McCook, Nebraska: Population 7,000, beefcake population 23,000

Pity the gay people of McCook, Nebraska, population 7,000, in southwest Nebraska nowhere near anywhere.  The nearest gay neighborhoods are in Denver, 4 hours away, and Omaha, 4 hours away in the other direction.

The top attractions are the Museum of the High Plains (in an old house), the city park, and a nearby reservoir.

The top restaurants are Fuller's, with toys on the walls, A Taste of Texas BBQ, and McDonald's.

A March for Love in the city park in 2017 drew 50 participants and onlookers, as well as a car with a driver yelling "Death to gays!" and a protest "Marriage = 1 Man and 1 Woman" festival.

But what McCook lacks in restaurants, sights, and pro-gay residents, it makes up for in beefcake.  There are thousands of pictures online of McCook Bison wrestlers.

With or without their shirts.

Individual or group

Wacky or not (this one says "We mean business," so they're wearing ties, and one guy has a briefcase).

In McCook or away.

Sometimes with singlets.

And just when you think you have seen a beefcake photo of every high school and community college athlete in town, a whole file of pictures of the swim team appears.


And the cross-country team.

And powerlifters.

But I'm out of room.

Wahoo: A Fish, a Shrub, a Town, and a High School

"Wahoo" sounds like a cry of happiness or excitement, like "Yippee" or "Yahoo."   But the dictionary demotes the interjection to #4, after a fish and two bushes, all based on Native American names garbled into "wahoo." One of the bushes donated its name to Wahoo Creek in Nebraska, whence the city.

It's in the cornfields about 45 miles west of Omaha, one of those quintessential small towns with a grid of streets, east-west numberd, north-south named after trees: Sycamore, Chestnut, Locust, Elm, Beach, Pine.

















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2,1 square miles containing 1,801 houses (8 with gay people), 10 churches, 18 restaurants  (including the Wigwam Cafe, the C&C Cafe, Rezac's Cafe, and the Stockyard Cafe). 3 parks, 2 high schools, a county jail, the county courthouse, city hall, and a lot of trees.

Its main claim to fame dates back to 1995, when the town leaders petitioned David Letterman to identify it as the "home office" for his late night talk show.  They sent many whimsical gifts, including a Ford Pinto (the old car that exploded on impact), a clock made of cow dung, and two teenage boys, Jeff and Josh Price.  He finally agreed, but sent the boys home.





Maybe he already had all the teenage boys he needed.

If you have a few names left on your Christmas list, try the Yahoo High Swim Team.

This group seems a little young -- I swear I saw braces.  Maybe they're from the Aquatic Center.

There are a lot of wrestlers, both local high schools.

I'm not usually into crosscountry, but I might watch these guys, just for the jogging trunks with various national flags on them.  The photo doesn't explain the significance.

This came up in a search on "Wahoo powerlifting," but I think it's more "Wahoo!  Powerlifting!"

And I think these guys have actually caught a "Wahoo" fish.

A Dream Weekend in Kearney, Nebraska

"I want you to come to Kearney, Nebraska  on December 1st for the Varsity KHS Invite."

I don't know what that is, but I might take him up on the offer if:
1. He shaves off that stupid moustache.
2. The offer includes a personally escorted dream weekend.

Kearney is a small town of 30,000 in the Nebraska wilderness, about halfway between Omaha and North Platte.  It will take me about five hours to get there, so I'll drive in on Friday, November 30th, and be there for dinner:

Suwannee Thai Cuisine, followed by a show at the Merryman Performing Arts Center.  Magician Jay Owenhouse is performing.

There are no gay bars in Kearney, so he'll have to provide some other post-theater entertainment.















Apparently the best breakfast in Kearney is at a place called The Egg and I, so we'll go there on Saturday morning.

The Varsity Invite is at 10:00 am.

Afterwards I want to go sightseeing: Great Platte River Road Monument,  the Museum of Nebraska Art, and the gym, of course.











In the evening, the Kearney High School is doing The Importance of Being Earnest.  Or maybe the swim team is having a meet.

Sunday morning: Prince of Peace Catholic Church, which has an interesting sanctuary.

Then lunch.  I'll want to meet the three students who were suspended for painting an American flag on their chests.  Local celebrities, freedom of speech and all that.

A final swing through town, and then I'll hit the road back home.

