Thank you, Lady Bird!

It's a six hundred fifty mile drive from Lincoln, Nebraska to Dallas, but possible for the solo driver. With the cruise control, good music, and cooperative weather it's a very relaxing day for me.



Summer of 1962, our family made the same trip taking two full days to reach Dallas, and three to go back to Lincoln. We three kids sat in the backseat of the '54 Chevy with our little sweaty legs stuck to the car seat and dust blowing in the open windows. We were fussy, irritable, and asked endless "are we there yet" questions, I'm sure. It's possible that we were also having chain reaction carsickness. I don't think we were spilling our grape snowcones that particular trip!



My parents were tense. The demands of any road trip with little kids was aggravated by the stress of two-lane highways and the oppressive visual clutter of roadsigns and billboards right up to the shoulder of the road. It was an ugly scene.

On my drive south on US 81 from York, Nebraska, and through Kansas, the four-lane divided highway was edged with masses of wildflowers in almost every color. I love driving I-35 through north central Oklahoma, imagining the wildness of the country at the time of the Land Run and the Territorial years. As I cross each river I scan for places bandits might have hidden to elude lawmen, and I appreciate not having to look past tacky, dilapidated, and misspelled signs. Passing through the Arbuckle Mountains and Ardmore as the lush raspberry twilight deepened into violet iris evening the view was unmarred by lighted billboards except around the Indian casinos.

Lady Bird Johnson did much to elevate public expectations for pleasant driving experiences across our beautiful country. That the Congress passed even the flawed compromise Highway Beautification Act of 1965over the objections of the powerful outdoor advertising industry was a gift to future generations from Lady Bird and LBJ. Her influence is in those roadside banks of wildflowers, and in our landscaped highways. I would be hard pressed to name a contribution by any other First Lady in my lifetime that impacts as many people on a daily basis.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Church key

"And you've never seen a more tackily lovable rural garage than the one Randel Wright has designed," wrote Dallas Morning News critic Lawson Taitte. He was reviewing "Stanton's Garage" by Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, which runs through July ninth.

I've been in that "tackily lovable rural garage" on way too many roadtrips and family vacations run aground, amoco, and amok. Wright's set is so perfect I wanted to wash my hands just looking at the duct tape-patched vinyl couch. I knew hundreds of stranded fat guys in shorts have sweated on that vinyl, and more than one kid has barfed his orange soda. I could even taste the burnt coffee in the styrofoam cup. If I'd been sitting closer to the stage, I bet I could have seen the desicated fly wings and daddy longlegs on the window sill, as Wright has captured every other detail.

In a satisfying moment of Act I, the vending machine is the shooting victim of an imbalanced and immobilized Mobil Travel Guide reader. We know deep down that the Baby Ruth and Butterfinger bars are both stale and melty, but this one is for every person who ever lost a quarter while marooned at Zeke's Brake and Muffler.

Back when station attendants "filled-er-up" and gave us free placemats, thermal cups, and steak knives, I used to love the smell of gasoline. Now when I accidently spill a drop at the self-serve island, it's unappealing. Does leaded smell better than unleaded?

When characters in Joan Ackermann's play need to visit the gas station restroom, they carry a huge, grimy key to unlock the outside door. My mom would have been cringing. She taught us very early the skill of covering the seat with layered toilet paper! Thank heaven the play is set in Missouri. If it had been in rural Utah, the restroom would be missing its door entirely. Thank heaven, too, that someone invented Purell!



At 160 minutes the play runs long, even though the slow pace reinforces the everyman connection to the car repair delay frustration. Similar scenes could be merged so that the audience isn't worrying when the next clean restroom will be available on this journey.

CTD performs in a former Baptist church built in 1925. The space is funky, the bar (tended by CTD Managing Director and former Dallas Morning News theatre critic Tom Sime) is fun, but the sightlines are aggravating in the balcony. My neck will be stiff tomorrow from trying to see the pine air fresheners and gumball machine.

Seems like just yesterday a teen driver rear-ended our 1954 pea green Chevy on Highway 6 through Holdrege, Nebraska. The rear bumper punched into the car's trunk, so the Chevy looked just like a giant beer can opener had left its mark. The vampire said, "I vant to drink your Bud!"

