in which I use a thesaurus and the series of tubes

DMB posed me the following: "what is the word for people who live in north platt [sic.]?"

I had no idea. So I asked my colleagues, both of whom were born in NP, attended high school here, and are around 50 years old. One has lived here pretty much her whole life, the other moved down the road to Ogallala for a while and is looking to move back. Neither of them had any idea either. The best guess was "Flat Rockers?" Apparently Flat Rock is a nickname for NP, for reasons unknown. (The mystery deepens. Platte, I believe, is french for flat, but the rock part remains obscure.) Conversation on this topic led us to NP's other nickname, which is, of course, Little Chicago. My colleagues couldn't enlighten me regarding the provenance of that moniker either, but Wikipedia could: "During the 1930s, high crime rates and corruption caused North Platte to be infamously known as 'Little Chicago." This is ludicrous. Of course, that leaves "Little Chicagoans" as an option, but no one would ever know that it referred to North Platters (as I choose to call them, and as the receptionist at the North Platte Convention and Visitor's Bureau reluctantly suggested). The last alternative is just to refer to them all as the afore-blogged Bulldawgs. This cognomen, like "Little Chicagoans", does not obviously identify the denizens, but it at least retains some of the local flavor.

In other NP news, NP has graced the lyrics of at least two songs. Here are the lyrics to one, Superslab Showdown, by C.W. McCall, complete with interpretation. And here are the lyrics to another, A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left (originally called to my attention by HDL).

Yesterday, my trusty sidekick, Lulu, and I took a beautiful drive through midwestern Nebraska. I found the first few towns quaint (in an entirely un-Annapolis way) though smelly. Later I discovered that my trusty sidekick had barfed on the backseat. So they are probably merely quaint. Anyhow, I do have photos to show for it, but it's hard to post them w/o internet access at home. Maybe next weekend. At that point I will give more detail on our trip.

This was our route:


View Larger Map

I can't speak highly enough the beauty of the Nebraska sandhills. If you don't take the opportunity to visit me while I'm here, you perusers of the series of tubes, you will have forgone a wonderful, and uncommon, opportunity.

bonne soir,

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