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When I was in grade school, I often went for rides with my grandfathers. This time of year Grandfather Wrench was scouting for wild plums ripe for the picking. I think he had homemade plum butter at every meal. For breakfast he spread plum butter and Real Roast smooth peanut butter on the toast he ate with his oatmeal and coffee. For dinner and supper, he spread the plum butter on fresh white bread so thick it dripped off. If pancakes were on the menu, he spread plumb butter on the cakes. I don’t remember if he liked Grandmother’s plum but...
Elsewhere in this newspaper is a story written by Kerma Crouse about the Webber Community Picnic held in the Frank Herrmann Memorial Park. I wish we had a dozen freelance reporters like Kerma. She roams the area on her own schedule, finding and exploring topics which interest her and then writing a story about her discovery. We have shared a number of her stories with Kansas Positive Press and were told they are among that publication’s most popular stories apparently because the stir the readers’ memories. This week’s story stirred my memor...
I don’t know the validity of the study but earlier this week, the editor’s email contained a report on the most dangerous time of the day to drive in Nebraska. According to the report, the most dangerous time is between 4 and 4:59 p.m. These days I generally am working in the office at that time of day and not out driving. However, when I attended Pleasant Valley School a few decades ago, that was the time I was on the road riding my pony home from school. Of course, my school was in Kansas and the study was based on Nebraska data but my route...
The Blauvelts lost a friend we called Blackie between 3 and 5 Sunday afternoon. Blackie was a member of a spring litter of kittens delivered by the mother cat who claims our neighborhood. I'm not sure where her father, Mr. Gray, calls home, but he is a regular visitor and apparently a good friend of Mrs. Cat and her youngsters. Earlier this year, Mrs. Cat got shut in our garage overnight and the kittens apparently had a scary time being alone. About noon the next day Blackie was found high in a...
I’m naturally curious and one of the reasons I decided on a newspaper career was the opportunities the work provided to feed my curiosity. Over the years I have been privileged to get a close up view of many things. For example, once when the natural gas pipeline company serving Superior was replacing a section of the line, the foreman invited me to observe the procedure. In preparation he provided me with the procedure manual that described the work to be done. I read the manual and reported to the job site at the designated time. When I a...
Area residents shouldn’t complain about not having something to do in July for July must be the peak month for community celebrations in the Heartland. I remember the time I had friends visiting from West Virginia. They were en route to a family reunion in South Dakota and only stopped here for the third weekend in July. Like many years the mercury reached 110 on Saturday and I had celebrations in Davenport, Mankato and Republic to cover. I didn’t know what else to do other than load them in the newspaper vehicle and head out for a day of celeb...
Like father, like son. After my parents sold their business and moved into town, my mother bought a bicycle. She liked to ride about Superior in the evening with Mabel Davis, a retired farmer’s wife. My father rode a bicycle on short trips around town but, because of his declining health, he didn’t have the stamina to ride as far as the women. He didn’t like sitting inside and started investing in motorized transportation devices. His first purchases were Cushman scooter size trailbikes. The trailbikes allowed him to putt along with the bicycle...
Over the years unidentified flying objects have made for a number of interesting newspaper stories. A number of those stories stem from the 1950s and 60s prior to the launch of the first astronauts. I remember being filled with fear listening to news bulletins related to the Russians’ launch of their first Sputnik space satellite on Oct. 4, 1957. The little thing was about the size of a beach ball. In the 1970s, I met and visited with the American who was the first to intercept radio transmissions between the satellite and the Russian scientist...
Friday the Blauvelt’s were in Osborne for the funeral of Rita’s nearly 98-year-old mother, Margaret Chatham. While we had not anticipated the funeral, we had planned for weeks to be in Osborne for a family reunion scheduled to be held in the Osborne Free Methodist Church’s fellowship hall. And we were in the hall for several hours but we also went with family, Chatham neighbors and friends to the funeral held at the Osborne cemetery. The Osborne funeral home was in the midst of a remodeling project and not available and since the family was alr...
Early in career as editor of The Superior Express, I was in a state of panic over what we were going to fill the paper with. It was Monday and I hadn't taken any pictures for that week's issue. According to the production schedule then being followed, all pictures for the week's edition were to be taken by Monday. Film was to be developed after supper on Monday night and hung to dry. The needed prints were to be made early Tuesday morning and ready to be sized and made into halftones by 8 a.m....
Forty years ago this month the fate of an overhead suspension bridge first erected in Iowa probably in the prior century and moved in Nuckolls County in 1935 was sealed. On a June morning construction workers toppled the tired structure into the Republican River. It replaced a bridge destroyed by the great 1935 flood. At the time it was moved, the Nuckolls County Commissioners expected it would be good for 100 years. It may have been had expectations of what was needed from a bridge at the location had not changed. By 1984, the bridge was...
“Windy Ridge,” by Florence MacNaughton Butler of Oskaloosa, Iowa, is a Nebraska pioneer story that relates to the time Evelyn Brodstone was growing up in Superior. In fact the Brodstones and the MacNaughtons were neighbors. There have been many pioneer stories written about Nebraska including several written by Red Cloud’s Willa Cather. But this story is different because it is one set at the MacNaugton home place which was just north of the present Superior Evergreen Cemetery on the west side of the highway. The MacNaughton farm would have...
