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editor’s notebook 6/10/21 Sunday I was glad I wasn’t trying to ride either my pony or bicycle on Highway 14. Without a doubt, I would have been spooked by all the traffic and I suspect most if not all of the horses I have ridden would also have been spooked and tried to escape. That day Highway 14 didn’t fit the description of a lazy country highway. For sure it wasn’t a place for the pokey Sunday driver I have become. Sunday morning the 28th annual Tour Nebraska cruise brought more than 450 vehicles into this area. Tour participants were sc...
I suspect the thousands of people who most years gathered at Lovewell Lake for this week’s three-day weekend would have liked more sun and less rain but the weather was great for the annual Lady Vestey Festival. The sky was overcast and the temperature on the cool side making for a pleasant weekend. It hasn’t always been that way. While the parade has never been rained out, it has come close and rain has dampened a number of festival activities. One year a representative of the Vestey family was drenched when a vendor’s tent filled with water...
With the expectation that thousands of visitors will visit Superior this weekend, community residents are working to make sure the community is looking the best possible. Mother Nature has cooperated and the vegetation looks great. Here at the newspaper we decided we should spruce up our windows. Since the festival was not held last year, it may have been two years since some of the windows had been washed. It has taken repeated baths to get the accumulated grim off. We also decided to change...
Last week I made the mistake of starting a story in this space but not completing it. When I had used my allotted space I promised to continue the story this week. I should have known better than to make such a promise and then turn to other work. It is okay to publish a story in segments but those segments should be written in order. Instead I paused a week and now I can’t remember what stories I planned to share this week. Last week I wrote about Republican River bridges at Superior. The story started with the first bridge approved by the res...
Many of us give little thought to zipping across the Republican River several times a day. We have grown accustomed to easily crossing the river on wide, substantial bridges, but that hasn’t always been the case. A narrow Webber Road bridge was nearly the undoing of the gang which robbed the Security National Bank Nov. 22, 1934. After gathering up their loot, gang members took hostages and left Superior at a high rate of speed. An eyewitness report said all four wheels of the get-away-car were off the ground as the robbers soared over the Misso...
What do I write about this week? When Saturday’s New York Times arrived in my mail box on Monday morning, I thought I might have an idea. I struggled the rest of Monday and part of Tuesday trying to get the words to flow but they never came. That article reported on how divided Rural America is when it comes to medical advice related to COVID-19 and the vaccines. I don’t remember it being that way when Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine. I do remember the long lines of people waiting their turn for an opportunity to receive the vac...
Monday morning I received an e-mail message from a former country school teacher advising it was going to be a nice day and I should schedule a reporting and photography trip that would allow me to be outside. It was a suggestion I wanted to accept. I remembered my childhood when I took my red chair and went to watch nearby construction projects. I could sit on that chair by the hour and entertain myself watching men work. I watched projects like the blacktopping of Highway 14, extension of a bridge, construction of the Courtland Canal, and...
Though we awoke Tuesday morning to find the ground was covered with puffy snow, apparently the custom harvesters are anticipating the arrival of spring and wheat to harvest in the southern states. The editor of this newspaper was looking out the front window of the newspaper office, when he should have been writing this column and saw what appeared to be a custom harvesting crew heading south. Highway 14 has long been a popular route for the harvesters. When the Blauvelt family operated a gasoline station near the Kansas-Nebraska stateline, we...
More than 40 years ago a friend employed by the Nebraska Department of Economic Development invited me to ride with him to a meeting in Thayer County. In exchange for my help with the meeting, I suspect he provided my supper. The Nebraska tourism office was promoting the circle tour concept. Each Nebraska community was encouraged to promote tourism by planning a tour route that circulated the community. Circle tours may have been a good idea for central Nebraska communities but they weren’t a good idea for border communities like Superior f...
Sunday I had just finshed dinner and was sitting in my living room sipping a cup of hot tea and making afternoon plans when members of the Superior Volunteer Fire Department were called to Webber. Rita and I gathered our cameras and headed to Webber. All we knew was a fire was threatening a trailer and spreading along the railroad track. The fire call gave us reason to get out of the house, and do a little exploring. As we drove toward Webber, we reviewed previous times we had followed the fire department to that area. I recalled the night I...
As this reporter and his wife were leaving for work Saturday morning, Rita noticed a large bird sitting in a tree east of the Windstream telephone building. We stopped to scrutinize the bird. It's body appeared to be shaped much like that of an eagle. But eagles rarely enter into town. They are more often found near the river but with their numbers on the upswing, we wondered if it could possibly be an eagle. Eagles are birds of prey. They often follow the snow geese and feed on unlucky geese....
Ninety years ago businesses which belonged to the Superior Commercial Club joined together to sponsor Black Cat Days. The event attracted statewide attention and business owners reported the two-day sales event was responsible for their best two days of the year. The event demonstrated the power of advertising when a product the people want is combined with a price they can afford, The Express was one of the participating business firms and the results far exceeded expectations. The Express editor offered to trade a one-year subscription to...
With the massive storm forecast for the weekend, I kept close watch on the weather and had trouble focusing on other topics. It should be no surprise that Monday arrived before I was ready for it. Among the undone things on my to do list was the selection of an idea around which to build this week’s notebook entries. Now facing a deadline, I am going to fill this space with a collection of unrelated stories. The first one reminds me of my days working at my father’s gasoline station. We had customers who knew they had a problem but did...
