My Christmas story

 

Oh, Christmas tree --

The author, 2023

 what a spell

 you cast on me

 For most of my life, I've had a love-hate relationship with Christmas trees. I even told about this a mere 16 years ago on a stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people, in a Baltimore show called Stoop Storytelling. The theme of the night: Holidays From Hell, Part Deux. 

 Blame it on my childhood. When I was growing up, my parents never had a Christmas tree.

 Well, maybe that's understandable. After all, we were Jewish.

 One year, my father took me across our street in Northwest Baltimore, to visit a neighbor family and see what Christmas looked like. It was the home of the Landsmans -- Ray and Dorothy, and more kids than I could quickly count.

 Ray was Baltimore's first Jewish police lieutenant, but Dorothy was Catholic and they came to an agreement that their children (about a dozen of them, all with names beginning with the letter 'J') would be raised in the Catholic faith. 

 They had a tree, presents in various stages of unwrap, the kids running around in seeming chaos, the smell of a ham in the oven wafting out from the kitchen, and Dorothy upstairs in bed nursing the youngest of their brood. The Madonna of Royce Avenue. Close to 70 years later, I still remember it.

 We celebrated Hanukkah, of course. But no, we didn't have the proverbial Hanukkah bush. I had a modest Lionel electric train set, with a small figure-eight track that wrapped around a leg of our rarely-used dining room table. My father Ben set up the train every year for the holiday season, and by New Year's Day it was gone back into storage.

 The Jewish dropout

 Religion was not all that important to me. I had a nasty teacher in Hebrew school -- and early in fourth grade I walked out of the class in anger and never went back. My parents got a call from the school two weeks later asking why I hadn't been attending. 

We had a difficult conversation in which I was threatened with punishment, but the crisis was resolved with a compromise of taking private lessons for my bar mitzvah. And at 13, after the synagogue ceremony through which a boy becomes a man, I became a religion dropout as well.

 At 19, in a courthouse ceremony, I married a girlfriend, Vol, who had been raised in a Christian family -- but like me, religion was not relevant to her life. But there was this little thing that carried forward: She/we had to have a Christmas tree. In our mid-20s we also had a daughter. And in one of my last pictures of us as a family, she and our 4-year-old Jennifer (who later changed her name to FL) are sitting by the tree with presents. 

A few months later, after a decade together, our marriage ended.

 And I got married again. My second wife, Kathleen, also had been raised as a Christian, and like the first she came hard-wired for Christmas. We even once attended the midnight Christmas Eve service at the nearby Lovely Lane -- known as the mother church of American Methodism. It was, in fact, lovely. 

As for our tree, she believed in buying good ornaments -- and for my young daughter, a top-quality stuffed animal lion she named Li-Li (pron: lie-lie) that saw her through some challenging times as she bounced between parents in Baltimore and Florida.

 Marriage number two lasted about four years, and when Kathleen departed I was left with ornaments including a small herd of beautiful silken carousel horses and elephants that had graced our trees.

 The third proves the charm

 And I got married again. Yup, third Christian for this lapsed Jew -- this one not only having had a strong religious upbringing, but playing the organ in church and at age 12 leading a cherub choir. 

Attending Frostburg state college in Western Maryland, she made a point of going to services at every church in town -- eventually becoming the lone white person in the only black church there. The minister. Joe Gipson, became a friend, and after services each Sunday she traveled with him about nine miles down the road to Cumberland for his services at a second black church. She was their pianist.

 And near her 1967 graduation, when Bonnie married the first time, Joe was the soloist singing at her Baltimore church wedding.

 When we embarked on a life together in 1980, in our mid-30s, a Unitarian minister who was a favorite customer in her camera store, Bill Barnett, officiated the wedding in the living room of her little house just south of the city. And six weeks later, the daughter we created together was born.

