Look further

Step out of the bar on O street. Brothers, O'Rourke's, whatever. Walk east.Past The abandoned blood plasma clinic on 15th (Centennial... 15th) Move out of downtown, past the first dollar store you'll see. Some people get their food there.
Move towards 21st street. Here you find the Keg. It's not the kind of bar you find downtown. More people like to drink in the middle of the day here. They have drink specials on WWE nights. The bartender will frequently step outside for a cigarette if he trusts everybody in the place.
Some smoke Marlboros. Most smoke Rodgers, Apaches, Shields. Bikers like to come to the place on weekends. they like to drink Coors, you won't find Sam Adams here. The bikers wear the same looks on their faces as the maids, the mechanics, the unemployed who come here. They might smile and laugh if someone tells a joke about sex or somebody else's race. Otherwise they just look tired; angry and tired, all the time.

Take a detour down to N street. The rotting cat you smell is Antelope Creek, flowing through a pipe under your feet. They say the smell comes from salt deposits that form naturally in the ground here.
The chemicals they put in the grass at Antelope Park? And down in the southeast, toward the suburbs? Yeah, they probably have something to do with the smell too. What in God's name are they doing at that chicken plant? I think you know quite enough already, and you're going to eat the chicken anyway. The plant probably has something to do with the smell too.

They're going to dig up Antelope Creek. Part of a big project to bring vitality to Lincoln's city core. If there's ever a big flood, they say that the creek will burst through the pipe and explode through the ground. Lincoln has a history of simply letting her poor people get flooded out, so this is a step in the right direction. While they're at it, they figured that they might as well build a big expressway around downtown leading to nowhere in particular. this will shave a couple more blocks off of the west end of T-Town. a few more homes are to be knocked down. It's no secret that the city has been looking to do this for years, and now they have a reason. Good for them.

They plan to extend Trago Park along the path of bulldozed homes. Good for them. They'll spend a lot of money on it and it will look really nice when it's new. Than it will be ignored of course. In five years, direlects and direlect students can drunkenly avoid each other as they wonder through the latest failed attempt at gentrification.

Turn back to the other side of O, Keep heading east on N street. You'll find another dollar store; different franchise I think. I get my toothpaste there. Like all dollar stores, it has seven aisles for no discernable reason. There are never more than two people working checkout.

One of them is a big black lady. She was the clerk the last time I was there, a couple of weeks ago. She was giving advise and comfort to a bigger white lady, a bit younger. She had just had her fourth child. The father wasn't the man who had beaten her for ten years, not this time. She has done a good job of staying away from him, but it's hard. She's afraid of being alone. She has been taught that she is supposed to be afraid of being alone.

She's buying socks for her kids. She wonders what she'll get them for Christmas. She wonders what she'll do for work. She wonders about her car. It runs funny. She can't aford to get it looked at. It will continue to run funny until the engine blows in six months or a year. Than she'll scrape toghether the funds for another 89 Crown Vic another six months or a year after that. She might have another kid by then.

The black woman nods and tells her to take care of herself. She has a different sort of look on her face. Like it used to be tired and angry, but now it seems she's picked up some sort of secret wisdom that gives her a reason for satisfaction.

Head back up to O if you like. On to 27th. The Mexican restaurant at the Budget Inn I stayed at while looking for my apartment is quite good. There are Mexican grocery stores and Arab restaurants all along this strech of 27th. Most of them are pretty desperate, frequented only by friends and neighbors.

I could give you a tour all the way to the city limits, but I can tell that you've wanted to turn back for a while. That's okay. You haven't drifted too far, and there's still time to get back under the stadium's shadow before dark. Head down to the bookstore and get yourself one of those paintings of Devaney/Zeus looking down on the team from the clouds.