540. Grant, Perkins County (NE04)

This reminds me a little of Chase County, but a little less so. It’s stout and angular (though not quite as much), but it also has crosses, setting off that church/state thing. The columns, oddly enough, soften it a little bit, which is not something that you think of classical architectural features doing, but there it is.

I grabbed the cache on the way to the courthouse, a tube hidden between a couple of poles. I thought this one would be a little harder, what with it being near thick foliage and and electrical boxes, too. The number of possibilities was pretty big. But I got lucky. It was in the first place I looked, which was fine by me because I really didn’t want to go down into those trees at that moment. Sometimes (in fact, often) it’s just better to be lucky than good. Besides, just like Chase County, it was only one of only five in the county. I didn’t feel like cavorting across the county. Especially not at that moment. Between the cache and the courthouse, I had one of those proverbial brushes with…something. As I was driving up the road, I saw a large work truck driving up ahead of me. There was nothing coming and it was a two lane road, so I drove into the oncoming traffic lane so I could pass. What I didn’t know was that the truck apparently had no brake lights. It wasn’t slow, it was stopped. And, more importantly, it was stopped so it could turn left into (I assume) its company. Which was directly into my path trying to pass. I had to hit the brakes, swerve back into the correct lane, and hope. As you can tell from the fact that I am here to tell the tale, I did not end up dying in a ditch in Nebraska. Of all the ways I could go, that is not the one I would have foreseen. Then again, I have also learned that what I foresee is not always the metric of things. But you know something? Despite all the cursing and all the anger as I drove away, I was unexpectedly good. If you don’t mind me paraphrasing Gracchus Babeuf (or, depending on your source, Aeschylus, Emiliano Zapata, or George Washington), it’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. I don’t, in this case, relate it to oppression, but rather to the difference between activity and inaction. I don’t want to die (there are too many things and people to live for), but I was out there. I was rolling. I was seeing the world, even if the world was Nebraska. What’s a little bit of fear and a brush with death compared to that? Surly, but full of rushing blood and metaphorical adrenaline, I pressed ahead, consumed with purpose, even if that purpose was as simple as reaching…