Bunkhouse Bar & Grill, Part 2

. . . I open the door and step in.

There is no man with garters on his sleeves at the piano, (there is no piano) and there are no dancehall girls perched on the knees of cowboys and gunfighters.  A group of people are sitting around a table watching a movie on a flat screen television.  But they do all turn and look at me when I come in.  Then they turn back to the tv.  Nobody spits any tobacco juice.

I walk in as casually as I can manage.  I go and stand at the bar, leaning against it and looking at the tv, which by now everyone else has turned back to.  They are watching The Fugitive.  I allow myself to be captured by the screen so I don’t have to figure out where to look, lay an arm along the rustic wooden bar, affecting a casual stance like any customer awaiting the proprietor.  It seems like a long time, but is probably no more than a minute before a woman comes out and says, “Hello.  What can I get for you?”

When I ask her what is available she offers me a small menu.  It has a basic selection of items you’d expect from a bar and grill—burgers, fries, chicken strips, etc.  I am not terribly hungry, since the slab of elk I’d eaten at Cabela’s is still with me, but I have to order something and eat it, that’s what one does at a restaurant, and it is well past dinner time.  I look up and tell her I was thinking of getting something light, that I’d had a big sandwich at Cabela’s earlier.  She suggests the chicken strips, but then I see they have grilled cheese sandwiches, “just like Mom makes.”  That looks about right, so I order the grilled cheese and a coke.  She takes my order back to the kitchen.

I go over to a table behind the one where everyone is sitting and turn my chair to face the tv.  They glance at me, but not with a great deal of interest.  I devote myself to watching Harrison Ford elude Tommy Lee Jones, sneaking occasional glances at the people sitting at the table.  There are a couple of men in cowboy hats, a man in what looks like a feed cap, a woman, a young girl.  I try, with all my might, to be cool, to relax my shoulders and not put out tense, nervous vibes.  And then I catch one of the men looking my way.  I can read the thought balloon over his head:  I wonder what’s up with that gal.  I wouldn’t exactly say his look is unfriendly, but it is guarded, speculative.  On the other hand, I probably am giving out scared rabbit signals, and that doesn’t tend to put people at ease.  The girl glances at me with the insouciant disdain that only young girls can project.

My grilled cheese and coke come.  It is a standard grilled cheese on normal sized white bread, not an oversized monstrosity on huge, misshapen sourdough, which is what passes for haute cuisine grilled cheese at some places.  This is a normal, American grilled cheese sandwich, with fries, in a red plastic basket, and they weren’t kidding when they said it was like Mom would make.  It is very good, the perfectly grilled golden brown bread crispness on the outside enclosing the still-soft inner sanctum of bread and melted cheese inside.  It’s cut on the diagonal, two perfect little triangles, and I eat both of them and then start on the fries, still trying to be cool.

A thought comes to me:  why am I afraid of these people?  They are my countrymen (and women).  They are just people.  I’m the one that’s being weird about this.

The lady who took my order comes out and stands behind the girl, laying a hand lightly on her shoulder.  The girl, and I see that while she is a big girl so far as height is concerned, there is still a fair bit of little girl left in her, leans back and throws her arms around the woman.  Mother and daughter.

Some of the people at the table get up and leave, including the big man in the cowboy hat who had looked me over narrowly.  The mom (which is how I am now thinking of her) goes back to the kitchen area for a bit, then returns.  She says to me, “So you were in Sidney to shop at Cabela’s?”

Ah.  Conversation entrée.  And about Cabela’s!  See how making devotions at the mother church pays dividends later?

And so I tell her that yes, I had been to Cabela’s because I love that store and they don’t have them where I come from, that although I’d visited the Reno store a few days ago, I wanted to see the first Cabela’s built, the corporate headquarters.   And that leads to her asking me where I am headed, and that leads to me telling her that I am on my way to pick up my travel trailer, which gives me a way to explain that I’d wanted to see at least a few things that were interesting and off the Interstate, and that I’d read someone’s post about coming to the Bunkhouse Grill if you only had time to do one thing in Nebraska, because it would show you the real heart of cowboy country and Nebraska better than anything else you could do.

