When the sun rises over Plainview, Nebraska, Arnold Oltjenbruns is already up and ready for work. Beginning at 7:30 A.M., he picks up the kids that he drives to school. “I like hauling the kids the best,” he says. “As soon as they get in the van they're talking away, and telling me what's going on.” Oltjenbruns drives Plainview's “Handivan”—a small, accessible van that provides public transit for Plainview's 1,200 residents. Whether he's taking people to school, medical appointments, stores, (or to a nursing home in a neighboring town so that one gentleman could visit his girlfriend), Oltjenbruns and the Handivan can be the difference between isolation and strong social ties in the small northeastern Nebraska city.
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