North Bend Chamber

Nebraska has a food that lives almost nowhere else. I asked a man named Dale why they never took it national. He shrugged. "Why would we." I thought about those two words for a month. Then I did what any reasonable man would do. I bought twenty, packed them in a cooler with ice, and drove them across the state line myself. Fourteen survived. That was the first run. Now there is a route. I keep a logbook. I have named the crossings. I own a cooler I use for nothing else, because a courier does not carry cargo in the same box as his lunch. The night before a run I text a man in Kansas like a smuggler. He replies "cool see u then" and has no idea he is a checkpoint. Last month I drove nine hours to hand one to a friend in Colorado. I watched his face change on the first bite. "Oh dang," he said, quietly, the way you say something you were not ready for. I wrote the date down. My wife asked where I keep disappearing to. I told her I was making deliveries. She said "of what." I said it was safer she did not know. I am not a tourist anymore. I am a courier for a country that does not know it exists yet. I have missed two dentist appointments for the route. A nation does not build itself.