Growing apart: The tale of two cities

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BY DICK PIERSOL / Lincoln Journal Star ANALYSIS

For those of us who have lived in both Lincoln and Omaha, a perception persists: Most people in each city pay very little attention to the other. To some Omahans, Lincoln is as out of sight and out of mind as Ong, and vice versa.

In Elkhorn, a suburban colony of Omaha, ask a prominent local contractor for a recommendation of somebody in Lincoln to do some work on a house and you’ll get a big, blank stare.  

It often works the other way, too.

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So both cities are Midwestern in that way.   

Outside one’s own turf, people are strangers. 

As the Journal Star’s tales of these two cities unfolded, one couldn’t escape the feeling that Omaha and Lincoln and their people are, as Midwestern people say when they’re trying to be polite, “Diffrunt.”

In Lincoln, one overhears a customer crabbing at a sales clerk about her Daisy Fuentes jeans, the brand mispronounced as if the name were spelled Fuence. 

In Omaha, no self-respecting retail snob would admit to wearing Daisy’s jeans.

In Omaha some years ago, there was an intense conversation among women at a fashionable party about the latest must-see attraction in Europe, which turned out to be  the latest apparition of the Blessed Virgin. 

Probably wouldn’t be as likely to hear that conversation in Lincoln. 

In Lincoln, grocery store patrons surrounded a robber in the parking lot and tried to talk him into giving up and mending his ways.

That is a lot less likely to happen in Omaha.

Like a couple of shirttail relatives who settled a little too close to each other, these two cities have their own annoying, charming personalities that came from their growth on the frontier. 

Cecil Steward knows both places and qualifies as a guide.

The retired dean of architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, now the head of the Joslyn Castle Institute for Sustainable Communities, is working to prepare the way for what will become of these two cities and the territory between them over the next generation.

“I’ve come to the conclusion Omaha is more or less the way it is because of what it sprung from: the river town, the outpost to the West, the railhead to the West, always business, looking to growth and development,” Steward said.

“That look to the West became both micro and macro in its history. Today it’s more micro in terms of annexation and growth ... but initially it was much broader than that.

“George Joslyn, for instance, made his fortune taking advantage of the railroad moving west, extending his newsprint franchise all the way to the coast. This was a springboard for big things,” Steward said.

“Lincoln was more dominated by faith-based folks, by the attempt to create the university, the movement of the capital,” he said. “Lincoln grew up with a more introspective attitude toward business and lifestyle.

“Omaha grew up with a more wide-open free attitude, to do business there in order to do business elsewhere.”

Dave Cary agrees with the notion that history made these two cities what and who they are. 

Speaking as a person who has lived in both cities, not as the transportation planner he has been in both, Cary denies the notion that people in Lincoln feel any less esteem for their city in comparison to Omaha.

“I personally don’t have that opinion and haven’t heard a lot of that,” he said. “What I hear in Lincoln is, they like it as it is, it offers a choice from Omaha.”

It’s as if they are competitive relatives who need their space to be who they want to be. 

Which begs the question: Are the distinctions of these two metros to be cherished, even cultivated, like those of complementary siblings?   

Or will they be criticized, pinched, poked and aggravated, like two fussy cousins who need Aunt Gretna to separate them? 

It might take some distance to see them clearly for what they were, are or might be.

Bart Becker used to be the city editor of the Lincoln Journal and now lives in Seattle, which is far enough off in space and time.

“Back then, Lincoln was more of a cat and Omaha more of a dog,” Becker said.  “But, of course, neither could match rural, small-town Nebraska’s wonderful appreciation of individual eccentricity.”

Reach Dick Piersol at 473-7241 or dpiersol@journalstar.com.