Ainsworth

I felt protected and comfortable growing up in the small town of Ainsworth, Nebraska.  Entering the town on Highway 20 you were greeted by a sign that said Gate Way to the Sand Hills, Population 1875.  Almost everyone in town knew my name and 20 or so relatives were there to lend their supervision and support. By the time I was five or six years old the whole town was my neighborhood and I was free to leave and return home without need to check for parental consent as long I was seated on time at the kitchen table at dinner (the noon meal at our house) and supper. 

We lived across the street from the high school, grade school and football field and next to a vacant lot so play space and companions were always available.  The school sidewalks made tracks first for tricycles, then roller skates and bikes. Later they were the pathway from the football field to the bubbler where we were instructed by our coach not to drink more than 6 swallows during practice. I recall the clacking of our shoe cleats on the cement. They sounded like an amplified troop of uncoordinated tap dancers. Broad trunked old trees in the schoolyard made the perfect setting for endless hours of “hide and seek” during long summer evenings.  Play was sometimes interrupted by radio shows like Fibber McGee and Molly, Bob Hope, Amos and Andy and my favorite, Bill Stearn’s Sport Stories. The fact that these stories all had the same theme made them no less exciting.   Someone would go from nothing to greatness against all odds. For example, the boy born with the deformed leg would set the world’s record in the high jump. Stearn would begin talking slowly in a soft voice and end in a crescendo of rapid loud exclamations that made us want to stand up and cheer.  

We were 4 blocks from Main Street on a gravel and dirt road that added to the dark clouds that made the vision of day turn into the darkness of night during dust storms that accompanied hot summer winds. Main Street was a 3 block paved stretch set perpendicular south of Highway 20 with the most frequented places like the movie theater, drug and grocery stores, the 5 and 10 cent store, two bakeries and a confectionery in the middle.  This block took on special significance each summer when the carnival came to town and when we had parades, especially the small marching booster band which came by train each year from Omaha, throwing treats to kids as they passed by. On the north side of the highway was the city park.  We used the small fountain there as a wading pool. The shell was near the fountain and the city band gave regular concerts there during the summer that began and ended with spirited Sousa marches.  The middle of the programs were always painfully long and boring with overtures that without exception contained slow passages in which the reed section, especially the clarinets, played off key and squeaked. It was also the place for the podium on the Fourth of July were George Farnam, the best lawyer in town and a gifted speaker, delivered his fiery orations. 

The south end of Main Street was demarcated by the railroad depot. I spent several years greeting the train there early each morning to receive my editions of the Omaha World Herald, thrown from the baggage car by my Uncle Frank, which I then delivered.  I remember one customer, an elderly woman named Nina who on the weekly collection day always offered me a cookie and a nickel with the instruction that I should spend it on myself and not consider it as payment.  Only problem was she never paid her bill and this along with maintaining and replacing bicycles pretty much ate up my profit.

Crossing the tracks southward resulted in a definite change of scenery.  We were then on “the wrong side of the tracks” where the less fortunate, less integrated citizens of the town resided.  Yards were untidy.  Houses were long overdue for painting.  The only successful business place I recall being on that side of town was the junkyard, the place where we sold our discarded metal for recycling after the onset of World War II.  This was also the part of town where the Pentecostal Church was situated.  Friends and I would go there at least once during the Christmas season, lured by candy and the fun of the service itself.  For example they would sing “Stand Up Stand Up For Jesus” and the congregation would stand and sit each time that phrase occurred in the hymn (many).  On this part of my dad’s mail route the houses were so far apart that he drove rather than walked. He would sometimes let me, at an early age, sit on his lap and steer, there being no fear of traffic. This is my earliest recall of talks with my dad in which I listened to his stories about his experiences growing up on a farm, playing quarterback on the football team in high school and acting as driver for two wealthy men touring Europe after the end of the First World War rather than immediately returning home from where he was stationed in France.  In my preteen years I would ask him to tell these stories over and over again on those occasions when we shared times alone with each other.  As I got older the roles were reversed in that he more often became the active listener, encouraging me to talk or even boast about whatever I wished, imagined or real.  Although I had no inkling at that time that I would become a doctor, one of our favorite fantasies was one in which I would someday become a scientist who would discover cures for bad things like cancers.

