Prelude September 2019

Dr. Hill drove away from the small yet lovely university campus feeling weary. The late summer Nebraska air was hot and humid, but not nearly as thick and oppressive as the meeting he just left. He enjoyed his work, his teaching, his students, but the daily grind was another matter. He had been in this business so long even software upgrade training and social justice issues were starting to simmer like ancient news. Higher education seemed to be moving farther away from teaching and learning and academics. Hill wasn’t sure what has happening. Things were different these days. The world was changing rapidly. But he had no dog in the fight. And he was a man of scholastic peace. This was the Friday before Labor Day weekend, and he had three days off before the fall semester began.

He would admit these days he was more interested in reading about new motorcycle engine designs than hearing about online chat rooms. Samuel Hill turned up the radio in his jeep and caught the last few bars of “Cat Scratch Fever” on a Grand Island FM Station. The song reminded him he was going to start an article questioning the significance of rock music in western culture. He wondered when rock music would decline in popularity. Probably when the last boomer passed. Or such music became politically incorrect. He didn’t use his phone to play music. Nor did he own an iPod.

The 20^th century jeep radio probably wouldn’t support an aux cord anyway. Any notion of playlists and buying songs appeared odd to him. Reflecting, he realized he might have purchased a few LP’s back in the 1970s. And maybe an 8 track or cassette tape. But not many. He wondered when free FM broadcast radio would finally be finished. Satellite fee-based radio was very popular these days. And iPhones were filled with downloaded songs. Oh well.

Prof. Hill was going through a period of change and adjustment. Just four short months ago, Samuel Hill had retired from his full-time faculty job at Copperfield Community College back in North New Mexico. His thirty-year stint of grading essays, division meetings, and holiday potlucks had finally concluded. Sure was a fast thirty years, he thought, as he turned down the gravel road to his new home. He was starting a fresh chapter in life and looking forward to his future.

Earlier, during May, he had driven his motor home (pulling his jeep along behind) to see his good friend August Nightingale in Nebraska. He ended up staying.

When he first arrived in Nebraska, in June, Doc Hill had spent about a week in Aurora, just twenty miles to the south of Lone Tree, with his RV parked out in front of Nightingale’s home. For a day or two, he and the Nightingales enjoyed catching up on Copperfield and Hamilton City news. Nighty and his wife, Sarah, had each lived in Hamilton City earlier. Dr. Nightingale had worked at Copperfield for a time. Nightingale had been a policy researcher for the college, and Sarah had worked in a medical records office. Dr. Hill was amazed the couple got along so well. She had helped Nighty convalesce after he was injured in an auto accident, and they fell in love and married a year or so later. (The Nightingales’ complete love story can be found in The Auroran: Cold Front Redemption, Rogue Phoenix Press, 2016.) They were infatuated with the area and were keen on the “healing” qualities possessed by small Midwestern towns. Hill was quite impressed Sarah and August seemed to genuinely care for each other. Their relationship did not have that “domestic” aroma or small business quality so common to stale American marriages.

A bachelor for many years, Hill had never admired or understood the marital situation. But the Nightingales were generous, pleasant people. And he learned a great deal about the local area from them. At the time, he had no idea he would soon be one of their neighbors, though a few miles away.

Now, in very early September, he lived in a small studio cabin on the banks of Pi Lake, a water-filled sandpit not far from Lone Tree and about twenty miles north of Aurora. He rented the red cabin from an attorney in Sioux City. The place had a nice porch, a pot belly stove, a loft, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Dr. Hill’s motor home and jeep were kept nearby in a western movie set-like stand of trees under a large cottonwood, sheltered from the late summer sun. He was planning to live in the cabin for just one year, but he liked the place. He liked it a lot. The lake was a getaway for the attorney and his wife, but they were traveling in Europe for an extended vacation and were happy to find a tenant.

While visiting the Nightingales in Aurora, Hill read an ad in the local paper about adjunct teaching openings at University of Nebraska-Lone Tree. At about the same moment, he saw the Pi Lake cabin for rent notice. The coincidence was amazing. He had been a community college professor who had always wanted to teach at a university. And, he thought it would be Thoreau-like, almost romantic, to live in a cabin near a body of water.

Apparently, the university had a section of American Lit Survey which needed an instructor. And the attorney was anxious to find a tenant before he flew to Berlin. A couple of Skype interviews and phone calls later, both deals were consummated. When things came together, Dr. Hill was ecstatic and almost relieved. He had a cabin on the lake and a nice teaching job to keep him engaged with the academic world.