Readers are vital to the success of a newspaper. If newspapers were not read, there would be no need to prepare a newspaper but the importance of readers does not stop with reading. They are also the eyes and ears of a newspaper. We rely on our readers to keep us posted on what is happening in the communities we serve. If you are missing something that was once part of the this newspaper, it is most likely missing because those who once submitted the stories are no longer doing so. We appreciate...
After last week’s below zero temperatures, it almost feels like we are living in a tropical paradise. On Monday afternoon, at least one person called at The Express window in shirtsleeves. That didn’t happen last week. Following the death of Rita’s father on Feb. 4, we closely followed the weather forecasts and looked for a time when her mother could safely attend a graveside service. Because of the COVID regulations, Mrs. Chatham could not attend a traditional church or funeral home service. Thankfully, Saturday, the day picked for the funer...
One hundred years ago today my father was born in a farm house a couple miles or so north of Abdal, Nebraska. He was his parents fourth and last child. I don’t remember Dad or his parents talking about the circumstances surrounding his birth. But they did talk about the day they found their baby boy drinking kerosene. Grandmother was on a ladder painting the farmhouse porch when she looked down to see her youngest trying to drink the kerosene she planned to clean her brush with. The doctor was summoned from Nelson, My grandparents told a v...
Regular readers of this column know I grew up in a house that wasn’t much more than a stone’s throw from my father’s business. The house was designed so my fathxer could keep a close watch on his business. There was even a switch within reach of his bed with which he could turn off and on lights at his place of business. In the dual purpose building that served as a combination garage and fireworks stand, there was a door bell button so the clerk could summon help. Like a bank’s burglar alarm system, the switch was located out of the custome...
As a youngster I disliked wearing jeans, I much preferred overalls but apparently overalls for youngsters were falling out of favor. The J.C. Penney store quit offering overalls in the smaller sizes I needed and I bought the last two pair the Troudt Clothing Store stocked. My mother was wrong when she said I looked for nails and barb wire on which to tear my overalls, I think barb wire and nails looked for and frequently found me. I may have helped popularize today’s tattered clothes fashion trend. I was inspired by Grandmother who said patched...
Regular readers of this column know I grew up in a house that wasn’t much more than a stone’s throw from my father’s business. The house was designed so my father could keep a close watch on his business. There was even a switch within reach of his bed with which he could turn off and on lights at his place of business. In the dual purpose building that served as a combination garage and fireworks stand, there was a door bell button so the clerk could summon help. Like a bank’s burglar alarm system, the switch was located out of the custome...
With this week’s winter weather. It has been a bit hard for this weather watcher to focus on the newspaper work he should be doing. Instead of working, I would have liked to have taken a position where I could watch people coping with the falling snow. And while sitting inside looking out, I would have my laptop computer near by so I could keep up with the latest weather reports being delivered via the internet. When the snow started, one friend excitedly told me it was going to provide the first opportunity to use a Christmas gift. Later in t...
After writing a weekly column for the better part of five decades, I fear I repeat my stories all too frequently, and with the continuing pandemic and an attempt to avoid exposure to the COVID-19 virus, I’m not acquiring new stories. Last week a caller from the Courtland area said his favorite topic was the stories I told about living and working on Blauvelt’s Hill. Well, folks those stories might be liked but I have lived elsewhere a lot longer than I lived there and I’m sure I told all of the stories more than once. It is a struggle to put a...
I grew up believing I lived in the world’s melting pot, a place where people of various races and backgrounds came together and made decisions which benefited the majority. I counted among my friends people from Nigeria, India, Iraq, Hong Kong, Mexico, South America and Europe. But this year what defines and unifies this nation has become an urgent question. From the safety of the rural Heartland we have watched angry mobs burn our cities and invade our national capitol. What is happening? Why such unrest? The Biblical book of Exodus may s...
Richard Schmeling, a frequent contributor to this newspaper sent a story about his Aunt Freda and slip-on seat covers she installed on her new Pontiac with the expectation when it came time to trade-in the car. it would be worth more. His story sparked memories of things I have added to my vehicles. I started to do so in grade school when my vehicle was a bicycle. The first thing I added was a rear view mirror so I could see what was behind me without turning my head. I really liked the mirror and was heart broken when I broke it. I had gotten...
Late Sunday a friend shared on social media an experience she had earlier that evening. Her dog was incessantly barking and keeping the household awake. On a bright moonlight night, she got up and went, while dressed in her pj’s and house slippers, to see what was disturbing the dog. She was exploring the nearby creek area when she found the dog. The little dog was barking at a dozen or so llamas lined up on the other side of a fence. The llamas were staring at the little dog and the “old lady” prowling in the dark and perhaps wondering why a...
n my 50 years with The Express, I’ve investigated a number of ideas that were to bring new revenue to the newspaper business. Most have not lived up to their projections although some were ahead of their time. One of the first was the copy machine. Now most everybody has a way to make copies. If they don’t have a copy machine, many people have a way to scan and print documents with their cell phones and computer related equipment. Our first copier here at the newspaper was a monstrously heavy machine. To discourage its use, we put it in the...
