Lincoln, Nebraska: Home on the Prairie

The college city's big sky and endless farmland gave this New Yorker some fresh perspective

  • By Meghan Daum
  • Smithsonian magazine, November 2011, Subscribe
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Lincoln Nebraska In Nebraska, storms are a violence from which no amount of caution or privilege can protect you. Their warnings crawl across television screens in every season.

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    Meghan Daum

    Lincoln, Nebraska: Home on the Prairie

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    The thing you have to understand about Lincoln is that it falls under the radar. Unless you’re from Nebraska—or possibly South Dakota or Iowa—it’s probably not a place you’d think of visiting, much less moving to. No matter how unaffordable life becomes in Brooklyn or Portland or Austin, Lincoln is unlikely to turn up on a list of “unexpected hipster destinations.” But, being extremely unhip, I moved there anyway. In 1999, when I was 29, I traded New York City for it and stayed nearly four years. This was a strange thing to do, and it perplexed a lot of people, particularly because I did not, contrary to some assumptions, go there for school or a guy or because I was in the witness protection program. As a result, there’s a part of me that feels like an impostor whenever I write or even talk about Lincoln. I’m not from there, I don’t live there now, and when I did live there, I occupied an often awkward middle ground between guest and resident. By this I mean that even though I lived in a house and had friends and a relationship and a book club and a dog, I was always regarded as “the person who moved here from New York for no particular reason.” In Nebraska that translates loosely into “deeply weird person.”

    I could tell you the basics. That Lincoln is the state capital and the county seat and the site of the main campus of the University of Nebraska, and that the capitol building has a 15-story tower commonly referred to as “the penis of the plains.” I could tell you that recent figures put the population at nearly 260,000 and the median household income at just under $45,000. I’d be obliged to mention, of course, that the biggest deal in town is, and always has been, Cornhusker football. The stadium has a capacity of more than 80,000, and on game days the normally wide-open 60 miles of interstate between Lincoln and Omaha goes bumper to bumper.

    I could tell you the stuff that’s slightly beyond the basics. That despite Husker pride—there’s a disproportionate number of red cars and trucks on Lincoln’s streets—and the beer-chugging, chest-painting, corn hat-wearing (yes, as in a corncob on your head) all-American gestalt that comes with it, Lincoln’s not as Wonder Bread as you might think. Since the 1980s, it’s been a locus for refugee resettlement, and there are thriving communities of Iraqis and Vietnamese and Sudanese, to name a few. It’s also got a visible LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) population, a lot of aging hippies and the kind of warmed-over, slightly self-congratulatory political correctness common to left-leaning university towns in red states. Unlike Omaha, which wants the rest of the country to know that it has tall buildings and Fortune 500 companies, Lincoln wants you to know that it’s culturally sophisticated, that it’s got a vegetarian sandwich shop and a public radio station and a wine bar. Like a restless kid from a small town, Lincoln wants to prove to you that it’s not a hick. All the same, the country comforts of its steakhouses and honky-tonks make you want to put your arms around it as though it were a big, shaggy sheepdog.

    But all that stuff always seems slightly beside the point. The Lincoln I love—the reason I stayed as long as I did and have returned nearly every year since—actually starts where the city limits end. Drive five minutes out of town and farmland unspools before you, replacing the car dealerships and big-box stores with oceans of prairie grass and corn growing in lock step rows all the way to the horizon. This is where I spent the bulk of my Lincoln years; in a tiny farmhouse on the northwestern outskirts of town with an eccentric boyfriend and lots of animals (dogs, horses, a pig—the whole tableau). It would be a lie to say I didn’t have some dark hours. My total income in 2001 was just over $12,000. My debit card was declined at the Hy-Vee supermarket more than once. I seriously wondered about whether I had it in me to seek work at the Goodyear plant. (I didn’t.) As quiet as the days and nights were, there was chaos all around—animals that got sick, propane tanks that ran out of gas on frigid weekends. This wouldn’t surprise a Nebraskan. It is not possible, after all, to live on a farm with a boyfriend, eccentric or otherwise, and animals five times your size without wondering if your life is piling up in snowdrifts around you. You can’t live through a rural Nebraska winter without succumbing to at least a little of the “prairie madness” the early homesteaders battled when the wind blew mercilessly for weeks and months at a time.