Entertainment in our town was mostly to be found at the two movie theaters, each showing a different movie 3 times weekly and at school where in addition to sporting events we attended music concerts, plays, and talent shows performed by students. There being no competing events, attendance was good no matter the quality of what was to be heard or seen. Hanging out time was spent at the soda fountain in the Rexall Drug Store where for a nickel you could get a chocolate coke and for a dime a root beer float, at the Confectionery where a sack of bing cherries could be had for the same amount and at the City Hall where dances were held after sporting events. We would walk up and down Main Street on Saturday nights when the ranchers and farmers came to town and the stores remained open late. When we reached the milestone age of 16 we could then endlessly cruise the same route, usually with girls in one car flirting with boys in another. I remember being allowed to use the family car on the day I got my driver’s license.  I was given a limit in terms of how many miles I could drive.  I was with friends and it was close to midnight when we noted that we had used all of our allotted miles and were several miles out of town on a country road.  We tricked the odometer by backing all the way home. I’m not sure I ever told my mom and dad what I had done. Daytimes in summer we would walk a mile from town to a sand pit where we would swim.  There were no lifeguards or instructors so we taught ourselves and demonstrated our competency when for the first time we were able to swim to a raft that was anchored in the middle.  

I also have some intense recollections of Ainsworth coming from the olfactory part of my brain that, directly connected as it is, leads me to recall the essence of experiences. There was the smell of lilacs along the streets from the school in all directions on a spring day which stimulated thoughts of the soon to come summer vacation, the smell of wet turned leaves piled around the outside entrance to our basement that fell from the maple tree above that still makes me nostalgic, the aroma of the multi course breakfast to be enjoyed after chores during a summer job in the hayfield, the pungent scent of the gardenia corsage nervously pinned on my date for the senior prom with a shaky hand and a blush, the smell of freshly made buttered popcorn from Mr. Boxford’s porch across the street(he was in his mid 90’s and while giving us free sacks full made in an old popper he had obtained from a movie theater told us that the secret to his longevity was cigarettes and whiskey), the smell of cotton candy at the carnival, the odor of  my father’s leather mail sack wet from his sweat on a hot summer’s day when he stopped by the house for his noontime dinner break,  the smell of sickness that permeated the house when I was quarantined with the “seven day measles” with a sign posted on the door preventing anyone from entering, the smell of the freshly waxed gym floor at the high school which contrasted with the dusty smell of the little gym  in the church annex, and the odor emanating from  the boy’s locker room at the high school, an amalgamate of the anti fungal powder in a trough to prevent athlete’s foot, T Shirts, protective pads and socks long overdue for washing, shower soap, tape, tincture of benzoin and analgesic balm prompting memories of practices, games to be played, games won or lost.   

  

Looking back I realize that Ainsworth may have been a fairly typical small town in Nebraska at that time. The people there were almost all protestant (we didn’t even have a catholic church or a synagogue in town), republicans and Caucasians.  I don’t recall ever seeing an African American in our town.  Sometimes an American Indian from a reservation or from just outside town would appear on a Saturday night, usually ending up in the jail which was in the basement of the City Hall early in the evening because of a disturbance associated with getting drunk.  Occasionally, our town would be visited by gypsies and that would prompt citizens to lock the doors to their houses, something they would not usually think necessary. Hoboes would come to our door begging for food that we gladly gave.

Growing up in Ainsworth I did not have the opportunity to interact with people of different races and beliefs. This may have been a blessing in disguise, however, because I was not encouraged to develop the prejudices in childhood that I later as an adult found in some people who had been members of subgroups making up more diverse communities.

I’m of the age when I might be asked whether, given a choice, I would have preferred to grow up somewhere different.  The answer is no.

Ainsworth was a town where the people were honest, friendly, protective, consistent and respectful and I can’t imagine a place that would have been more nurturing to grow up in than that.  Do I wish I could have spent my whole life there? Probably not.  Ainsworth provided, for me, a solid springboard to a world with wider potentials.