With the right companions, you can have a dream weekend anywhere, even in Kearney, Nebraska.

Nebraska Cornhusker Beefcake

Fred and I moved to Omaha in the summer of 1980, just after my sophomore year in college, and though I hated it at the time, it was probably just too much to bite off all at once: my first apartment, my first time paying rent, my first live-in relationship,  my first taste of adulthood.

We often drove down to the University of Nebraska, 30 miles away -- Fred even suggested that I transfer there to finish my degree -- so it became my first "adult" university.

Huge -- 25,000 students, 10 times the size of Augustana or Olivet.

Big on football and fraternities.

A huge, beautiful campus, walking distance from five museums, two used bookstores, and the State Capitol.

The biggest library I had ever seen.




















A weight room that brings tears to the eyes (actually, this one is new).

















And amazingly bulgeworthy wrestling singlets that bring tears to the eyes.

I can't resist posting another one.

This one was too good to pass up.

Ok, last one.

Fred was a big fan of wrestling -- or wrestling singlets, anyway, and he promised that in the fall we'd get season tickets.  But I only stayed in Omaha about five weeks.

I haven't found any other good beefcake photos of Nebraska Cornhuskers, no swimming, track, or powerlifting.  Even the Uplifting Athletes 5-K run: they ran in their football jerseys.

But the eye-catching wrestling singlets are more than enough.

Plus the statue of Archie the Mammoth.

Deciphering the Mysterious Headline: Gruden, Yoked, Deuce.

I was looking for Omaha beefcake,  searching under "Creighton University" and "powerlifting," when I came across this mysterious
headline:

"John Gruden's Yoked Son Deuce Just Won a Powerlifting Gold Medal."

Lots of mysteries here.

1. Is Deuce actually the guy's name?  It's a gambling term referring to 2 on dice, rather an odd thing to name someone.  Or is it a phrase, "son deuce"?

2. What does yoked mean?  A "yoke" is something you put over the head and shoulders of an ox to get it to plow a field, but that can't be what it means here.  Maybe it refers to a disability,like this bodybuilder with Down's Syndrome.

3. Who the heck is John Grudin?  Since he popped up in a Creighton search, he must be a Creighton University professor, or maybe a local Omaha celebrity, like a newscaster.

Heartwarming:  The disabled son of a university professor has won a powerlifting gold medal.

First things first: I google Deuce Gruden, to see if it's a real person.

Yep, he's 24 years old, the assistant strength and conditioning coach of the Washington Redskins (a football team), who left them in January 2018 to join his father in Oakland.  Father John says he's "like a tiny little lady but a beast."

Here he poses with...well, I don't know what.

In 2017 he won a gold medal at the IPF Powerlifting Championships in Belarus by lifting 752.5 kg.

3. There's no indication that he has Down's Syndrome, so what the heck does "yoked" mean?

According to the Urban Dictionary, "muscular," from the resemblance the trapezoid has to a yoke.

It's used even with guys who don't have muscular traps, although with them a more accurate term is "swole."

3. Who is John Grudin, Part 1.

I found an article stating that "Washington Redskins Coach Jay Grudin closes on a 2.5 million dollar house near RG3 at Creighton Farms.  Sounds close, since Deuce worked for the Redskins, but it's John, not Jay.

I'm not even going to worry about what RG3 is, or why we're expected to be interested in the houses football coaches buy.

Or what it means to say that son Joey Gruden has won a walk-on with the Fliers.

By the way, Joey's nickname is the Slim Reaper, and he has 2,066 followers on Twitter.  Here he is in the hot tub with a girl.

4. Who is John Grudin, Part 2.

Joey's facebook friends include Christopher, Jay, JJ, Jack, Mike, and Deuce Grudin!  But no John.

But if I spell it Jon Gruden, I get Jay's brother and Joey's uncle (and the father of yoked Deuce), a football coach for the Oakland Raiders.  He's 50 years old, and probably one of these guys.

So, to recap:

We are expected to instantly recognize the names of not only every single player on every professional football team (50 per team) but the names of all their coaches (15 per team).  And the same for baseball and basketball.

That's over 5,000 names, a gargantuan feat of memory.  5,000 words are plenty for everyday communication in a foreign language.

And what does any of this have to do with Creighton University?

