706. Wahoo, Saunders County (NE23)

That is not a cookie-cutter courthouse.  In fact, that is quite a thing.  Call me suitably impressed.  Part of me wonders if Wahoo was another one of those towns that could have been a regional mecca and perhaps didn’t quite make it.  However, the more interesting thing is that Wahoo didn’t have a war memorial …

… it has all the war memorials.  I’ve seen some pretty involved and impressive war memorials in some pretty small towns, but holy mother of crap!  I understand both the desire and the necessity to remember those who have gone off to war, especially those who have died.  I’m even on record that I understand the resultant desire to memorialize the Confederate dead.  While I don’t appreciate what they were fighting for, they were citizens of their counties who died in a war.  I also have to say that vast displays like this go beyond remembrance in my mind.  They turn it into something gaudy and gauche.  This doesn’t feel like remembrance to me.  This feels performative.  It feels like they’re attempting to show that they are better at the memorial game than some other town, that they are more dolorously mournful than anyone else.  And if that’s the reason they do it, I think they missed the point.  I mean, seriously, do you need an individual stone for each individual person?  Do you think some of the cost of this (and I know headstones alone are quite expensive, much less the rest) might have been better spent on the living?  Maybe some of these immortalized people might have wished that for their children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren they would never get to see? 

Everyone’s expression of grief is unique, and how they express it is their own.  The same can be said for a community as well.  The community has made its choice, and while I must respect that choice, I can’t help but think about what might have been.  Then again, this county could be richer than Croesus, for all I know.  This could represent a pittance of what they could do.  I very much doubt it, though.  But in the end, what do I know?  I’m just a tourist here.

My first attempt at a cache was a trackable hotel at the Saunders County Historical Museum.  I figured I’d swap out some I had picked up in Omaha and Wayne.  However, it required getting information from various exhibits on the grounds to get the combination, and I didn’t have time for that.  If they had mentioned that in the front of the description, I wouldn’t have gone for it in the first place.  I waste my own time out here on the road!  I don’t have time for someone else to waste it for me! 

My second attempt was a D1/T1 on Main Street.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t mention until far down in the description that you must ask the proprietor for it.  Killing me, Smalls!  Killing me! 

Luckily, my third attempt (which I thought would be inside the library until I read the entire description) turned out to be an LPC.  Come on, folks!  I get that you’re trying to maintain excitement and all that good stuff, and at another time, I might be just fine with it.  A Sunday morning at 7:00 is not (and likely never will be) that time. 

I was finally off again, this time headed for a jewel, one of the counties I had most hoped to finally get…