    Still, that landscape is the place my mind summons when I’m asked (usually in some yogic or meditative context, now that I live in Los Angeles) to close my eyes and “imagine a scene of total peace and serenity.” In those moments, I picture the Rothko-like blocks of earth and sky, the psychedelic sunsets, the sublime loneliness of a single cottonwood punctuating acres of flat prairie. I remember the sound of golf ball-size hail hitting the roof and denting the car. I remember sitting on the front porch and watching a lightning storm that was miles away but cracked the whole night open nonetheless. It was there, under that sky and at the mercy of all that weather, that I began to understand the concept of a wrathful God. In Nebraska, storms are a violence from which no amount of caution or privilege can protect you. Their warnings crawl across television screens in every season. They’ll blow you or freeze you or blind you into submission. They’ll force you into some kind of faith.

    Lincoln gave me a faith in second chances. In third and fourth chances, too. I’d had a nervous upbringing in the tense, high-stakes suburbs of New York City, after which I lived hungrily and ecstatically, but no less nervously, in the clutches of the city itself. This was a life that appeared to have no margin for error. One mistake—the wrong college, the wrong job, embarking on marriage and family too soon or too late—seemed to bear the seeds of total ruination. Terrified of making a wrong move, of tying myself down or cutting off my options, I found myself paralyzed in the classic New York City way. I paid my rent, pursued my career, worked at temp jobs and went on second (but not third) dates. I was waiting for the big score, of course (what is New York City if not a holding pen for people awaiting recognition of their greatness?), but in the meantime I was holding still, making no commitments or sudden moves, never venturing past the point of no return, honoring the nervous energy that paid my bills (barely) and delayed most of my gratification indefinitely.

    Until one day I got on a plane and moved to Lincoln. Like I said, I don’t expect people to get it. I didn’t get it myself. Instead, I can offer this controlling metaphor. It concerns the final approach into the Lincoln airfield. It’s a long runway surrounded by fields, with no built-up adjacent areas or bodies of water to negotiate. The runway is so long, in fact, that it was designated an emergency landing site for the space shuttle and, to this day, every time I fly in, even when the wind is tossing the little plane around like a rag doll, I always have the feeling that nothing can possibly go wrong. The space is so vast, the margin for error so wide, that getting thrown off course is just a minor hiccup, an eminently correctable misfire. Lincoln’s air space, like its ground space, is inherently forgiving.

    After those acid trip sunsets, that’s the thing about Lincoln that rocked my world. That you can’t really mess up too badly. You can marry too young, get a terrible tattoo or earn $12,000 a year, and the sky will not necessarily fall. The housing is too cheap and the folks are too kind for it to be otherwise. Moreover, when you live underneath a sky that big, it’s hard to take yourself too seriously. Its storms have a way of sweeping into town and jolting your life into perspective. That jolt was Lincoln’s gift to me. It comes in handy every day.

    Meghan Daum’s most recent book is Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House.


    The thing you have to understand about Lincoln is that it falls under the radar. Unless you’re from Nebraska—or possibly South Dakota or Iowa—it’s probably not a place you’d think of visiting, much less moving to. No matter how unaffordable life becomes in Brooklyn or Portland or Austin, Lincoln is unlikely to turn up on a list of “unexpected hipster destinations.” But, being extremely unhip, I moved there anyway. In 1999, when I was 29, I traded New York City for it and stayed nearly four years. This was a strange thing to do, and it perplexed a lot of people, particularly because I did not, contrary to some assumptions, go there for school or a guy or because I was in the witness protection program. As a result, there’s a part of me that feels like an impostor whenever I write or even talk about Lincoln. I’m not from there, I don’t live there now, and when I did live there, I occupied an often awkward middle ground between guest and resident. By this I mean that even though I lived in a house and had friends and a relationship and a book club and a dog, I was always regarded as “the person who moved here from New York for no particular reason.” In Nebraska that translates loosely into “deeply weird person.”