“And so,” I said, “I promised myself that I’d do it.  I’d take the exit and come here and have something to eat and I would talk to people, because this sounded like the neatest bar and grill I’d ever heard of.”

“Chad,” said the lady, walking over to the man in the feed cap.  “This lady read about us and made a side trip to see us.”  She tells him what I’d told her and he grins and says, “Well thank you for stopping in, we appreciate it,” in a back country drawl.

The ice has been broken, now they know why I’m here, what I’m doing, where I’m going.  I’m still a little self-conscious, but I’ve made it in the door, nobody has shot me or run me out of town, nobody has treated me badly, these are just ordinary folks, regular Americans who happen to live in an out of the way, tiny town, in a state with a lot of open farm and ranch country.  Everybody knows everybody here, and so outsiders might have to be patient and allow time to get to know folks before the easy familiarity develops that comes with long acquaintance, and obviously there isn’t time for that if you are only passing through.  But it is no more difficult to connect with this family on a human level than is with anyone else.  It is my own nervousness that makes it difficult.

More conversation develops during the commercial breaks that come on during the movie. They ask me a few questions, I tell them a little bit more about myself and my trip to get the trailer, what I’m driving (like a big dog, Goose is often an excellent ice breaker and conversation starter, at least among people  who value basic, classic work trucks, as people in ranch country obviously do). 

The owners are Chad and Laura Cooney, and their daughter is Savanah.  Laura tells me that Chad is a builder by trade and that he built the Bunkhouse himself about eight years ago, and he also built the little store next door. 

 

I tell them I’m surprised to hear it, that the place looks like it grew there.  I say that if they had told me it had been there for sixty years or more, I would have believed them.  Laura says there had been an old bar in town but it burned down.  The one Chad has built so capably looks like it has always stood in this spot, but it is in fact fairly new. 

They tell me that the town of Arthur, which happens to be the county seat of Arthur County, has the smallest courthouse in the entire nation, and also has a church made out of hay bales.

I pay my bill, a very modest $5.75 for the sandwich, coke and fries, and thank Laura for letting me see the bar and talk with them.  I tell her about my blog, and that I’ve started including pictures of people I meet along the way, and ask her if I can take her picture and put it in the blog, and she says yes.

 

Laura assures me Chad doesn’t care if I take his picture, but he doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about it, so I turn to Savanah.  I find out she is eleven years old.  This country seems to raise big, beautiful, sleek youngsters, whether they are foals or calves or children.  She is the cream of the crop of corn fed Nebraska beauties, with masses of thick, golden, waving hair and a glowing tan.  She is taller than me, and she tells me she is five foot nine.  I ask her if she would like her picture in my blog, and she says possibly, and reaches up to fuss with her hair, pulling it back.  I tell her she has perfect hair and a fantastic tan I’m jealous of.  I say I’m from California and you have a better tan than me, look at that fish belly white!  I hold up the inside of my arm against her golden one to show her.

“She does tan,” her mother says.

Savanah tells me about a trip she took to San Diego, about her animals, cats and dogs and pigs.  The pigs are a 4H project.  “But the pigs have to go to heaven,” she says.  I nod and say well, that’s a fact of life with farm animals, isn’t it, they aren’t exactly pets, like the cats and dogs.  She says well you don’t usually have to shoot the dogs and cats, and I agree and say usually not.

I ask her if she rides horses, since this is such great horse country, and she tells me yes, she rides her friend’s horses, she has a horse herself but it is “half mustang and can’t be trained,” and lives with her grandfather.  She looks a bit annoyed by this fact.

“So how about it, do you want to be on my blog?” I ask her, and this time she gives me a definitive yes.  She wants to pose with something she made, and points to the shelf above the bar mirror which has lots of interesting objects, shot glasses and rustic art pieces, and she tells me about pieces she made for her Dad.  She wants her Dad to find something for her to pose with, but he is enjoying a relaxing evening watching tv after a long day and doesn’t feel like climbing up to get something down from the high shelf, so I tell her I’ll take a picture of the shelf and post it.
 