Accountability

In the frigid winters of adolescent memories I arrived at the high school entrance before daylight in alternating pale green Chevrolets for M-W-F and T-Th. Our dads took turns driving Janice and me. My dad drove a 1954 Chevy automatic. Her dad drove a 1951 three-speed on the column with a windshield visor. A dad would start the car to warm it up at least fifteen minutes before we were to leave. Often, the batteries were plugged in overnight, or they wouldn't have started at all. Both trunks held a snowshovel, a container of sand, jumper cables, and a blanket. The '51 had chains on the tires. The '54 had snowtires. The '54 had an AM radio, but I'm not sure about the '51. Having lived in Texas for fifteen years, I finally quit keeping sand and a shovel in the trunk. The jumper cables are still there, but that's because I have sons. Those sons acquired the sort of cars that needed jumping many times.

When I was teaching preschool classes at the local rec center I was stunned when kids would "play hospital". They would slap "the patient" on the chest with a toy frypan, and yell, "Clear!" I always want to yell, "Clear!" when I use jumper cables. The preschoolers caused my confusion about defrybulators and defibrillators. The kids would also play "Lamaze" and coach each other about breathing and pushing. Then Mr. Potato Head would birth a mini-Potato Head from his rear storage pod bay door. The preschoolers took this in stride, but I was traumatized.

Janice and I have been reminiscing about practice driving with our dads. She wrote, "...I tried to turn the steering wheel (with no power steering) ... This was, of course, after I had killed it a couple times getting to the corner to turn. " Ah, yes. Killing the car. A common experience learning to drive!

When I was teaching my oldest to drive my stick shift minivan up at his high school parking lot, he killed it many, many times. Alas, this is Bush Country. We can carry concealed, but we can't fess up to "killing the car," or "killing the engine". The car "dies". The engine "dies". No one takes verbal responsibility for these inconvenient and unfortunate automotive murders perpetrated by stupidity or inexperience. No one is accountable. I've been laughed at many times in Oklahoma and Texas for using the expression, "I killed the car".

In Nebraska we own up to our transgressions. If the banana barf-yellow rusty 1970 Chevy Nova dies at the corner of 27th and Holdrege everyday on the way home from work due to a mechanical problem that requires opening the hood, unscrewing the butterfly wing nut, and poking a screwdriver into the air intake valve while being honked at by unsympathetic motorists, (not to mention trying not to get your muffler* stuck in the engine causing driver demise by strangulation), we say that the "car died". By contrast, if we have done some really dumb driver move, we admit we "killed the car".

*In this example, "muffler" means a long knit or crocheted scarf worn around the collar of a winter coat. It has nothing to do with Midas. I don't know if it is called a "muffler" down here, because you can almost get through January without even wearing a coat!

Sore Throat

Woke up with a scratchy, raw throat at 5:21 this morning. Oh, no! Please, please, not strep! After awhile I knew I was going to have to eat a sloppy joe with a big stacker dill pickle. It's not the best thing for a sore throat, but it's as close as I can get.

I belong to the Campbell's chicken gumbo soup recipe* contingent of Midwestern sloppy joe eaters, not the Heinz ketchup-Manwich contingent. This is very important. Down here in Texas when a displaced Nebraskan meets a displaced Iowan, the conversation gets around to loose meat sandwich preference pretty quick. Like religion and politics, it's important to find out just what kind of person you are dealing with so you can avoid stepping on conversational toes.

The best thing of all for a sore throat is a Tastee sandwich from the Tastee Inn & Out drive-in at 48th and Holdrege Streets in Lincoln, Nebraska. Actually an order of three Tastees is about what it takes to do the job of recovering from a sore throat. I sure hope the Tastee drive-in is still there.

When we turned the pea-green '54 Chevy into Tastees on the looping tree-lined driveway off Holdrege, the microphones stuck up from the ground like giant white lollipops. The pick-up window was on the passenger side of the car. Sometime I got to lean out of the car to get the cardboard tub of Tastee sandwiches from the woman with the white uniform and hairnet. Ahhhh, the steam and mustard aroma! [The tub made a fine tom-tom.] If we went inside to order and eat, the person at the counter would write up our order and send it in a pneumatic tube! This was fascinating to me as a kid, just as my sons loved the Omaha drive-through bank with the clear pneumatic tube.