    I could tell you the basics. That Lincoln is the state capital and the county seat and the site of the main campus of the University of Nebraska, and that the capitol building has a 15-story tower commonly referred to as “the penis of the plains.” I could tell you that recent figures put the population at nearly 260,000 and the median household income at just under $45,000. I’d be obliged to mention, of course, that the biggest deal in town is, and always has been, Cornhusker football. The stadium has a capacity of more than 80,000, and on game days the normally wide-open 60 miles of interstate between Lincoln and Omaha goes bumper to bumper.

    I could tell you the stuff that’s slightly beyond the basics. That despite Husker pride—there’s a disproportionate number of red cars and trucks on Lincoln’s streets—and the beer-chugging, chest-painting, corn hat-wearing (yes, as in a corncob on your head) all-American gestalt that comes with it, Lincoln’s not as Wonder Bread as you might think. Since the 1980s, it’s been a locus for refugee resettlement, and there are thriving communities of Iraqis and Vietnamese and Sudanese, to name a few. It’s also got a visible LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) population, a lot of aging hippies and the kind of warmed-over, slightly self-congratulatory political correctness common to left-leaning university towns in red states. Unlike Omaha, which wants the rest of the country to know that it has tall buildings and Fortune 500 companies, Lincoln wants you to know that it’s culturally sophisticated, that it’s got a vegetarian sandwich shop and a public radio station and a wine bar. Like a restless kid from a small town, Lincoln wants to prove to you that it’s not a hick. All the same, the country comforts of its steakhouses and honky-tonks make you want to put your arms around it as though it were a big, shaggy sheepdog.

    But all that stuff always seems slightly beside the point. The Lincoln I love—the reason I stayed as long as I did and have returned nearly every year since—actually starts where the city limits end. Drive five minutes out of town and farmland unspools before you, replacing the car dealerships and big-box stores with oceans of prairie grass and corn growing in lock step rows all the way to the horizon. This is where I spent the bulk of my Lincoln years; in a tiny farmhouse on the northwestern outskirts of town with an eccentric boyfriend and lots of animals (dogs, horses, a pig—the whole tableau). It would be a lie to say I didn’t have some dark hours. My total income in 2001 was just over $12,000. My debit card was declined at the Hy-Vee supermarket more than once. I seriously wondered about whether I had it in me to seek work at the Goodyear plant. (I didn’t.) As quiet as the days and nights were, there was chaos all around—animals that got sick, propane tanks that ran out of gas on frigid weekends. This wouldn’t surprise a Nebraskan. It is not possible, after all, to live on a farm with a boyfriend, eccentric or otherwise, and animals five times your size without wondering if your life is piling up in snowdrifts around you. You can’t live through a rural Nebraska winter without succumbing to at least a little of the “prairie madness” the early homesteaders battled when the wind blew mercilessly for weeks and months at a time.

    Still, that landscape is the place my mind summons when I’m asked (usually in some yogic or meditative context, now that I live in Los Angeles) to close my eyes and “imagine a scene of total peace and serenity.” In those moments, I picture the Rothko-like blocks of earth and sky, the psychedelic sunsets, the sublime loneliness of a single cottonwood punctuating acres of flat prairie. I remember the sound of golf ball-size hail hitting the roof and denting the car. I remember sitting on the front porch and watching a lightning storm that was miles away but cracked the whole night open nonetheless. It was there, under that sky and at the mercy of all that weather, that I began to understand the concept of a wrathful God. In Nebraska, storms are a violence from which no amount of caution or privilege can protect you. Their warnings crawl across television screens in every season. They’ll blow you or freeze you or blind you into submission. They’ll force you into some kind of faith.

