Prologue

I’m an artist now, and I live and work in the city. It’s a landscape of cement and noise and crowds, all very different and very far away from the little town where I grew up—Clear River, Nebraska, population: 1500.

Clear River was surrounded by cornfields and cattle and open sky. The tallest building in town was only three stories high. Most of the streets were unpaved, and we didn’t even have a traffic light. We didn’t need one. Every day the Union Pacific Streamliners roared through, but they never stopped in Clear River.

I often think of that little town, and that special Christmas in 1946, when I was ten years old.