Bring on the New Year

This week has been filled with strep throat and a ruptured ear drums for my grandson, a soar throat for me, and now I have laryngitis. It’s been a week of naps and non-production. I haven’t even started to tear down Christmas. We were not able to celebrate Christmas and obviously New Years is out. Not that we do New Years anyway. The husband always says it’s for the young, dumb and drunk. Man we must be getting old.

I will just chalk up this holiday as thankful. Thankful for the first great grand baby. Thankful for the week before Christmas when Florida came to town. Thankful for dinner and a walk about with my daughter and the grand boys downtown to our Old Market and the Gene Leahy Mall.

This has been a tradition of ours since my girls were tiny. They used to have an event called “Dickens in the Market”. This was a fun event where people would dress up in Victorian garb and horses and buggies would Parade down the street. Carollers would be on the street corners with their instruments singing songs. It was a wonderful atmosphere. I remember one particular year, where the temperatures were in the single digits. The girls were dressed in their snowsuits. You know the kind, where there arms were pretty much standing straight out and they could hardly move. The hood up over the hats and a heavy scarf over their faces. We must have been nuts!

Unfortunately or fortunately they no longer do that event. Times have made way for new traditions, and an opportunity to use our own imagination. But the magic is still there. The old warehouses come to life with their white twinkle lights and brick streets. If you’re lucky, you might run into someone with their saxophone or violin. You can still take a ride in a horse drawn carriage, if you have a reservation. Being able to hear the horses hooves on the cobblestone is always music to my ears. And of course shopping down there is always interesting. Although my kind of shopping no longer exists, it has made way for funkier boutiques that appeal to a younger crowd. But, dining down there is still a wonderful experience with everything from sandwiches to fine cuisine.

Once we were seated at Spaghetti Works, I asked the very soon to be 12 year old if this was the last year we were going to be able to do this. He looked a bit surprised by the question and said, no. They liked coming down at Christmas time. Can we go to that mall place? I said well yeah, that’s part of the whole point!

A beautiful December night, in the 40’s we walked from the restaurant over to the mall while my daughter went and grabbed the car. It was magical. It didn’t matter that we walked by a building under going renovation with scaffolding, or the fact that there were cars obstructing the perfect view. My grand boys silhouetted in that wonderful twinkle light. A moment permanently imprinted in my memory.

The Gene Leahy has been completely redone. Back in the 70’s they started to create a gathering place. They tore down buildings and started The Central Park Mall. They put in a man made lake with foot bridges and swans. A place where you could have a picnic and later a couple of food trucks. But as the “New and Improved” downtown area evolved into condos, sports complex’s and hotels Omaha Planning Commission decided they needed to create a more user friendly park, where kids could play, walk the dog, an amphitheater for relaxed performances or hacky sack!

They filled in the lake, created a very safe playground for kids from 1-well the 12 year old still loves it. Luckily they left “The Slide” in tact, a downtown landmark and destination. They made it better by adding a slide for littles, and a weird thing that looks fun to walk up on, and a great hill to cartwheel down. Between the amphitheater and the slides there are these giant bench swings, for you to relax and watch your kids from either direction.

Then under one of the street bridges they added a reflecting pool. The pool has these huge LED screens that change seasonally.

This time of course it was set for the holiday with snow and a deer prancing across the screen only to disappear and return with a friend to prance the other direction.

As I was sitting on one of the swing benches I had that sense of wonder. What’s this? I couldn’t quite make it out. I didn’t remember this from my last visit. I got up to take a walk and figure out what was at the end of the pond. I was still mesmerized by the deer prancing across the screen. The reflection in the water was amazing.

All of a sudden this huge goddess type head came into view. Though not to my taste, it was spectacular in its luminosity. Not sure what the relevance of this type of sculpture is to Omaha but, a statement it makes!

As the time table winds down on 2023, I will leave you with a couple of photos of the lower level before I start the tear down.