Eclipse in Small Town America

The Solar Eclipse

Best in Small Town America

Our family went to Virginia, Nebraska to watch the solar eclipse this past Monday. We watched the sun dance behind the moon above constantly shifting bands of clouds before a muted darkness descended during the brief totality. While not as dramatic as seeing the corona of the sun surrounding a black moon, our experience was quite satisfying and I got a t-shirt memorializing the event to complete the bargain.

Our experience was shared by about 100 people who decided that a small, almost ghost, town surrounded by corn and soybean fields in southern Nebraska was the place to be. Virginia, Nebraska has a population of about 20 on a good day. Downtown is three blocks long with the major hub being the grain elevator. Large trucks pulled in and out the whole time we were there dumping their loads and going out for more. No time to stop to watch the once in a lifetime event happening in the clouds.

There were three small places open on the main drag to welcome the population surge. Terry’s steakhouse is evidently the only restaurant in the area for miles around and called in every worker to prepare and serve a special eclipse styled breakfast, lunch and dinner to all who came. There was a steady trickle of customers in and out of Terry’s all day with folks retiring to lawn chairs set up in the empty lots on either side of the building, food and drinks in hand, to gaze upward. Across the street, the five people who work at Citizen’s State Bank closed up from 11 to 2 and brought their lobby and desk chairs into the street to watch the show.

The American Legion Post, a vacant lot down the street from Terry’s, put on the best welcome for traveling strangers. They opened the doors so visiting sun gazers could use the bathrooms. Legion members prepared pulled pork in roaster ovens and set out sides of coleslaw to sell to the hungry that did not bring picnic supplies. They put out a clearly homemade sheet cake decorated with a large sun at the total eclipse phase to share with the anticipated revelers, asking only that visitors fill out a large poster board with their name and hometown along with how many miles they had traveled to get to small town Virginia for the eclipse.

The rest of Virginia’s main street is made up of long empty small buildings. The faded sign for Staples Store hovered over windows boarded up and most of the rest had broken windows or none at all speaking to the town’s decline as a local center of commerce.

We set up our chairs in the town park across the street from the grain elevator and a small deserted shop that locals opened to set up their picnic table. The park had oak shade trees, a swing set, a half basketball court and a push me, pull you merry go round that I went round on with my grand daughters and some other kids who stopped by the red painted antique. The two picnic tables used hand welded farm wagon wheel rims to support the seats and tabletop. We got there around 10 am and by 11:30 there were 6 other families looking up through the clouds at the sun with our special glasses or welding goggles brought from work. Two local young teen boys walked around with a cardboard sign proclaiming tongue in cheek, “The End is Near,” before playing some hoops and then pulling out their glasses for the event.

We chatted amiably with others who came to look up into the sky. There was a three generation local family, a couple from Minnesota with a fancy filtered camera, a family from Texas and two guys with very fancy drones that hovered 400 feet up while filming the event at opposite ends of the street. I could not understand what they gained from a higher aerial view that was still under the cloud cover, but to each his own. When the totality arrived, all the watchers cheered and whistled.

It was refreshing to be at that small town event, bigger than all it held, and share it with family and quietly nice people who just wanted to see something they had never seen before. It was a thoroughly positive and genuinely American event.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled.