Boutiques, Back Roads, and Bankruptcies

It’s Saturday evening, 7:32 p.m. and it’s still steaming hot. I have just washed the skillet after frying hamburgers inside – too hot to grill. 

The east window is steamy too. I take my white cotton dish towel and run it across the cloudy glass. It streaks even more. “There’s probably a little grease still on my towel,” I tell myself as I put a bit more elbow grease into cleaning the hazy windowpane. I throw the towel in the washing machine and tell myself, “Good enough.” 

Looking out the same hazy window, I think about the activities of the day that started on a quick trip to Friend, Neb. “We’re going to the Freckled Door this morning.” I said as I swung open the old, wooden bedroom door to my daughter’s room, warped from the passing of time so that it sticks a little when you try and open it. “Now?” My teenage daughter asked sleepily, but motivated to get out of bed for a mini shopping excursion. 

Out here we live in the land of boutiques and back roads. Little shops here and there popping up in small towns dying to find new life again. One store we stopped at in Friend runs on QR codes and no employees, just stations in a mini-market where entrepreneurial moms and “creators” sell homespun, eclectic items like hand-crafted jewelry, organic laundry soap, Husker sweatshirts, candles, sweet syrups for their mixed drinks, and sourdough loaves of bread. Further down the sidewalk is a faith-based coffee shop that sells t-shirts that say, “Jesus Loves you a Latte.” The coffee stand faces a bar that opens later in the day. I tongue-in-cheek told Caroline, “Well, they have their spirits covered.”

In-between the bougie shop or two are boarded-up windows. It’s the land of boutiques, back roads, and tragically – farm bankruptcies too. It’s the land of can-do and we just can’t make it anymore. 

It’s not for the faint of heart out here. Those signs on many farmhouse walls that say “Faith – Family – Farming,” can be deceiving. Not even all the faith in the world can pull some of these farms through. When you’re playing an inequitable game, it’s hard to “win” when it seems like the government and some of your neighbors don’t want to see you succeed. 

These dirt roads in the middle of nowhere and everywhere are just a few gravel road turns from slick pavement that will take us to the capital city in just under an hour – (30 minutes when I-80 cooperates and I can just cruise). There I chase dreams and a few dollars to make something change out here. My solitary drive is a long stream of stories and questions running through my consciousness.

In the evening, I come back and make “farm food” for dinner as the kids sometimes call it. I keep ahead of the laundry, the blankets folded on the couch, the checkbook balanced, and vacuum lines in the rug. I look out the farmhouse window – a house aging right along with me. I am content with how the house is and discontented with how the countryside is. I run my dish towel across the window. Time to level the playing field and put more elbow grease into the rural scene. No throwing in the towel around here – I won’t rest until I like what I see. 

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