It was 38 degrees this morning and I had to deice the windshield. Now I know I’m really headed home. Too bad I couldn’t bring just a bit of the heat from Austin with me.
After circling around a bit with Ms. Garmin leading me on a merry chase, I drove into downtown Omaha to meet a young VISTA volunteer I made contact with during an online class we both took. She offered to be my tour guide here. Annaleah grew up in a nearby town and now lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the Missouri River from Omaha. She showed me the sights in both cities and took me to some of her favorite places.
What a treat to get to know Annaleah! As a VISTA, she worked at a regional food bank. Now she’s employed by Head Start, where she works with families of Head Start students to bring stability to their lives.
Our tour began at the Tea Smith with cups of delicious tea to warm us and a cranberry scone to fortify us. I sipped coconut chai, and Annaleah enjoyed an aromatic cup of almond apple delight while we chatted about ourselves and shared experiences.
The next stop took us to a store with used and antique books on any topic one can imagine, crammed into every nook—a hoarder’s hideaway, filled only with books. The stacks towered over us, so high an aluminum ladder stood ready to serve customers who spotted a desired volume in the upper regions. I came away with two books for my research and one audiobook to accompany me to Minnesota; Annaleah bought a Madeleine L’Engle volume for her husband.
We braved the freezing wind to cross the Missouri River on the amazing pedestrian bridge that connects the two cities. The bridge, the only one of its kind connecting two states, stretches 3,000 feet (including the landings on both sides), is 15 feet wide, and soars in an S curve 60 feet above the river. There are 150 miles of hiking trails on either side of the bridge. We could feel the bridge sway as the wind whipped around us. What views of the river and the cities below!
For lunch I enjoyed a Nebraska treat: a runza, a sandwich made of ground beef, cabbage, and spices. The meal, introduced to the area by German immigrants, is sold by Runza, a fast-food restaurant, only in Nebraska and a few nearby areas. Annaleah said there was such a demand for the sandwich by former Nebraska natives that Runza now ships them frozen through the mail. I have to admit mine was pretty tasty.
We also toured the neighborhoods of Council Bluffs, viewing the grand old houses of the late 1800s and early 1900s. We viewed one firsthand, the General Dodge House, built in 1869 by Civil War General and Union Pacific railroad builder Grenville M. Dodge. Judging from the portraits, he was quite a handsome young soldier. In later years, though, his jaunty smile had turned into a scowl. Guess the responsibility of running the country’s largest railroad and meeting with U.S. presidents took a toll on the guy.
The docent told us that the grand piano in the third-floor ballroom had to be lifted through a window. The curved stairs had a section carved into the wall to accommodate a casket’s being carried from the upper floors, but the piano was too big to fit.
We also stopped off at the spot where Abraham Lincoln—in the midst of the Civil War— once viewed the territory and issued the order to begin the transcontinental railroad. In 1869 the final spike was hammered in, connecting the rails from coast to coast.
After Annaleah bid good-bye with a promise to visit if she got to Maine, I stopped at the Durham Museum, located in Omaha’s Union Station. It made me glad to see such a lovely structure preserved and used as a repository of the city’s history. But it also made me sad to think that Portland, my city, had allowed its Union Station to be destroyed by a wrecking ball to make way for a strip mall in the 1960s. I remember as a little girl running across the marble floors of the station, my patent leather shoes echoing through the massive building, as my sister and I waited for the train to take us to relatives in Rockland.
Tomorrow: Off to Minnesota!