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.

Baby, It's Cold Outside.

Autumn has given up all attempts to hold off winter. Officially, it's still nine days until winter is in residence, but it has been regularly cold and snowy for ten days, now. The ice storm that is currently in the news, was a little to the east of us. We got a bit of sleety rain that turned into a thin coating of ice, but nothing as severe as an ice storm that hit Alma last new year's eve. Parts of the town were without power for a week, and Holdrege, twenty-four miles north of us was powerless for weeks and weeks. That ice storm hit this area so bad that 3,000 telephone poles broke off and fell over. Power workers from three or four nearby states came to the rescue. Several eighteen wheelers came to Holdrege with flat bed trailers holding enormous generators to supply electricity to the freezing town.


This is my satellite dish, and while it is showing the result of icing, it certainly isn't severe. And contrary to claims of some "competing" forms of tv service, I have never lost my signal due to clouds, rain, lightning, snow, ice or the heartbreak of psoriasis.
You see these dishes on almost every home in the area, since the alternative ain't much. The local cable company's top of the line, most expensive package consists of only 47 channels and does not include ESPN2. That is tantamount to heresy. How is a man supposed to be whole without ESPN2?

Since I have no covered parking, my poor car must feel like I'm storing it in a food freezer. This morning I had to fill a plastic juice container with warm tap water and pour it in the cracks around the car door to get it open. It was frozen solid and wouldn't budge. My California friends who came from the midwest and the east can probably recall those glorious moments. I have a special "bra" that covers the windshield at night so that it doesn't ice up and force me to scrape, scrape, scrape. I have found that making products to help deal with the problems of automobile icing is a big business out here. I have also found out that most of those products don't work very well. Warm tap water worked great, but the special aerosol spray I bought to "guarantee" that the doors would not freeze shut was a piece of crud. Ah, well.

There will always be something magical to me about white snow covering a neighborhood scene. I took this picture while standing in my front door at noon today. The high temp is going to be 22 degrees F, and the low tonight will be approximately 6-8 degrees F. I won't notice most of it at all since I will be comfortably housed on my couch this afternoon reading a book and sipping a cup of hot chocolate topped with those little marshmallows. Now, that's how cold weather should be experienced.


Looking down the street in the other direction produces the same sort of scene. The snow is about six to eight inches deep on the lawns and walkways, but has certainly been flattened on the street by passing cars. I am gaining a certain amount of expertise in navigating in the snow and ice. Mostly, it calls for slower speeds and common sense. Of course, every region has it's share of yo-yos who simply don't understand concepts like caution when driving in poor road conditions.

Does the cold upset or discourage me about the move from California. Not one bit. I have been in Nebraska when it was bitterly cold (-38 wind chill temp) and I spent a year in Greenland in the army where wind chill was not required for it to get to -38 or lower. The saying is true: "There is no such thing as weather that is too cold - there is only inadequate clothing." I have invested in some pretty warm clothing and footgear and I have to say that it makes being outdoors in cold weather tolerable. Of course, I would love for it to be Spring so I could be relaxing on the bank of the lake with a line in the water, but I accept that Winter is a necessary part of this earth's rhythm.

Life is pretty good, regardless of the forecast.

Winter Has Arrived

December 21 is officially the start of winter, but for all practical purposes it arrived last night in the form of our first significant snowfall. Last Monday, November 19, the high temperature was 77 degrees F. Yesterday, November 23, we got three inches of snow. I guess that's the way it goes in the plains states (I would normally have said, "that's the way it goes in the midwest", but it has been pointed out to me by several residents that this is not the midwest but is part of the Great American Plains).

My car does not have covered parking, so this is what I found waiting for me this morning. The picture is a little dark as it was fairly early and still quite cloudy. Under the beautiful, fluffy snow lies hard as rock ice, so I got to use my ice scraper and bristle brush for the first time. I'll have to get a can of silicone spray in town and spray it on my rubber door seals so they don't freeze to the door as they tried to do today. Luckily, it didn't get too cold last night (about 17 above, F). I had to make a trip to Orleans this morning (distance= 7 miles, population=425) and tried to be prudent in my driving habits. There is an old saying to the effect that half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at, and I have no trouble admitting that I am dumb at driving on snow and ice. I will learn as the months go by, but for now I'll take it slow and easy. My Sister, the Rev. Kathe Ford, lived in Alaska for ten years and told me that driving on snow and ice was easy as could be. No problem, she said. "Stopping on ice," she then said, "now that's a problem".

Here's what it looks like up the walk to my front door. The snow isn't very deep at all, but it's still a measurable snow fall. The concrete walks hold heat longer than the dirt areas, so they tend melt the snow off. Problem is, the melted snow shortly freezes and makes the walkways slippery and dangerous. I have purchased a pair of boots designed for good footing in snow and ice, but short of mounting climbing crampons, nothing can really give good footing on ice.

The view up the street shows off a wintry view that is truly beautiful. The high temperatures today and tomorrow will be in the mid forties, so I'm told that what is beautiful today will be ugly, muddy slush by Monday afternoon.

Ah, well. So much for a wintry paradise.

A Lot Going On, Part 2

Each year the Friday before Thanksgiving is the occasion for Alma's "Holiday Preview". The Christmas lights are up and lit. Christmas carols echo up and down the streets from strategically located loudspeakers and there is simply no place to park because all the shops are open and most of the town has turned out to take a look at this year's decorations.

When I walked past the Subway franchise and looked in the window, I could see my granddaughter busily putting sandwiches together for a host of customers. There were similar scenes in all the stores as the people of Alma made a point of walking each side of Main Street and stepping into each store for at least a few moments. Since almost everybody in Alma knows everybody else (at least slightly), it's a time of community conviviality.