 We began attending Bill's Unitarian Universalist church in Annapolis, which I enjoyed whenever I managed to stay awake during services. We wanted our daughters to benefit from its ecumenical education program, which was free of dogma and included sex education. Its services drew on beliefs and traditions from multiple faiths, with Christmas seeming to have a far greater joy than Easter. The existence of Christ was pretty much acknowledged, but for some in the congregation not necessarily a resurrection.

 At home, of course, we had a Christmas tree. Fortunately, Bonnie took care of decorating it. I just didn't enjoy the task -- or, for that matter, having to buy a damn tree every year. At least Bonnie preferred trees that were a little bare of branches. Lush trees did not show off the ornaments as well. Not quite a sad Charlie Brown tree, but one that looked good with its bare spots in back facing a wall. And usually priced lower than the "good" trees.

 And our collection of ornaments began to grow. The horses and elephants from my days with Kathleen galloped and trumpeted beautifully in company with "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments from 1944 (Bonnie Jean) and 1980 (daughter Lauren), little mice, a rhino and a hippo, lace snowflakes, intricate balls crafted by a blind Frostburg college friend decades ago, a German shepherd harking (not barking) to our dog Miss T, favorite teacher ornaments given to Bonnie by middle school students during her career as an educator, a tiny baseball symbolic of the too-much-attention I gave to my favorite spectator sport.

 And now, a dark turn...

 In 1994, I had a great idea: Why do we have to buy a tree? Why don't we walk into the woods near our home in suburban Pasadena and get one the old-fashioned way. Bonnie reluctantly agreed to my plan. 

Daughter Lauren, then all of 14 years old, was invited to join us on that December night, and was not so keen about the idea.

 "You mean you're going steal a tree?" she said. "Why don't you just buy a tree?"

 "I think poach would be a better term," I replied.

 So it was just me and Bonnie heading out about 11 o'clock, under a full moon on a foggy and unseasonably warm winter night. It seemed incredibly romantic. I drove us in our station wagon the nearly quarter-mile to edge of the woods, and, carrying a saw, was leading the way on its path in my usual fashion -- to make sure any residual spider webs did not reach my bride. 

 A little more than a tenth of mile into the woods, the path takes a curve and as I stepped ahead of Bonnie, she encountered an unexpected obstacle. I heard a thud and a cry of pain, and turned to find she had slipped in a small patch of mud and was thrashing around on the ground.

 I reached to help her up, and saw the bone protruding from her left wrist. We managed to get her standing, and as she was shaking I held her right arm on the short walk back to the parking spot. I gallantly put my jacket on her seat -- well, actually, to keep the seat from getting muddy because Bonnie had mud just about everywhere.

Back home, I helped get her clean and in fresh clothing for our ride to a hospital about seven miles away.

 The orthopedic surgeon on duty assessed the injury, and told us, "I have good news, and bad news Which would you like first?"

 "How about bad news," I suggested.

 "This is one of the worst fractures I've seen. But the good news is that I can fix it."

 I breathed a sigh of relief that proved only temporary. 

 "But I have more bad news," he continued. "First I have to break it again to get it into the right position."

 Bonnie was given some joy juice -- an intravenous painkiller -- and I held her right hand as the doc gave a quick twist to her injured wrist. The cracking sound stays with me even now, nearly 30 years later.

 While Bonnie was recovering from anesthesia after the ensuing surgery, I was dispatched about 3 a.m. to a nearby all-night pharmacy to fill her prescription for a pain med she would need at home. The pharmacist looked at the prescription and asked, "Do you want the name brand or a generic?"

 "What's the difference?" I asked.

 "The generic is 10 dollars, and the name brand is 35."

 Okay. I admit it. I was too cheap to pay for a Christmas tree. But now, I was overwhelmed by guilt. It's like the yin and yang of my Jewish upbringing. What to do?!!

 "Give her the good stuff," I stammered.

 So the upshot is I spent $50 for the emergency room co-pay, $35 for Percocet pills, and didn't even have a tree to show for it. 

