About Schmidt Response

        About Schmidt is a film featuring Jack Nicholson as Warren Schmidt.  Warren, a vice president at Woodmen of the World insurance company in Omaha, Nebraska, recently retired from his job at the age of 66.  Shortly after, his wife Helen suddenly died, so Walter decided to take a trip to visit places of his past in the new R.V. that Helen and him recently purchased before the wedding of their daughter Jeannie in Denver, Colorado.  On this road trip, Walter found himself visiting many places in the Great Plains area.  After meeting many interesting people on his journey, Walter traveled to Denver to visit Jeannie and her fiancée.  He attended the wedding and got emotional about losing his only daughter and eventually voyaged home.  At the end of his excursion, he passed through Kearney, Nebraska and visited the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument.  The film then concluded with an inspirational letter from the little boy, Ndugu, Walter sponsored in Tanzania.

        This movie, while having little relevance to the Great Plains, did have some significant connections.  For instance, as Walter drove through the plains at the beginning of his journey across the Midwest, there was a noticeably large amount of cattle, grass, hay, and flat land.  In Grassland, by Richard Manning, Manning noted that large amounts of cows lived in the northern plains because of the substantial amount of corn located there.  Corn, he stated, was used to fatten cows.  The hay that was visible in the grasslands Walter drove through was used to feed the cattle in the winter months because they could not dig through the snow to eat grass and keep a healthy diet, Manning declared. As always, grass and flat land were very common in the Great Plains, especially in the Midwest where Walter traveled.

        In addition to viewing things from the windows of his R.V., Walter Schmidt stopped by popular tourist sites located in the Great Plains area.  The first stop on Walter’s trip was Holdrege, Nebraska to visit his old home.  Though there was nothing in any of the novels we have studied about Holdrege, there was a lot of information in Grassland about the Sandhills of Nebraska, which are not too distant from Holdrege.  The next stop on his journey was the University of Kansas.  Many battles with the Comanches occurred in the state of Kansas, and in June 1854, the Kansas Territory was opened for the settlement of whites, eliminating all Indians from the land.  After Kansas, Walter went to the Custer County Museum in Nebraska where he saw stone arrowheads on display.  In Binnema’s Common and Contested Ground, he spoke a lot about the history of weaponry.  Bows and arrows followed the atlatl, and guns eventually replaced these weapons.  After leaving the museum, Walter spoke to an Indian who I assume descended from family members who lived among the tribes in the Great Plains.  Finally, after attending the wedding of his daughter in Denver, Walter headed back to his home in Omaha, but before he arrived at his destination, Walter Schmidt stopped at the Platte River Road Archway Monument in Kearney, Nebraska.  At this museum, there were displays of longhorn cattle.  Longhorns, according to Hamalainen in The Comanche Empire, were thin with long legs.  They traveled much faster than shorthorn cattle and were easier to manage in the winter.  Walter reflected on the images of Indians in this museum, and he envied their bravery and the hardships they went through. 

After reading Grassland, The Comanche Empire, and Common and Contested Ground, I have definitely learned that Indians greatly struggled throughout their everyday life.  Trying to find food and shelter was difficult, but so was trying to survive war and disease.  Walter Schmidt of About Schmidt definitely learned a lot on his journey across the Great Plains, and he realized that though his life seemed difficult after losing his wife and only daughter, he lived a pretty amazing life compared to the hardships the Indians faced.