NE Day 5- Painted People, Petrified Wood, and the Pony Express
Today began with a trip a super cute wooden coffee shack/general store called Lasso Espresso in Gothenburg for a good strong cup of iced coffee to start my day. They had a drive through which was very convenient, but meant that I didn’t actually get to snag a picture of how adorable the location is so luckily someone on Google images had the thought as well:
Gothenburg is also home to a beautifully green arboretum with a fun historical gem tucked inside: two authentic (though slightly relocated) Pony Express stations. Visitors are welcome to poke around the little wood cabins and appreciate what a crazy life it must have been furiously galloping between stations like from Missouri to California. While the Pony Express proved that it was possible to transport information and goods cross country with relative ease, I never realized that it was actually a bit of a glorious failure. Despite the bravery of the riders permanently earning them a place in American History and imagination, the actual mail service was hugely unsuccessful going bankrupt in just 18 months and almost instantly getting replaced by telegraphs. Their glorification is a classic example of history not letting facts get in the way of a good story. My favorite part of the story though is that they honest to god ran ads for riders that said: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred” Freaking wild.
My next stop, just one town over in Cozad, was the childhood home of one the great American painter, Robert Henri. Finding the home and the museum about Henri that is now there was a total happy accident, because I just happened to see a sign for it after I took a wrong turn and missed the highway. I recognized the name because I’d really liked his paintings whenever I saw them in the various museums I’d been to, but the home somehow wasn’t on my radar at all and it really would have been a damn shame to miss it. Not only do they have quite a few of his rather exceptional paintings, but the house itself is a treasure trove of period furnishings and Henri’s family history is such a bonkers story that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
I was the only one there, which wasn’t too surprising for a work day, but it was a little funny because the only staff there was a very bored college girl who was clearly excited to have someone to talk art about so it took me a little bit to actually get started. The first floor was fully furnished with a blend of period appropriate pieces and actual items that belonged to the Cozad family. I say Cozad, because that was actually the surname Robert was born with. It’s the same name as the town, because his father, John Cozad, actually founded the entire small town with $50,000 dollars he won gambling. He was apparently so good at playing the card game, faro, he was banned from casinos all across the country. Already Robert’s origin story was way crazier than I could have anticipated.
Robert lived in the house from the time he was 8 to when he was 17. He wouldn’t receive formal art training until he left Nebraska for Philadelphia, but as a teenager he was restlessly creative, filling journals with illustrations and short stories. While they were almost certainly painted long after he would have lived here, the first floor had a few of Robert’s earlier paintings which have a sense of youthfulness, but still showcase considerable talent.
The most shocking thing I discovered was the reason Robert changed his name and left Nebraska. It turns out that shortly after Cozad was founded, the American West was having a bit of an identity crisis with more older cowboys butting heads with new settlers building farms and fencing off prime grazing land. Robert’s father ended up embroiled in such a conflict with a rancher named Alf Pearson (probably unrelated to the show, Alf). One day they were getting into a heated argument, and Alf started hitting John Cozad. He knocked John to the ground and continued to beat him, so John drew his gun and shot Alf in the face. He died a week later (which in itself is insane), but the Cozad’s didn’t wait around to hear the news, probably figuring that even if it was self-defense people weren’t going to take kindly to a town founder shooting the town’s people. The family sold everything they had, changed their names, and moved to New Jersey. Robert’s parents became Richard and Tessa Lee, his brother Johnnie changed his name to Frank Southern, and he adopted the pseudonym he’d become famous under. He and his brother pretended to be his parent’s adopted children to justify the different last names and to throw people off their scent. I had initially assumed he just thought Robert Henri sounded artsier than Robert Cozad, but the real story being a full on Western totally blew me away.
After the Cozads fled town, their house was turned into a hotel, and one notable guest was another artist named Miles Maryott. The museum fashioned one room into a a gallery of some of Maryott’s impressively vivid landscape paintings. Coincidentally, Maryott wasn’t only the second famous artist to live in the house, he was also the second famous murderer as one night he got mad and shot the sheriff of Oshkosh, NE (unclear about the deputy). In fact, many of his most famous paintings and about half of the museum’s collection were done while he was incarcerated. I’m not one to believe in haunted houses or anything, but the weird little circles life goes in sometimes really is astounding.
