remarkable considering that this is a big, big hunting state, so much so that some people claim that the opening of deer season should be a religious holiday.

I intend to be at the sanctuary each spring and fall for this spectacular show of mother nature at work. In the spring the month is March. Keanna told us that by mid April all the cranes will be gone and the Platte River will lazily wind its way toward the Missouri without the companionship of nearly half a million spectacular birds.

What a sight. What a place this is.

Odds and Ends

Today is March 23, Easter Sunday, and it is also my oldest daughter's birthday. She says she is 29. Yeah. Right. I asked her how she explained that to her oldest daughter who lives in Sacramento and is 30 years old herself. She just smirked and turned her head away. Since I am her daddy, I know exactly how old she is, but I'm not going to print it here. We're all having Easter dinner at her house tonight.

The weather just keeps getting better but is still inconsistent. Old man Winter simply wants to hang around as long as he can. Today it's going to be about 55 degrees, then dip down into the twenties tonight and then go up close to 75 tomorrow afternoon. to take advantage of that warmth, I'm going fishing in the Republican River with my friend Steve tomorrow. The walleyes, white and largemouth bass, and some others have moved out of the lake and into the river to spawn. We're going to see if we can relieve the fish congestion in the river and add to the congestion in our freezers. I went fishing at Cedar Point on the lake two days ago and caught a 3 to 4 pound carp, which I sent back to its momma. The lake is still a bit too cold for most of the true game fish to move into the shallows.

My daughter, Eva, and I will start walking the trail by the lake again tomorrow morning. During the winter the auditorium downtown is open for those of who like to walk in the morning and Friday was the last day until next winter. I can only describe it as "round and round we go". Circling the inside of the auditorium 26 times equals one mile of walking. Fella here named Don opens up and brings his boom box with a great blend of CDs to keep us from getting too bored. Most of us who walk are senior citizens trying to stay healthy. Eva, having been born in 1957, has no liking for Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman, but Don does play a set of their music, which suits me just fine. One of the walking couples in their mid to late seventies will occasionally forgo the walking and swing into a dance in the middle of the auditorium when a piece of music really takes them back. I'm not talking gentle waltzing here. I'm talking lively dancing that gets awfully close to the old jitterbug stuff of WWII. Friday they bounced out there when Bill Haley and the Comets started in on "Rock Around The Clock". I do not foresee "rockin' chairs" in the near future for them.



































The top picture is a photo I took last summer of one of the clearings along the lake walkway.
At the bottom is what that same general area looks like today. Summer is prettier without a doubt and the process of changing into summer is well along the way. Many of the trees limbs have the little growth nubs that will become leaf and branch with time. Here and there little of spots of green grass are pushing their way into the light. I will be able to watch the change of the season on a daily basis. It's a new experience for this old Angeleno and it's fascinating.

Oh, and by the way, in the state finals for the high school speech teams, my granddaughter's team took fifth place. Not bad for a school with a grade 7 to 12 population of approximately 250 competing against schools from Omaha and Lincoln with populations of 1500 and up. They did a good job.

The migrations of geese and duck are just about finished. For most of this month anybody looking skyward would have seen multiple vee shaped formations of waterfowl heading north. Often the sky was filled with thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of geese and ducks. I have never before in my life seen such a thing and I don't mind telling you that it was spectacular. They call this area part of the "flyway", and I can certainly see why. I thought I could appreciate the few such formations I would occasionally see in California, but the sights here are often flabbergasting. It makes me appreciative of the need to preserve our wetlands so that these migratory populations will always be able to find a temporary haven. I like to think of myself as a pragmatic conservationist, and by that I mean that while I am an environmentalist, I also think hunting organizations like Ducks Unlimited deserve tons of praise for their efforts to promote wetland preservation. They recognized long ago that without places for the ducks and geese to exist, they would have nothing to hunt. Everybody has benefited. I have no selfish interest in saying good things about a hunting organization. I don't own a firearm of any kind and haven't in over forty years, but plain old practicality tells me people with what may appear to be conflicting interests can find common ground that is helpful to all.

A Lot Going On, Part One

Each of the high schools in the area, including Alma High, has a speech team, and my grand-daughter, Enchantra, is on the Alma team. She is a Junior and is very articulate when she speaks, which is not necessarily that often since she seems permanently attached to her MP3 player and always has those ear buds plugged in to her ears.

The speech teams compete in various competitions against other schools. They have various categories that must be covered, such as Oral Interpretive Dissertation, Informative Speaking, Duet Acting and Humorous Prose.

Having done the rounds of schools, the teams prepared for the district finals, which this year were held in Alma. For a final dress rehearsal, the team put on its full performance a week ago last Thursday night at Joe Camera in downtown Alma. Joe Camera is a combination coffee house, one hour photo and bicycle shop with a sort of community recreation room in the back. The parents gathered in the rec room at the appointed hour and packed the place. It was great to see that many of the town's residents take an interest in what the kids are doing. Face it, speech team is not as popular as football or basketball, so to see 45 to 50 people jammed into that room was terrific.

Enchantra did a solo performance in Informative Speaking on the history of Daylight Saving Time. She did some good research and came up with a lot of facts that raised the eyebrows, not the least of which (as you may have noticed) is that it is "Saving" time , not "Savings". Singular, not plural. Hmmm.

The Oral Interpretive Dissertation was a team effort involving five people, one of whom was my granddaughter. Her best friend, a young lady named Riane, was the featured performer and did a presentation on "The Insanity of Mary Girard". Girard was the wife of the one of the wealthiest men in the U.S. shortly after the American Revolution. He had his wife, Mary, declared insane and placed in an asylum, where she spent the last 25 years of her life. History is not that clear as to whether she was truly deranged or if her husband just wanted her out of the way so he could have a parade of mistresses in his life without criticism at home. It was a terrific presentation.

A senior, a young lady named Allison, did a humorous prose piece by performing what was a magazine article by Nora Ephron titled, "A Few Words About Breasts". It really spoke about what it's like in this Playboy oriented society for a girl to grow into maturity "undeveloped". It was indeed humorous, and sometimes downright funny.
If the reader is not familiar with the name Nora Ephron, she is a writer who specializes in romantic humor, writing things like "Sleepless in Seattle", "When Harry Met Sally" and adapting an old Jimmy Stewart film called, "The Shop Around Corner" into a new movie she called, "You've Got Mail". Nora Ephron's work has given Meg Ryan a career.

The evening was terrific, and the following Monday the real district finals took place at Alma High. There were four judges in four different rooms, and each performance had to take place in front of each judge. That meant that Enchantra took her visual displays on Daylight Saving Time to four different rooms and went through her routine four different times. So did each of the other groups.

Unfortunately, her Informative Speaking performance did not place her among the winners. The presentation on Mary Girard, however, took first place in its category, and those five kids, including Enchantra, will travel to Lincoln next week to the state finals competition. Allison's presentation on a young woman's growing up pains also won first place, and she will take her act to the state capital for the finals.

I certainly wish them well, and I hope you do too. I'll let you know how they do.

A Lot Going On, Part 2

Yesterday I drove to McCook, NE, which is about 65 to 70 miles east of here and is about 50 miles from the Colorado border. It was an easy drive on good two lane roads with 60 and 65 mph speed limits. I passed through seven or eight small towns and never had to come to a full stop. Highway signs give fair warning that there will be reduced speed ahead, so there is ample time to slow down to the usual 35mph through the towns. The town sizes varied from 136 to 1044, and McCook itself is just over 7,000. Wow, it even has traffic lights. That's a big city in our book.

It has become obvious to me that a car's license plate can be a real liability on that kind of a drive if a person likes to drive over the speed limit. My license number is 51-C887, and the 51 indicates that I live in Harlan County. The law will usually give some leeway to drivers from their county, but those from outside that county had best toe the line to as near driving perfection as possible. Every county has a different number based on how many cars are registered there, and of course Omaha cars, from Douglas County, have license plates that begin 1-. You definitely do not want to push your luck in other counties if your license plate begins 1-. It may prove costly.