 The next day, as Bonnie recuperated at home, I drove two miles up the road to Ace Hardware and found most of the Christmas trees had already been sold. But among those left in the store yard was the perfect tree for Bonnie. Not purely Charlie Brown. Just a nice, not-too-branchy tree. A store employee cut a few inches off the bottom so it would stay fresh resting in the water of our tree stand, and helped me tie it to the station wagon roof rack.

 I was pretty pleased with myself, and after pulling onto our driveway went into the house and invited Lauren outside to see the wonderful tree I had bought for $10. And looking it over, with more wisdom than any 14-year-old should possess, she stared straight at me and gave me the come-uppance I so cheaply deserved: "I told you so."

 Epilogue 

 Bonnie continued over the years to demand a tree at Christmas, and I coped as well as I could. One year a local garden center was having its last-day going-out-of-business sale, and had a beautiful $500 artificial Christmas tree priced at 90 percent off. I told Bonnie.

 She said no.

 In 2019, my friend and former newspaper colleague Frank Roylance posted on Facebook that he and his wife were downsizing for a move into a condo and did anyone want their artificial Christmas tree -- free! And I jumped at it, begging Bonnie to relent. So off we went, to Frank's house north of the city, and together we managed to get the long and heavy box wedged into our hatchback car.

 We stored it on a high shelf in our backyard shed, but in ensuing years the tree just lay in its long heavy cardboard box. We were not able to set it up for Christmas in 2019, as I had just battled a life-threatening ordeal with a MRSA infection and sepsis.

 And in 2020, the pandemic turned our world upside-down. Bonnie late in the fall had surgery to remove her gallbladder, and there would be no Christmas fanfare. And in early January of 2021, as the first vaccines for Covid were rolling out, we learned that Bonnie had advanced and aggressive pancreatic cancer.

 A few weeks later, Bonnie wrote about the uncertainty of how long she would survive -- hoping that she might be able to attend a nephew's wedding, or see another Christmas with our families. But it was not to be. Her life journey ended in March, 10 days before the arrival of spring. 

 And the tree lay in its box in the shed, until this week.

 Inspired by a friend I have been dating in recent months, and her artificial but lovely tree I had helped assemble in her apartment (yeah, she is a Christian... just the way my life continues to play out... and seriously hard-wired for Christmas), I trudged back to my shed a few days ago and lugged that heavy box into my house. 

 Sunday night, I took it out -- it was in three pieces, the bottom and middle sections very heavy and the top relatively light. I cleared away from the living room half a dozen boxes of some of the too-much-stuff accumulated during four decades in suburbia, pieced the tree together in front of the bay front window, and plugged it in.

 Miraculously, every little light bulb on the seven-and-a-half-foot-tall tree was illuminated.

 On Monday morning, I climbed into the attic and went down to the basement to retrieve boxes of Christmas ornaments and decorations, including some that have outlived three marriages and half a century of moves, divorces and loss, and set to work.

 I had never in my entire life trimmed a Christmas tree solo, and I spent hours at the task, sorting through ornaments that came with memories of mostly happy times and joys.

Bonnie's 1944 ornament

 There were the sand dollars netted from the surf on Florida's Gulf coast by our kids in 1989, which they painted for that year's tree and endured for nearly 30 others over the course of our lives. Some were so beautiful and evoked such wonderful memories that I was in tears.

There's even a dragon ornament, purchased at a science fiction convention years ago -- before Game of Thrones hatched three of them into pop culture.

 The tree left only a few inches to spare below the ceiling, and was too tall for one tradition that had been a continuing bad joke: Deciding who gets to put the tree up the angel's butt. Well, that would be me this time. The angel was much too tall, so I set it on the windowsill next to an ornamental Buddha. Several smaller angels, in various sizes, found perches elsewhere on the tree.

 When I was done, I turned off the lights in the house and plugged in the tree.

 I was overwhelmed by its beauty

 And I thought maybe I wasn't really alone, after all. 

