By Lela Torgesen Wade
We drove all the way to middle Nebraska in July of 2017, traversing 11 states outside our own. Seven of them we’d not been in before.I had seen the “Mighty” Mississippi River twice from a plane, but crossing those bridges in a car was doubly awesome. And viewing it from the street where my cousin Sam Clemens grew up was a thrill beyond compare. Off the beaten path and not well-marked, the little town of Hannibal, Missouri is well worth the detour from the interstate. We visited Mark Twain’s home with the fence he had to whitewash, his father’s Justice of the Peace office building, and the museum full of memorabilia.
Later that day we were within 25 miles of my grandfather’s boyhood home. We bypassed that because I knew his family’s house was torn down years ago after Lida, the youngest child, died. But I inherited a photo of it. The population of that small town has grown only slightly since 1900.
The terrain never got as flat as I had expected. Gently rolling hills were ever present. Due to lack of humidity and trees, it’s true that you can see for miles across those wide open expanses. But it makes me sad that only small patches of the prairie now exist in its natural state.
In a Nebraska campground we watched red squirrels nibbling cherries in a tree. This species is larger than the gray ones of the eastern United States – interlopers from Great Britain. So how were the grays able to take over the reds’ territory? Why did the reds migrate west?
We realized, upon seeing a mule deer in a pasture near the Platte River, how this animal got its name. It could have been mistaken for a female moose.
Our second main objective was to visit Dodge City, Kansas. I grew up watching Gunsmoke on television with my grandmother. I’d often told myself, I must see that town before I die. We toured Boot Hill Cemetery and Museum and were photographed in front of the Long Branch Saloon. One hundred and four degrees in the shade, but worth every sweltering, sweaty minute! My mind’s eye saw Chester Goode wiping his brow with a pocket handkerchief and exclaiming, ‘I swan to goodness, Mr. Dillon!’
The little Kansas town where my grandmother was born and raised was too far out of our way. And I suspect any sign of her family’s ever having been there disappeared about a century ago. I have a photo of that house too – tall and painted white with spacious porches. Her mother earned a living taking in boarders.
As it has many times before, Chattanooga, Tennessee welcomed us back with fog and torrents of rain that lasted miles into North Georgia. Then… it sure was good to be back home.