Five days in Nebraska. What to do…what to do…

So, what does a city slicker do when she finds herself in a farming community in Nebraska?

Act like she’s never seen cows before…

Get about as excited at the sight of the non-alcoholic wild turkey as she does at the sight of the alcoholic one…

Cheese it up in a cornfield….

They were just starting to plant, so the corn is only about knee high to a grasshopper (always wanted to use that phrase), which completely thwarted my plans of doing a [Black] Children of the Corn sendup.

Wait out the rain in the wheel of a combine…

Remember Whoopi Goldberg’s line in Jumping Jack Flash when she called for help from the phone booth she was trapped in. “I’m a little black woman in a big silver box.” Well, I’m “a little black woman in a big silver wheel.” Seriously, those things are huge!

If you tell people you’re headed to Tokyo or London or Rome, their response is usually something along the lines of, “Ohmigod. You are? So jealous. Wish I could go.” But tell them you’re headed out to Grand Island, Nebraska, and you get a “WHY????” delivered with as much derision as confusion. Actually, I never usually even mention the town since city folk seem to have little to no idea of where any place is that has a population of under 75,000–that is, unless something catastrophic has happened there. Case and point–the farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. Despite having only 2100 people, there is a huge Wikipedia entry on it because it holds the distinction of being the place where the In Cold Blood murders took place. Fortunately, the towns I visited had no such sordid history, although states like Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa come with their own set of prejudgements and stereotypes–Oz, Dorothy, tornadoes–one of which occurred while I was there.

So, why was I in South Central Nebraska eating pulled pork sandwiches at an Elk’s Lodge and running through cornfields? Family. Probably the only reason you’d visit, I suppose. My good friend’s daughter Hayley was graduating high school. Grand Island is definitely not a place I could hang out for a long period of time. Having grown up in NYC and now living in LA, I get antsy whenever the pace slows too much. I’ve gotten spoiled having access to restaurants still open for food at midnight, being in the midst of a variety of different cultures, having the beach only a few miles west and the hills five blocks north. But there were some awesome things about Grand Island: being able to sleep without the sound of sirens and police helicopters, hearing doves coo (which I thought were owls), seeing woodpeckers launch an assault on the bark of a tree, watching cotton tail bunnies bounding across the yard, witnessing stunning weather patterns across the sky.

And I loved the sense of family. When museums and art galleries and hiking trails and world renowned points of interest don’t exactly abound, you spend more time with the people in your life. You’re always eating, drinking and laughing together. And the avocado toast and kale you’re so used to in LA is replaced by jello and marshmallow salads (Yes, that is a thing!), meat, and a lot of sweet, doughy, baked products. And then somebody snaps a picture of you in which your belly out-protrudes your boobs!

But it’s okay because A) it’s temporary. And B) you realize that these moments with friends and family are what matter most.