I've invested a large chunk of today Googling Tastees, Maid-Rites, and other loose meat sandwiches. Never did find a photo of the Tastee Inn & Out in Lincoln, but it was lots of fun, and my throat is feeling much better. It was easier finding a photo of the original Runza Drive-In on the way to Pioneers Park, and the original Valentino's by the Ag Campus. Dad says the first Tastee Inn near the main NU campus was the site of the mid-Seventies Hong Kong Pizza King, a multicultural experience, and later became Pontillo's, home of the very bad breath meatball sandwich.

You can read the review of a play presented at the FringeNYC Festival last August:

Onion Girl, a new play written by Joye H. Cook-Levy and directed by Scott R.C. Levy, tells the story of Billy, a young woman whose Mother has died and left her the family business: the Tastee Inn & Out in Sioux City, Iowa, a relic of the original fast-food days. Regulars can drive up and place their "usual" orders with a person they know, and “onion chips with an extra container of dip” is a house specialty...

There's some disagreement about the year of the invention of the loose meat sandwich, but all signs point to Sioux City, Iowa. "Loose meat" is a pretty unappealing name. I had never heard that term until a 1994 episode of Roseanne. The Food Timeline's History of Sandwiches has a section on Sloppy Joes:

During the second half of the nineteenth century ground beef gained popularity in America because it was both economical and nourishing. Recipes for Hamburg Steaks (aka hamburgers) were included in many popular American cookbooks. Cooks often added inexpensive fillers (bread crumbs, ketchup, tomato paste, eggs, sweet peppers, minced onions, Worcestershire sauce, bottled horseradish, pickle relish, mustard, salt & pepper were the most popular) to stretch the meat. [Duh!] This ground beef mixture was then fashioned into meatballs, meat loaves, hamburger stew, and loose meat sandwiches....Where do sloppy joes fit in?
"The origins of this dish are unknown, but recipes for the dish date back at least to the 1940s. It dates in print to 1935. There is probably no Joe after whom it is named--but its rather messy appearance and tendency to drip off plate or roll makes "sloppy" an adequate description, and "Joe" is an American name of proletarian character and unassailable genuineness. There are many individual and regional variations on the dish. In Sioux City, Iowa, a dish of this type is called a "loosemeat sandwich," created in 1934 at Ye Olde Tavern Inn by Abraham and Bertha Kaled."
--- Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p.297).


Besides Tastee drama and history, there is Tastee art. This is from Kent Wolgamott's review of Wendy Jane Bantam's exhibit last spring:

...She also captures some Lincoln landmarks with three smaller paintings that also display her quirky sense of humor. They're "Sub Zero at the Topper Popper," "Zesto Zesto," in which ducks frolic in the parking lot in front of the ice cream shop, and "Spies at Tastee Inn & Out," where rabbits surround the building and one is on the roof holding binoculars.

I love it! I tried to find that painting on the website for her gallery, but I think Wendy sold it.

Okay, we've got drama, history, popular culture, medicine, and art. Now it's time for religion. This is the Tastee Inn Prayer from a story by David Boles. (I bet I went to school with his sister):

"Oh, Lord, may the pick-up window never be on the right side of the car and may the building never get a new coat of paint."

Can't you just hear Janis Joplin singing, "Oh Lord, won't ya buy me a Tastees sandwich. My friends all get curly fries and chocolate shakes, too..."

*Sloppy Joes:
1 lb. ground beef
1 can chicken gumbo soup
1/2 cup chopped onions or 1 heaping tbsp minced onions
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp catsup
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp salt & a shake of pepper
Brown beef and onions. Add other ingredients. Simmer 30 min.

Night Driving

One of the photos in the Mayo Clinic history site set me off on a night drive in memory country with my dad in the '54 pea green Chevy. The photo shows some of the Sisters of St. Francis who started St. Mary's hospital in Rochester.

