Excerpt from Satirical History of NEBRASKA
NEW “ALL-TOO-TRUE-BLUE” (ALTERNATIVE) STATE HISTORIES
TIME IMMEMORIAL – Wind, Dinosaurs, and Indians
The first inhabitant of Nebraska was wind. It never left. The next inhabitants of Nebraska were the Dinohippuses. They lived around Chimney Rock. The Dinohippuses used Chimney Rock as a boundary marker, waypoint, and landmark.
Then the Indians came from the east and, not being the pickiest of eaters, scarfed up all the Dinohippuses. They claimed that the Dinohippuses tasted like chicken. But that’s the same thing the Dinohippuses said about the Indians.
After that, seeing that the Indians had gotten rid of the pesky Dinohippuses (whose sheer mass and halitosis gave them the fantods), the usual suspects moved in – that is to say, the French and the Spanish. They were always doing that, it seems. No sooner would the Indians get settled in an area than a gaggle of metal-hatted yahoos and furry-faced fur trappers would come traipsing in with their bellicose and belligerent ways.
As you can see from this picture from a family album, the Dinohippus was kind of like a horse without flesh and guts:
Photo of Dinohippus at his or her 8th grade graduation ceremony made available by Ghedoghedo
1846 to 1869 — Oregon Trail Heyday
From the mid-1840s to the late 1860s, the Oregon Trail was in constant use by those “Ho-ing” Westward. People traveled the trail prior to 1846 and after 1869, but those years bracketed the Trail’s heyday.
In Nebraska, landmarks along the trail which were eagerly looked for by travelers included Courthouse Rock, Jailhouse Rock (which later became an inspiration to Elvis), and Chimney Rock, which is shown below as seen by weary travelers of that time period:
1854 — Kansas/Nebraska Act (Territoryhood)
When the Kansas/Nebraska Act went into effect in 1854, Nebraska was made a Territory. A sales territory, that is, for carpetbaggers and swindlers and dandies who thought there was nothing but country bumpkins and gullible yokels out in “the Great American Desert,” as they called Nebraska at the time.
The farmers in Nebraska would have had little recourse for satisfaction after finding they had been bamboozled by these scalawags if not for their pitchforks and trained attack oxen
1862 — Homestead Act
The Homestead Act, which was passed in 1862, led to increased westward migration throughout the 1860s. It provided free land to those who would build structures on it and work it for five years.
This collaborative fingerpainting by Stephen Curry and Burl Ives reflects the Zeitgeist of those taking part in these heady times:
If you look closely, you can see Casey Jones engineering the train, Abraham Lincoln speechifying, Tom Sawyer chasing Becky Thatcher around the schoolyard, your great-grandfather cultivating turnips, and Red Cloud looking on, aghast
1863 – Lincoln Chooses Omaha as U.P. Terminus
Speaking of Abraham Lincoln (for whom Abraham, Nebraska, was named), that rocker of the Top Hat chose Omaha as the eastern terminus of the transcontinental railroad in 1863.
Soon railroad tracks could be seen wherever people looked (and they existed where they didn’t look, too).
This made the transmigration of souls from the east to the west much more convenient than it had been in previous times.
Here’s a subliminal advertisement slipped into the leading journals of the day, subtly broaching the possibility of relocating to Nebraska:
They mentioned Iowa in there, too, to make Nebraska seem more appealing by comparison. After all, everybody thought Iowa was Idaho, and most people didn’t want to travel clear across the continent just to become spud farmers
1879 – Standing Bear
The Ponca man Standing Bear went to court in 1879 in Omaha to clear up confusion regarding the Ponca ceding land of theirs.
Advocate of Native American rights Thomas Tibbles, who had served under John Brown, made the situation known via the Omaha Daily Herald, which he edited.
Due to his “stubbornness” in refusing to relocate where the authorities claimed he had agreed to move, Standing Bear (and others) were arrested.
At the crux of the legalities was the belief that Indians were not people. Yes, you read that right.
The brouhaha became a federal case (literally). Standing Bear gave a brief but logical speech in court proving that he was, indeed, a man.
The upshot was that through this case, Indians were deemed by the judge to indeed be people. This surprised some at the time, apparently.
Here’s the man in question:
Perhaps the inattentive or unobservant thought he must be a bear rather than a person, due to his name
1883 – Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
William Frederick Cody’s Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition kicked off in Omaha in 1883.
Cody remained a showman ever after that, living until 1917. Here he is in 1915, still game even after his horse chawed his hair off, thinking it was a bale of hay:
1899 – Ottomobiles Built in Omaha
In 1899, Otto Bayesdorfer and his brothers Gus and Charles became the first of nearly a dozen Omaha car manufacturers, naming their product the Ottomobile.
No joke! You could look it up. They rested on their laurels with the Ottomobile, though, failing to follow through with a Gusmobile or a Chuckmobile.
They did invent the Chuck Wagon, though:
The next time you want to look at somebody cross-eyed, view the image on the left with your right eye, and vice versa. Take some Dramamine first, though, especially if you are a Drama Queen
1913 -- “O Pioneers!”
Willa Cather, who grew up in Nebraska, published her novel O Pioneers in 1913.
Cather’s novel tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Sweetish immigrants on a Nebraska farm at the turn of the 20th century. She refers to them as “Sweetish” because there was nary a sourpuss in the bunch.
