Or “My Gosh It’s Flat out There!” By Jeff Moyers
I rode along with neighbor Kevin Shipe out to Hastings, Nebraska recently to pick up a road tractor for their farm. I had been as far west as Kansas as a senior in high school when I went to the national FFA convention, but this was the first trip that far west since that. Ironically, I went to the convention with Kevin’s dad Kent lo those many years ago. We left Mathias early on the morning of May 22nd, taking corridor H up to Mt. Storm, then dropping off the mountain to Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. We picked up I-70 and headed west, passing thru Pennsylvania and Ohio, and spent the first night in Terra Haute, Indiana. The next day saw us cross Illinois, Iowa, and as my guide said, a little corner of Missouri and Kansas before arriving at our next overnight stop, Hastings, Nebraska.
I’m not sure I was prepared for just how big the fields are out there. As Kevin joked, they’re so big that you can watch your dog run off for three days straight. We saw lots of corn and soy beans, huge irrigation rigs that seemed to go for hundreds of yards across a field, oil wells at work, and some of the biggest farm machinery I’d ever seen. Ever the WV country boy, I think I was probably more taken back for a while by all the dead armadillos we saw along the interstate than some of the scenery. Reminded me of a possum wearing a suit of armor.
We made it out to the farm where the truck was waiting on Friday morning. The farmer selling it was most cordial and allowed me to wander around and take pictures while he and Kevin conducted their transaction. This gentleman had mostly John Deere equipment, as did seemingly most of the rest of the farms we saw, with very little of any other brand seen, and told us he raised 2,000 acres of corn which blew my mind until I later found out that his was a relatively small operation and that eight to ten thousand acres of crops was the average.
The truck that we brought home had been used to haul corn in to his grain bins from the distant fields, driven by his mother. As we talked, he motioned to the fellow running a string trimmer across the road and told us that was his dad. This was the family farm, a true piece of Americana. We of course got around to hunting and the local wildlife. I said something in passing about groundhogs and he didn’t know what they were as they aren’t found in Nebraska, they instead have badgers and prairie dogs, and just north of there one could also hunt mule deer along with white tails, as well as pheasants, quail, and three different species of wild turkeys. In talking to some of Kevin’s friends in Indiana that I met, I learned that a big deer out there weighs in at around 300 pounds. I’m pretty sure I saw several coyotes off in the distance from the interstate was well.
After picking the truck up, we then headed for Grand Island, Nebraska to drop off the rental car. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the air conditioning, stereo, and cooled seats on the way back home. As we passed thru Grand Island, we saw the Grand Island Case/IH manufacturing plant where they build combines, self-propelled windrowers, and headers, which took me back to another day many years ago when I worked for the IH/New Holland farm machinery dealer in Harrisonburg.
We took the time to visit the Hastings Museum of Natural & Cultural History, Planetarium, and Theatre, which I really enjoyed. I couldn’t understand why Kool-Aid was featured so prominently until we got inside and learned that the product originated right there in Hastings by a gentleman by the name of Edwin Perkins. There were great displays of wildlife, antique vehicles, firearms, and archaeology. I jokingly sent a picture of a mounted polar bear to a friend of mine and asked if she knew that polar bears were in Nebraska. Not sure if she bought it or not. One thing that really made an impression on me were the references to the Sioux and Cheyenne American indian tribes that had lived in the area in another time. It was amazing to think that I was standing where one of those folks may well have stood, lived, and hunted and gave me a greater appreciation of such things.
We got on the interstate from there and started the long trip home. I had foolishly offered to help drive home if needed but I soon saw that I had no business behind the wheel of that big truck so I instead did what Kevin said he took me along for, company and good conversation. I kept him entertained with an appropriate playlist on my cell phone including Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road”, Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Roll on Down the Highway”, and of course Jerry Reed’s “Eastbound and Down”. I told him I was going to sit down and watch “Smokey and the Bandit” as soon as I got home and got unpacked.
Along the way out and back, we saw Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals, and behind it, Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs, the St. Louis Arch, Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indiana Pacers, and lots and lots of agriculture-based industry. Another thing that really struck me was how many ponds and lakes we saw from the interstate, not to mention the Missippi and Ohio rivers, yet there was irrigation everywhere you wanted to look in the larger fields. I told Kevin that if we were to ever take that trip again, I was bringing fishing tackle.
Sadly tho, while we saw some amazing things, we also saw some things that made one wonder about mankind. We were leaving a McDonald’s one day and noticed an unusual car parked at the entrance. It turned out to be a Maserati, parked in a handicap spot, locked and idling. There were handicap tags and no handicap mirror hanger. I’d like to give the driver the benefit of the doubt that he or she was entitled to park there and weren’t simply parking their expensive car close to the door for their own convenience or to protect it from getting dinged in the parking lot. Somewhere in the Kansas City area late one night on I70 we were passed by five motorcycles. We were doing around 70 mph and they passed us, as the old saying goes, like we were going the other way. We estimated that they were doing at least 90-100 mph, zipping in and out of traffic in spaces a lawmower would have struggled to make. I couldn’t look away but also didn’t want to see the carnage should one of them have lost control in that heavy traffic. A day or so later we say a similar display when a fellow in a late model Camaro convertible did about the same thing in heavy traffic, only to get off the interstate in less than a couple of hundred yards.
We made it to Columbus, Ohio early in the evening of May 26th. We’d intended to try to make West Virginia for the night but reports of severe storms in the area made us reconsider, with the sky in the distance toward the WV line looking much like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, so we found lodging, good food, and a good night’s rest there, and after a good breakfast and some excellent coffee, we were back on the road. When we crossed the Ohio River back into West Virginia, one look at the high and dark Ohio river confirmed that we’d made the right decision. I have to admit, seeing that “welcome to WV” sign felt pretty good. I saw some beautiful country and amazing things, but nothing beats home. When we got off the last primary road and onto the little secondary back road we live on and got close to home, I started laying on the air horn, much like the Snowman at the end of the movie, telling everyone that the WV boys were glad to be home.