My 2023 tree, in its glory

 

Tree dragon

 

A closer look

On the Road Again, Chapter 10

Cadillac Ranch draws visitors to Texas pasture. (Photos (c) Bonnie J. Schupp)

Last stop in New Mexico,

but more craziness

in Lone Star State

Invest in spray paint stock, folks!

Tucumcari… tuckawhat? That’s where we settled for our final night in New Mexico, after turning eastward for the long drive home. Bonnie was worn out in our almost nightly (and free with 20,000 points) Holiday Inn Express du jour, but I went out to peek at the town, fill the gas tank and get the dead bugs off the windshield.

Summer weather was settling in, with temperatures rising into the 90s, and bugs were attacking the windshield like it was a kamikaze suicide mission. (Flying grasshoppers, it looked like, made the loudest impact and biggest mess.)

Outside a closed cafe, Tucumcari

Tucumcari turned out to be enchanting, in an oddball way. Driving along a mile or so of Historic Route 66, I found an assortment of old-style roadside motels, stores and gas stations in various states of survival, decay or abandonment – like the Apache motel near the edge of town, a big sign above the building topped by an Indian face and “vacancy” at the bottom. A tiny notice on a boarded office window read “no trespassing.” And the Motel Entrance arrow pointed to a line of boarded windows and doors.

I also took note of a huge horned animal skeleton on the back of a pickup truck alongside the Tepee Curios shop. Nearby, a camel stood atop the sign of the Safari Motel – and a big one stood in the lobby by the front window.

Route 66 museum monument

But in the glare of the setting sun, I missed a lot more crazy-great stuff – so the next morning, we headed together to check out the roadside attractions there. One stop on the west side of town was a large Route 66 monument incorporating a giant 1950s-style automobile tailfin, standing in front of the local Route 66 museum.

But who needed to see the museum, when the town itself was such an amazing exhibition of faded, quirky glory. Well, not all faded. There was the Blue Swallow Motel, whose owners over the last six years or so have lovingly restored the place to its 1940s and 1950s beauty, including antique automobiles, colorful painted metal chairs outside each room, and adjoining garages bearing signs and painted murals. The motel dates to 1941, and has a working 1941 Kelvinator refrigerator/freezer named “Lois.”

Blue Swallow rooms have adjoining garages,.

There’s a couple of murals, including one of James Dean smoking a cigarette and standing next to his Porsche automobile – presumably the one in which he died in a crash.

On an adjoining lot stands an old gas station with two pairs of “pumps” – one for leaded gasoline, the other ethyl – at period prices. On another fuel island, a pair of Tesla charging stations. 

Most of the Blue Swallow rooms have a queen bed, and prices start at $89 a night, an employee  said as we peered into some that had just been vacated and were being cleaned.

Old artsy signs, neon and not, abound on the roadside – many having outlived their businesses. A former laundry building has one depicting a housewife doing her washing in a round tub.

One motel has a sign declaring that Clint Eastwood stayed there. 

A roadside café has half an airplane nestled against its side wall.

And there’s three miles of this kitsch! Even an Edsel! (Come to think, why not an Edsel? It’s a perfect touch.)

We spent the noontime hour there as Bonnie took dozens of pictures, and then bid adieu (or maybe adios) to New Mexico, hopping back onto Interstate 40 and heading into the Texas panhandle – the narrowest part of the Lone Star State.

Cadillac, VW graveyards and a giant cross

Two graffiti painters add their touches to buried Caddies.

One of the best-known quirky attractions in Texas is the Cadillac Ranch, just off Interstate 40 west of Amarillo. It is a line of Cadillac automobiles half-buried hood-down in a pasture, baking under an unforgiving sun on the Wednesday after Memorial Day. Not a holiday, not a weekend… and we were stunned to find a steady stream of a couple dozen gawkers and graffiti painters walking about a tenth of mile in from the frontage roadway parking area.