May is an anniversary month for this editor for on May 21, 1970, it was announced I had succeeded Howard Crilly as editor of The Express. The day was also my 24th birthday. On my first Memorial Day as The Express editor. I had gone to Superior’s City Park to cover the dedication of the Buel Anderson Vietnam War Memorial. Buel was a member of my high school graduating class and the first Superior resident to die serving his country in the Vietnamese War. As the Nebraska governor was delivering the dedication address, members of the Superior resc...
According to the public notice section of a previous issue of this newspaper, the City of Superior will hold a public hearing Tuesday to consider the implementation of the recommendations contained in a sign study. I haven’t studied the suggestions and do not want to comment either for or against but I want to caution that change is sometimes hard. I was in high school when stop signs were placed on Eighth Street. The signs were needed and today I’m glad they are there but I wasn’t so sure when they first went up. I was enroute from the Super...
I have great respect for the newspaper crews who produced newspapers with handset type. As a journalism student at Kansas State University, my introductory course was one that dealt with the history of printing and the various methods used.The instructor was an old man in poor health. He knew his material but when the class met I prayed he wouldn’t keel over dead in our presence. Professor Byron Ellis required each of his students learn how to handset type. In the lab portion of the class, we composed things like business cards and advertisemen...
Other than notes about the weather, the notebook pages are empty this week. I’m blaming allergies for the chest conjestion which has clipped my wings the past couple of weeks. I was supposed to have a part in Superior’s National Day of Prayer observance and had to cancel. A week later I was asked to record a podcast spot. Same story, I had to cancel. Many years I have attended multiple high school graduation activities but thus far this year my count stands at 0. After being surprised in Lincoln by the April 26 storm outbreak, I have been kee...
Thursday afternoon Rita and I drove into Lincoln with plans to attend the 151st annual meeting of the Nebraska Press Association. One hundred fifty-one seems like a lot of meetings, but while in Lincoln, I got to thinking about my experiences with the association. While I haven’t always availed myself of the opportunities to attend the annual meetings, I have been eligible to attend more than a third of them. My first one in the Lincoln Hotel came 53 years ago and I have fond memories of older members making me feel welcome. This year’s mee...
There are things about my memories that I don’t understand. In recent days I have been researching the history of two Commercial Avenue buildings, the former Carnegie Public Library building at Fourth and Commercial and the former Masonic Lodge building at Third and Commercial. What I remember differs from what I have learned in my research. For example, I remember both a museum room and the Christian Science Reading Room located in the basement of the library. When visiting the library, I liked to go downstairs and look at the museum c...
Last week’s entries in this space about the building of the Simic roller skating rink caused readers to ask about previous roller skating rinks. I don’t have the answers to all their questions but here is some information I gathered from the newspaper accounts about roller rinks in this area. I’m sure I missed many stories and have failed to include some of the rinks. The first mention found reported on the opening of a roller skating rink in Nelson on Sept. 4, 1884. The next spring the rink held two and a half mile long skating races, one f...
Good to see a group of volunteers taking hold of the Simic Skating Rink and working hard to reopen it. Community volunteers have done wonders with the Superior Auditorium and the Crest Theatre. Hopefully, the Simic volunteers will have the same kind of results. My Grandfather Wrench was part of a Superior investment group that tore down part of the Peddicord barn and used the material salvaged to build the Skatemor Rink located where the VFW Club is now. As a youngster I didn’t get to go there nearly enough. I was raised in the country and i...
There is both good news and bad news to report this week. The good news to report this week is the owners of the Agrex Elevator would like to expand and that is also the bad news. The elevator company would like to purchase an acreage near First and Hartley Street intersection and immediately add a scale and adapt the site for ground pile storage. A competitor, Aurora Cooperative currently uses an adjoining site for the storage of milo in a ground pile. Neighbors in the southeast corner of Superior and members of the Superior Planning...
Volunteers worked thoughout the day Friday at the Superior Auditorium installing a large screen and projection system which the Ideal Market crew wanted to use at their appreciation supper starting at 5 p.m. One man was on a scissors lift near the ceiling of the great hall. Two others were in the attic. On the floor preparations were underway for the dinner but there was a problem. As part of Friday’s program, the plan was to project onto the big screen a slide show of Ideal Market pictures gathered through the years but an unexpected p...
Hopefully, the lack of an operating jail in Nuckolls County is an indication that Nuckolls County folks have become law abiding citizens. In the early days of the county, the jails were busy places. And in some communities among the first public facilities built. In Nuckolls County the jail was built while the county was renting space for the county offices. After reading back issues of newspapers published in Nuckolls County, I’ve concluded our citizens were not always law abiding. I haven’t done a thorough study but from my weekend rea...
In this week’s From the Files column it is noted this newspaper’s mail processing crew set a record 50 years ago of 85,00 pieces of mail processed in one week. I don’t remember what all we did that week but in those days it wasn’t unusual for our mail to fill the contracted carrier’s truck to capacity and have mail left on the local post office dock. I didn’t understand why postal officials refused to allow a second truck run from Superior to the Hastings processing center. The business was here, the truck company was willing to make the tr...
Many folks think our weather is behaving strangely. Some believe global warming is changing weather patterns and attribute global warming to the use of fossil fuels. A century or so ago the appearance of Halley’s Comet was blamed for undesirable weather. As a periodic comet it returns to the vicinity of the earth about every 75 years. It is was last here in 1986 and is projected to return in 2061. The first known observation of Halley’s Comet took place in 230 B.C. or perhaps 466 B.C. The comet’s appearance in 1910 was particularly spect...
