Walt "The Vault"

This morning we picked up Walt "The Vault" Miller and got a drive-through tour of the Naval Ammunitions Depot just outside of Hastings. I was surprised to see something so large and historical out here in the middle of Nebraska. The facility manufactured shells and ammunitions for use in WWII and the Korean War. The factories were enormous and most of them had fallen into severe disrepair.

We stopped to briefly walk around inside a building which had been used to melt and pour TNT into torpedoes and depth charges. Further down the assembly line was the site of an explosion which disintegrated 8 people instantaneously on April 6th, 1944. The explosion was so powerful it blew out the windows in the nearby town of Glenville. The building we explored was full of broken walls, twisted metal, and shattered windows. When the facility was shut down, the marines didn't know what to do about all of the explosive residue which had gathered into the cracks and crevices of the building. So they soaked wooden pallets in kerosene, piled them up inside, and set the place ablaze. It was a wreck afterwards, but man alive - what a bonfire!

We were already running late, so after leaving the site we hurried over to meet with Scott Opbreck at the Meat Animal Research Center. This is a place, run by the government, that is doing world class research in order to make the best and most delicious steak in the world. The entire lab facility we were in smelled like a steakhouse. In back we ran across two women whose job as far as I could tell was to cook steaks to perfection and then analyze the tenderness of the meat. Get this - there is an actual gene in the DNA of a cow which can predict the meat's tenderness! Who knew?

 

We got in a van and drove around to see the different animals they were doing research on. We saw cows, sheep, and pigs. (Well, we didn't see pigs because the pigs were quarantined in huge windowless sheds so they wouldn't contract diseases.) They had about 27,000 head of cattle (which is apparently a ton) on their property. One cow got feisty and stared me down between the gates of her feeder.

The sheep reminded me of New Zealand, although they don't keep them in little pens there. I was impressed especially by the self-shearing sheep. What a great idea if you're only raising sheep for meat! However the shedding did make the sheep look extra scraggly and pretty hideous. New Zealand sheep are much cuter, especially the ones with the black faces!

After lunch we took in the sickly-sweet stench of the Chief Ethanol Plant. It smells kinda good at first, a little yeasty. But after a really good wiff of it you kind of want to throw up. Duane Kristensen gave us the rundown on the plant and let us smell some of the 200 proof ethanol they had produced. It was completely potable alcohol, quite strong, but drinkable. It smelled so good that I wished I had a mixer to make myself a stiff drink!

Stiff drinks were not allowed at our next stop - the Crossroads Homeless Shelter. That's where the news media met up with our group and I got tapped to be interviewed. Five minutes later and I was on my way to being a local TV star! My short appearance was a huge hit with the old ladies at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd. Tonight I joined one of the women's circles while they met at my host's home and after I told them about the interview one of them called up her husband and told him to make sure and tape the news tonight! I felt quite loved.

Interesting story: Everyone forgot to tell Pastor Peeler where the women's group met! So he sat at the church all by his lonesome waiting for people to show up. Finally he called over to Betty to ask if they might have cancelled it. Poor Pastor Peeler! 

While he made his way over, that left me stuck in a room with about 10 old ladies. Betty is going to be mad at me when she reads this. She told me personally, "We have a wide range of ages in our circle." Now that may be, but as Gary pointed out, not one of those women was under 55 years old! It was a lot of fun though, and I got to practice my storytelling skills. The night ended with a warm slice of peach pie topped with vanilla ice cream. Mmmmmm...

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