The photo dates back many decades before my memory, but steam heat and nun garb didn't change that much. My memory is in black and white, which is somewhat strange anyway. It's probably a composite memory of several trips with my dad in the Chevy, just as Peter Coy's picture book is a composite trip. The story doesn't connect with children, but the illustrations connect with former children of a certain vintage.

I was probably four years old when we went "night driving" from Lincoln to Norfolk. I was riding shotgun to keep my dad awake on the 120 mile drive. We were going up to the hospital so Dad could see his grandmother or one of his aunts. He taught me to whistle on the trip. We stopped for gas. Dad let me choose a treat from the vending machine. I picked the Hostess Sno-balls because of the soft fuzzy pink appearance. About one bite into the dyed coconut and I swore I'd never eat coconut again! It's not cotton candy or Barbie's feather boa! It's almost as nasty as black jelly beans and goldfish crackers, but those are different stories for another time. It was nastier than the smell of dead skunk for miles and miles.

When we got to the hospital it was very late, well past visiting hours, and besides I was a little kid. Back then you had to be at least twelve to visit a patient. While Dad went upstairs, the nuns took me down to the kitchen and fed me some chicken noodle soup. Did any of this really happen? I'm not sure, but the pea green 1954 Chevy and the Hostess Sno-ball were definitely real.

Coo Coo Ca-Choo

Last Sunday Dave Barry wrote about that tasty paste we ate in kindergarten and at Sunday School. Robert Fulghum explained that all we really need to know we learned in kindergarten. Today I'm laughing about the equally important things I learned babysitting.

In sixth grade in 1966 I discovered pop music. I moved beyond my red crystal radio kit to a little transistor radio in its vinyl case. Every Saturday afternoon I would listen to the top 49 countdown on KLMS, 1490 AM with my earphone that looked like my grandmother's hearing aid. I could listen while I dug dandelions in the front yard. Any time we complained of boredom, my mom told us we could chose whether to darn our socks or to dig dandelions. That was excellent incentive to learn to entertain ourselves. [Imagine that! We didn't even have a VCR in the backseat of the Chevy. Heck, we had just gotten seatbelts.] And, thank heaven I had a mom with a constructive cure for boredom!

Cue the memory soundtrack:

• Georgy Girl
• To Sir With Love
• What's It All About, Alfie
• Penny Lane
• Ruby Tuesday
• I'm a Believer
• Don't Sleep in the Subway
• I Dig Rock and Roll Music
• I Think We're Alone Now
• Feeling Groovy

I bought 45s for eighty-eight cents in Kresges at the only mall in town. My allowance for four weeks was enough to buy a 45. I put those plastic swirly adaptors in the record centers so I could play them on our hi-fi. I wore Yardley white lip gloss and blue eye shadow, and read both Sixteen and Seventeen magazines. My PaperMate pen was designed by Marimekko, and I was introduced to pizza and Doritos.

The next year I started babysitting for a couple with two daughters during all the Cornhusker home games and the chamber music concerts. This is significant in that

1. I began developing my skills entertaining and educating kids which have served me well as a mom and art teacher
2. I was introduced to the lifestyle of a more affluent socio-economic group
3. I was the beneficiary of football tickets when they couldn't attend
4. They convinced my mom that I was old enough to see Franco Zefferelli's beautiful Romeo and Juliet
5. I developed the ability, now long lost, to visualize the action of a football game from the radio announcer's descriptions
6. I was paid a whopping seventy-five cents an hour, when most of my other "clients" paid thirty-five or fifty cents
7. I had the opportunity to read their copy of The Graduate, or I might still not have a clue what sex is.

Slow down. You move too fast. Got to make the morning last.

USPS

Breezed into my favorite post office in Richardson, TX (Motto: We won't make you want to gnaw your leg off to get out of this trap!) when it opened at 8:30 this morning. Mailing a family portrait of three GQ guys and their old chrome-top mom to my parents. Lucked out and got my favorite civil servant, a chatty English-speaking guy who looks like a somewhat past-fifty former surfer who enjoys his Coronas. I noticed the Buckminster Fuller commemorative stamp on the poster of "new issues", and was stunned to see the stamp came out in July. Where was I? How did I miss this? Why do I feel like I am being sucked down into the rabbit hole of Memory Lane? I don't have time for Memory Lane! Why does the rabbit hole look like the hair dryer of an early Barbie? I've got to get to work!