    Lincoln gave me a faith in second chances. In third and fourth chances, too. I’d had a nervous upbringing in the tense, high-stakes suburbs of New York City, after which I lived hungrily and ecstatically, but no less nervously, in the clutches of the city itself. This was a life that appeared to have no margin for error. One mistake—the wrong college, the wrong job, embarking on marriage and family too soon or too late—seemed to bear the seeds of total ruination. Terrified of making a wrong move, of tying myself down or cutting off my options, I found myself paralyzed in the classic New York City way. I paid my rent, pursued my career, worked at temp jobs and went on second (but not third) dates. I was waiting for the big score, of course (what is New York City if not a holding pen for people awaiting recognition of their greatness?), but in the meantime I was holding still, making no commitments or sudden moves, never venturing past the point of no return, honoring the nervous energy that paid my bills (barely) and delayed most of my gratification indefinitely.

    Until one day I got on a plane and moved to Lincoln. Like I said, I don’t expect people to get it. I didn’t get it myself. Instead, I can offer this controlling metaphor. It concerns the final approach into the Lincoln airfield. It’s a long runway surrounded by fields, with no built-up adjacent areas or bodies of water to negotiate. The runway is so long, in fact, that it was designated an emergency landing site for the space shuttle and, to this day, every time I fly in, even when the wind is tossing the little plane around like a rag doll, I always have the feeling that nothing can possibly go wrong. The space is so vast, the margin for error so wide, that getting thrown off course is just a minor hiccup, an eminently correctable misfire. Lincoln’s air space, like its ground space, is inherently forgiving.

    After those acid trip sunsets, that’s the thing about Lincoln that rocked my world. That you can’t really mess up too badly. You can marry too young, get a terrible tattoo or earn $12,000 a year, and the sky will not necessarily fall. The housing is too cheap and the folks are too kind for it to be otherwise. Moreover, when you live underneath a sky that big, it’s hard to take yourself too seriously. Its storms have a way of sweeping into town and jolting your life into perspective. That jolt was Lincoln’s gift to me. It comes in handy every day.

    Meghan Daum’s most recent book is Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House.

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    Comments (89)

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    As a Lincolnite and a Nebraskan for over two decades my memories are solid, positive and everlasting. We share many of the same feelings for a place mysteriously etched into our minds. No one can be brought to fully comprehend or understand all things Go Big Red, even after living it as a University of Nebraska student. While I have lived in California (where most people can't spell winter and San Diego bills itself as “America’s Finest City” in most part do to the near perfect weather) for the last three decades, with an in between decade in Vail, Colorado, I miss, fondly remember and long for the chance to return to what I have all my life considered my roots. Some say you can't go back or go home, but for me life has a cycle and I can't think of any other place on earth, and I have been lucky enough to have traveled the globe, that I would rather live the last years of my life and die and be buried. I can’t help but feel sorry and even have some pity for all those people who just don’t know or have not experienced what you and I have been so blessed to have as part of our short lives here on this earth to be able to fully understand and embrace the song “There Is No Place Like Nebraska”!

    Posted by Dean-Ross Schessler on February 11,2012 | 12:08 PM

    Meghan's writing has a way of grabbing your attention and spirit, taking both on the journey with her. I too have a "Lincoln" like place in Alabama which has a way of removing the foder of life and makes room for nourishing the soul. Meghan has a true storytelling gift! Reply to Joel above: You missed the point.

    Posted by janice on February 5,2012 | 12:12 PM

    Many people view everything west of Lincoln as western nebraska. Omaha is a town of people that want to be a big town and just asoon consider "nebraska" as their step sibling state and all agriculture a downfall to their image even though they were built around the stockyards. Lincoln contains a little of the big city arrogance. If you truely want sincerity and a place where it's considered discourteous if you dont wave going down the highway, then travel outside of these two places. As far as the people who have moved here or moved back and dont feel welcomed, then I appologize for the people you have dealt with. As a poster said above, in all places you will meet all types.

