MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, NEB. -- Five days until USC sends an entire state into mourning, and it's corn to the right, corn to the left and Baghdad Bob over yonder.
Later I will become very intimate with Bob, grabbing one of those four things hanging from underneath Bob's rather large backside to begin the milking process. And Gary Matthews thinks he's got it tough when I start pressing him to give it up.
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IT SOUNDED like a good idea at the time, getting away from the Choking Dogs and arriving here early to see what it's like to be sentenced to a life in Nebraska, beginning with an overnight visit to Bob and Linda Wuebben's farm in Fordyce.
They think life is just swell here, the pair of Corn Cobs married for 34 years, their last vacation being the three days they went to the Black Hills for their honeymoon -- while every other day, year after year -- milking cows and feeding the calves at dawn. And then doing it again just before supper.
Beckham plays 90 minutes in England, travels first class back to L.A. to play another soccer match, and everyone worries the guy is going to be plumb-tuckered out.
Out here it's hard work every day, really hard work when you consider the fact husband and wife are spending 365 days, every morning, noon, and night together, "and as long as she helps with the milking," Bob says, "I can't complain."
Linda, a freelance writer in her spare time, hops on a four-wheeler twice a day to ride across the prairie and drive the cows home for milking. I can't get the wife to get in her new car and fetch Starbucks.
"It's like my dad used to say, 'You'll never go to hell if you put in a hard day's work,' " says Linda, and right away I'm thinking, where does that leave Bill Dwyre, who writes only two columns a week?
When Linda is done, she's just starting -- preparing oversized baby bottles for the calves. Flies are everywhere, which she ignores. One fly gets into my house, and I have a daughter who will turn over the furniture and break dishes to hunt it down.
It's commonplace here to be covered in them, and yet inside their wonderful home is a picture of a father, son and cow walking down the road, the youngster saying, "Aincha glad we're farmers, dad?"
Bob loves it, all right. Says he's not tied down, because he chose to do this. "You are your own boss," he says. Bob is crazy, maybe from the flies buzzing around his head every day. He hasn't had a day off in 34 years -- from work or wife.