Two small horses pulled a wagon filled with people on a tour of the four block area that is essentially downtown Alma, Nebraska. The wagon has regular automobile tires on its wheels, so it looked to be a comfortable ride. Even though it was after dark, I saw many hardy souls wearing only T-shirts, no jackets. The temperature was probably in the low sixties or high fifties, and a softy like me wears a light jacket in that weather, but then I've only been here a little over five months. Maybe my blood will thicken as time marches on.

The entity that operates my apartment complex, The Alma Housing Authority, led by my apartment manager, Denise (boy, is she high energy Irish), had set up camp at Joe Camera, my favorite store in town. Denise offered free coffee, cookies and blueberry muffins to all who stopped in. She was also offering a drawing for a new DVD player, so people came by, said "Hi" and generally hung around to talk. I had volunteered to help host a half-hour slot, so from 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM, I welcomed people and made sure they were aware of all to be had there at Joe Camera.

Two ladies from my apartment complex relieved me at the appointed time. One of them was my immediate neighbor, Ruby. Ruby is 98 years old going on 45 and has suffered no real ill effects of aging, other than (like most of us) she's probably not as tall as she used to be. If I make it to 98, I hope I am as physically and mentally able as is Ruby. She is a delight.

The free coffee was limited to regular and decaf, because the shop offers everything you can imagine in the way of coffee. In an earlier post, I commented on the wide selection of coffees available. So for those who wanted a Latte or a "Mocha Java" (whatever that is), I referred them to the store owner, Dusti, who happily obliged them at regular store prices for the fancy stuff.

The jars of coffee beans and tea leaves on the shelves are more numerous than anyone would ever expect to find in a town of 1232 souls. The tea included Earl Grey and Oolong Formosa, while the various coffees included a bean called, "A.M. Mayhem". I think I would be afraid to try that one first thing in the morning. I'll take ordinary coffee, thank you. In fact, I love the smell and taste of unsullied coffee, especially in the morning. When my daughter, Eva, and I have coffee at Bugbee's after our walks, I watch her pollute her cup of java with sugar and creamer, and I wonder if it's too late to save her from that poor condition.

Next Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, I will sit down and celebrate that holiday with both my daughters for the first time in 27 years. This is the kind of thing that my move from Duarte, CA, was all about. Time has taught me that few, if any, things are more important than family.

I hope everyone who reads this has a happy Thanksgiving.

A Lot Going On, Part 1

Sorry to have been absent so long, but a lot has been going on. A person might think that a small town in the late fall would be a quiet place with people getting ready to hunker down for the winter season. Not so. When November rolls around, Alma, Nebraska, gets crowded.

It's hunting season and it seems like half the state is here in camouflage (or camos, as is the new lingo) to hunt for deer, waterfowl, pheasant, quail, turkey, you name it. The two motels in town have "No Vacancy" signs hung out, which helps to explain why the Super 8 Motel chain is working frantically to finish their newest addition on Highway 183. It is currently set for a January, 2008, opening. This area is regarded as one of the "primo" hunting areas in the state, and the primary hunting season starts in November. Luckily, it's been a mild, if not warm, autumn, so those guys crouched down in the duck blinds at dawn aren't going to freeze to death.

It's been warm enough that my neighbor and I went fishing near the dam and while I got blanked, my neighbor, Steve, got two nice wipers (5 and 8 pounds) and a largemouth bass, not to mention two nice hookups that he lost. I didn't even get a bite. How is it that two people can stand essentially side by side, casting the same lure (silver and blue rattletrap) into the same locations and one gets the fish while the other (yours truly) draws a blank?

Deer season ends tomorrow, November 18, and that is good news for my walking habit. My daughter Eva and I have had to give up using the walkway built by the city because there are too many deer hunters out there and we don't want to run the risk of being a hunting casualty. Like any large group of people, 99% of the hunters are good at what they do and observe the rules of rifle and hunting safety. It's the 1 % who are idiots with guns that we worry about, so we have been meandering through town in the mornings trying to get our walking mileage in. With the season ending tomorrow at midnight, we will be back to our old routine on Monday.

Drop into Bugbee's restaurant at any time of the day and you will find that half the crowd is wearing camos or flourescent caps and vests while they eat their meals and scarf down the coffee. These are the hunters taking a break.

Another breed of hunter here is that of the archers. Archery deer season ended just before the rifle season began, and it was a smashing success. A combination mini-market gas station here is called the "Short Stop", and it is also a deer check-in station for those who have accomplished their mission. When I filled up with gas on the last day of archery season and commented on two deer that were strapped to pickup trucks in the parking area, the lady behind the counter said that they had logged in over 90 deer and one of them was the biggest whitetail deer she had ever seen. That's just one check-in station in one small town. This area draws a lot of people who, by staying at the motels, dining at the various eateries and shopping at the local stores pump a lot of money into the Alma Economy.

In the summer, of course, it is Harlan County Lake that brings people in. It's the second largest lake in Nebraska and the fishing and water sports keep the motels and RV parks reasonably full for the entire summer season. Some people in Lincoln (three hours away) and Omaha (four hours) park their RVs here for the summer and drive down every chance they can find to get away from work.

This is a remarkably busy little place. A cell phone company recently constructed a new tower across Highway 183 from Bugbee's, and companies don't do those kinds of things without market research that says the market here will expand. That gives us two cell phone options in town, now, so we're expecting the competition to produce some reduced monthly plans. Only time will tell.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words.........

A couple of friends said that while they appreciated my photos of the walkway, some were a bit too dark and it was hard to see the detail. Sorry about that. My digital is seven years old and doesn't compensate for low light levels well at all. On Some days I have carried one of my 35mm cameras and got some beautiful shots, so here they are.















You find beauty where ever you look for it. Don't forget to look.

Nuff Said