Life Escape from Nebraska
If you’re ever in Nebraska—and I hope you never are—don’t camp at the Lake Minature State Park. Windy, hot, flies everywhere, mud-bottomed lake, and, uh, filth. Broken bottles, empty beer cans, dirty diapers, and I swear to God I saw something on the beach that could only have been a used colostomy bag.
So anyway, we got up early and made for the exits—Wyoming was just 40 or so miles away. But Nebraska wasn’t through with us. Our left front tire came apart on a few miles from Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
Sigh.
The tow truck came.
And soon we were at a tire place somewhere in the middle of nowhere that, as is the case in the United States these days, looked like it could be anywhere. I once listened to a lecture given by an urban design critic who said—and I paraphrasing here—that, “…the United States is the wealthiest country in the history of the world and it has the ugliest built environment in the history of the world.” It’s too freakin’ true.
Three hours and a hundred bucks later we were in Casper, Wyoming, where we just finished touring the downtown core. We enjoyed visiting the Dick Cheney Federal Building (here’s a better view of Dick’s place), viewing the public art (loved this huge mural on the main drag—that boy is the only person of color we’ve seen for days), and marveling at what has to be the coolest bank building I have ever seen. The banks tower dominates the skyline here and it’s is so freaking cool that I about wet myself when I saw it. Can’t you just picture Angie Dickinson bursting from the building, gun in hand, in hot pursuit of some miscreant? Here’s the tower at sunset. Some parts of America are still beautiful despite our best efforts to destroy the place.
America! Fuck yeah!
(Yeah, yeah: This post is really dull and it’s only of interest to my mother—maybe not even to her—and I’ve wasted a good deal of scarce and precious space here on the Internets with this long post and Beruit is burning and we’re havin’ a heatwave and how dare I? So sue me.)
Dan wrote:
"(Yeah, yeah: This post is really dull and it’s only of interest to my mother—maybe not even to her—and I’ve wasted a good deal of scarce and precious space here on the Internets with this long post and Beruit is burning and we’re havin’ a heatwave and how dare I? So sue me.)"
I recently noticed that the two colored bars that run vertically down either side of Slog are, in fact, advertisements for various products, purveyors of products, and venues. And in fact, the more people who post topics or comments, the more advertising space is revealed.
Could there be some diabolical ulterior motive to all these travelogues, marxist architecture critiques, night club rants and Darcy Burner frottage?