With shifting winds, it was difficult to avoid the fumes of spray-painters' efforts. Graffiti is encouraged. Even the old barbed-wire pasture fence has been painted. In a sense, whatever anyone paints on the cars may last forever – but under layers of graffiti added by other visitors. Who knows how long this bizarre display will survive, but I imagine that after a century or two of paint layers, the Cadillac frames will have grown larger.

A Slug Bug jalopy adds artistic touch.

Beetles planted at Slug Bug Ranch

Our next stop was a spoof of Cadillac Ranch about 20 miles east of Amarillo, near the community of Conway. It is called the Slug Bug Ranch, for a row of five dead Volkswagen Beetles similarly buried and adorned with layers of graffiti. But there’s also several buildings of a former fuel stop bearing wacky messages, and back in a grassy field an old pickup truck – its hood popped open – under the rotting canopy of a long-abandoned Texaco garage. 

For visual punning, there was the ruins of an old Shell station, a shell of its former self.

Giant Cross rises over Stations of the Cross.

Further east, in the town of Groom, we found religion – a 19-story cross reputed to be the second-biggest in the Western Hemisphere, standing almost like a sundial surrounded by metal sculptures depicting the Stations of the Cross. 

Climb a nearby stairway to find a recreation of Christ’s tomb watched over by a pair of angels.

On a blistering hot day, it was a relief to check out the center of the property featuring a religion-themed fountain, and an air-conditioned building with a gift shop, divinely clean restrooms, and a 230-seat movie theater screening an eight-minute inspirational film. I peeked inside and found not a single soul, just empty seats. Jesus!

 

 

Texas over and done, quickly!

The Panhandle is just 177 miles wide, so we reached Oklahoma by 6 p.m. (even after losing an hour, since crossing into Texas we had entered the Central Time Zone and lost an hour). And 40 miles later, we pulled into Elk City and found our next Holiday Inn Express – this one extraordinarily luxurious, and free for our stay (at a bargain surrender of 15,000 reward points).

After sharing a steak dinner at a nearby sports bar and grill, called Boomtown, we settled into our executive king room (an upgrade over the standard twin-double afforded us Platinum Rewards members when available) and expected to watch a late-night comedy show. But none was being aired over the local network affiliates. Instead, we were treated to dramatic live coverage of a string of violent storms sweeping southeasterly 30 to 40 miles north of Elk City.

Amazing to watch the coverage as the TV stations had crews broadcasting the view through windshields as they drove into the storms. The weather anchors were giving minute-by-minute storm tracks, warning of cyclonic action, winds of 60 to 90 mph, and the possibility of hail the size of baseballs. One road crew told of hail hits cracking the windshield, and showed an image of a car perhaps two-tenths of mile in front of them spinning around in the middle of the road before the driver luckily regained control.

There were indications the storms could reach Interstate 40, closer to Oklahoma City – one of our planned destinations for Thursday afternoon. But by morning, there was no alarming news about the overnight drama. Just another weather day in Oklahoma, I guess.

Next chapter: A few stops in a very wide state, OK?

On the Road Again... Part 7

Our ribbon of asphalt through the Nebraska Sandhills (above), and Pilgrim Holiness Church (below, left). (Photos by Bonnie J. Schupp)


Exploring faith and whimsy
before leaving Nebraska

ARTHUR, Nebraska – It’s not exactly the church around the corner, but the Pilgrim Holiness Church is a must-visit kind of place. It was made of hay bales in the late 1920s, and survived the possibility of being eaten by cows with coatings of plaster and stucco.

Arthur has a population of maybe 200 – “more at night than daytime,” jokes the town’s busiest octogenarian, Don Thompson, just done mowing grass in the local cemetery.

Don found us walking around the old white church, where Bonnie was taking pictures. We were easy to find. Probably everyone in town knew we had come through in the red Camry with those flashy Star-Spangled Banner bicentennial tags from Maryland, but hardly unique as travelers drawn by their religious oddity.

Our instant tour guide drew a cluster of keys from his pants pocket. “I think I have the right one,” he allows, slipping the silvery key into a padlock that keeps out intruders – not that such a tiny place would have a church burglar. It clicks open.