The second floor of the house was a recreation of Robert and his wife’s apartment/studio in Paris where he really made a name for himself as an artist. The walls were covered in artwork from this period, where you can really see the influence the Impressionists had on young Robert:
Next was a display commemorating one of the most pivotal shows of Robert’s career and a turning point in American art called The Eight. The show was organized by 8 artists including Henri, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, George Luks, William J. Glackens, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, and later George Bellows (who was their fifth Beatle) who decided to protest the stranglehold on most exhibitions held by elitist, conservative National Academy of Design. Their idea was to tear down barriers between artists and viewers by showing that artists could showcase their own art on their own terms to a wider audience. The show heralded a new phase in American Modernism with a slightly grittier focus on realism and everyday city life not common to the Impressionist movement. They were eventually overshadowed by the more abstract postwar modernists out of Europe, but when you look at their works they feel like a very logical stepping stone between Impressionism and Expressionism. While every work not modern eyes seems quite tame and pretty, I thought it was pretty funny that at the time not everyone appreciated such a radical break from the art status quo and one of the contemporary reviews at the time said, “Bah the whole thing creates a distinct feeling of nausea”.
Lastly on this floor, I really cracked up at the mannequins in Robert’s parents bedroom all dolled up in their Sunday best like that could somehow make them any less creepy and lifeless:
Around the corner from the main house, the museum housed the majority of their collection of Henri’s original art in a special climate controlled gallery space. The gallery featured over 30 original drawings, 7 grand portraits, and more recent works by the current Artist-In-Residence making it quite the small but mighty little gallery tucked away in the middle of Nebraska.
My personal favorites were lovely impressionistic beach and city scenes and Henri’s portraits of children which to me really capture the personality of their young subjects better than most paintings I’ve seen.
I also loved seeing his more cartoony sketches with names like “Pug Nosed Boy” and “Stout Women in Hat” because they were so much sillier than I would have expected. It really goes to show you that even really talented artists still love to doodle.
After the museum, I had a short two hour drive north to my next destination. Along the way, I just had to stop to marvel at how vast and empty the landscape could be. It just seems to roll out into forever.
My next stop was the teeny town of Taylor, whose claim to fame is a wonderfully surreal public art installation by local artist Marah Sandoz. The town of Taylor is small and getting smaller with less than 190 residents at the last census, but Marah and her family love their town and have made it their personal mission to preserve it. She wanted do something that would stop traffic and make passers by want to stay and poke around a bit. Inspired by the historic building in the town, she came up with the idea of The Villagers, black-and-white, life-size wooden figures depicting various people from the town’s heyday around the turn of the 20th century. Despite only having taken one ceramics class in college, Marah set about carving and painting The Villagers herself and discovered she had a real talent for it. Each villager is bursting with personality, and she has a real eye for locations so each one is placed in such a way as to really turn everyday spots into rich tableaus, like little windows into the past. Her goal is to one day have a Villager for each actual human living in the town (182 by her count) and she’s well on her way, doing 6 a year since 2003 giving her over 100! Maps to all the Villagers are free at the town Visitor Center and it such a weird, fun, and kind of magical thing walking around the little town and trying to find them all.
Just like with Robert Henri, my favorite Villagers were the children, whose mischievousness, curiosity, and playfulness Marah was able to capture with real charm.
Marah also strategically placed some of her most lovable villagers in front of the town’s two prominent historic buildings, The Famer’s Filling Station and the Pavillion Hotel so any tourists her work snags can’t possibly miss them.
I got to actually meet Marah, because she runs a cute antique and crafts store in town where she’s able to sell her own work as well as provide a place where other local artists and artisans can ply their trades. She was incredibly sweet and funny, happy to chat and joke around with this little traveler for some time, telling me how she got started and what her process is like. Even talking with her for just a short time, you could tell how genuine she was and how much she cared about her community.
Leaving town, this yard in particular really stood out to me because I couldn’t tell if this was more art or just something that sort of happened. I guess if people like it, it doesn’t really matter which is which.
I bid a fond farewell to Taylor and its Villagers and started heading West. After a short 2.5 hr drive, I stopped to get some much needed coffee at my second adorable coffee shop of the day. This stop was at Anne Marie’s in Paxton which used to be a Union Pacific Railway Depot which give the building it’s pretty distinctive shape. The historic building has since been restored and turned into a cafe/ antique shop/ local meeting spot. They had really good coffee and everyone there was super friendly, not even minding the fact that I took some time to nap in my car in their parking lot after all that driving.