I noticed as I got nearer to McCook that the "rolls" in the rolling countryside began to have deeper valleys and higher peaks. I can only assume that the terrain was beginning its change to the higher plains of Colorado. I want to come back in the later spring when things are green and see it again. It's pretty even in the early spring drab brown, but later it ought to be very, very pretty.

Driving these country roads is an eerie feeling for an ex-Californian, because there is almost no traffic. It's really weird after spending my life in L.A. The danger that all drivers must prepare for on those drives is deer. I have been told by almost everyone that at some time, somewhere in Nebraska, a deer will jump in front of me and the front of my car will bring it to an untimely death. If I am lucky, they say, the damage to my car will be less than $5,000.00. I am not looking forward to that eventuality.

I have a sister who has lived in Missouri for 40 years and she tells me I can buy a small device that attaches to my bumper and emits a high pitch whistle that only deer can hear. It frightens them as the car approaches and they will not jump in front of the car in panic. She says she has had one on her car for many years and has never even had a close call with a deer. She did tell me, however, that the whistle didn't help very much the night she hit the cow. That's another story, though.

A Lot Going On, Part 3

Every region of this country has its peculiarities in the naming of places and Nebraska is no different. Example: Norfolk, NE, is pronounced as though it were spelled Norfork, which makes this the second state I've been in where a town of that name is not pronounced as it is spelled. While in the army, six centuries ago, I was stationed near Norfolk, VA. It was made clear to me early on that pronouncing it as it was spelled marked me as an alien creature. The citizens of that state pronounce it "Nawflk", no exceptions allowed.

I regularly visit a local "village" here named Orleans. Please articulate it as "Orleens". However, if you are in Louisiana, be advised that the battered city on the delta is not pronounced "New Orleens". It is "N'awlins" to the true natives, a few of whom I have met along the years. To the ears of the westerner, the southern pronunciation of ordinary sounding words can take some strange turns. The same is true of some towns here in Nebraska.

Nebraska has the town of Beatrice, and it is pronounced "be-at-ris", with the accent on "at". It's almost directly south of Lincoln, so someday I'm sure I will be there for a visit.

A couple of familiar names to my friends in Southern California would be the towns of Arcadia, NE. and Fullerton, NE, which are pronounced exactly as they are back in the far west. I also notice that just across the Nebraska border in Colorado are the towns of Akron and Yuma.

There are many towns in Nebraska that reflect its direct involvement in the opening of the west and its Native American homelands. Place names like Red Cloud, Broken Bow, Tekemah, Medicine Creek, Red Arrow County, Omaha and Ogallala all give testimony to the Indian past of Nebraska. And, of course, Red Cloud was the home of Willa Cather, who wrote so many classic stories about life in pioneer Nebraska. I recommend everyone rent the movie "O' Pioneers" with Jessica Lange, which is a faithful re-telling of Cather's greatest novel.

Even the name "Nebraska" comes from an Otoe Indian word for "flat", but it's misleading because Kansas sets new standards for the definition of flat. Pool tables dream about being that flat. Nebraska farmland is primarily gently rolling countryside, but the sandhills in north-central Nebraska and the canyons of the badlands in the east belie the belief that Nebraska is absolutely flat.

Currently, I am reading a book by Roger Welsch, who is to Nebraska what Garrison Keillor is to Wisconsin and Minnesota with his tales of Lake Woebegon. For years, Welsch appeared on the "CBS Sunday Morning" show with his "Postcard From Nebraska". His love for this state is up front to the point that he describes his disgust when he lived briefly in Colorado and found that the scenery was obscured by all the trees and mountains. He loves these plains and I can see why.

This Is For The Birds

Yesterday was Thursday, March 6, and I drove my daughter, Eva Marie, to Grand Island, NE, (just over 100 miles away, population 50,000) for an appointment with an epilepsy specialist. Much of that drive on I-80 runs parallel to the Platte River and we were treated to views of endless flocks of migratory birds as they traveled to and from the river.