The Lost Bodybuilder Cop of Tulsa, Oklahoma

This was the cover photo of a book on constitutional law.  A sculpture of family of muscular naked people about to be squished by a scary giant hand.

Where did it come from?  I wondered.  Was it part of the Brutopian mind control plan of some post-Orwellian police state?

The back blurb listed the photographer, so I looked up his online portfolio, and found it:

It's the facade of  Nebraska State Administration Building, previously Woodmen Accident and Life, across from the Capitol on K Street in Lincoln.

Well, that's pretty Brutopian.

I wanted to know about muscleman who posed as the "father," and also the little boy on the right.  Did he spend his whole life walking past a naked image of himself at age 10?

According to the building's guide, the sculpture is "The Protecting Hand," by Lawrence Tenney Stevens, erected in 1954.


Lawrence Tenney Stevens (1896-1972) was one of the progenitors of the "Cowboy High Style" movement.    He grew up in Massachusett, lived in Europe, and finally settled in Santa Barbara, California and Cody, Wyoming.  He specialized in "big" sculptures, entrances to buildings and so on. Some naked women, but muscular men, too.

Like The Contralto, on the Esplanade in Dallas.

There's also a modern dance award in his name.

He was quite a cowboy.

Now, who were the models for the Grabbing Hand sculpture?

A Smithsonian Catalog revealed more: The subjects were Doug Henson, Mrs. Stevens, and Sylvia, Sara, Marc, and Chad Stevens, his own wife and kids.

The boy, Marc Stevens, (b. 1949), now lives in Passaic, New Jersey.

The baby, Chad Stevens (b. 1954), now lives in Montrose, Colorado.

I couldn't find out much about them.

According to the Gay Art website, Doug Henson, the model for the father, was a Tulsa "motorcycle policeman"  and a 1952 Mr. America.

Unfortunately, the 1952 Mr. America was Jim Park (left),  No one named Doug Henson, Doug Hanson, or Doug Hansen competed.

I checked the pro bodybuilder and pro wrestler databases.  Nothing.

A check of the Lincoln obituaries revealed  a Douglas Andrew Henson, born in 1924 and died on May 24, 2014.  He was named "Mr. Oklahoma" in 1949, just before he joined the Tulsa Police Department.

However, I can find no more on the "Mr. Oklahoma" award.  It may have been an amateur title, not based on an actual bodybuilding competition.

I guess there aren't any pics of Doug Henson in a posing strap lying around.

But here's a picture of a modern bodybuilder.

Searching for Beefcake in Grand Island, Nebraska

When I left Rock Island for the safe haven of West Hollywood, I took Interstate 80 through Nebraska.  You go through the big city of Omaha and skirt around the college town of Lincoln without seeing anything, and then it's 400 miles of wilderness: endless flat fields of corn and soybeans broken only by occasional exits with Shell Stations and McDonalds, and the signs for cities that the Interstate skirts around: North Platte, Grand Island, Gothenburg, Ogallala.

I wonder what is it like to live in these small towns, to wake up every morning in a square frame house with cornfields in the back yard, to pass tractors and dogs on the way to work, to eat in the town's one diner, where everybody knows your name and where your daddy went to school. 

I chose Grand Island, because it's the first city you reach after Lincoln (population 48,000), and because it was founded by immigrants from the Quad Cities.  They named it "Grand Island" after an island in the Platte River,

It's the site of the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center, the only police academy in the state, and the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneers

Most of the restaurants are along the lines of "The Great U.S.A. Steak House," but there's also Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, and Somali, plus a Thai-Lao market.

There are two high schools, Catholic and public, with swimming and wrestling.  No colleges except for an extension of the conservative Doane University

There's a used bookstore, the Tattered Book, on the same block with three antique malls and the Primitive Touch Antique Warehouse.

The Grand Island Little Theater is doing "A Trip to Bountiful," "Wait Until Dark," and "In One Bed and Out the Other" (a sex farce about 19th century marital infidelity).

According to the "Butch Wonders" blog, Grand Island is a 'steaming pile of homo-hatred.'  The City Council recently rejected an anti-discrimination ordinance, 8-2, because they didn't want to give anyone the impression that Grand Island was "gay-friendly."

Did anyone think it was?











I imagine that most of Grand Island's gay men have already left, or will leave soon, just as I left Rock Island in 1985.  30 years and 450 miles, and not much has changed.