Lincoln, Nebraska 29-31 March 1990: Duds 'N Suds and Sweet, Sweet Salad Dressings

I’m at an ethics conference in Nebraska. The building and people I’m meeting are very like a dream I had some time ago, though I don’t find I’ve written it down. I seem to have more and more bits of these prescient dreams lately. How bizarre that experience is . . . .

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Just turned 40 yesterday. Yesterday and today I walked in Lincoln. A dismal place. The weather is heavily overcast and coldish. Ground soggy—that dreary, interminable not quite winter, not yet spring, period I remember each year from Toronto. The houses are many of them unkempt, the shops either closed or depleted of wares worth buying. I’ve seen what seem to be 800 pizza parlors, 700 auto dealers, 100 thrift shops, and little else except 2 laundromats with those cutesy names Midwesterners seem to like for their establishments: Duds ‘N Suds, and LaunDRY Palace. Of course, I believe New Orleans has a Splish Splash Washerteria.

The food is appalling. Salads are dressed with the most cloyingly sweet viscous stuff I’ve ever encountered—too sweet even for a dessert. Other food is tasteless, unseasoned, ill-prepared. The only decent restaurant I’ve found is a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place, where I had lunch and dinner.