Quiltish

Notes from Lynn:

Marsha Redman and Poor Ralph (Polk, Nebraska, Chapter II)

More than 20 years ago, I returned from a cross-country trip to attend an awards banquet in Manhattan. On the way back I took a side trip to Polk, Nebraska, to meet my hero, editor-printer Norris Alfred, and his front-page columnist, Marsha Redman. A local housewife, she wrote beguiling humor in the Polk Progress about life’s little adventures, her six kids and, of course, Poor Ralph. When I arrived home, I told my (then) teenage daughter the news: (1) in New York, I had lunch sitting next to the famous and easy-going Walter Cronkite (gazillions of daily TV viewers) and, (2) in Polk, I met Marsha Redman (about 800 subscribers, including our family in San Francisco).

Amy was excited.

She asked: “What’s she like?”

When Margo and I showed up in Polk, we stepped into the Post Office to ask for the site of the Progress office. The newspaper died 20 years ago, but the two women behind the counter didn’t hesitate. It’s just up a few doors on Main Street. When asked if they knew Marsha Redman, the answer came fast: “Right across the street, having coffee at Sportsman's. That’s her car parked outside.” Small towns are different from big cities.

In the coffee shop-restaurant-bar, Marsha introduced us to her friend, Millie, and her son, Matt, and Poor Ralph, her husband, who appeared in her columns as the hapless victim of family complexities. He shrugged. Proudly. (Years ago, when a letter was addressed to “Poor Ralph, Polk, NE,” the postal clerks sent it without hesitation to Ralph Redman.) From the Progress, encouraged by Norris, Marsha landed a regular spot as a free-lance contributor to the Lincoln Journal-Star’s columns. She became a speaker on the lecture/banquet circuit. After the Progress became a fond memory, however, she quit writing. She explained that with all her children grown up she didn’t want to switch to cute stories about her grandchildren. Poor Ralph didn’t seem too depressed over that decision. When he retired, they signed up with the U.S. Park Service as seasonal volunteers at Flaming Gorge National Park in Utah.

When they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, she said, they decided to give it another 50 years and see if it works out.

Notes from Margo:

I know you’re supposed to go to upstate New York and the Northeast to see the foliage change colors in the fall. But I don’t know how much more spectacular that could be than what we see here in southern Iowa. Corn fields stretch as far as the eye can see, which is what you’d expect. But in the late fall, corn is drying on the stalk. The fields are pale gold for miles, the rows sculpting lines on the gentle hills, sometimes following the contours, sometimes crossing them. And any uncultivated land with bit of water is overgrown with thick groves of mature deciduous trees turning all shades of yellow, orange, red, tans and browns. The effect is a textured pale gold landscape with highlights of brilliant autumn colors. Whew!! I’m loving it.

Surprises continue: We cut through a tiny corner of northwest Missouri as we drove local roads from Nebraska to our first stop in Iowa. Windmills topped every hill (above). Not old-fashioned pump-some-water-up wells. We saw dozens of those huge futuristic three-bladed power generators that back in California dominate the Altamont Pass. We saw the first ones turning slowly and majestically in the distance as we crossed the darkly powerful Missouri River. We saw the last ones as we approached the sign reading “The People of Iowa Welcome You.” We’re speculating that Missouri has tax incentives that Nebraska and Iowa don’t. Or the Missouri power company has an agenda that the neighboring companies don’t. Or something. (Note from later: Wrong again. There are windmills in Iowa, too. We just didn’t see them right away.)

We camped on the Missouri River at tiny Brownville, which Lynn wanted to see as part of research for the book he’s been working on (and not working on) for about five years now. (More from Lynn later on this.) But for me, one of the highlights was a bike ride on the “Steamboat Trace” path, which follows the river for about 25 miles. I rode only a few miles up and down the fine crushed limestone gravel path. It runs a bit away from the river, well away from traffic, through the multi-colored foliage, past fields, along levees. At a creek crossing, some rowdy woodpeckers called attention to themselves. They had the coolest flight pattern: They gave a few wingbeats and then coasted in a roller-coaster, up-and-down path. I checked the iPhone’s birdbook. It has a search function like this: I’m in Nebraska. There’s a woodpecker I don’t know. It gives me four choices. Based on the flight pattern, there’s only one it can be. Red-bellied woodpeckers. My first.

We had started reading ahead in the AAA tourist guide after we realized in Washington state that we had driven right through a town that had the country’s only bridge built just for squirrels. So anyway, Lynn was reading ahead and found the world’s largest collection of quilts – more than 2,300 – in Lincoln, Nebraska. A must-see for me.

And a lovely visit it was, starting with the view from the parking lot. The exterior of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum is sheathed in bricks laid in patterns like quilting blocks. Also the bathroom tiles, the marble-block flooring and the pattern in the window panes – all quiltish. The collections on display are relatively small, probably only a few dozen, but each of the works has detailed descriptions of the times they reflect, the women who made them, the dyes and the the fabric showing the technology of the times. That was a rewarding hour or two, but another really cool bit was that they have more than 800 of their quilts in digital images that you can search in their “virtual gallery.” So, for instance, I’m interested in the red and white quilts of the early 1900s, and strip quilting as a technique. (One of the strip quilts is pictured.) So, I could search for those quilts and then project them, larger-than-life-size, on a huge screen.

Amahia Mallea, whom we stopped to visit in Des Moines, is a visiting professor of history, especially of the environment, at Drake University. She met us at the Mars Coffee Shop, where she likes to hang out to grade papers. Like the other members of Lynn’s newfound cousin’s family, she is amazed by how much Lynn looks like her uncle, Mark Ludlow. She is a long-distance cyclist, who has made a project of cycling the whole length of the Missouri River. We had enjoyed her blog about that adventure. She’s also done long-distance cycling in China, but her next trip is to go all the way to the headwaters of the Missouri and hike, kayak and bike downstream to the point where she ended her previous journey. The tiny bit of the Steamboat Trace that I had biked the day before had been part of her thousand-mile journey. As we drove away from the coffee shop, Lynn and I wished we could have visited with her for a week – which just keeps happening on this trip.

Notable: We also bypassed a new tourist attraction in northwest Nebraska, a long way from our path. It's a replica of Stonehenge created from old cars stacked on top of each other and painted gray. It's called Carhenge.

Mileage from Emerald, Nebraska, to Brownville: 91

From Brownville through Des Moines to Boone, Iowa: 222

Mileage so far: 4,153