My next stop was uniquely incredible art gallery onetown over in Olgalla called the Petrified Wood Gallery. The gallery was founded by two 80-year old twins from the area, Howard and Harvey Kenfield, who had been collecting, polishing, and carving fossils and petrified since the early 1950s. They started the hobby as a way to relax after both serving in the Korean War together, and it was just something they sort of did for themselves in between working and raising families. When they retired they really realized what a collection they’d amassed, and they opened a gallery to display their decades worth of artwork and natural treasures. Their skill and unusual medium soon became a major local attraction with people coming in just to watch the two identical old men hard at work, and soon the gallery expanded to include not just their work but rotating exhibits of other artists and rock collectors from near and far. While not by either twin, the first thing I saw when I walked in was this exquisitely carved redwood log by an artist named Ken Acton which had a full immensely detailed scene in the center. Right away it tips visitors off that this galley is a real special blend of incredibly talented artists blending their handiwork with the natural beauty of the world around them. Since the brothers founded their gallery, there have been federal limitations put on the collecting and owning of petrified wood, so this is and might always be the only place like it in the country.
Petrified wood is special kind of fossil which occurs when wood becomes submerged in water-rich sediment or volcanic ash. The water flows in and out the wood gradually filling in pores in the tree tissue with different minerals so that over time as the wood decays its structure is perfectly preserved in rock. When the petrified wood is polished, it shines with an otherworldly quality seeing such natural shapes and patterns rendered in brightly colored stone. The twins collection of wood was immense, and even if they’d never started carving it, the visit would be worth it for the sheer variety of tree and mineral combinations they have on display.
Some highlights from the pure petrified wood displays included: a massive cross section of petrified Indian palm wood which looks almost like it contains a swirling galaxy of distant stars; a small talisman of petrified birch which one of the Kenfield brothers wrote a sweet little ode to; a beautiful red and orange piece perfectly placed in the window for visitors to see how gloriously it interacts with the sunlight; and a neat display about the process of how wood becomes petrified and how it is later polished and cut by rockhounds.
On display, the twins also had a pretty sizable collection of more traditional fossils including in which the natural material is preserved over time in rock but not fully replaced by the minerals. They had standard fare like leaves and dinosaur bones, but some of the craziest fossils that I’d never seen before were fully intact fossilized pinecones from prehistoric trees. It really shines new lite on such a commonplace object seeing the familiar structure perfectly set in stone.
Other interesting and unusual minerals on display included: magnetic meteorites that had crashed somewhere in Idaho, a big collection of shiny agates including Nebraska’s state gemstone Blue Agate which has a really somber mellow hue; and a mineral called selenite which naturally crystalizes in these sprouting choral-like formations. The world of minerals is such fascinating place.
The twins also had some impressively massive geodes cracked open to reveal delicate crystalline structures underneath the hard rock exterior. They were really dazzling in the gallery’s artificial light, and it’s always sort of miraculous to me that such intricate beautiful patterns just kind of happen randomly from combinations of pressure, physics, chemistry, and time.
While the natural world provided a lot of raw beauty, transitioning into the man made artifacts the humans were able to shape these spectacular materials in some pretty inventive ways. There were smooth polished spheres, woodland critters, butterflies, eggs, baby dinosaurs, tortoise shells, and even a full miniature nativity all carved from these precious minerals. It was amazing to see the creativity but also the simplicity in each work which really shows off the artists’ hands without overshadowing the luster of the stones and wood.
Possibly the twins’ most famous series of works were dreamy landscapes of wooden houses built from carefully carved and organized strips of petrified wood. They look like little ghost town shacks from the Old West, but their unique building blocks give them a sort of ethereal glow turning the potentially run down, desolate looking vistas into scenes of surreal, stoic grandeur.
My favorite pieces were scenes placed into hollowed knolls and knots which gave each otherwise thoroughly realistic scene a fantastical quality like little portals into fairytales. The painstaking detail the twins put into house was just mind-boggling, especially when this was just a part time hobby for most of their lives.
Something about it being set aside in memory of a departed friend made this little scene really stick out to me. I don’t know the connection between the memorial and it who its dedicated to, but you can still get the vibe that they were going for something pretty personal even if it would otherwise fit right in with the others.
Using their distinctive style, the Kenfields were also able to create some adorably realized birds really capturing the personalities of their feathered subjects. It was just so dang whimsical.
Though I have to admit that some of their sculptures were slightly more shocking than others:
say what you will about trolls, they don’t gossip
While the Kenfields were certainly the stars of the show, the other artists on display had some pretty impressive works as well. Highlights here included impressionistic snowscapes made out of mosaics of crushed rocks and gorgeous painting done directly on slabs of stone to give them a strangely haunting earthy quality. Sadly I didn’t catch many of the artists names, but it was still great to see the twins use their success to lift up other talented people with them.
This painting in particular blew me away because of the way the natural cracks and colorations of the rock were so seamlessly incorporated into the Western landscape. It was pretty stunning.