Flashback to 1976, University of Nebraska... Mary and I decide during lunch at the student union to cut class and go hear Bucky Fuller speak to an association of Nebraska architects in the auditorium of Sheldon Gallery. The auditorium is full, but we slip in and sit on the steps in the aisle. It's winter. I sense our midi-length wool coats bunched around us on the steps, and suspect we had on knee-high leather boots. Bucky is a visionary Mr. Magoo, all bald head and black Coke bottle glasses and high-energy stubborn conviction about better living through geometry. He is much cuter and crazier than the image on the postage stamp... A just-hatched baby archaeopteryx, featherless. You kinda want to rub his head for luck.

Flashback further to 1957, Lincoln. Sometimes I wonder if it was real, but I remember my dad having a homemade model of a geodesic dome in the basement of our duplex when I was two years old. You know how sometimes you think it is an authentic memory, but it turns out to be a distortion from an actual family slideshow to ward off cabin fever during a blizzard forty years ago? You think you travelled to Bismarck, North Dakota in 1960, but it turns out you ate a bismarck with a carton of chocolate milk at a diner in Marysville, Kansas on a rainy day? You remember getting carsick in the backseat of the '54 Chevy when you went driving around the reservoir dam that was under construction in that plastic raincoat that didn't breathe? Still, for the next twenty-plus years you checked North Dakota off on the map of States I Have Visited... So, I maybe just think Howie had that model of a geodesic dome, but for thirty years I expected that when he retired he would build a real dome out in the backyard.

So, the civil surfer servant said, "You really want those stamps? No one has ever asked for those stamps. We can't get rid of them. Didn't that guy make geo-dweeezy domes or something?" The stamps are truly ugly. They look more like Dr. Strangelove-Does-Epcot than Bucky. I will be glad to use them to mail Mary and my parents. The civil servant is crossed off my Prince Charming list, though!

Tell Santa I'm being very good

We had the pea green Chevy until about 1972. Then my dad bought a red and white 1961 Plymouth Sport Fury with push-button transmission and rectangular steering wheel. The windshield was tinted so the whole world looked like "South Pacific" in Panavision. That is the car I used to load up with 4'x4' canvases. It is also also the car in the Unfortunate Incident When the Moth Flew Up My Bellbottom Pant Leg. The 1961 Sport Fury is quite probably the greatest car ever made, and I would very much like one in mint condition if you happen to be out shopping. Make sure it is red and white. Thanks.

Early Childhood Influences

Lately, whenever my youngest whines, "Well, what should I eat?????????", I want to belt out, "Have a yogurt, Mr. Goldstone. Is there any little thing that I can do?", in my best Ethel Merman voice. Yes, it's a Gypsy flashback. That's the first indoor movie I can remember seeing. I was four at the most. There I am at the movies with my Broadway musical-loving parents.

I haven't had this prolonged of a flashback since my youngest took up the trumpet for middle school band in the fall of 1998. I refrained from sharing that he should "bump it with a trumpet", but on the other hand, you do have to have a gimmick. And that stands for T, and it rhymes with P, and that stands for pool. And I know all you folks are the right kind of parents... It was probably a forgone conclusion that I would be a librarian if I wasn't a burlesque stripper.

Before Gypsy, I can remember seeing a double-feature at the drive-in. I was probably expected to be asleep in the backseat of the 1954 pea-green Chevy. The first movie must have been something about Sinbad. There were pirates running around in poofy pants, and someone hiding in a rattan chest. The pirates plunged their swords into the chest. I recently viewed a '50's movie of "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad". It had the feel of that early memory, but not the actual sword scene. I'll have to keep searching for my roots.

The second feature presentation was "Porgy and Bess". While I have golden brown, shadowy memories of that movie and the legless Porgy, I still have a deep fondness for Gershwin music and those scooter/dollies kids race on in Phys. Ed.

My parents were shocked when I let my sons, then aged 10-14, watch Steve Martin in "Roxanne". "Good grief," I muttered, while I secretly sang, "You gotta do it with finesse!"