When I was for a decade the caretaker to a very ill, very disabled person, I often attended a "support group" along with folks who found themselves in similar situations. Not an easy task, being a full-time caretaker. At these useful gatherings, Information was exchanged, sympathy was given, hands were wrung and tissues were always at the ready. It was never an easy two hours.
One of the recurrent themes of our discussions was escapism. Many of the caregivers wanted out. "I just want to get into a car and drive somewhere, anywhere." "I want to lie on a beach in Hawaii, all by myself." "I want to move to a garret in Paris, stay there until this is over -- somewhere where I could meet new people, healthy ones." "Sometimes I think of joining a pilgrimage, but I don't know to where." "Nepal." "A cruise around the world." "Is there another planet that I could go to?"
I too had escapist fantasies, but I'm embarrassed to report that they were of the blandest, most unimaginative, variety. Not Paris or Rome or Prague. For me, it was decidedly unexotic O'Neill, Nebraska. If any of my constant readers need evidence that I was then and am now a monumentally pedestrian person, the proof lies in the O'Neill pudding.
When I indulged the fantasy, which I did at night, usually between 2am to 4am, I would imagine myself in a room at a slightly louche pay-by-the-week motel a couple of blocks from downtown O'Neill. Crappy old stick furniture (but a good bed and mattress), low-wattage light bulbs in the ceiling fixture, big cut-glass ashtray. In this alternative world, I ate my breakfasts at Fay's Cafe a few hundred yards from the motel -- at my regular booth by the window. In the big table at the center of the diner, cheerful immense farmers gobbled their pancakes and bacon and coffee before setting off to fire up their John Deeres. They talked irrigation pipe and the price of soybeans.

O'Neill was so real to me that I could see myself walking the route from my place at the Dakota Motel to the cafe, past St. Mary's church and then by the old bank building.
Or strolling on a weekend evening to the old Gateway Theater to see the latest vampire or biker flick.
Perhaps stopping at the Chesterfield West for an order of chicken fried steak, fried green beans and mayonnaise.
It was a fantasy of Crusoe-like solitude right there in central Nebraska. No conversation, not even a casual "hello."
It was not a dream. Nothing irrational or dreamlike ever occurred. I'm not that sort of person. On the contrary, everything was realer than real. I could feel the texture of the brick buildings as I made my way down the street. The sense were not dulled; they were alerted.
In retrospect, it is mighty curious to me that I never imagined such commonplace human interactions as a chat on a bench in the square or a game of poker or pool. No contacts, male or female. I didn't have the strength.
The O'Neill of my troubled nights was not a real place. It was an invented composite of the many small mid-western towns in which I had eaten or slept during one of my many cross-country migrations. Yet it was real to me -- and a considerable solace.
I'm happy to report that O'Neill is all over now. Gone.
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