The Platte River is not typical of what most of us see in our mind's eye when we hear the word "river". It meanders gently across the landscape from its origins in Colorado to its merger with the Missouri River. It is broad and shallow with literally hundreds of small islets dotting its course. Those islets, which a westerner would refer to as sandbars, provide the reason for the Sandhill Crane to rest and "refuel" in Nebraska.

The vast numbers of the Sandhill Cranes that visit here are of the subspecies referred to as the "Lesser Sandhill Crane", lesser denoting that this is a fairly small crane and weighs 7 to 9 pounds at most. Yesterday we saw literally thousands of them in different flocks moving to and from the river. It took a conscious effort on my part to keep my eyes on the road while driving instead of trying to watch the show up in the air. Just to keep things interesting, there were also large flocks of geese and ducks moving from the feeding areas to water sanctuaries. For the Cranes, the Platte offers nighttime protection from coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, black bears and the occasional cougar. Bald eagles have been known to go after some of the smaller cranes, and we have plenty of those eagles in the area (Fish and Game officials counted 63 bald eagles at Harlan County Lake this winter).

Many of the farmers in the area are less than thrilled to see their fields covered with cranes during the daylight hours. Cranes, of course, love to eat grains and if some of those grains are newly planted seeds, so much the better. The winter wheat, of which I wrote in an earlier posting, is starting to sprout and cranes love the green leaves. If it were just a few cranes, the farmers wouldn't be concerned at all, but a total migratory population of 600,000 seed eating waterfowl can do a lot of damage. There is not much the farmers can do, since Nebraska is the only state in the U.S. that does not allow the hunting or taking of cranes. Most of the birds will stay on the Platte for about a month, leaving in early April for Northern Canada, Alaska and Northeastern Siberia, where they will nest and lay their eggs.

This is a Whooping Crane, of the rarest and most endangered birds in the world, and if luck is with me I will see one or two of these magnificent creatures when I visit the Rowe Sanctuary on my crane watching day.

In 1941 there were only 21 Whooping Cranes alive in the wild. Today, that number is close to 600, but its continued existence is still very much in doubt. It is much larger than the Sandhill Crane, standing 5 feet tall and weighing 18 to 22 pounds on the average. I have read about the efforts to save this bird since I was 12 years old, and if I am sufficiently blessed to see one living in the wild as nature intended, I will consider that one of the highlights of my 73 years.

Brrrrr!

This is a picture of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, as seen from Sondrestromfjord, Greenland. It's important to me because I spent a year of my army life there from spring of 1955 to spring 1956. When people here continually ask me how I am handling the cold weather in Nebraska, I usually tell them a few tales of what really cold weather is like. Thanks to the nature of this blog, I can show you in just a few pictures what that place was like.

First, they no longer call it by the Danish name Sondrestromfjord. It is now officially named Kangerlussuaq, its original Inuit name. Further, to my astonishment, it is now a tourism stopover, and an Air Greenland flight leaves Baltimore, MD, destined for Kangerlussuaq once each week during the summer.

Since the early 1950s, there has always been a fairly nice hotel there. Sondrestrom was a refueling point for the very first over -the-pole flights from Los Angeles to Europe, and the hotel was maintained for the passengers in case the planes could not take off due to weather or mechanical difficulty. When I was there, the two airlines involved were TWA, flying Lockheed Constellations, and SAS , piloting Douglas DC-6Bs. Both were the last generations of propeller driven passenger aircraft. The USAF has closed its airbase and now the entire "town" and airfield is under the care and maintenance of the Danish government.

With today's long range jet aircraft, stopping to refuel is no longer necessary, but SAS still flies there from Copenhagen, Denmark, two to three times a week. The picture to the left was taken in the 1970s and shows a Douglas DC-8 being prepped for flight. The steam in the air tells us the temperature was probably between thirty and forty degrees below zero.


