An All Too Brief Vacation

We left for Lincoln bright and early Friday morning. Ok, not too early but we got on the road by eight. And started off on our long drive. To town where we played at the playground while the car got washed. We had decided to take the northern rout instead of the southerly and more direct rout because we always go that way and wanted a change of scenery.

Since we  were going that general direction anyway I thought it would be interesting to go a little farther off course and go through the area my Grandpa grew up in. That part of Nebraska is beautiful, not that most of the rest of the state isn’t but I am partial to the big rolling hills and huge oak trees.

We found Fullerton easily enough. A beautiful little town with big old houses and the typical main street. It was much bigger than my vague remembrances as a child. Nobody could quite remember the exact location of the house my great grandparents had lived in after moving to town and I was a rather small child at the time. I found an area that seemed vaguely familiar and decided to call that the place.

We also stopped by what may have been the farm, or at least the general area where the farm used to be that my Grandpa grew up on. I used to love to hear the stories about rooster fights he would encourage, terrible injuries incurred by he and his brothers and, most of all, about the teams of horses they farmed with. I loved to hear about Prince and Bird and all the others long forgotten, how as a very young boy, five I think, his dad would put him to driving the team, at the end of the field he would come and turn them around and put my grandpa back on the reins.

The only hint as to the location of the old place was that part of it had been sold as a church camp. Sure enough my searches found Whispering Cedars Baptist church camp in just the right area. So we drove up and looked at it. High on the bluffs just as it had been described we found it. Maybe we drove past the old place too but we had no idea where it was. I thought about stopping by some nearby farm and asking, rural memories often go back that far, but that seemed a little excessive. We had found the general area and that was enough.

Then in to Genoa to the cemetery to visit my great grandparents graves and back on the road, rushing to Lincoln.