I Live in North Platte

(I wrote this piece seven years ago, when I moved to North Platte. Reading back through it recently, I had to chuckle. It's still relevant and it explains a lot about why we have put together a "Do The 52" competition for North Platte in 2008. Enjoy!)

     I live in North Platte. I’m shocked.

     Of course many of you live in North Platte too, without being the least bit shocked, but I came the scenic route. Remote rainforest of southern Peru through high school, Chicago and Indiana and California through graduate school, Washington D.C., southern Texas and Mexico through my twenties, Indonesia through my thirties, Dallas into my forties. If you’d asked me five years ago where I’d be living at the start of the 21st century, I could have named 100 possible countries and 1000 possible cities without ever getting close to North Platte.

     “Why North Platte?” ask people I'm leaving in Dallas and people I'm meeting in North Platte.

     “Why not North Platte?” I answer. For some reason, “why” sounds negative and “why not” sounds positive.

     Ultimately, the reason is Tammy, my fiancée. Tammy is the lovely and intelligent co-anchor weeknights on KNOP and she loves her job and has loyal fans who would wrap me in duct tape and lay me across the tracks if I enticed her anywhere else. I have corporations and organizations and clients in Dallas that greatly appreciate me, but none of them would duct tape Tammy for taking me away. If anything, they would raise their eyebrows conspicuously and ask, “With your background, why North Platte?”

     So now I live in North Platte, where people mostly think trees block the wind and a good view of nothing as far as the eye can see. Where I grew up, trees were the view. Now I have to learn north, south, east and west even when I’m referring to which corner of which drawer of which bedroom the camera is in. I practice, “Tammy, could you get the camera so I can get a picture of this cow? It’s in the southwest corner of the northwest dresser in the east bedroom.” I'm referring to the camera--not the cow.

     “It was in the northEAST dresser,” she says ten minutes later, patiently and lovingly but with unbelieving question marks in her eyes. Like, “Were you raised in a hut or something?” Tammy grew up on a ranch south of here, but where I grew up, dugout canoes were the only practical means of transportation and directions were just “upriver” and “downriver.” And they didn’t have dressers and drawers. Or bedrooms, for that matter.

     So now I have to find out what to do in North Platte. First, of course, I have to find a job, and I can’t quite figure out how running a training program in Mexico or directing a cooperative graduate linguistics program with a University in Sulawesi qualifies me for anything I’ve seen in the employment ads. But that’s a minor thing. When you’re a cross cultural trainer and real estate broker and author and speaker and handyman and building contractor and Peru tour guide, there’s always something you can do. Like ranching.

     More importantly, I have to find out how to enjoy this place, and I think I might be on my own. I checked in at the Chamber of Commerce on one of my earlier visits and asked what there was to do that was fun. Mind you, I’m not terribly fussy, having spent many years of my life 350 miles from the nearest light bulb.

     “Well…I don’t know,” said the first smiling lady, who apologized that she had only been here a couple of months. I thought two months might have been long enough to have discovered at least one fun thing to do.

     “There’s the train yards,” offered a second smiling lady who sounded like the train yards pretty well summarized North Platte.

     Within two years, I will offer them 50 things to do within 50 miles. I’m too old for 4 H and too young for square dancing, but I’m willing to bet that there’s a lot in between.

     But first, there are questions to be answered. Like why is it called “North Platte” when it’s between the North Platte and the South Platte. Why not a more accurate “Mid Platte”? Or a more descriptive “Flatte Platte?” Or, even trendier and more descriptive of its actual color, “Platte Latte?”

     And then I’ve got to learn everything I can about cattle and corn prices. Then I’ll be able to understand the noon news, read in a drone by someone who needs to learn how to make it sound fascinating that hog prices are the same as they were yesterday and the day before, but corn prices are moderately higher and cattle are…well…I forget how he said the cows are doing these days.

     Even though I’m chuckling, I’m not poking fun. I’m enchanted by this city and its culture, it’s friendly people and it’s super Walmart and its weeknight news anchor. I could have done far worse than moving to North Platte.

So, one thing at a time, and the first thing is to just get over the shock. If you’ve ever heard of Sulawesi, let’s have lunch. I’m going to love this place.

Comments

[Ann Milton]

I grew up in North Platte. I hiked the river, ice-skated, sledded and ran myself silly playing Kick the Can and No Ghosts Out Tonight. I fished with my dad, shot marbles, made a bag swing and built tree houses. The newspaper put our neighborhood gang’s photo in the paper for making a snowman twice as large as we were and coloring it with Kool-aid. During the summer we rode bikes to Cody Park to swim, play tennis and catch ground squirrels for pets. The Maytag motors that propelled our homemade go-carts fouled the neighborhood with noise and gray exhaust. We dressed up in my grandmother’s old hats, dresses and jewelry and paraded around the block. We tried to dig our own swimming pool, erected a shack in the back yard and tunneled under a slab of cement to make a clubhouse. We chased sugar beet trucks and cooked our booty in tin cans over fires in the yard. No grass grew in our backyard. Our feet beat it down as we played football, basketball, dug a golf course and searched for worms. My parents were the type that blessed the hours their three active children joined the neighborhood kids outside instead of bowling in the upstairs hallway or stomping around playing Haunted Husband, both games requiring loud screaming and jumping on and off beds.

I don’t know when I joined the chorus of voices that sang, “There’s nothing to do in North Platte.” I knew it by heart when I left for college, swearing never to return.

When my mother became less independent, I did move back, but vowed not to stay. Then I discovered that North Platte offers something I didn’t find in Denver, Anchorage, Seattle, Phoenix or any other city in which I chose to live. North Platte is just the right size to start whatever you want to do. Good meeting locations, small amounts of red tape, plentiful and happy volunteers, and above all—friendly people who want to try new things. The place seethes with creative ideas and the space and energy to do them.

I was amazed when Donna Meltzer started a Bluegrass Festival. Then Sharon Owen began the Literary Festival, opened her store to writers’ groups and began having two open mic nights a month. Espresso and Da Buzz host concerts. Trudy Merritt set NP to running and triathlon-ing, Ron Snell invented a Plattepus Fest and now has created the “Do the 52.” Heather Weigel got a grant for Frisbee in Cody Park. Wava Best and Patsy Smith constantly come up with new art ideas that involve the kids and the art-challenged of the city. Dave Herrald, Connie and Ken Bible conceived a Rail Fest. The list goes on and the message is clear. North Platte bustles with new beginnings, but if there’s something you’d like to have happening that’s not going on, you can start it yourself. There’s nothing to it but to do it. It’s a great town.

[Ina Snell]

We've been to Sulawesi, too. And lived 350 miles from a lightbulb. Wanna have lunch? (Delightful to read all over again!)