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| For Sale at Plains Trading Co, Valentine, NE |
In
the The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition,
there is the story of the African-American DeWitty/Audacious settlement in the
Sand Hills. And Garden City, Kansas, today, which has invited and absorbed waves of immigrants from all over the world to work in its meatpacking plants.
Hollywood in the 20th century largely brainwashed us into thinking the West was lily white. In fact, census records show there were Native American, black, Asian, mixed-race families in towns all over the Plains, especially in railroad towns. A typical "cowboy" on the cattle trail was more likely to speak Spanish or Swedish than English.
When
I passed through Valentine, Nebraska, in 2009, I encountered two Asian-Americans, one by design, one by accident. The vignettes show that the idea of a "Prairie Mosaic" is not part of history. It's part of life there today.
The
first was the Korean-American Bum Song, who was selling bonsai plants by the side of the road. His life story is in the
book.
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| Bum Song, 2009 |
The second was an encounter I had planned. Years before, I ate at a
Chinese restaurant on the south side of Valentine. I returned there in 2009 on
my research trip to find out more about the family. I was curious as to how
they coped in a town where there were few, if any other Asian families. When I
arrived, I discovered that the first Chinese family had moved on. The Guans had
taken their places.
This
is a “cutting room” floor blog. I decided not to run a picture of Bum Song in
the new book because it didn’t meet my standards for composition. For those who
would like to see him, here is a picture!
I
cut the story of Fei Guan out of the manuscript for pacing reasons. I felt the
narrative was lingering too long in Valentine, and I had to move on. But I’m
posting it here:
The China Cafe
The last stop on Highway 83 leaving Valentine is
the town’s only Chinese restaurant, which is simply named the China Cafe.
There’s nothing fancy about the brown, square
building made of corrugated steel. The interior is plain as well, with a few
Asian knickknacks, posters and booths upholstered in cracking vinyl.
Fei Guan works the wok while his wife Sui waits
on tables.
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| China Cafe, Valentine, NE, 2009. All photos by Stew Magnuson |
The Guans are the town’s only Chinese family.
For Fei, it was a long journey from Hong Kong to
the middle the prairie. The 40-year-old with a medium build and dark hair
sticking out the back of his baseball cap left the former British colony
shortly before the Chinese took the territory back in 1997. As many Chinese emigrants
have since the Gold Rush days of the 1840s, he ended up in San Francisco, where
he bought a restaurant. He ran it for thirteen years until his landlord just
about put him out of business. Every year, he raised the rent until it came to
about $6,000 a month.
It was about that time he saw an ad in a Chinese
language newspaper offering a restaurant for sale in Valentine, Nebraska. Of
course, he had never heard of the town, and never been to the nation’s vast
interior. He had lived in two of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, but had
no experience in small towns. But he was intrigued. First, there was no
competition. Drive 100 miles in any direction and there are no other Chinese
restaurants. Hell, in San Francisco, you can’t walk five minutes without
finding Chinese food. And not only was the business for sale, so was the
property. No longer could a landlord put the squeeze on him when it came time
to renew the lease.
So he bought the restaurant from the Chinese
family who had owned it for seven years and moved his family to the town on the
edge of the Sand Hills.
That was two years ago, and he hasn’t taken a
day off since.
He closes for a half day on Christmas, but
otherwise works seven days a week, including Thanksgiving.
“I want my customers to know that I’m always
here.”
He gets up in the morning, brings his kids to
school, and then has about two hours to fish the Niobrara River.
“I meet a lot of people when I’m fishing,” he
says.
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| Fei Guan, 2009 |
The exterior and interior are plain, but the
food is not. The chicken and black mushrooms is delicious and tastes more like
the authentic Chinese meals one finds in San Francisco than the oily congealed
food one finds in most rural Chinese restaurants. Fei doesn’t believe in the
ubiquitous “Chinese buffet” that one finds in about every town nowadays. He
does one on Fridays for lunch, but that’s the only concession he makes.
I tell him that the 1910 census that I had read
at the historical museum shows that there was one Chinese family living in
Valentine. The Cahotas ran a boarding house. Later, the family ran a five and
dime store downtown. Fei is genuinely surprised, although we both agree that
the name sounds more Japanese than Chinese.
Has it worked out? I ask him.
“The economy is slow, and business is down a
little bit. But I can still make a living,” he says.
The End
Addendum: The fall of 2012, three years after
this encounter, I had a chance to make a quick trip down Highway 83 from the
Rosebud Reservation to Oakley, Kansas. I stopped in to say hello to Fei Guan
and get a bite to eat. The sign was still up, but when I walked in the
restaurant, it had been totally gutted. A woman came out of the kitchen and
informed me that she and her husband had bought the building a few months ago,
and they were going to open a gun shop in its place. The Guans had left town.
She didn’t know where they went. I wonder how the Guans and Bum Song are doing,
and where life has taken them five years after our paths crossed.
Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas,
available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. Both are for sale at Plains Trading Co. in Valentine, Nebraska.
To join the
Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK
HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com. Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com