Pawnee City

Love affair: Intern thanks her Pawnee City readers

By Tess Bresley
Alumni News Staff

I came to Pawnee City brimming with ideals, passion and an itch for experience. I couldn’t help but grin at my good fortune.

For a whole summer, Bev and Ron Puhalla were willing to pay me to do what I love — write and learn.

But I was not hired because of my excellent or inspiring writing skills. No, I was hired because one of my professors told Bev I was trustworthy and I could talk to a fence post if need be. She also knew I was dying to find out what it was like to live in a small town.

Summer’s over now. I haven’t had a long conversation with a fence post yet, but I have had the chance to treat that itch for experience.

I worked toward the goals of a community newspaper. I interviewed people with hours of stories and information to share — and people who were willing to share nothing. I learned never to assume a government official knows his job or his responsibility to the public who elected them.

The experience taught me about myself, too.

I know I need to work harder at double-checking all the facts before I hand the story to the editor; I know I need to have it right or someone is going to let me know; and I know it’s impossible to be perfect.

Then there was the practical education.

I have learned not to wear sandals or a dress when walking on a farm or through tall prairie grass, not to walk so fast I miss saying hello to a neighbor on the sidewalk and how to properly wave at other drivers I pass in town.

In other words, I think I have followed one journalistic motto and learned something about everything and everything about nothing.

One thing I do know: Everybody has a story somewhere in their lives fit for the front page, and I wish I could’ve stayed in Pawnee County long enough to hear them all.

“I am just a common person,” most people told me. “You don’t have to write much on me.”

But in a close community like this one, no one is common. Each person plays a role in the success and prosperity of its future and the preservation of its history.

I read a story once about a young girl walking along the beach, throwing starfish back into the surf. A man walking along the same stretch of sand stopped to ask her why she was wasting her time. It was impossible to save all the stranded starfish, he told her.

The little girl picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean.

“I made a difference for that one,” she said.

“Common” people are capable of great things — stories and accomplishments that have made me laugh, get angry, rethink my ideas and wish I could be so “common.”

I used to think small towns were old and slow, stuck in a time warp somewhere. Now I think people here are just much closer to their history than I was growing up in Omaha. Many people seem to draw strength from that history, more proud of completing a task by hand than with some faster, easier, new-fangled technology.

But Pawnee County is not stuck. The computers, the ideas, the glow in people’s eyes when they talk of future improvements — these things are the hope I had never stopped to see before.

I don’t plan to forget what I’ve learned.

As reminders, I bought myself an old rocking chair to hear the creak, feel the memories and be comforted by its solid arms. I made sure my house in Lincoln had a porch and a swing so I could rest outside and watch the neighbors go by.

And so that I never lose the curiosity to seek and report on the unique in all the common things, sitting next to me on the porch will be a small gray tabby farm cat named Chiminey.