When the patriarch of the family runs away to join the circus, a la Toby Tyler, his daughter, Alexandra Bergson, sells the farm and moves to Chicago. There, she becomes a Cubs fan and forgets all about Nebraska.
This lithograph of Cather shows her dreaming up her characters and their daring adventures. They are growing right out of her bun (hair bun, that is), like serpents from Medusa’s locks or a batch of sourdough flapjacks from some starter worn around the neck:
The thought of joining the circus is just now germinating in her father’s well-worn noggin, while she envisions Alexandra in the Windy City, shoplifting at Macy’s any time she wants
1923 -- “One of Ours”
Willa Cather was at it again in 1923 with those far-fetched science fiction novels of hers. This time it was called One of Ours. This effort of hers won Cather a Pulitzer Prize.
This eyebrow-raiser is about Nebraskan Claude Wheeler. Like O Pioneers, it is set around the turn of the 20th century.
Wheeler is the son of the town drunk and a ballet dancer. His mother gives him all the beer he wants, so he feels he has it made. His father tries to give him ballet lessons, but Claude is afraid the neighborhood fellas will think he is a sissy. So, the stuck-between-two-worlds son drinks all the beer his mother has, forcing her to “go on the wagon” and sober up.
Too fat to dance (ballet, at any rate), Claude alienates his father after he rips his tutu all asunder and to thunder while trying to get it on for his lesson.
Frustrated beyond measure, the father gives up ballet for booze. And his mother takes up her long-neglected ballet slippers (she had been a ballet dancer, too, before becoming the town drunk). So, now, the roles are reversed. The father is now the town drunk, and the mother the ballet dancer.
The moral of the story is: don’t read books about town drunks and ballet dancers. And if you do, pay no attention to them!
1954 -- “In the Watercloset”
Omaha Indian Marlon Brando starred in the film In the Watercloset in 1954. The flick contains the immortal line, “I Coulda Shoulda Woulda Been a Contender.” He was talking about his mayoral candidacy, which his brother put the kibosh on by exposing him as a megalomaniac rather than a public servant.
Besides Brando, the movie featured Karl Moldy, Ty Cobb, Rod Stewart, Sally Hemings, and Eve Arden. The soundtrack was performed by the Berenstain Bears (the Chipmunks being at the time otherwise occupied).
1962 to 1992 — Johnny Carson Show
Although born in Iowa, Johnny Carson often mentioned that he was a Nebraskan. His family moved there (from Iowa) in 1933, when he was 8 years old.
Carson’s Tonight Show was one of the most popular shows on late-night TV for three decades, from 1962 to 1992.
As Ed McMahon would say, “Heeeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!”:
1968 – Finian’s Rainbow
Omaha’s “Old Twinkletoes” Fred Astaire appeared in the 1968 movie Finian’s Rainbow along with Petulant Clark.
Finian’s Rainbow is about a man who wears a plain tie, but everywhere he goes people say he is wearing a “rainbow tie”; then when he denies it, they say, pointing at his belly, “Yes you are, see, there’s a pot at the end of it!”
He then pulls out the pillow that he had stuffed in his shirt, and trips the light fantastic (dances up a storm). The joke is on the jokester!
If I could put a video clip of Astaire clogging and doing the Hungarian Goulash dance, I would.
1982 — Springsteen’s “Nebraska”
In 1982, Bruce Springsteen followed up his double album The River with the lushly orchestrated, over-produced album Nebraska.
Songs featured on Springsteen’s Nebraska include Johnny Rotten, State Blooper, Reason to Believe (not the Rod Stewart song), and Atlantic Ocean, as well as the title song.
Here’s Springsteen at a concert in Omaha, telling the crowd that Nebraska is one of his 50 favorite States:
2010 — Warren Buffett Gives Away His Dough
In 2010, Omaha native and multi-billionaire Warren Buffett got in touch with his inner Andrew Carnegie and said that he was going to give at least half of his bread (dough) to charity. He didn’t say how much, if any, he would give his cousin Jimmy. Perhaps Jimmy already has sufficient quantities of greenback dollars, what with all the parrots he sells at his Montserrat pet shop.
Yes, Warren Buffett is the cousin of Jimmy Buffett, as well as Earl Warren, Elizabeth Warren, and Warren Moon. But aren’t we all?
In an act of logomorphanthropy (philanthropy shown to rabbits), Buffett renovated the warren of Fiver and his Friends (The Watership Down gang). They now have organic carrots year-round, without having to worry about being shotgunned by that old grouch and curmudgeon, farmer MacGregor.
Here’s Buffett listening to cousin Jimmy’s song “A Pirate Looks at 80”:
If he would put a parrot on his shoulder, the family resemblance with Jimmy would be more obvious to see (hey, no jokes about Long John Silver here!)
. . .
Each Saturday and Tuesday an excerpt of one State’s (satirized) history will be posted here, in alphabetical order (from Alabama to Wyoming).
For “the rest of the story,” the (32-page) complete book “The New All-too-True-Blue History of Nebraska” is available here.
The regions of the U.S. have been combined into volumes, too; [State] is included in the volume The New All-too-True-Blue History of the American Midwest
You can listen to this excerpt here.
Blackbird Crow Raven is also the author of the book “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle”