Why I Love Nebraska

I think the aspect I like most of being from a small town in Nebraska is the fact that no matter where I’ve been or who I’ve talked to, there is a tie back to my hometown area somehow.

While these appear to be your run of the mill seventies art deco, they are absolutely remarkable pieces to me. Pictures just like these hung in my childhood room and as a girl I laid on my bed staring at these.  They are just so colorful and so much activity going on in them.  I had saved these from my childhood room to hang in my children’s room.

However, after a garage sale I had when I was still living in Omaha, they were accidentally taken to a nearby Goodwill.  I didn’t discover the mistake until about six months after the fact and I wasn’t able to find them on a visit there.  I knew they were gone, I knew someone had snatched those right up.  I was bummed, but not devastated.  I just had to think of another way to decorate the nursery.  But, it was a little sad that a piece of my childhood I had kept with me for nearly 30 years had disappeared.

When my daughter was about 2 years old, she saw a Raggedy Ann doll at a flea market, wanted it and so I bought it for her.  Later I ran into some antique-y looking ceramic Raggedy Ann & Andy’s.  A cute toll painting of a Raggedy Ann and got to wondering about these pictures again as we seemed to be starting a theme.

My mom was with me during those purchases, so I must have planted the seed, and my daughter received the above pictured look-a-likes for her 4th birthday last year.  My mom was so pleased with herself to have found them at that same flea market we saw the doll and keeping it a surprise.


I knew them immediately.  Right above Raggedy Ann’s head, the blue sky was flaking off in the exact same place.  And…

…my mom had used these to lay something on to spray paint at one time.  (Why Mom, why?!  But, thanks for doing it!)  These are the exact wall hangings that went to a second-hand store 75 miles away and ended up in a flea market just 20 miles away about 5 years later.

They truly belong to me, they came home.  I’ve had way too many coincidences like this that have only happened around here.  No where else in the world or in this country could this have happened. 

I’ve been talking about a pull I feel to be here in rural Nebraska in recent months.  I feel like these pictures.  I had to go through all of these whacky adventures to find out that life has its own plan for me and I just need to enjoy the process.  Like these pictures, I may get hung up somewhere I don’t want to be for a while to finally get back to where I belong.