Someone is Getting Out!

I received a letter-of-resignation from one of our staff recently.  One of my coworkers is leaving the employment of the company I work for, packing up his family, and moving to Texas.  A better paying job with more opportunity awaits him in a climate that is more to his liking.  No one begrudges him the opportunity he is not letting pass him by.  In fact, the only mumblings around the office that have been created by his announcement are mumblings of slight jealousy.  He has done it… he has found a way out of Nebraska!

My coworkers and I seldom complain about the work we do on a daily basis (unless we have a particularly stressful day of telephone calls or the subcontractors we use for a majority of our service work are giving us grief).  We all seem to like our jobs.  We do, however, like to complain about living here.  We have come to the conclusion that, of our little staff of nine (soon to be eight), the majority of us are not completely in love with living here.  I figure that about 5% of the population here in the panhandle of Nebraska… a percentage that consists mostly those in the higher echelon of wages and stature, … actually “love” living here.  The other 95% of the residents of our area fall into one of two categories (please remember, there was no scientific research involved in the estimation of these percentages… just raw, gut instinct from a guy who likes to bitch) :

1: People who hate living here.  By hate, I mean anything from somewhat dislike to extreme, pull-your-hair-out hate.

2: People who are indifferent.

The second category are a bigger thorn-in-the-side of my attitude than the people who actually love living here (all 5% of them).  The indifferent people make excuses and self-justifications and talk down to those of us in category 1.  The lovers talk down to us as well, but at least it’s because they love it here and they don’t like us harshing their love mellow.  The indifferents talk down to us because our rants about the crappiness of Nebraska makes them think about their own pathetic existences here… and they don’t like that.

The indifferents don’t really like living here, but they come up with reasoning that can be difficult to follow.

“Why don’t you try to find the positive instead of always looking at the negative?”  Because “finding the positive” sounds like work, and why should one have to “work” to find joy in a community? If a community doesn’t offer joy, find a community that does.

“Instead of complaining, why can’t you try to appreciate what the panhandle has to offer?”  This is like having a turd on your dinner plate.  Now someone is telling you not to complain about the turd, and that you should realize that the turd actually has a small amount of nutritional value because of the undigested corn.  Pick the corn out of the turd and enjoy it instead of complaining about the turd.  Brings new meaning to living in the “cornhusker” state, doesn’t it?

“It’s negative people like you who make it difficult to live here!”  The villager who complains about the wolves coming in and eating the village’s sheep isn’t the cause of the lack of food and wool.  The villager who complains is bringing light to an issue that will not be solved if the other villager’s don’t realize there is a problem.  If no one complains about it, won’t get fixed.  Without the pessimist, the optimist has no bright side to look at… or, better yet, no dark side to look away from.

“If you don’t like it here, just leave!” Oh, if only life were so simple.  For some of us, there are children in school, mortgages to pay, job commitments, lack of funds for a move, and many other excuses that really do make it difficult to completely uproot lives in search of greener pastures.  Plus, I really feel like many of us who hate it here would love to not hate it here, but we don’t know how to institute the change necessary to make it better here.  For example, Scottsbluff and Gering are currently two separate communities with two separate governments, school systems, law enforcement agencies, etc.  Combining the two communities seems like it would benefit both communities by saving tax-payer money and by attracting new employers and jobs with a single community of about 25,000 instead two separate communities of less than 20,000.  Problem is, the morons in Gering want nothing to do with the jerks across the river in Scottsbluff.  In fact, the residents of Gering feel so strongly about “keeping their own identity” that they voted out the mayor who was in favor of starting to consolidate the two communities in favor of the hot-head who is all about keeping the communities separate.  So Gering took one step forward by electing Susan Weideman and then took twenty steps backward by electing Ed Mayo.  Opening the eyes of the people who don’t really want to see the communities grow and thrive as one, but who instead view the two communities as rivals, is a difficult, if not impossible, task to overcome.  So, if we don’t like it, we’re supposed to leave; and many of us do leave and the population continues to stagnate… and no one can quite figure out how to fix this!?!  We are just doing what you tell us to do!

I’m not usually one who gets too deeply involved in the whole positive/negative energy thing.  However, there really does seem to be a negative energy in this place.  Don’t believe me?  Try spending a couple of hours at the Scottsbluff Walmart on the first weekend of the month when all of the government-assisted shoppers are loading up and you will know the meaning of the words “negative energy”.  Given the fact that such a large percentage of the population here is either negative or indifferent, the negative energy thrives.  At times, you can actually feel it washing over you.  I can feel it, can you?

Happy Stinking New Year…

Stinking Old Germans!

