So

I'm thinking of kicking about Mexico for a couple of weeks in the spring. I bought a passport last week. You didn't used to need a passport to go to Mexico or Canada I've been as far abroad as Vancouver and Monterrey, but you need one now, so.

Anyway when my uncle heard about my vague plans he warned me that 'they're gunning down Americans on sight.' as proof he offered the figure of six Americans murdered in Mexico in the past six months, about as many murdered Americans as the city of Lincoln produces in a year, and of course Mexico is a neighbor and a huge trading partner, and the number of citizens of one country currently being in the other at the moment is for various reasons much higher than the population of Lincoln at any time. Not that I want to downplay the real dangers of Mexican nightlife, just to say that it's the same as any other bad neighborhood, nation-sized or no. Never buy drugs on credit and you'll be exponentially safer everywhere.

But he's not one to bother arguing with my uncle. He's one who takes pride in being right while at the same time being able to separate his own rightness from the level of fact in what he says. What he says isn't right because the information is correct, this matters very little. No, whatever he happens to say is right because he is the one saying it and I am his junior. Yesterday he said something about how well the Creighton football team was doing, and I got nothing but an angry brick wall response when I pointed out that they haven't played American football there since the forties, though the soccer team is indeed pretty good.

Later that day he pointed out that many Native Americans are changing their names back to something prototypicaly Native instead of whatever Anglophone name was imposed on their families back in Boarding House days. The way my uncle stated this made it clear that he considered this a case of minorities getting special rights, 'They can do anything on Indian Reservations' when of course everybody is free to change their name to anything. There are some exceptions, they'll be no getting 'Dr. Cuntfucker Supreme' printed on your license, and it's something that's done very rarely, since of course it make family dinners even more painful, but it's legal to all just the same.

The uncle said that when Indians on the Rosebud Reservation are given subsidized housing, either from The State or the casino up there, the first thing they do is rip out the toliets and sinks and sell them to the highest bidder, using the holes in the floor for waste removal.


And as I've said before he's right of course. Because being right is not what he is on a given subject but who he is. And in case you were wondering, no, the Rosebud Sioux don't actually pawn off their own indoor plumbing, and you were stupid for wondering. But that's not important.

Within the Beran family there is a secret route from North Platte to the 'Siouxland" where Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota all meet. Take US. 83 up to NE. 92 East, 92 East through Arnold to the Anselmo Road, Anselmo Road through Anselmo past Victoria Springs to US. 183 North. US. 183 north to NE. 91 East. Ne. 91 east through Burwell to US. 281 North. US 281 North through Bartlett to NE. 70 East. NE. 70 east to NE. 14 at Elgin. NE 14 North through Neligh to US 20 East. US 20 East to US. 81 junction. Signs from there will point you towards Sioux City, Sioux Falls, Yankton, anywhere else up there you happen to be going. I just felt a duty to share. Grandpa used to get very angry when someone suggested taking the main roads up there and adding a whole twenty miles.