The Superior Express -

There hasn’t been a lot of hoopla associated with Superior celebrations in recent times but that wasn’t always the case. For example, I cite the Diamond Jubilee held in September, 1950, to celebrate the town’s founding in 1875.

For that celebration, the late Oran King composed  a song set to the tune of Alexander’s Rag Time Band. Mr. King was the first to publicly sing the song. He sang it as a solo but soon a quartet composed of Bill McBroom, George Day, Dick Elliott and Donn Crilly were singing the song at public gatherings. It was also said to be popular as a group number.

I’ve not seen the words but hopefully someone has kept a copy. If a copy can be found, it might be appropriate to sing at a Lady Vestey Victorian Festival and certainly at the Superior Sesquicentennial celebration which should be held two years from now.

In mid-August of 1950, the entire town of Superior was alerted early one Wednesday morning by several bomb blasts and the wail of the fire truck siren along with the blowing of the fire whistle and the ringing of the fire bell in addition to bands playing and fireworks being shot in various parts of the community.

According to a newspaper report, those turning out at 7 a.m. to help start the festivities with a bang was 95-year-old Mrs. J. H. Roberts. She was a relative newcomer who had only lived in Superior for eight years.

The Superior Express of Aug. 10, 1950, reported Korbelik’s band started in the north part of the town and drove to the business section playing all along the way. The Superior City Band came into the downtown area playing from the east.

A loud speaker truck roamed the town telling the citizens to gather downtown where a kangaroo court was being convened.  A large crowd reportedly turned out for the affair.

George Johnson Jr. disguised behind a long, black beard, made the announcements. The bands played and the crowd sang the Diamond Jubilee song. 

This event was part of the advanced promotion. The actual celebration didn’t come until September.

The Express reported the Diamond Jubilee came to an abrupt ending on Tuesday evening when rain started. The big show and fireworks display planned for the baseball stadium was cancelled because of the rain and the balloon ascension failed to materialize because of the approaching rain. However, a large crowd remained in town in spite of the rain. All amusement places were crowded and the carnival did a good business. Big parades were held on both Monday and Tuesday. The parades featured more than 200 elaborately decorated floats, a number of saddle clubs and show horses, four bands, and boys and girls on decorated bicycles and with their pets and many fancy costumes.

The newspaper accounts didn’t say but since the celebration was held in mid-September, I assume schools were either not yet in session or were dismissed those days.

The parade floats were prepared by businesses, churches, clubs, fraternal organizations and rural schools. Approximately 3,000 people attended the Sunday night show at the ballfield and more than 4,000 people attended the open-air Monday night stage show. Dances were also held Monday and Tuesday nights at the Superior Auditorium.

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These days some people apparently receive great delight in lambasting the media and blaming members of our Fourth Estate for many of the nation’s ills. A century or more ago it was the newspaper editors who led the negative charge. Communities often had two or more newspapers, sometimes owned by the same people but always representing different political parties.

In 1882. Superior’s newspapers were not well established and so the editor of The Superior Journal had this to say about his counterpart, the editor of the Nelson Herald.

He wrote “Ellis (the Nelson editor) drinks pond water and is a squint-eyed  consumptive liar with breath like a buzzard and a record like a convict. If he don’t tell the truth a little more plentifully, the Beaver precinct people, will rise as one man and churn him till there won’t be anything left of him but a pair of suspenders and a wart.”

This tirade appeared in the second issue of the Journal. Apparently, if he didn’t have an editor to feud with in Superior as was common for the time, the Journal editor was willing to look up the road to Nelson and pick a fight with the editor of that community’s newspaper. I’m glad editors no longer fight with one another.

As this year marks the 150th anniversary of the Nebraska Press Association, the state’s oldest trade organization, I’ve been researching the history of Nuckolls County newspapers for the association. The association has a college intern assembling a booklet about Nebraska’s newspapers and she has asked for information on the papers in each county.