There are so many things about the Craphandle of Nebraska not to like!  The wind blows here almost all of the time.  The scenery is… uh… not very scenic.  There is little to do here that does not involve killing critters of one kind or another or drinking lots and lots of alcohol (I know, I know; sounds like a redneck heaven… but if you aren’t 100% pure redneck, it sucks.)  Low wages and a relatively high cost of living (i.e. we make less and pay more because we like killing stuff and drinking stuff… or something.)  Oh, I could go on for hours about the stuff here that sucks!  There is some good stuff here too, but the good stuff isn’t nearly as fun to write about!

One of the most annoying things of all about living in the Craphandle of Nebraska is the stinking old Germans!

Now, I have nothing against Germans as a people (other then, I guess, World War I… & maybe World War II… and that holocaust thing wasn’t real cool… and BWMs kind of suck ’cause they are only for rich, snotty people.)  Heck, I have my fair share of German blood running through my veins.  However, the Germans here are different!  The Germans here in the Craphandle of Nebraska are Germans from Russia who left Russia to get away from the Czars… blah, blah, blah.  I’ve had the whole thing explained to me before but it didn’t interest me at the time and I have no desire to bore you to death with it now.  To make it short: Germans around here are… uh… different; did I already mention that?

To Germans around here, bratwurst isn’t a mainstay and sauerkraut is seldom seen.  “Garlic sausage” is the meat of choice.  Never heard of garlic sausage?  Yeah, neither has 99% of the US population.  Garlic sausage is a beefie porkish big link sausage thingie that tastes pretty garlicy.  Don’t get me wrong, the garlic sausage stuff is good… but it ain’t bratwurst!  Also, they have these things here called “cabbage burgers.”  These are also known in German communities around the world as kraut burgers or runzas.
Kraut Burger
Kraut burgers are a mixture of lightly seasoned cabbage and ground beef stuffed inside bread dough and baked.  Sounds yummy, huh?  Actually, they aren’t nearly as gross as they sound and, if you’re like me, you will enjoy the gas-producing side effects:)  There is even a franchised fast food restaurant based out of somewhere in eastern Nebraska that specializes in kraut burgers; it’s called Runza and it sells extremely overpriced, very small versions of the kraut burger.  So, next time you’re in Nebraska, stop at a Runza and order some cabbage and ground beef stuffed bread dough… it will only take like 3 of them to fill you up, and they are only like $5.00 each.  That’s a reasonable lunch!

Germans around here also like their “German Blackberries”, which aren’t blackberries at all but are the potentially lethal Black Nightshade.

Black Nightshade

The local Germans use these berries, which are from the same plant family as tobacco, in breads and various desert products. Poisonous tobacco berries… line up kiddies, Grandma has something special for you!

Aside from the strange cooking habits of the stinking Germans, the attitude that many of these people force on you will either really tick you off or make you sick!  “My family helped found this valley,” the stinking Germans will say (’cause, I guess, much of the Craphandle is located in a valley.)  They throw this at you in an attempt to, I don’t know, impress you?  It’s like the fact that this moron’s great-grandfather settled here a long time ago makes the moron someone special.  I always want to come back with something like:

“Well, if your family helped found this valley, why in the hell aren’t there better paying jobs here?  Why is the crime rate so proportionately high here?  Why has this turned into a retirement community where young families have to be semi-retarded to stay?  Why is it, that at any given time of the day, you can be stopped by not one but two trains when trying to travel from one side of the “twin cities” of Scottsbluff and Gering to the other… what kind of “progressive” community still has railroad crossings on major streets instead of underpasses or overpasses… oh, that’s right, we’re not ‘progressive,’ ’cause we’re a bunch of stinking Germans who don’t need no stinking progress!  Why is there a meth lab in every corn field and a meth head on every corner?  If your family helped found this valley and played a major part in what this valley is today… I guess your family kind of failed us, didn’t they, Sparky!”

Of course, the stinking old Germans only throw this crap out when you are dealing with a customer service issue and they want special treatment because of “who they are.”  If I was actually able to come back with the response I feel is appropriate, I would find myself filing for unemployment.  Stinking Germans!

Another time where the stinking old Germans really try to tick me off is when they are driving!  Even in my church parking lot, you really have to be careful with the stinking Germans behind the wheel.  It can be 15 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind howling and the snow blowing and you are coming out of church with your family, including your new-born baby.  You are trying to rush your family to the safety of the awaiting car but… LOOK OUT!!!… a stinking old German is coming right at you and there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that that old moron is going to slow down let alone stop to let you and your family find safety from the weather in your car… not until they drive by.  How DARE you think that the stinking old German should let you cross just because he or she is in the warm safety of their car; they are old and they are German… you should feel lucky that they didn’t just run you down where you stand, because that is perfectly within their rights.  Don’t you know who they ARE!  And if you think the church parking lot is bad, just wait until you try the stinking Walmart parking lot!!!