Cody Nebraska

Route 20 runs along the northern edge of the Sand Hills of Nebraska and I'm sure I would have stumbled across it sooner or later, but I had been thinking about Cody even before we left New York, because it was the central town featured in the October 1978 National Geographic article on the Sand Hills of Nebraska.  The edition caught my eye because on the cover was a picture of a gorilla holding an Olympus camera to his eye and snapping a self portrait of himself in a mirror and the article on the sand hills was just one of those serendipitous extras you tuck away for future reference .

          

          
  The cover and two illustrations from the 1978 edition of National Geographic.  Couldn't get the cover the right way, but you get the idea.                                                            

 This impresses me as an interesting, and not necessarily complimentary, editorial on the "art" of photography, which has been the cornerstone of the mag.  Sadly, I'm not sure I entirely disagree.  Maybe one day they will just have crews of monkeys with helmet mounted cameras running around, randomly clicking a button and filling 8 GB memory cards with enough images to satisfy their editors.  Which reminds me of a poem I wrote years ago while I was still amusing myself with poetry:

As if to deny their humanity,
 the materialists have been overheard to ask the question...

 Suppose you were to take an infinite number of monkeys,

 and place them in front of typewriters

 to strike randomly at the keys

 for an indefinite period of time,
 could one of them produce the great American novel,

 a sonnet, or at least some mediocre poetry?

 Why yes I could answer,

 I am that monkey!!!!!

But I digress...

Cody sounded and seemed like an interesting and authentic place, a real wild west ranching town, especially to someone who had hardly been further west than New Jersey before he became a hobo.  What turned out to be the biggest surprise of all, was that while I've been getting older, Cody has hardly changed at all since 1978, and probably for many years before that.  It looked just like the pictures in the article.   Funny though, not much was really open for business, and you didn't see anyone around, but the buildings were intact.  There was a working post office, a mechanic, and a few other signs of life, but we didn't get to hang around all that long to see what the night life was like.  Always like to think I'll see more next time around.

Couldn't leave without a picture of the post office, and speaking of other means of communication that appear to approaching irrelevance, you don't see many phone booths any more, and especially ones like this.  It was good to see, unfortunately I didn't have anyone to call.  You don't often get the opportunity to live out your dreams, and going to Cody was one of mine, among others, during my period of indentured servitude.  So I am fortunate to have been there and to report back.  

Pablo