Simers wants to experience the run-up to the USC game with Cornhuskers
fans, if any are willing to show him what their lives are like.
July 31 2007
I am writing this now to give the overland stage time to get it there.
USC will be playing in Nebraska on Sept. 15, and I will be joining the
greatest football team ever assembled as they strike out into the
wilderness.
If possible, I'd like to spend time boarding with some corn cobs,
maybe getting a smell of what it's like to be around livestock — then
leaving Lincoln to move around the state and spend a few days here and
there.
A stop in Wahoo at the Wigwam Café is probably a good start, but I was
thinking it'd be interesting to stay with a real-live-boring
Cornhuskers family somewhere out on the prairie so I can feel what
it's like to have nothing to look forward to in my life other than a
Saturday afternoon football game.
I'll be going to Nebraska early in the football week, and while I'm
not sure what corn cob hospitality is like, I'd like to remind folks
that when they came to L.A., I tried to help.
Remember when the Cornhuskers came to the big city to lose in the Rose
Bowl? Everyone here knows there are no individual seats — just long
benches for the skinny people who live here.
I was looking out for the corn-fed porkers, of course, including all
their big-butted women, when I told them that if everyone sat down
after the anthem, there were going to be people falling atop each
other at the end of each row.
A number of corn cobs e-mailed to say they were unhappy with Page 2
but thrilled now to have their very own Internet machines.
They also wanted to tell me about their wonderful lives, kids and the
modern facilities being built right down there by the creek. Well,
there's nothing like a Wal-Mart coming to town to excite the locals,
so I was thrilled for them. But for some reason that didn't come
across in our correspondence, and there might still be some hard
feelings.
I got to thinking last summer, though, as I drove the
family-that-I-used-to-love across Nebraska in a RV what it must be
like to actually live there most every day of your life.
I can't remember for sure if it was Nebraska or Kansas where I saw a
tree, but it just seemed as if there wasn't much there.
That's why the corn cobs love their football. It's all they have,
everyone wearing red, and sitting there like plump, ripe tomatoes with
corncobs stuck to their heads, singing, "There is no place like
Nebraska."
Hard to argue. There's not a 7-Eleven in the entire state, thousands
of people never once tasting a Slurpee, which got me wondering whether
I could live that way for a whole week.
I know there aren't a whole lot of cities in Nebraska, but I'm willing
to spend a few days out yonder with a family if someone would like to
show me what it's like to live without DirecTV and not ask me to kill
a chicken for dinner.
I can play checkers if forced, though, or make a run to the Feed
Store. Right now I'm willing to go wherever the corn cobs tell me to
go, and while several have already done that, I'd like to see for
myself they're not talking about some place in Nebraska.
