After my sister's as-usual splendid (and fattening) meal, I went out for a sunny afternoon walk, thinking Chester, their dog, would go with me. He went out the other way with Sue a bit later, so that we ultimately met up west of town. Other than the first two, an unusual marblized texture on a huge cottonwood log on the creek bank, these are good nostalgic sights for me.
I know that we have several French names in places (our original county name of 1857 is L'eau qui court) and Native American families (Rouillard, Frazier), though I don't know how Bazille Creek got its name, only that Jean Frederic Bazille was one of Monet's and Renoir's best friends, as talented as they (but far richer), untimely killed in the Franco-Prussian War. In a completely digressive aside, I learned that from one of the most authentic, brilliantly acted documentaries on artists I've ever seen, the BBC America 2006 documentary on The Impressionists. When I was growing up, the Bazille curving around the west side of Center was many times deeper than this--even in the photo I think the bottom is visible--and flooded badly in summertimes. Dams and irrigation have depleted it, but in my days it's where we went skinny-dipping or wore trunks if visibility was an issue or girls or mothers were along, a good way to cool off in hot summers. State 13 followed its well-known scenic valley from Creighton through Center to Maiden's Leap east of Niobrara, and Sunday drivers would ask us questions or directions when we were hanging out at the courthouse fountain or on the post office steps. Dad did a great deal of hunting and fishing where it ran into the Missouri, today a popular wildlife area entirely different also.
In the photo below, the hills in the background always seemed a grouping of three, so I named them the Three Sisters. Today a huge, wary wild turkey flock lives at their base, where once Billy Hillberg, our resident eccentric bum with a college education, lived in a hovel full of his collected junk and rigged a cable chair across the creek to get into town during high water. The cottonwoods at the right follow the sweeping curve of the Bazille where it took out and buried a steel highway bridge in my high school days. (This road I'm standing on going west out of town was our route to Verdigre, now moved a mile north.)
Between Chester and the cornfield, along this farm road, is the grassy flat southwest of town where Dad coached the Center softball team, including sister Sue, to good seasons. When I was very young, Von Rentzells lived to the left close to the creek. In high school days we scavenged the remains. In the far middle distance along the fence line, I discovered eastern wahoo trees, small and shrubby, with a notable four-lobed fruit that looks like pink bubble gum. I transplanted two to our hedge, gone now.
A lovely view looking back east at the curving highway approach to town on the south past Jim and Sue's. Center lies in a bowl of hills, which we always felt cozy in and which Dad called Peaceful Valley. Today, naturally, it's a nuisance as far as cell phones working. They don't, and that's all I have. But I have deep affection for these hills we tromped all over.
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