    And if you want to see the true beauty of the state then dont sit at the edge of town and do it at sunset, do it with a hard working rancher or farmer who has been putting in long days on that land and gets the opportunity to stop and acknowledge what he sees around him then keeps on working to feed the world

    Posted by "oscar" on January 10,2012 | 06:49 PM

    I enjoyed the article and could identify with many of the comments. It has been over 40 years since we moved to Colorado, but I still consider Lincoln "home." I've lost track of how many trips we made on I-80 as we come back for every Husker football game. Each time I drive into Lincoln I still get excited. One of my son's fond memories from when he was young, was driving across Nebraska at night and seeing lightning dance across the sky. Even though my children were young when we moved from Lincoln, they feel a strong attachment and love coming back. Now a couple of my grand children are Big Red fans and say the atmosphere at the stadium can't be beat.

    Posted by Janet Winslow on January 10,2012 | 04:34 PM

    What a lovely article. You captured the essence of Nebraska and Lincoln. It makes me all the prouder to have been born and raised in Nebraska. I too left in my young 20's, then returned to finish my degree at UNL. I no longer live in Lincoln, but have family there and love seeing the expanse of space and oh my, the sky!! I live in California now - and miss the extreme weather conditions of Nebraska - apparently, it builds character and survival skills. Meghan, I'm so glad I discovered you and your article. Thank you and keep writing. You are very talented. All the best.

    Posted by jean on January 5,2012 | 04:32 PM

    One of my favorite lines: "When you live underneath a sky that big, it’s hard to take yourself too seriously."

    For a moment I can hit the 'pause button' on life, as I drive along the countryside on a Sunday evening right outside of Lincoln. Look one way and see rolling hills, look the other way and you'll see the the sun setting on our skyline with the Capitol and Memorial Stadium--cityscape to small town and everything in between. I'm proud to call Lincoln home for the past five years.

    Posted by Venny Alub on December 20,2011 | 02:57 PM

    I moved to Nebraska from Miami Florida for law school. It was very much a cultural change that requiered some getting used to. I found that the best medicine was to take advantage of those empty spaces and lovely skies and lonely surroundings to sooth away any stress. Its true people arent as welcoming as they are friendly and they dont particulary take to strangers as quickly as folks might in urban areas. In time found that nebraska rubbed off on me and folks I knew back home started to comment on the Nebraska side of my polite and seemingly friendly not yet welcoming personality...somethign like those open vistas and endless skys friendly yet not welcoming per say. Now back in South Florida I often reminisce about those Nebraska days and drives into Lincoln on weekends. Im glad to see Im not the ony one who found the place so memorable for its semingly serene ambiance.

    Posted by Tony on December 19,2011 | 05:37 AM

    The imagery is lovely. The butchering of the English language is appalling. I simply don't understand how a "professional" writer can commit to print such statements as "It's also got a visible LGBT," or "it's got a vegetarian sandwich shop," or "I'd had a nervous upbringing." The phrase "It's got" translates to "It has got." The phrase "I'd had" translates to "I had had." The most egregious error was a comma splice (I'll let you find that one yourself).

    As a public high school student, my English teacher required each of us to read and memorize Kate L. Turabian's "A Manual for Writers." It's a shame this is not required reading for all "professional" writers.

    Posted by Joel on December 18,2011 | 11:17 AM

    Having Our Open-Space Cake and Gobbling It Down Too

    “Since the 1980s, it’s been a locus for refugee resettlement, and there are thriving communities of Iraqis and Vietnamese and Sudanese, to name a few. ... But all that stuff always seems slightly beside the point.”

    As the Church Lady would say, “How conveeenient.”

    The Lincoln I love—the reason I stayed as long as I did and have returned nearly every year since—actually starts where the city limits end. Drive five minutes out of town and farmland unspools before you ...”

    American writers, especially of European heritage, almost always proclaim refugee or immigrant communities to be either thriving or vibrant. Just as it is de rigueur for enlightened--and who among us would not want to be considered so?-- writers and reporters to enthuse over our limitless migrant-driven population growth, while at the same time happily gushing over our seemingly limitless open spaces, apparently without possessing the slightest clue that the two are in the long-term diametrically opposed.