The twins’ obsession with rocks began with them hunting for and collecting arrowheads left over from local Native American tribes, so a pretty extensive wing of the gallery is just dedicated to giving back to and celebrating Native arts and culture. These included hundreds of the arrowheads the twins have collected over the years displayed on their own as well as in intricate arrangements recreating famous paintings of Native American life.
This gallery also housed some amazing works by contemporary Native artists, which I really loved because there’s always a danger of fetishism when collecting cultural artifacts, but letting current voices and talents of the community speak for themselves is again a great way for the twins to lift others who they’ve benefitted from. These works included wood carvings, pewter sculptures, paintings, and embroidery wonderfully blending traditional and modernist stylistic influences.
My favorites here included a particularly dramatic pewter sculpture and a fantastic Navajo Sandpainting improbably made from carefully arranging different colored grains of sand into complex symbolic patterns.
In the middle of the gallery lobby, there was a pretty exquisite wooden rocking chair that I like to picture the twins fighting over to have the prime whittling seat.
Last but not least their was a special exhibition of works by the museum’s featured artist. While I was there, the spotlight was on a woman from Imperial, NE named Marcia Bauerle who made dreamy abstract collages of found materials and her own painting. Her art had a soothing, meditative quality to it, and again it just made me think how it would have been cool enough to see any one display from the gallery one its own but the fact that it’s there bringing all this local art, geology, and history together is really special.
Oh and of course when you leave, you have to walk by a giant painted cowboy boot. That goes without saying.
For dinner, I drove back to Paxton to visit one of Nebraska’s most famous restaurant Ole’s Big Game Steakhouse and Lounge. Started as a bar and clubhouse for hunters, Ole’s is equally famous for their extensive menagerie of exotic taxidermied animals. It’s not everyday you get to eat with elephants, giraffes, and polar bears in the middle of Nebraska.
While the wild decor might have made Ole a popular tourist stop, the food is what keeps people coming back. They have top notch steaks from Nebraska raised cows and a whole bevy of tasty side dishes. I got a steak sandwich (the cheapest option but also pretty good sized cut of sirloin) with a side of mashed potatoes in an excellent mushroom gravy. It was a hearty perfect meal.
After that I made way to my Air BnB, which was another hour away. This was one of my absolute favorite stays because my host might be the coolest woman I’ve ever met. She’s got a degree and works in sales, but she just loves cows so much she’s saving up to start her own cattle ranch. She has 15 cows of her own, which I thought was a lot but she said would be way too small to turn a profit. She was so knowledgable and passionate about something I had no idea about, and it was so interesting and touching to hear her talk about cows and the ins and outs of basically starting and running a small business while also caring for living animals you have an emotional attachment to. She also happens be super gay and super in the closet within her small NE town, but when she heard I was from MA she basically lit up because she had hunch she could be open with me (I like to think I also do my best to give off accepting vibes as much as I can). She got to tell me stories about her girlfriend who lives in CO, who you could tell she loves very much but can’t talk about to the majority of the people around her which was a little heartbreaking so even though they were fun stories there was a little more emotional weight there and I was happy to listen. She also happened to be an equal beer snob to me so we traded some of my heavy duty stouts I bought yesterday for an IPA one of her friends had homebrewed and sat around telling stories and drinking into the evening. At one point, she got a hankering for night time snack so she made a beautiful creation I’d never seen before by wrapping bacon around some asparagus she had plucked fresh from garden earlier in the day. It was heavenly.
Our idyllic night took a very strange turn however, when all of a sudden a strange and very drunk old man walked right into the house. For some reference, this is a pretty “you don’t have to lock the doors” type of small town, so I don’t think dropping in on neighbors is wholly unheard of, but I could tell while she knew the guy this was still pretty surprising for my host. A younger guy who drove him there, walked in next with twelve pack of Bud Lights and the old guy explained that he hadn’t seen my host at the bar tonight so he figured he’d bring some drinks to her. We sat and had some deeply awkward beers, and while I don’t think the guys had any malicious intentions, despite the pretty glaring crossing of social boundaries, there was an uneasiness that pervaded all the uncomfortable small talk and embarrassing flirtations from the older guy to my so so not interested host. I did my best to keep the tone of things light, while subtly making my presence, which they clearly weren’t expecting, known as much as I could. If things had turned sour, I’m not sure I would have been able to do anything, but I hoped that someone else being there would sort of de-escalated the whole strange encounter and I tried give off to the host that I was there for her for support or better yet as an out if she needed one without coming right out and saying it.
