Nebraskaland

58 Nebraskaland • May 2020 A nightly ritual here comes about halfway through the evening news during the weather report. Linda drags out her battered weather journal, jots down the high and low temperatures for the day, some notes about the day's events, any precipitation, unusual events ... fi rst mourning doves of spring, the sound of frogs at the pond, an eagle cruising the river, even personal notes ... visitors, health issues, anything funny or unexpected that happened. Perhaps as she scans entries for the previous few years: She'll report to me that it was on this day two years ago that we got together with Jim and Tess, or Daughter Joyce came visiting, or although we had a high temperature of 78 today, two years ago on this date the high was only 41. Then sometimes she mumbles something like "I don't know why I do this. One of these days I'm just going to stop." I shake my head and maybe even say out loud, "I sure hope you never do." I fi nd such memories interesting. But just as important, they are useful. "Last year we found wild asparagus down at the cabin" means it just might be a good time to check down there again. For a good part of my life I worked as a consultant developing living history farms – museums where curators work to recreate life as it was at another time. I like to boast that in my 80 years, I actually lived in many centuries – the early 1600s as a pilgrim at Plimoth Plantation [sic that spelling], 1700s at the Colonial Pennsylvania Plantation Project outside of Philadelphia, and the 1800s at Stuhr Museum here in Nebraska. An invaluable resource in helping us understand the ordinary farmer's year in various geographies and historical periods are journals (or "daybooks," another word for "journal") precisely like Linda's. Yesterday's farmer wasn't so much interested, however, in renewing old memories as he was in keeping track of things. If he bred the mare in February, he needed to remember that she would be due to foal sometime in November, about 325 days later. The family cow took about 280 days to bring a calf to delivery. Those are facts every farmer knew and needed to keep track of. What farmers on the frontiers did not know was what to expect in the new geographies they were moving into. And that was true for the frontiersmen in Iowa as surely as it was for the pilgrims at Plimoth. So they kept journals, not to remember but to learn. Put yourself in the shoes of the Swede, Czech, Irishman or even New Yorker who came to Nebraska to homestead. Reports from early travelers were not only sparse and sketchy, they were often downright dishonest. "Boosters" eager to bring new settlers onto the Plains for whatever reasons, either out of ignorance or downright dishonesty, made preposterous claims for the idyllic geography. You might look at a map or a schoolroom globe and see that Nebraska's southern border is the 40th parallel. Why, that same line around the globe runs through mid-Spain and Italy, even Turkey! This Nebraska territory should therefore be prime agricultural ground for cotton, olives, sweet wine grapes, fi ne tobaccos and maybe even oranges! Then here you were, you farmed a season or two, and one winter in the old sod house put to rest those impossible notions! So, when can we expect the latest spring frost and earliest autumn freeze? How much rain is "normal?" When do the wild plums bloom and what date was it last year when spawning carp could be harvested at the creek with a pitchfork? When do we start worrying about clouds of grasshoppers and how long are the potatoes in the cellar safe from freezing? The best source for such information for your specifi c location was yourself and a faithfully kept daybook. Thankfully, we still have some of those records from cautious and conscientious farmers who, like Linda, kept track of the world around them. Or more precisely, the acres between them and the horizon. Linda's weather journal reminds us of our own lives and past, and cautions us about the future. And, I would submit, would do the same for any Nebraskan even now in the 21st century. Because we are still on the frontier. We haven't been here on the Plains all that long and the weather is in constant fl ux, so we need to keep track of what exactly it is doing in hopes of getting some idea of where it is going. Maybe I could ask a local weatherman, Travis Klenecky, Ken Siemek or Kent Boughton, the guys we watch, when we last had a month of weather reports without a new record being established. Most rainfall in one day, highest temp, lowest temp, highest low for the day, largest hail, most snow, driest month, most tornadoes, on and on. (Even as I write these very words we are in the middle of a record spell of April rain. Ho hum.) What I hear when I see a report of another Nebraska record is that we still don't know for sure what this "Sweet Nebraska Land" is all about. We haven't even established the norms – there is no more ridiculous word to use in any Plains weather report than "average!" – and now we fi nd that Plains weather makes not only wild daily, weekly, annual swings but seems to be shifting all around us. About the time we feel sure about one set of parameters for our weather, all at once the wind shifts – a friend once scoff ed at the wind vane I was mounting on our roof, saying, "It's no good for Nebraska, Rog. It only points in one direction at a time!" – and whatever we thought we knew for sure about this geography's weather or climate is gone like an April snow. If we get any snow this April. Or May. No, Linda, please keep that weather journal going. If it speaks to us of what has been and cautions us about what might be, it also amuses us with the constant question that could be the Nebraska motto: What the heck is going on here? Roger Welsch is a folklorist, humorist and author. DEAR DIARY By Roger Welsch MIXED BAG

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