Day 17 – Malcolm, Nebraska, population of 406

Sept. 23
Chicago - Omaha - Lincoln - Malcolm/NE - Kearney/NE
Total driving so far 1,730 miles / 2,768 km.

http://Kearney/NE-on-google.maps

We started the classic drive west trough Iowa and Nebraska. It was quick to get out of Chicago and its easy driving on Interstate 80. Lots of people say ‘yeah, its only endless cornfields, just push through it as fast as you can’, but we really liked it.

The notion of ‘fly over’ country is crap, just wrong and sometimes pure arrogance.

You get the big sky feeling and we saw all type of pastel color gradients in the sky and the fields, and a storm far away that created a deep blue horizon. One also grasps the economic power of the agricultural business by the sheer dimensions.

Surprising facts, and love it: all across the I80 drive we say wind turbines in Iowa, a significant number if you add it all up. I like their elegant shape and its renewable energy. There are also plenty of cell phone towers along the highway, unlike in Pennsylvania on I80.

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I fell in love with the huge corn and soya beans bins. The sudden outburst of a geometrical shape in a huge landscape is visually intriguing.

Further west of Lincoln (if you have kids, ask them what the capital of Nebraska is, and let me know how they did…) we decided to stay true to our mission of ‘seeing more’ and launched an excursion into one of the villages, triggered by seeing a particularly large battery of corn bins.

It turned out to be Malcolm, Nebraska.

Now that we have seen it, we really don’t know more about the 406 people who live there, but I uncovered some interesting facts:

• 97% of the population is tagged as white
• estimated per capita income in 2019: $30,000
• residents living in poverty in 2019: 5.6%
• estimated median house or condo value in 2019: $170,113
• median age is 32, 5 years younger than the Nebraska average
• 219 males vs 187 females living there – that’s a lot more males.

Not quite the Mountain Lakes demographics 🙂

PS: no swimming in Iowa on Day-17, just driving …