Eventually they left, she resigned then and there that she’d probably have to start locking her door even though it would probably annoy her dog, and we went back to our much more amicable chatting and drinking. We were both a little freaked out, but she assured me that while it was misguided and a little gross the old guy was harmless but she was more generally unsettled by the younger guy because unbeknownst to me he had some notoriety in town because when he was in high school he shot a bunch of deer with a semi-automatic which was both highly unsportsmanlike and very illegal but he got off light because his dad is rich and high up in the town. I feel like while the specifics of that story are kinda nuts, every small town in America has a story somewhat like that of a town brat getting away with something. She said she was relieved I was there, and I joked that I wouldn’t have been much good in a fight to which she got a little sheepish and said, “Yeah I wasn’t going to tell you this in case it freaked you out but there’s a gun under your bed so I would have been able to protect myself all on my own, but it was nice not having to” We laughed at the absurdity of it all, but it was a pretty jolting realization of why, as much I hate guns personally, they can be awfully comforting and valuable in super remote locations like this where you’re conservatively at least 30 minutes away from the nearest police station. A hugely unusual ending, to an otherwise incredibly fun day.
Favorite Random Sightings: Hands Down Massage (clever name); Trotters Whoa and Go Express; Mr Randy's Restaurant and Drinkery; The Arnold Exchange (for exchanging old Arnolds for newer models of Arnolds presumably); a billboard proudly proclaiming “We can help your cranky gut!”
Regional Observations: The one thing I knew about Nebraska beforehand was that there would be lots of cornfields, but I still wasn’t prepared for just how much they’d make up almost the entirety of the middle of the state.
Albums Listened To: Wes Montgomery Plays for Lovers by Wes Montgomery (a collection of songs by the legendary Jazz guitarist that are really great despite the terrible name given to the compilation); West Side Story Original Broadway Recording by Various Artists (I think this was actually my first time listening to the whole soundtrack all the way through because I’d only ever seen snippets of the movie at that point and I bought the disc at an antique store in Maine during the trip, so it really blew me away); What a Terrible World What a Beautiful World by the Decemberists (a lovely mellow album, though there’s one song about Sandy Hook that always destroys me emotionally); What You Can Do, What You Can’t by Skinnerbox (a super fun 90s ska-punk album that truly has one of the grossest album covers I have ever seen); What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye (just the title track but I should fix that); What’s the Story Morning Glory by Oasis (just She’s Electric); When The Eagle Flies by Traffic (I like 70s Steve Winwood a lot more than 80s Steve Winwood); When Will Josh See How Cool I Am? by Crazy Ex Girlfriend Cast (just the pitch perfect Disney parody Maybe This Dream); Where We Exist by Survey Says! (Just Falling Apart); Whiskey Icarus by Kyle Kinane (one of my favorite stand up albums in recent years, he’s just a natural storyteller); White Blood Cells by the White Stripes (just Hotel Yorba and Fell In Love with a Girl); White Man in Hammersmith Palais (single) by the Clash (one of if not my favorite Clash songs)
Joke of the Day:
Alex was pulled over for speeding down the highway; the officer came to the driver’s window and said, "Sir, may I see your driver’s license and registration?"
Alex said, "Well officer I don't have a license, it was taken away for a DUI."
The officer, in surprise, said, "Well, do you have a registration for the vehicle?"
So Alex replied, "No sir, the car is not mine I stole it, but I am pretty sure I saw a registration card in the glove box when I put the gun in it."
The officer stepped back, "There is a gun in the glove box?!?"
Alex sighed and said, "Yes sir, I used to kill the woman who owns the car before I stuffed her in the trunk."
The officer steps toward the back of the car and says, "Sir do not move, I am calling for backup."
The officer calls for backup and about ten minutes later another highway patrolman arrives. He walks up to the window slowly and asks the man for his driver’s license and registration.
Alex said," Yes officer here it is right here."
It all checked out so the officer said," Is there a gun in the glove box sir?"
Alex laughs and says," No officer why would there be a gun in the glove box." He opened the glove box and showed him that there was no gun.
The second officer asked him to open the trunk because he had reason to believe that there was a body in it. Alex agrees and opens the trunk, no dead body.
The second officer says, "Sir I do not understand, the officer that pulled you over said that you did not have a license, the car was stolen, there was a gun in the glove box, and a dead body in the trunk."
Alex looks the officer in the eyes and says, "Yeah and I'll bet he said I was speeding too."
Songs of the Day:
he makes the most insane playing look so laid back
Rita Moreno is a national treasure. The combination of her performance, the music, and the choreography is a high watermark for movie musicals still
something about this one always makes me smile
I really like this song, but I again must reiterate how bad the album art is
hard to believe a show this funny and weird was on network TV
I remember when my brother first heard this he couldn’t wait to show me, because he correctly guessed it would instantly become one of my favorite bits of stand up