Wayne, Nebraska

Craig:

I always look forward to going home. Seeing family and reliving old memories is always worth the trip. Home for me consists of a fairly small town in Northeast Nebraska called Wayne. Wayne is home to about 5,000 permanent residents with the population increasing a little during the school year when the students of Wayne State College come back. Wayne has many features that resemble most rural Nebraska towns including, but not limited to: a grain elevator, a local coffee shop where farmers gather to complain about grain prices and the weather (Vel’s Bakery), a volunteer fire department, three traffic lights, a Dairy Queen, a John Deere dealership, Pamida, a small grocery store (Pac’N’Save), and a couple of small shops and eateries. Wayne is also home to the world famous “Wayne Chicken Show,” the one weekend where a chicken is the most important animal in the world. For an entire weekend in July, the locals of Wayne gather to celebrate chickens and everything chicken. We eat fried chicken, make omelettes, dress up like chickens, cluck like chickens, try to catch chicken eggs, chase and catch chickens, and see if chickens can fly. The festival was once featured in National Geographic magazine, and at one point, the winner of the annual “Cluck off” would appear on the Tonight Show. And if all this was not enough, two of the best people in the world live in Wayne… my parents.

Bridget and I needed a decent rest period after covering much of the West in about three and a half weeks so three days in Wayne was just the ticket. The first day we spent most of the time organizing the 29 boxes of our stuff we had moved to my parents’ house. Dave and Sue were kind enough to let us store many boxes, a king size bed, two bikes, two surfboards, and scuba gear in the spare bedroom downstairs. Bridget and I cooked up some excellent Nebraska rib-eye steaks that night on the grill and then we headed out to the John Deere store where my dad works to drive a tractor. I grew up as kind of a farm kid but Bridget had never driven a tractor. My dad just happened to have one of the newest models of John Deere tractors on the market. Most people don’t know it even exists yet. My dad taught Bridget how to drive it and then let her take it for a spin. She was all smiles as she drove the $220,000 tractor down the road.

The next day we took a trip down to Scribner, NE to visit my grandparents, Clinton and Mildred Von Seggern. After some catching up at the house we headed down to the Scriber Steakhouse for dinner. You have got to love small-town Nebraska when you ask for the “house red” and the waitress has no idea what you are talking about. Scribner has one feature that Wayne does not… you can parallel park in the middle of Main Street.

We left the steakhouse with just enough daylight left to go pick sweet corn, raspberries, and green peppers from the garden.

The next day we headed up to Lewis and Clark Lake on the border of South Dakota and Nebraska. My dad pulled the boat up to do some tubing and water skiing. We could not have asked for a better day. The lake was empty except for a couple of walleye fishermen and jet skiers. After I had my fill of getting dragged and beat up behind the boat on the tube, Bridget gave water skiing a try. It took her a while but finally managed to get up and have a few short rides out of the water. We finished the lake trip up with ice cream at the Weigand Marina and headed back to Wayne.



That night we grilled up some chicken and the sweet corn picked from my grandparents’ garden. The sweet corn was fantastic! A warm thank you goes out to the garden of Clinton and Mildred. We finished out the night with some beers and a few games of corn hole in the backyard. Just for the record, the young kids won.

We left Wayne early on Saturday morning for Chicago. The trip home was excellent and I cannot wait to get back there in a couple of weeks. Wayne will be our last stop before the South Pacific. Next trip back will be even better as Bridget will get to spend her first day on the farm and we will get to see what my Aunt Becky has in store for us.

Thanks to the whole state of Nebraska. We will be back soon.

Next stop: Chicago, IL