Then I get her picture, sitting at the bar. 

 

She spells her name for me and I write it on a napkin so I can be sure to get it right, and Laura gives me one of their business cards from the register.  I take a few more pictures and thank them.

I’ve asked if I have to head back to I80 the way I came, and they tell me no, it’s no farther to just head straight out and on through the Sandhills through Tryon and on to North Platte, where I’m planning on making my next stop.  They give me directions, and wish me good luck on my trip.

I leave the Bunkhouse, going out into the calm, golden evening, the quiet of this tiny little settlement.  I take a few more pictures and then saddle up.  I’m pulling out of town when I remember I’d wanted to get a picture of the Thunderbolt siren.  It’s easy to find, just up a side road by the volunteer fire department.   There it is!  I’ve bagged my first Thunderbolt tornado siren! 

The folks at Airraidsirens.com would be proud of me.  Thanks to them I know what it is, and that the box below is the blower.  This one looks a little weathered, and who knows if it is in working condition, but it’s there.  I’ll have to try to identify the smaller siren mounted near it.

As I’m stopping to get a better shot of the siren, I see Savanah walking up the road with a friend.

I pull back out onto 61 and head out of town, driving along the short stretch that Google thought worth capturing for streetview, seeing in reality what I saw a month or so ago only in virtual reality.  I drive on into the Sand hills, which some travelers have suggested is a far better route through this section of Nebraska than I80, describing them as beautiful in a quiet, oddly peaceful way.  It is late in the day, the sun is below the line of low hills, and while the light is lingering for awhile, it is draining away.  These gently folded hills are peaceful, and very quiet.  I mostly have the road to myself.  I remember I wanted to try and post an update from Arthur itself, but I’m well past the town by now.  I pull over and compose a quick post and when I try to attach the location the only thing that comes up is “Tornado Alley.”  Eeeeek!  I’d asked the Cooneys if they’d had tornadoes, and they couldn’t recall any.  They thought any tornadoes that formed would dissipate in the Sandhills.  I’m not so sure about that, but there are no tornadoes today, in any case.  I’ve got signal, but it’s too faint to upload data, so I save my post and drive on.

The light fades quickly, and soon the hills are laying in the gloaming and I can’t see much.  It’s a lonely, empty two lane road through wide, rolling countryside far from anything.  I pass two whitetail deer standing by the road, and later after full darkness has fallen, I have to jam on the brake, swerving and shimmying alarmingly to a stop to avoid hitting one that is casually sauntering across the road.

What I can see of the Sandhills reminds me very much of some places I’ve been in California, but I miss a lot of it because the landscape is soon hidden in darkness.  The little town of Tryon is closed and slumbering by the time I reach it, and eventually I come into North Platte.  I’ve missed a long stretch of I80 and travelled along a recommended route that I thought I wouldn’t have time for.  I’ve added hours to my journey, but I’m so glad I did.

In the final analysis, it doesn’t seem like much of a story.  I went to a bar and grill in a tiny town in Nebraska while I was on a road trip.  I had a sandwich.  I talked to the family that owns the place.  I took some pictures.  I said goodbye, got in my truck, and left.  And yet it is a great personal triumph.  I have gone to a place that is far, far away from home, all by myself (Goose, Baby Bear and Kenny’s spirit notwithstanding).  I have decided, from the easy comfort of home and the computer screen, that I will go visit this place I have heard about, even if I’m traveling by myself, even if it is far off the beaten path.  Even if I’m worried the people I meet will think I’m weird, an outsider.  I decided I would do this, and then I did it.  I have been brave, and I’m proud of myself.  I have kept my promise to myself and my whispered promise to someone who left me in the morning as the sun was rising to go on a far journey of his own where I could not follow.  I have been brave.

If you are ever passing through Nebraska on I80 and you have a few hours to spare, do yourself a favor.  Get off the Interstate at Ogallala and head to Arthur, Nebraska.  Go to the Bunkhouse Bar & Grill.  Tell them Mountain Kimmie sent you.

 

Today’s soundtrack:  Bela Fleck, the Bluegrass Sessions.