Tales From Omaha

I usually like to go for a walk in the country on Sunday. But it was too cold for that, so I decided to go to Omaha instead. I didn't know what I was going to do exactly, I didn't have much spending money, and if it was too cold to walk than it was too cold to go to the zoo.

So I just went. I took the scenic route, highway 6 to the new Dodge Street Freeway. Interstate 80 angles southwest towards Lincoln, and Omaha has been sprawling due west into a transportation dead end. The state has spent the last 25 years or so gradually jerry-rigging West Dodge Street into a freeway. The most recent part of this never-ending construction project is an elevated expressway between the I-680 beltway and 144th street. It's the state's biggest urban construction project since I-480 provided segregation-by freeway more than 30 years ago. No neighborhoods destroyed this time I'm afraid, and traffic does flow quite nicely.

I stopped by Crossroads Mall at Dodge and 7snd. This is the real downtown Omaha, the gateway between something that resembles a city and 20 miles of cul-de-sacs.

I thought that I might find something ridiculous there that I could mock for the amusement of my loyal readers (Jered, Dan, how ya doing?). But I didn't find anything one couldn't find in a smaller mall, nothing that hasn't been mocked before by better satirists than I. Perhaps I'm getting a bit older and wiser, no longer amused by the obvious surface-stupidity of a shopping mall. Perhaps I dig a little deeper now.

So in the Sears basement I saw one of those inflatable Christmas yard decorations. It consisted of Winny-The-Pooh slowly "rising and inflating" out of a "hunny" jar and embracing his big, tall, strong, "Tigger". I stared at it for about five minutes, not going to pretend that I didn't find it amusing. But it wasn't as blatantly Fruedian as an anti-feminist rant or "The Rock" movie. Words can't really convey how funny it was, you have to see it.

I walked past a Chile's restaurant and saw people willingly standing in line to eat at Chile's. Steely Dan was pumping out of the speaker's. I had my lunch later at the downtown Little King, (13th and Farnamish)this is the best place to eat in Omaha. Get yourself a pitcher of Rolling Rock and watch the TV, always set to one of those channels that always play MASH reruns.

One of the Booths at Crossroads had celebrity portraits, the kind where Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Kurt Cobain are sitting in some cosmic bar toghether. Twenty bucks. I didn't notice that the guy running the booth was looking at me the whole time. He asked me if there was anything I wanted. I said maybe and walked around the parking lot and back inside to avoid him. I'm bashful sometimes.

The food court had something called "New York Chicken" selling generic fast food and advertising it with photos taken from sometime around my conception. The Sbarro's at the food court was clearly superior from the one we have at NU. I didn't eat there but I could tell just by looking. The potatoes had a nice color, and the salad was salad-green instead of Salmonella green.

After the mall I took a little trip through North Omaha. This is the neighborhood ruined by the afore-mentioned freeway. Omaha's North Freeway leads from downtown, through and over North Omaha and than ends just before the white-middle class neighborhood of Florence. It's very blatant. The official reason about why the freeway ends there is that Florence is 'historic' because some Mormons died there on the way to Utah 160 years ago. This is bullshit. The Mormon winter quarters is actually near the very northern tip of the city, near the beltway crossing over the Missouri. (Mormon Bridge.)

While driving down N. 30th I considered stopping at one of the Liquor stores there. They still sell Thunderbird at these places and I was thinking of grabbing a souvenir. But I decided not to. I partied too hard this weekend, and I thought the locals may have been insulted if they knew an outsider was ironically buying cheap booze from one of their shops.

Then I went downtown and had lunch at Little King. I don't do this nearly enough. If your heading towards the Iowa casinos on I-480, do yourself a favor; get off in downtown Omaha, head to Little King and spend your money on something worthwhile.

I headed down 13th past the zoo and into Bellevue. I was looking for Southroads Mall, figuring that a suburban mall might have something more ostentatiously stupid than Crossroads. But I have no idea where this place is. So I turned back towards Lincoln, stopping at a SuperTarget in Millard and eating free samples of Organic Nuts until the manager started to follow me around.

Then it was back towards home, my car radio rose from the dead last week, and they were playing a rerun of "Prairie Home Companion." It was a pleasent drive.