Fairbury couple knows every Nebraska nook and cranny
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BY CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star
FAIRBURY — In 1978, Barb and Loren Ebke embarked on a journey that would span 14 years and cover an entire state.
They visited Omaha and Ord, Lincoln and Lynch, Burchard, Bassett, Bertrand and every other city, town, village and hamlet in Nebraska.
They documented their journey with an old Polaroid camera, taking pictures of post offices in the communities that actually had them.
In those that didn’t, they’d photograph a building on Main Street or a water tower or a sign welcoming visitors to town.
They visited towns that weren’t even incorporated, like Saunders County’s tiny Rescue, which when they were there had just one resident.
They visited towns that didn’t have any residents at all, where just an old downtown building or a few run-down homes indicated that they ever existed.
The Ebkes veered from the main roads to visit country churches and old cemeteries. They bought a new camera and took pictures of those, and of waterfalls and trees in the fall.
“Our goal was really to see Nebraska, not just to run from town to town,” Barb Ebke said.
Although it’s been 14 years since the Ebkes checked the last town off their list, they still see a lot of Nebraska.
After they visited every Nebraska town, they visited every state and national park in Nebraska, as well as every Game and Parks state recreation area. They finished that project in 1998.
“There weren’t as many of those so it didn’t take us as long,” Barb said.
After that, they decided to photograph every single courthouse in the state, even though they had seen them all before.
Loren likes courthouses. He thought it would be nice to have a record of them all.
They finished up that project in 2004, and now they’re in the midst of driving every stretch of paved road in the state.
Both Nebraska natives, the Ebkes just like the state.
They grew up near Diller, on farms just a few miles apart. They married in 1957 and moved to Venango.
There, Loren farmed and Barb worked as a teller at a bank. When she had long weekends, they’d take little trips, mostly into the Sandhills.
They moved to Kearney, where Loren attended school. Then to Auburn, Aurora and finally Fairbury, where they still live.
Every town they lived in was set against a different landscape, Barb said. Many Nebraskans aren’t even aware of all the nuances of the state’s geography.
“There’s a lot of people who don’t ever go out of their little area,” she said. “They don’t see things.”
Like the mausoleum near Fairbury built so a man could be buried on his own land, before the state nixed the plan.
Like the waterfalls along the Niobrara River.
Like the little church in Keystone, just east of Ogallala, that is Protestant on one side and Catholic on the other.
Like the one-lane paved road in Grant County, and the tiny county courthouse in Arthur.
“I think the first time we went to Arthur, they were still using that,” Loren said.
He guesses that first trip was between 40 and 50 years ago. The courthouse isn’t used anymore.
They’ve seen a lot of things change in their time on the road.
They’ve had a few close calls, too. They’ve gotten stuck in the Sandhills, miles from anyone. Barb was once bitten by a rattlesnake.
But they’ve always made it home safe. And they’ve never, Loren said, had to ask anyone for help.
Barb gives talks to ladies’ aid groups and the like about the country churches they’ve seen and about Nebraska in general.
People tell her she should write a book, she said.
But she says she never will.
Instead, they still travel, taking little trips whenever they can get away from their business of cleaning office buildings.
And they enjoy wherever they end up.
“Nebraska, the whole state, is a pretty state,” Loren said.
Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.
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