 Don Thompson sits in front of the double row of pews (above), and the wall opening that reveals hay behind the plaster.

Inside, although the church hasn’t been used for services in many years, are two neat rows of wooden pews, and a fading print color image of Jesus looking out from the wall behind the pulpit.

Don shows us an opening in the wall (photo, right), revealing a section of the straw under the plaster. Then he leads us to the front and sits down at an old player piano – not original to the church, but donated to the landmark by a relative. He pumps a foot pedal and the roll of music begins to turn, cranking out a hymn.

Bonnie – a church organist in her teens -- takes the seat and plays “Jesus Loves Me,” and Don (click on video, below) begins singing.  It’s so incredibly timeless, this moment in the house of worship.

 

 

Bonnie plays the old piano, and Don sings the hymn.

Then he beckons us into the back rooms, where a succession of preachers, some of them women,  made their home over the decades. Artifacts are everywhere. Old scrub washers and hand-plungers, a stove from the 1920s, dusty wall calendars with unturned pages,

lots of patent medicine bottles.

And upstairs, more furnishings – some from the church, others, like an early Singer pedal-operated sewing machine, brought there after their owners passed on. Don opens a couple of the little square drawers in the machine’s table, and there are the old bobbins and needles in perfect condition.

Time has taken a toll here. Ceilings and walls have stains and cracks, there’s dust and cobwebs. Spiders go about their business, seeming oblivious to passers-by like us. Life goes on here, just not necessarily the human part of... dare I say, God’s creation.

As we’re chatting, and Don checks in by cell phone with his wife Helen, we learn that they’ve been married since New Year’s Eve of 1950 – eligible for Bonnie’s Together 40-Plus photo-and-words project examining the glue that holds people together for so long, first with a single word (other than “love”) and then a short explanation for that choice.

“Christian,” Don says without hesitation, adding one of his ever-quick one-liners: “I’m always forgiving her.”

He invites us to their home, but on the way we stop for a look inside what “Roasdside America” lists as the world’s smallest courthouse. Don has the key, of course – the same one from the church.

The wooden 1914 building served as the Arthur County courthouse, and offices of the county clerk and commissioners, until 1961 – and, wouldn’t you know it, Don Thompson, at 83, is the sole survivor of all the commissioners who had met there for nearly half a century. A neatly typed sheet lists all the names and dates, and there was Don in the last group of three names.

There’s all manner of records and bric-a-brac sitting out on counters and tables, like old typewriters, a safe (its door removed, but lying atop it), newspapers (Warren Commission report released, Challenger disaster... historic events, but dating after the courthouse was replaced by a bigger, more modern building mere steps away). A set of shelves holds records from the local public schools dating to the 1890s. It’s a dissheveled, but fascinating, museum – frozen in time, just like the church.

And then there’s the old jail. The little wooden building, a shack really, was missing the expected padlock on its heavy wood door. Maybe folks don’t go out of their way to break into a jail. But Don told us there was one inmate many years ago, a neer-do-well named Lemuel, who tried to break out from one of the three tiny wooden-slat cells.

Jail cell furnishings

.e got into the outer room and banged on the inside of the heavy door, possibly with a piece of metal from the wood stove. Don couldn’t remember exactly what was used, but pointed with pride at the slight gouges that remain from the pounding. As for Lem, someone noticed the noise and foiled his escape attempt. Eventually, Don said, someone shot him. Maybe he’s in a better place? Probably not.

The Thompson house, which Don himself enlarged after Helen wanted to move into town from their 400-acre ranch some 12 miles away, is heavy adorned with Christian displays and photos of their large family. They have four children (three boys, one girl), eight grandchildren (all but one of them girls) and seven great-grandsons. The modern kitchen is Helen’s domain, and she’s talking with Bonnie and inviting us to stay for an early-afternoon dinner that’s on the stove, while Don takes me into his domain – a cluttered office packed with his shortwave radio equipment.