During the winter, morale was a problem for those of us who stayed the entire year. The officers in charge tried their best to keep us grinning, but signs like the one to our right failed to get the job done.
Many times in winter, when we had been outside in extremely cold weather, we were required to drink a glass of cold water before we could have a cup of coffee. The water helped warm our teeth in stages so that we could have a hot drink without cracking the enamel and requiring extensive dental work.

A creature of the north doesn't seem too impressed with the SAS jumbo jet parked on the ramp. In Greenland and Scandinavia they are called reindeer. In Canada and Alaska the same animal is called a caribou.






Even the little critters will take a curious look at what the strange two legged animals are up to.







This is what the old airbase looked like. That's the control tower in the center and the runway is just in front of it. The string of boxlike buildings at the bottom of the photo are cement barracks for quartering the military residents. Before we left Ft. Eustis, VA, to travel to Sondrestrom, we were told that when we arrived we would be able to find a woman behind every tree. As you can see, there are no trees in Greenland. None. Not even one.

Was it cold? You betcha it got cold. We army types didn't stay on the base itself as shown above. We were stationed in wooden barracks seven miles over the hills. We were located at a little facility called Camp Lloyd right at the harbor. There were twenty of us (more or less) who stayed the entire year. In the summer when the harbor thawed we imported 300 army stevedores from the States to unload ships filled with goods for the airbase. Army trucks and army drivers then hauled the goods over the hills and to the base.

Our showers and restrooms (officially called latrines) were about fifty yards from the barracks, which were not well insulated. In the winter if you wished to really chill a six pack of beer, you placed it on the floor overnight. It would be ice cold for the next day.

One night after having showered, shaved, et al, I dressed up in my bulky but warm air force flight suit and trudged back to the barracks (Walking was not difficult as there was not much snow. It was usually too cold to snow). As I stood at the barracks door preparing to enter, the thermometer on the outside wall said that the temperature was 44 degrees below zero. I reflected that I had not seen the sun in weeks, thanks to perpetual darkness, and I swore that when I got back to the USA I would never, ever complain about hot weather again. I still keep that promise today.

I apologize to my friends who check this blog to see what's going on with the L.A. transplant. January was so busy for me that it remains a blur of activity. How does that happen in such a small town and in the dead of winter? February introduced me to something I have never experienced before: Bronchial Pneumonia. I never want to be introduced to that again. It knocked me flat, and every time I coughed, it felt like red hot metal ball bearings were rolling around in my chest. Ugh. Ugh. There are a couple of bugs ravaging this area that were not covered in any of the usual flu and pneumonia immunizations that many of us received at the start of winter. My oldest daughter, Eva Marie, went down with the flu in February even though she had a flu shot in November. Almost everybody I talk to tells me that at least two members of their family were down with it.

Sickness aside, winter is on its way out but it ain't leaving without a fight. Generally everything is warmer and the snow is all gone. Saturday, March first, the temperature in Alma, Nebraska, was 74 degrees. Wow, that felt good. Sunday the high temperature was 44 with wind and rain. Today it is dry, but there is wind and cold air. This morning the time and temperature sign on the bank told me that at 9:00 AM it was 24 degrees downtown. Those who have lived East of California know that March is a month for battle between the departing and incoming seasons, but generally the trend is toward warmer weather.

I just want it to be warm enough long enough to melt all the ice on the banks of Harlan County Lake and the Republican River so I can cast my line into the waters. My freezer is empty of fish and that just isn't the way things are supposed to be.

The walking trail by the lake is snow and ice free and I walked it three times last week. Boy, my legs are out of shape. The scenery on the walk is rather stark, since none of the trees have new leaves yet. I looked closely at the ends of the some of the lower branches of a couple of trees and you can see the new growth that will soon be putting out the Spring greenery.

In the mornings now, I hear birds singing when I open my eyes and try to find the courage to get out of bed. I have always read that when Red Breasted Robins show up, you know that winter is gone. Well, the Robins are everywhere but it's still pretty cold out there today and for the rest of the week. The weekend, though, looks to be much warmer.

