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Back in the day, reporters used to be able to hitch a ride with the governor or National Guard to the site of a disastrous tornado or flood.
One of those trips involved a flight to Coleridge, in northeast Nebraska, after a tornado had destroyed two farm homes and damaged several residences on the north edge of the town.
At one of the farms, the owner stood just outside the now-bare foundation where his house once stood. The house was gone.
“It could have been worse,” he said. No one had been injured or killed, after all.
For some reason, that quote has stuck with me over the years. It could be, I keep thinking – maybe should be – the state motto.
I can’t recall the number of times I’ve heard the same comment when visiting the scene of a devastating flood, a horrible fire, or, like in Coleridge, one heck of a nasty tornado.
But it kind of typifies what Nebraskans are all about. Despite homes being washed away by flooding, or burned to the ground in a fire, or wiped off the map by a tornado, despite watching crops burn up in a drought, the phrase we often use is, “it could have been worse.”
It says to me that Cornhuskers are in it for the long run. We’re not cutting our losses and moving on due to some calamity or disaster.
To be sure, Nebraska has always been a place where people traveled across, to get somewhere else. It’s fly-over country.
That was true back in the pioneer days when wagon trains rolled up the flat Platte River Valley en route to Oregon, Utah and other points west. It’s still true today as semis and SUVs rumble down Interstate 80 and jetliners leave lazy contrails in the sky.
“Nebraska is an Indian word for ‘long ways across,’ “ is how the joke goes.
But it’s also a place where people stuck it out, through thick and thin, disasters and droughts. There was always an expectation that things would get better, and that it could have been worse.
Nebraskans persevere, through all kinds of weather. They stay on. They don’t move on. (Unless, of course, it’s to follow the football or volleyball team, or to go to a NASCAR race.) The state motto has sparked more debates than I can remember.
“Equality Before the Law” is the official state motto, the one on the state flag and seal. It’s a unique expression that everyone, black, white and otherwise, should be viewed equally, with equal rights.
Nebraska was granted statehood back in 1867 only after it dropped a “whites only” voting provision in its constitution, according to the Nebraska State Historical Society. You know, “equality before the law.”
We’ve also had a variety of other state mottos, mostly for tourism.
I personally liked “Where the West Begins,” a 1960s pitch, because Nebraska really is where “the West Begins” (and that’s somewhere west of North Platte or thereabouts).
There’s been a variety of other tourism taglines, but the one that stirred the most controversy was “Honestly, it’s not for everyone.”
That motto, since mothballed, was hailed by marketing types as edgy and directly confronting the idea that Nebraska was flat and boring. That slogan won some awards, and a survey said that interest in visiting the state increased after we admitted the state “wasn’t for everyone.”
But Gov. Pillen and others called it “nonsense” and a putdown. They said it hurt efforts to lure new residents to the state, and was contrary to economic development slogans stating that Nebraska was “open” for business and new folks.
(I’ve always thought that the state’s best tourism pitch would be showing on-coming motorists flashing the one-finger wave, the friendly greeting to strangers that is unique to Nebraska (and kind of unheard of elsewhere).
But for my money, the state motto, while nice, could use an upgrade. And “It Could Have Been Worse” works for me.
Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. He is a retired senior reporter for the Nebraska Examiner and the former Capitol Bureau Chief for the Omaha World-Herald.
