Nebraska 4 - Bohemian Cafe, Omaha

Gravy

I’m sure I will have eaten here as a young kid, in the early sixties. I wouldn’t have had the sauerkraut, but I’m sure I recall the gravy. Loads of great gravy.

My grandmother made great gravy: thick and white and a meal on its own – when you’re a kid. She was Danish and lived in Iowa so this doesn’t fit in entirely with these Nebraska/Omaha vignettes, but it is all about memory.

Omaha - Somewhere In Middle America

[Kinda hard to make out on this map, but Omaha is on the far right of the State, bordering Iowa and on the Missouri River]. 

I was listening recently to Counting Crows' fine song Omaha from their great debut album August and Everything After and it reminded me how one day I want to compile and post all the quips ever mentioned in song about Omaha, the place of my birth, and/or Nebraska. Poetry is another place to look, and I will, but I know of two Carl Sandberg poems referencing Omaha, and this is the better of the two, if not as explicitly about Omaha as the other,

Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window

Into the blue river hills

The red sun runners go
And the long sand changes
And to-day is a goner
And to-day is not worth haggling over.

Here in Omaha
The gloaming is bitter
As in Chicago
Or Kenosha.

The long sand changes.
To-day is a goner.
Time knocks in another brass nail.
Another yellow plunger shoots the dark.

Constellations
Wheeling over Omaha
As in Chicago
Or Kenosha.

The long sand is gone
and all the talk is stars.
They circle in a dome over Nebraska.

  - Carl Sandberg