The fine arts
I
once had a professor, PhD and all, ask me why I chose to live in The Hinterlands, by which he meant southwest Nebraska, a place he deemed marginally improper as it had no live theater to speak of, no coffee shops to host weekly poetry readings, and no art galleries, so far as he knew.
What makes you stay there, he wondered, bereft of the finer things? Surrounded by nothing but corn and blue-collar rednecks? (OK, I made up the blue-collar rednecks part, but it faithfully captures his tone.)
He left me at a loss for words, at least ones I could utter without jeopardizing my grade in Brit Lit. How odd that someone’s sense of “the finer things” should rest on measures so pithy.
Please understand, I thrive on live theater, espresso-fueled poetry readings and visual expression, but I dispute any definition of “art” that stops there.
Consider a casserole served at a covered-dish dinner in the fellowship hall of a 1960s-era community church. Tater Tots perfectly positioned? Onions, green beans and hamburger in golden proportion with creamy cream of mushroom soup? Art.
Louis L’Amour westerns—covers worn, the favorites to be read and re-read over the winter months—stacked on the floor beside a threadbare recliner? Art.
Corrals with gates that swing easily and fasten tight against nervous cows and calves at weaning time? Art.
The favorite get-along call of each cattle wrangler, man, woman or child: Hup-hup. Hi-up. Tsssss. Go cow, go cow, go. Poetry. (If you want coffee with that, a good Stanley thermos will keep it hot for hours.)
Cows lined up in stanchions. The ting of milk hitting a metal pail. Farm cats waiting just out of range from a Holstein’s kick, hoping for a squirt or two. Theater.
Horses trotting up to the tune of oats in a bucket. Evening shadows moving over the buffalo grass that anchors ancient sand dunes. The call of coyote pups at dusk. Leather work gloves that break in to the shape of your hands.
Mice skittering through a cane field when you’re shocking feed. The distant call of sandhill cranes on their way to the river. A wild race to close the windows before the dust wall of a thunderstorm sweeps through. Easy talk over a tailgate.
The Milky Way wheeling through a moonless sky. Watching it from atop a stack of bales while you listen to your mom washing supper dishes, the clatter of plates drifting out through an open window.
The low, menacing sound a hen makes when you’re gathering eggs in a murky henhouse. A tangle of barn cats weaving around your ankles while you carry scraps to their pan. The thunder of cottontail feet. The slow turn of a buck’s head, heavy with antlers, when he hears you at the edge of the yard. Cornstalks, golden at sunset, with white snow sifting through the rows and black Angus cattle spread over the landscape. All art.
I shouldn’t be so hard on that professor; he didn’t know that most “rural” communities do indeed have galleries, cafes and coffee shops that champion creative talent. He often waxed poetic at the serenity he felt upon hearing sheep bells ringing from the flocks of rural England, a bucolic experience elevated, for him, by a frame of reference tethered to John Donne and William Shakespeare. So be it, if mine was tethered to John Deere and Allis-Chalmers.
Why do I live in The Hinterlands? Because of the lively arts scene. And there’s no finer art than here.