Finishing stage 9 came with a price tag. Temperatures have averaged over 100 degrees for nine consecutive days. As I pushed to walk 20 miles every day inevitably the friction on my now swollen feet teamed up with moist socks and pronating shoes to bring up four foot blister. Despite my long experience in dealing with this problem I had to endure my share of pain and plod along the hot road surface to finally finish the stage. My reward was a simple, but beautiful, sign announcing “Welcome to Beatrice”

“Our dog Duke was free but we call him the $6500 pet. First he had worms. That cost us $1000. Then he tore up the venetian blinds. That was another $5500. Yea, we still named this new wine bar after ole Duke.”
Duke’s has an extensive wine list and good food. The owner James is an accomplished world adventurer. Do visit!

Thank God for small town specialty shoe stores. Such is Brown’s squeezed in along a Main Street in rural Nebraska. Frantically, I searched for a way to solve my little toe injury dilemma. Brown’s produced open toed shoes. Thank you Nick Almond!

P.S. I had searched the Local Wall Mart, high and low, but no men’s sandals. Now that is a bummer. Or is it an oversight?

Over another glass of wine, Vicky the restaurant assistant manager tells me more about the farming business. “Yes, some of those combines are owned by the Co _op or independent operators. They know from experience if we need help in the harvest. We are always trying to determine the best time to begin. If the corn is too dry the mill pays us less. If the crop is too wet, it’s too heavy, and we still get paid less. Farmers are smart. They have to figure all of this out”

“Usually we just let the stalks lay on the fields after harvest. It will decompose over the winter. Now at times you need to go into the field and de-tassel or cut off the stem”, Vicky continues. “Government Crop insurance, it is expensive” We can’t always afford it”
So now as I wander another 100 miles through Nebraska farm country I will consider my new found knowledge provide me by Vicky of Holdrege.

As you walk across farm country for ten days and more questions pop into your mind. Where does the irrigation water come from? What happens to the excess plant when the corn is harvested? Who owns the caravans of “combines” passing me leisurely along the open road? Well, to the rescue along comes Miss Vicky of Holdrege, Nebraska. She tells me, “Irrigation water comes from the Ogallala aquifer” I learn too farmers dig wells to get to the irrigation water. “We have problems with the corn borer moth. It works its way into the middle of the stalk. We use “round up” a pesticide.”

As I walked and observed hundreds of acres of soy beans fields, I notice sprinklings of taller green plants towering in height above the bean crop. “We call that rogue beans” Vicky explains. “We need to send folks into the bean fields to cut out this corn which has sprung up. I tell Vicky I read that corn is selling for six dollars a bushel and soybean is higher. “Actually, with the draught corn is now higher than six dollars. Bean fields yield less than corn. You get 210 bushels per acre for corn and only about 60 for beans”

“My family has been here since 1870”, Bob Graff said as he surveyed his dried out corn field. “Over the last five years my yield averaged 155 bushels per acre. It’s been s dry this year we’ll be lucky to yield 60”, he lamented.
The Graff family was originally lured to Nebraska by President Abe Lincoln’s Homestead Act which granted 160 free acres of land to “homesteaders” who agreed to move to then desolate parts of the U.S. and work the land for five years. “We now have a “no till” rule. We just leave the corn stalks on the ground that way we don’t churn p the soil and can preserve the nutrients in the ground”. I guess we will be here for a long to come”, Graff continued as he drove off to inspect his soy bean crop.

Strange but after only a week walking my body asked for a rest. I toured the “Czech Capital of America”. Homesteaders from Czechoslovakia migrated to this region of Eastern Nebraska in the 1860’s to flee persecution and achieve religious freedom. Their numbers ultimately reached 50,000 hearty souls who successfully tamed a once barren and lonely land.

My little right toe started to throb late yesterday a victim of the incessant heat and personal passion to walk twenty miles every day. Today, after only nine miles, with the temperature at a musty 103 I was in limp mode. The throbbing migrated to pain. After another eight sweaty, uncomfortable, miles I rested for the night. Yes, tomorrow must be a rest day!

That is, visit the Geneva in central Nebraska. It possesses a typically well maintained main street with a 1950’s character. Wood, freshly painted, two story buildings encircle the town square and courthouse. Fillmore County named in 1870 for U.S. President Willard Fillmore. For a few blocks, to the north and south of the square, neat, smallish [by New York standards] homes array the streets. Finely trimmed lawns and occasional swing and play sets signal that Geneva is a family town.

It is always the same, not only in New York, L.A. and Washington, D. C. All along the byways of America, including tiny stops like Minden, Clay City and Geneva, Nebraska, where here I sit tonight, local folks are glued to the television watching the evening news. The talking heads explain, theorize and pontificate. The home folks listen, reflect and cogitate and life goes on.