Don has been on the airwaves since the early 1950s, even built his own 100-foot transmitting tower out on the ranch. He’s also been a pilot, as co-owner years ago of a family airplane, still works as an electrician, digs the graves and buries the dead, and even works for a nearby county as a part-time roads inspector. One of his paintings, of the little ranchhouse where he was raised, is hanging along with many souvenirs and awards on the wall, near a drawing by a granddaughter of Jesus on the cross. Don also allows as how he’s been a writer, even selling some of his stories.  As I said, he’s rather busy for a country gentleman of 83½ years.

Helen sets up a card table in the living room and Bonnie helps open a set of folding chairs where we sit down to a supper of homemade meatballs and gravy, with macaroni salad, corn, and bright red and yellow varieties of fresh tomatoes. We hold hands, and Helen offers a prayer of thanks for the food, and for us visiting them.

Don and Helen (left), pictured for Bonnie's project.

 Religion is her strength. And, for Bonnie’s project, it is also her word.







 Her explanation is much longer than Don’s, but at its essence, she says, “Jesus Christ is our mainstay. All of our children go to church.” And there’s great pride and inner strength in her faith.

Our lives and feelings about religion are vastly different. But here in America’s heartland, some 1,600 miles from home, it’s good to look at the place of belief from another, very real, point of view.

And now this: Carhenge

From tiny Arthur, we hit the road for about 90 miles north and west, along scenic Route 2 through the Nebraska sandhills – seeing plenty of rolling hills of grasslands but hardly an ear of corn. This is cattle country, where many ranches are measured in thousands of acres. We had the railroad tracks to our right, and about every 30 minutes a long eastbound train would pass us, hauling cars loaded with Wyoming coal. 

Carhenge, and a perfect Nebraska sky.

Carhenge... America at its whimsiest.

Our destination was Alliance, home to that oddest of tourist attractions in this huge state: Carhenge. Doubtless you’ve seen it pictured, the old cars partially buried nose-first in the ground, and others balanced and wired atop them in imitation of that other “henge” in England. A town museum video on area history from native American roots to the 21^st century took note of Carhenge, putting the number of visitors at some 87,000 a year. And small wonder, because it’s hilarious – the cars, and whimsical sculptures mostly crafted from car parts and an occasional chassis.

Carhenge was created in 1987 by engineer Jim Reinders as a memorial to his father on land once farmed by his family. It has grown in recent years with art-car contributions by other artsy folks of similar quirky bent.

Jurassic parking at Carhenge

Whether one might call it a spiritual invocation or spoof of the American auto industry, no doubt about it being art. It is very much in the spirit of Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum.

It was late afternoon, and we decided to spend the night in Alliance – particularly after our friends at the IHG hotels group 800-number told me there was special deal, and our king-bed room would set us back only 5,000 points a night. And it proved so convenient and comfortable after 12 days on the road, we decided to chill out for two nights instead. (Somehow, after four free nights this trip, we still have nearly 65,000 points available!)

On our second day, Saturday, we explored the sleepy town. Most shops along Box Butte Avenue, the historic business district, were closed. The impressive-looking Alliance Theatre movie house, dating to 1937, was the brightest spot – but not open until evening.  We drove about half a mile to find Central Park, graced by among other attractions a spectacular fountain, an arboretum (closed, but beautiful outside gardens accessible), and the Knight Museum Sandhills Center.

Named for a town doctor who became one of its most successful businessmen, and left money to build it, the museum has a large collection focused on regional history and fascinating artifacts. We luckily arrived on one of the final days for a traveling show of photographs of native Americans from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, which complemented the museum’s display of native art and lifestyle relics.

When we arrived in Nebraska about four days earlier, it was a world we knew little about beyond its flat corn country. Now, as we prepare to leave for South Dakota, it’s like an old friend... albeit, Republican. We’ll miss it, and the kindness of strangers who casually greet you with a “good morning” as your turn the aisle past them in the Safeway supermarket.