Leaving Nebraska

My family was part of the great outward migration from the country to urban living. My grandparents never left, (not exactly true since my last living grandparent moved into a nursing home in Washington state a few months before passing on), but Mom left town (Ewing -pop 500), and Dad left the farm near Orchard, and they attended Grand Island Business College. I guess the college has been gone for years.

Dad was a WWII vet, and Mom worked in the War Department until the war was over, and they moved into an apartment in Omaha. Mom worked for Mutual of Omaha, and Dad hired on with the US Postal Service.

Now as a kid, Dad's job was pretty cool! How many kids dad's carried a badge and gun? Dad was a railway mail clerk and sorted mail on the trains between Omaha and Cheyenne, Wyoming. The mail clerks were required to carry a weapon as it wasn't too many years earlier when outlaws roamed the west and trains got robbed. The early day Saturday afternoon TV shows seemed to always show a train robbery in progress, so my friends were pretty impressed!

Progress made us leave I suppose... The Postal Service decided that train mail sorting wasn't the way to go anymore, so Dad bid on a job in Denver and that's how we left.

For years to come, I'd tell people that Nebraska was a great place...to be from. My Omaha high school's mascot was a bunny, the landscape was flat, the summers hot, the winters cold, and there was nothing to do. One thing though...I stayed true to my Cornhuskers.

I'm still amazed at how I'm coming full circle. Don't get me wrong about Colorado, I love Colorado's scenery and climate as much as anywhere I've been. But there is a lot more to life than climate and scenery, and the pace of life and unlimited growth in Colorado is just not what we want anymore. Now I'm saying Colorado is great place...to visit.

We're really excited to be coming back to Nebraska. 12 days and a wake-up to closing!