The Dismal Drive

The Dismal Drive
A meditation of sorts on Copeland, Rivers, and American Dreams
Elee Wood, July 4, 2010

"You've never been in the sand hills?" Dad's question was full of surprise and shock. In the fifteen or so years of my youth spent in Nebraska summers, I'd never really been to the sand hills, and here it was 2004. "We'll go then, for sure." This he said as we passed through the endless rows of Iowa corn en route to North Platte, Nebraska, where my grandmother lived. This was the first trip back to Nebraska since my mother's parents died. I hadn't made the drive across the plains since May of 1999, and despite being older the drive still seemed to take forever. On and on went the rows of corn, with so few cities here on the plains the corn reigns. The landscape lulled and mesmerized, no where to look for variety, and soon enough we were both asleep. The jerking of the car and sound of rumble bars jolted us awake enough for me to realize, this flatland was going to get us in trouble if we weren't careful.

We pulled into North Platte late in the day, the sun beating down on the car we rented back home in Milwaukee. Navigating from his reclined position, Dad casually gave directions to me, the excited-yet-weary driver. Grandma Mabel's house -- the new one, one I don't remember very well because she moved when I was in college -- was neat and tidy, with a well manicured lawn, meticulously shaped and trimmed hedge. Everything seemed flat. The houses were flat, nothing was over a ranch style. The land was flat, no hills, not a break in the horizon for miles. Mabel was inside listening to the TV set at a decibel loud enough to make up for her hearing aids sitting on the desk. She came to the door to give smothering grandmother hugs and welcomed us in standing only long enough to direct traffic and settle back to a seat close to the action near enough for her ailing body to rest again.

She called us kids, me and dad. I'm used to it I guess, being the only child, I never seemed to fit in as the granddaughter. It must be something about the group of people you are in that designates the granddaughter title. Mabel had four of her own kids and seven more from other husbands, all of whom have grandchildren and she still knew all of them, though there aren't really that many.

And so we set off for the sand hills. It was July 3, the day before Independence day.
The night before we spent time at the Lincoln County historical center and museum. The museum is a fascinating collection of the lives of the people of this area. It's no Smithsonian, though it is a people's museum, maybe more so than the Smithsonian could ever hope to be. The jumble of exhibits has some logic to its layout, but more importantly is about the people, about their daily life experience and how they see the world. I was struck by it--the sheer delight in everyday objects and the minutiae of people's lives. Somebody's pencil collection took up four feet of cabinet and another couple’s salt and pepper-shaker collection spread over six. Framed photos of days gone by mingled with adding machines, old furniture, wedding dresses, depression glass and a hat collection. All of it from the members of the community. All of it representing the lives of middle America.

It doesn't take long before you are out of town and into the beginning of the sand hills. It starts slow and then without realizing it you are in the midst of a completely different place, a place where time slips into the unknown. The sand hills began rolling by as we traveled the highway. On the radio Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man began and I felt as though we were in a movie. Could it haven been more idyllic? As the music went on, the hills rolled by. Weather beaten windmills sprang up every twenty acres or so to provide the cattle with fresh water. Miles were marked with old boots on the fence posts.

As I sat in the backseat of Mabel’s Buick Century, watching the hills roll by, hearing the plaintive brass sounds of the fanfare, I thought about the day. Independence eve it was, so to speak. My mind wandered and worried about how we seem not to remember as much why the fourth of July matters so much to people in the United States. There’s so much struggle in each individual life to create the dream and live in it, that it seems like maybe that independence is understood, just not always why we have it. But then, the car slowed, and slowed my anxious thoughts about meaning into another place. “Well here we are!” Dad said. “Where is here?” I wondered aloud, since the land in every direction ranged up and down over hills, the bright blue of the sky in sharp contrast to the grassy-covered sand. “The Dismal River.”

We climbed a short overlook, dad and I, while Mabel stayed in the car. At the top we looked out over The Dismal River, Nebraska’s “wildest and most undeveloped river.” It twists and turns, nearly loop-de-loops if you look hard enough. The view was far from the dreary and bleak suggested by its name. Instead, maybe with echoes of Copeland in my head, it was majestic. From above, the river winds and gracefully addresses its sand hill neighborhood. The bluestem grasses and sedges formed a pleasant border framing the water-land divide. Yet, I was told by my father, and Mabel too, this was a rough, forcible river. Like the cymbal crash in Fanfare, like the rumbling timpani and bass drums, this river reflects the winding road of American lives, the real people’s lives. There’s treacherous places, places where you can’t get past the barbed wire fences, places where the springs bubble up from the ground so violently that it seems like you might have made a wrong turn and ended up at Yellowstone. Wildlife abounds, quicksand lurks, and, oh... There’s a golf course at the end, just in case you thought it the rough beauty of nature wasn’t quite American enough.

From our perch over the Dismal River, I could see farther than before. The wide horizon stretch out over miles and miles of land where the bison once roamed, followed by the Blackfoot, Arapaho, Assiniboine, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Lakota, Kiowa Apache, Cree, Ojibwe, Sarsi, Shoshone, Stoney and Tonkawa. This land, this river, this place, this is the place of independence and freedom, had and taken, stolen and created. Funny how Copeland almost titled his stirring work as “Fanfare for Four Freedoms.” The crushing awe of nature and the responsibility of freedom lingered in my field of vision and rang in my ears as we departed. Somehow the sand hills evoked the meaning and purpose of independence in ways I had not considered.

Often on Independence Day the outward celebrations—the ubiquitous hot dogs and apple pies, the fireworks and the flagrant flag-waving—almost seem to reject the intended purpose and memory set forth by the Declaration. Yet, I have to have a moment of hope and trust in the common man, as it were, that for some each day is like paddling the Dismal River. Each day people face the twists and turns, the unexpected barriers, the springs and rapids that force us to think about what we are all about. The vast horizon of democracy promises that there is independence, but with independence comes great responsibility.

Looking at the wizened lines of my grandmother’s face as we sped off toward Broken Bow, in hopes of lunch at the Rodeway Inn, I thought of how her life mattered in this great anxious independence. Daughter of immigrant farmers, mother, wife, top seller of Stanley-Home-Products, her life was that of other plainswomen, perhaps of the modern age. Her life was not easy but she became expert at making do and then giving back. I think in many ways this is what is both known and unknown about our “fellow Americans.” There is caring and struggle, there is obnoxious ignorance, and there is anxious independence.

This is the hypnotism that comes from riding in the sand hills and listening to Copeland, dreaming a little about the land of the free. It was a Dismal drive.