Without Great Seriousness

Nearly twenty years ago, not long before I headed north to make my home in Canada, I was named an admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska. The elaborately designed commission, which hangs framed on my office wall, puts me in charge of various “officers, seamen, tadpoles and goldfish,” who are commanded to obey any orders I might give. That piece of paper is among my most cherished possessions.

To be made a Nebraska admiral is to be awarded the landlocked state’s highest civic honour — equivalent to the Order of Ontario or the Ordre national du Québec, though more lighthearted and without the post-nominals. The tradition goes back to 1931, when the Democratic governor Charles W. Bryan (younger brother of the better-known William Jennings) went on vacation, leaving the Republican lieutenant-governor Ted W. Metcalfe in charge. Metcalfe, whose father was the last military...