Crossing Nebraska

I said goodbye to my television a couple of weeks ago – a big old tube model that I’ve been carrying around from place to place since I first moved out on my own. It was a rather unceremonious ending for such a long-term relationship, I suppose, but it was also quite a long time in coming. I’ve been downsizing in general over the past couple of years and this was just one more step. And so it was that I woke up one Saturday morning with a little voice inside my head saying: “Oh yeah, you’ve been meaning to get rid of this haven’t you.” Off we went to Goodwill.     The thing about owning a television is that, whether or not it’s actually on, it tends to dictate what goes on around it. Whether it resides in your living room, family room, kitchen, or bedroom, it demands that people gather around it, and it insists that it be watched. When it happens to reside in the living room or family room, though, it has a way of becoming a veritable shrine to entertainment...

Missouri is often referred to as The Cave State for its many caves and grottoes formed by groundwater percolating through the limestone bluffs and hillsides. As such, in my youth I came to be a bit of a spelunker – not as much as was my friend, Mike, mind you, who seemed to have some special inside knowledge with respect to cavern whereabouts, but close. I’ll never forget the last excursion we went on together. Yes, it was the last one because, to tell you the truth, I don’t much like being stuck.   We were actually in a very well-known cavern, one known for having a “back door” up amongst the rolling hills far beyond the yawning main entrance. This time, however, we were off in a side passageway that we were hoping might have a similar, but as-yet-undiscovered, back entrance – perhaps a sinkhole at the bottom of a nondescript hollow or something. For some reason that I can no longer recall, I led the way. Maybe we flipped a coin, or maybe I was the stockier of the two of u...