ALLIANCE

NO DOGS OR INDIANS ALLOWED

What luxury to wake up naked, a crisp morning breeze coming through the open window, my legs curled together to keep myself warm, clean sheets, cheap but adequate pillows on a king-size bed in a motel room alone, peacefully listening to the chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp-chirp of a western meadowlark, the buzz of a single-prop plane high overhead, the deep crunch of train cars coupling in the nearby railroad yard. I have much to look forward to today. Good Friday. Today I take my little yellow Volkswagen rental on a 280-mile round-trip from my hometown, Alliance, Nebraska, to the poorest community in America, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, to hang out with my blood brother Vernell White Thunder, whom I've talked hours to but haven't seen in a long time; I just want to sit in his living room, drink copious amounts of Susie's "cowboy coffee," and relive the many profound and sometimes funny moments we've had over many years in many places — Kyle and Wanblee on the rez; me trying to teach him to spell, him trying to teach me how to ride horse bareback; our silly idea about drinking Navajo girls under the bar in downtown Albuquerque; our Indian horse ranch in Boulder, Colorado, which we named Tiyospaya; the little matter of the Buffalo Ranch; and the unresolved dispute over which of us danced with Jane Fonda. But first I must go for a swim.

Now residing in California, with my parents long gone and very few friends in the area, I don't visit often. My Lebanese former in-laws still live here, and I love seeing them, but not staying in Alliance, which might well be the most boring town in America; people drive five miles an hour down the middle of main street, park on the wrong side of the road, smoke inside the stores. I try hard to stay healthy at the only motel with a swimming pool, but this is hardly a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons. Perhaps it is a cut above the other motels here because it has an indoor swimming pool, but the pool is not long enough for lap swimming, and you can hardly get your heart pumping by splashing around. The best news is that they have a hot tub. I slip out of bed directly into my suit, grab the room key, head out, and amble down the hallway, only to discover a hand-scrawled sign on the door to the pool: CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE. So I march to the front desk to inquire how long the pool will be closed.

The twentysomething clerk, a local girl with orange-and-blue hair and numerous piercings, says, "All weekend."

This is clearly wrong. I am on the verge of demanding a refund and moving across the road to the American Inn, which, by the way, is half the price. But before I start shouting, the older, mellow me emerges; obviously, this poor girl is powerless — she knows nothing about the pool, why it is closed, or why it will take all weekend to clean the scum off the surface.

I say, "Okay; thanks."

I skulk back to my room next to the noisy soft drink vending machine to work out with the latex stretch bands I fortuitously stashed in my carry-on bag yesterday before taking an Uber to the Oakland Airport. Exercise is my elixir, my antidote to premature aging.

During the 1950s and '60s, before America was thoroughly homogenized, when I still liked it here, Alliance had no Holiday Inn Express, Motel 6, McDonald's, Kmart, Pizza Hut, 7-Eleven, or Dunkin' Donuts. Hard to imagine, but we had two proper hotels: the downtown Drake Hotel and the Alliance Hotel across from the train station, both locally owned with real lobbies, bellhops, public dining rooms, full bars, and banquet halls. When my parents could afford it, I loved eating in these hotels — chicken-fried steak on mashed potatoes smothered with onion gravy was my go-to favorite. Alliance also had two drugstores with classic '50s-style lunch counters, soda fountains, and jukeboxes. My mom worked at a shoe store called Howard's — Howard and his wife were family friends — and my dad was the editor of the local paper. My best friend Nace's dad worked at the Maytag appliance store, one of the few national businesses. There were three ice cream stands, one of which stayed open all year round even when the temperature dipped below zero, and two family hamburger places, the better of which was Rex's Hamburgers, where they sold fifteen-cent miniature burgers fried in three inches of grease on a smoky-hot griddle, served in little square dinner rolls — juicy and delicious; my brother and I could eat dozens. The grocery stores were all family owned; no chains until a Safeway opened up in 1962. Hardware stores, auto shops, a lumberyard, the farm implement company, an honest-to-Jesus smoke-filled pool hall with eight-ball and snooker tables, a drive-in movie theater where you could eat popcorn and lose your virginity while watching Jerry Lewis in The Bellboy, and a downtown movie theater that sponsored Saturday morning kiddie shows where during intermission Pepe the Clown (local sign painter Leonard Glarum) would drive his toy clown car out on the stage, make silly jokes, and hand out dorky prizes. Strategically located next to the movie theater was a candy store, and not far away were an all-night bakery and a doughnut shop.

Unlike with today's big-box stores in small-town franchise-dominated economies, most of the money made in Alliance stayed in Alliance; it was not siphoned off to some distant corporate headquarters in the Cayman Islands. People in Alliance felt prosperous and safe; they seldom bothered to lock their houses or car doors. On my tenth birthday, my parents gave me a Black Phantom Schwinn bicycle that elevated my status among my friends and brought me freedom and great joy. I could pedal anywhere — to the swimming pool, school, the movies, friends' houses, the soda fountain — and park without worry. My bike would be there when I needed it. I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as a bicycle lock, much less a bicycle thief.

We lived in a Norman Rockwell painting during the 1950s, then moved on to American Graffiti in the '60s. Lily-white Alliance had one poor black family, the Chandlers. An iconic sight was Old Man Hayes Chandler driving his horse and wagon through the alleyways to haul away discarded things for housewives. When I was a...