In the middle of the month, I am going to a nature preserve on the Platte River to watch the Sandhill Cranes. Those cranes are on their way north to Canada, Alaska and Siberia, but every spring they stop on the Platte for about a month to eat and gain strength for the rest of the journey. Approximately 600,000 of them, plus a few of the rare and endangered Whooping Cranes, will spend their nights in the safety of the sandbars of the Platte, then take off in the morning to feed in the many fields in the area. They return at dusk to the Platte for their evening snooze. The Rowe Sanctuary has built viewing blinds where we can stand unseen and peer through the cutouts to watch these magnificent birds and take pictures. No flash photography is permitted as it tends to frighten the cranes. Since the viewing will take place while the sky is still rather gray and the sun is just coming up, we'll have to use a very fast film, so I'm going to get some ASA800 film on my next foray into Kearney. We are told that by the time sun is up and the sky is bright, most of the cranes will have flown off to their feeding grounds.

One of the townspeople who knows told me to mark my calendar on the date that is three weeks before Easter. That, he says, is when the fish that spawn move out of the lake and into the river. Walleye, largemouth bass, white bass and a few stripers will be there for the taking. That date is next Saturday, March 9. I'm armed and ready.

Local Warming

Sorry to have been gone so long, but it has been a busy holiday season. I hope everyone who reads this had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy New Year or happy tenth anniversary of the day she ran off with the mailman.

Alma, Nebraska, enjoyed a white Christmas for the first time in four or five years, but it's all beginning to melt away. I am told that some winters here there is no snow at all, but we had enough to make it look like a Christmas scene from a Currier and Ives painting. Further, late on Christmas Day we were visited by what the weather people called a "freezing fog". I had never heard of that before, but what it did to the trees was magnificent.


The "fog" left little feathery ice crystals on the branches of all the trees. It looked like a fantasy creation by a Hollywood studio special effects team. It was not the heavy caked kind of ice that can cause so many problems, this ice crumbled and fell away at the slightest touch. It was almost like a dream sequence from a movie.




These are shots of the snow covered lawn area near my parking spot. What's interesting about it to me are those little footprints in the snow. They belong to a very busy squirrel who apparently doesn't believe in hibernation. I see him at various times of the day racing back and forth from his nest, which is hidden somewhere within the tree. Those tracks of his fan out to form a semicircular pattern from the tree's base as he searches for food. I thought that at this time of the year he would be curled in a furry little ball within his hideaway sleeping out the cold weather. Apparently he has other plans.

It is getting warmer during the day and the snow is starting to melt. The white stuff has already disappeared from most of the roadways and sidewalks and is now melting from the lawns.

By the end of this week, according to the forecasters, most of the snow will be a memory. Friday the temp will be between 45 and 50 degrees, which means it's time to wash the car. Now those in California will


probably say, "That's not warm!"
Well, once a person adjusts to this climate, 45 or 50 presents opportunities not available when it is a few degrees cooler. My poor car looks like it's been through a mud war and deserves better treatment. The do it yourself car wash in town will probably be very busy this weekend.

I was startled one day to see someone using the car wash when the temperature was below freezing and was told that some people do that regulary to wash the road salt off the under portions of the car. Sure, some of the water freezes to the car surfaces, but if the salt is gone, that's OK.

People here continually ask me how, as a Los Angeles transplant, I am dealing with the cold. I patiently explain to them that I am not having a problem. I visited Nebraska at Christmas time on several occasions. I flew out for my oldest daughter's birthday in January, and I flew out when my youngest graduated from the U. of Nebraska in Lincoln (normally referred to as UNL) in December when the wind chill was -38 degrees. I am no stranger to cold weather. I have cold weather clothing and may have been the only guy in L.A. who owned two sets of thermal long-johns. And, of course, when I was in the army I spent a year in Greenland, near the North Pole. Maybe I'll talk more about that next time. I have discovered that some interesting things are going on up there.