Vanity Insanity (32 page)
The tornado of 1975 as seen from the Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack.
©
Photographer Bob Dunham
The original headquarters for the Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha.
© Union Pacific Railroad Museum
Warren Buffett.
Photo with permission from Warren Buffett
Indian Hills Theater.
Brookhill Country Club.
Photo courtesy of Brookhill Country Club
Marian High School in the early eighties.
Photo courtesy Susan Toohey, Marian High School
M’s Pub in the Old Market in downtown Omaha.
Photo courtesy of M’s Pub
Inside of M’s Pub.
Photo courtesy of M’s Pub
Sacred Heart Church.
Photo courtesy of Father
Tom Fangman, Sacred Heart
Coach Tom Osborne.
Photo courtesy of NU Media Relations
Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Photo courtesy of NU Media Relations
“Coming and Going” illustration
.
Photo with permission of the Norman Rockwell family and Curtis Licensing.
Copyright © The Norman Rockwell Family Entities.
© Curtis Licensing. For all non-book uses © SEPS. All Rights Reserved.
PART III
The Day the Music Died
1995 to 1997
The three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, they took the last train for the coast, the day the music died.
Don McLean, “American Pie”
28
Octavia: Wash and Set
Friday, December 15
1995
A
petite, older woman by the name of Elsie sat on the church pew near the window of Vanity Insanity staring at Jenae’s long-sleeved T-shirt as though she were witnessing a horrific car accent. Elsie, one of Octavia’s girls, visibly shaken, could not look away.
What Elsie was so mesmerized by that December morning was an incredibly tight-fitting pink T-shirt that Jenae had stretched over her astonishing curves. It read: Dirty Blond. I suppose I should have felt more professional guilt in allowing Jenae to wear the possibly offensive shirt to work, but Jenae and I had come a long way to get to the present message on the shirt over her eye-catching chest.
A few months earlier, I’d made Jenae wear one of my Husker sweatshirts over the T-shirt she’d worn during River City Roundup. She had come into the salon in a short jean skirt, red cowboy boots, a cowboy hat,
and a T-shirt that hoped to convince the world of her plight:
Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy
. Elsie should be relieved that I’d spared her that terror.