"Moving Out, A Nebraska Woman's Life"

“Moving Out, A Nebraska Woman’s Life”, was written as an autobiographical family history by Polly Spence (1914-98). Never intended to be published, it would have languished in a bureau drawer had it not been for her son, Karl Spence Richardson, and the staff at the University of Nebraska Press who recognized the literary and historical merit of the work and published it posthumously in 2002.

Polly spent her first fifteen years in Franklin, a small town south and east of Kearney, north of the Republic River. In the early to mid-1920s, it was a town seething in conservative and puritanical values where the Ku Klux Klan held socials and were always ready to don sheets and burn a cross on a “Papist” yard. The “Jim Crow” ordinance was strictly enforced in those days in many towns across Nebraska.

In 1927, her family moved to Crawford, a rough and wild town in northwestern Nebraska. Polly contrasts the cultural differences between the prudish and vindictive mindset of Franklin and the liberal but tough cow-town people of Crawford.

Never able to get a college education, Polly did attend the University of Nebraska for a year. In 1929, she married a local Crawford boy, Levi Richardson, and settled into the life of a farmer’s wife, giving birth to three boys in rapid succession, and suffering the damnation of a miserable marriage. Through her book, Polly recalls the great events of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of a woman trying to get along without electricity or indoor plumbing until the late 1940’s. The reader shares with her the joys and satisfactions of the church socials, barn raisings, and long hours in the kitchen with other women preparing the meals for the threshing crews. The deaths of her father, her brother, and youngest son, Charley, were devastating to her. All of the reminiscing is put into perspective with her account of the local impact of the Great Depression, the droughts, the blizzards, the Ku Klux Klan, World War II, and the Viet Nam War.

Through resilience, determination, and resignation, Polly exemplifies the romantic ideal of the prairie woman of Cather’s “My Antonia”. But, with ever-growing marital problems coupled with the liberal views of the 1970s, she transforms herself into a modern independent woman. With divorce papers in her hand, she leaves the farm and moves to Los Angeles where she finds a job in a downtown office building.
This book would be a great selection for one of the local book discussion clubs.

Readers are reminded that the book, “Goodnight, Nebraska” will be discussed at the Library’s “One Book, One Columbus” event on Wednesday, April 26th at 7:00 PM. This discussion will be hosted by members of the Topaz Book Club. The author, Tom McNeal, weaves a story about a high school student—a football player—who, instead of going to live at a juvenile detention center in Utah, is sent to a small town somewhere near Chadron, Nebraska. There, he learns to cope with the mentality of a small town in the high plains of Nebraska. Copies of the book are again available for check out