    Among the earlier comments on this article, someone referred to the declining population in his area of Nebraska. Not to worry, since the population of the United States is now growing faster than that of many Third World nations, your problem will be over, historically speaking, in a flash.

    None of these transformative changes, roaring along since 1965-70, in U.S. population density and in its demographic makeup, were ever voted upon, much less approved by Nebraskans nor by voters of any other state. Hence these changes must at every opportunity be cheerfully propped up by wide-eyed praise, while long-term consequences are obscured. After all, as European Americans applaud the fact that they are becoming an ever smaller percentage of the U.S. population, they can keep their minds firmly occupied by celebrating that they are becoming ever more enriched! As for nature and open space? Not so easily self-deluded.

    Posted by Thomas Michael Andres on December 13,2011 | 12:47 AM

    I have lived in Minneapolis, KC, Lincoln, Philly, Indianapolis and now Charlotte. I would move back to Lincoln in a heart beat! My favorite feature of Lincoln is the network of bicycle trails. There is a north/south rail line converted to a trail, and an east/west rail line converted to a trail. In addition, every housing development is connected to the local grade school with a trail. We used to go on 50 mile rides towing the kids in a trailer on only rarely need to cross a street!

    Posted by Andy on December 13,2011 | 09:42 PM

    Thank you for capturing the essence of NE. You are very right, that Lincoln is unnoticed by the rest of the world. I also live in the NW part of Lincoln and I wouldn't trade it for the world. They sky scapes are absolutely amazing and the storms are are awesome and terrifying. Thank you for capturing the true essence of NE life.

    Posted by Leasa on November 26,2011 | 11:26 AM

    Thunder! When I was a kid growing up in Nebraska's Sandhills, the thunder would rattle the windows. Who would ever miss that? As a young adult, serving in the Peace Corps half way around the world, nearly two years away from Nebraska, I heard a faint rumble of thunder one afternoon and ran outside with my tape recorder to capture a faint imitation of home. Though I still live a long, long day's drive from the closest Nebraska border, I try to get back every year or two, and look forward introducing my grandchildren to my beloved state.

    Posted by Matt Beha on November 21,2011 | 11:04 AM

    I was in New York City for my brother's wedding this past weekend and trying to explain to my friends there what Nebraska is like. I will be sending them this article. Meghan, I think you will understand when I say that one of the best things in Nebraska are the cold, bleak winters. My friend laughed at my use of "bleak" but that is the best way to describe the scene as you drive on a cold winter's afternoon, with iced snow covering the corn stalk stubs and rowed under soy bean fields, and the endless, sunless, gray sky opening up overhead. I LOVE those days. They are bleak and lonely and depressing and beautiful. I live in Chicago now and I, too, find peace and serenity in remembering those freezing cold drives between Omaha or Lincoln and Norfolk. (Ya gotta love a winter where, even inside the car with the heater blasting, you are still cold in a down coat, hat, scarf and gloves!)

    Posted by Linda on November 16,2011 | 06:38 PM

    I was born and raised in Omaha. After high school, I left to have my adventures and never anticipated I would ever live in Nebraska again. Throughout the following 15 years, I lived all over the country in cities large and small. I always had a nostalgic feeling about Nebraska, however. Almost two years ago, I moved to Lincoln because I felt the pull of wanting to be close to family and to make Nebraska my home once again. The wide-open spaces, glorious vistas, excitement of a Huskers football game and the delights of family gatherings remain the best parts of living here. The transition has been (and continues to be) tough. It is true that people are kind but not necessarily welcoming to an outsider. Though I'm a native of Nebraska, the fact that I left has somehow reset my status to alien. Other transplants to Lincoln make up the majority of my friendships. In other places, a wealth of experience is valued; here, it makes you suspect. I struggle. I love this place and the peace it can bring but I miss the thirst for knowledge and wider world view that seems to be lacking here.

    Posted by Kim on November 16,2011 | 02:55 PM

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