Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 242
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...
I firmly believe people who don’t read newspapers are missing out on things they should know. Some people call me a historian and if I am it is because I like to read. It was while reading old newspapers on the weekend that I got the ideas for the entries in this space. I’ve long known that my garden grows the best in January and February. In the gloomy days of January and February, garden catalogs tickle my interest in gardening. This time of year I picture a weed free, well watered and lush garden. I get the real itch to till the soil. Fri...
When I began work at The Express, several pieces of equipment more than 70 years old were still in use. Typesetting equipment in daily use ranged from 40 to 50 years old but the process had begun to update the typesetting department. I remember asking a salesman how long we should expect the new electronic equipment to last. I remember seeing him point to one of the older Linotypes and saying, “It should last as long as those machines did.” Unfortunately, I believed him. Before 10 years had passed, the machine he sold had been replaced. Whe...
Saturday evening I was looking at a Jan. 18, 1934, issue of the Lawrence Locomotive, I was surprised to read a story the Locomotive editor had written about a good luck piece that appears to have been identical to the one lost in one of my desk drawers. Naturally, I wondered what had become of that lucky piece. Does a member of the editor's family still have it or was it tossed out in a cleaning spree? The story said the Union Pacific Railroad had one million of the pieces made to mark the...
I’m trying to learn to write 2024 but as usual it isn’t going so well. When I started to type these notebook entries, I said 2024 in my head but typed 2023 and had to go back and correct my typing. It is safe to say I am a slow learner and slow to change. Occasionally I still write 19 when starting to write a date. Seems like only a couple of years ago we worrying about Y2K and being told all our electronics would crash when the century turned and our vehicles might stop. Actually it appeared to be a bunch of worry about nothing. We still hav...
This week, while looking over the Jan 7, 1904 issue of a Nelson paper and preparing a story for next week’s issue of the Nuckolls County Locomotive-Gazette, I read a brief story I didn’t expect to find in the county seat paper. It said Will Blauvelt surprised his home folks in Hardy when he returned with a bride, Ida Hearne. When the Hardy residents learned 21-year-old Will had married, a group of Hardy young people attending the McDowell party went to the Blauvelt home and serenaded the newlyweds. I knew about the Dec. 24 wedding for in my...
We can not talk about the sounds of Christmas without mentioning Christmas bells. Many of my younger friends often share their memories of riding around Superior with Santa Claus on his motorized sleigh. Of course that sleight had a sound system which could be heard for blocks and helped build the day’s festive spirit. Today it would be considered primitive but in those days it was considered to be a marvelous system. That particular sleigh began as a dream fostered by two Superior area residents, Eugene Karmazin, the operator of a downtown S...
We have a good news story to report this week. In early November the Hebron Journal-Register newspaper published a sad story about a missing cat named Simba. Simba was described as a domestic short hair tabby cat that had become the Deshler community's pet. Veterinarian Cindy Sasse told Nancy McGill, the editor of the Hebron paper, "We think he's between 15 and 20 (years old), we're not sure. Witnesses said they saw the male cat affectionately named Simba scooped up by a woman and placed in her...
In September, a reader of this newspaper shared her concern that today’s students do not understand the significance of September 11 for her son had been wished “Happy 9-11.” She considered such a wish to be inappropriate and said the schools were failing to teach the students about the significance of that day. Those of us who lived through 9-11 and the days that followed will never forget the fear and emotion of that day and the ones that followed. As I thought about that conversation, I recalled other important days in our nation’s history...
Editorʼs Notebook By Bill Blauvelt While my father would later advertise that he offered tankwagon service, that was a misnomer. Dad offered tanktruck service for his bulk delivery tank was mounted on some kind of truck. His earliest Dodge truck was about the size of a modern pickup. As the years passed, the trucks got bigger. His largest, which was never put into service, held 5,000 gallons and was made to be pulled by a semi-tractor. I suspect the 1903 tankwagon had a steel tank mounted on wagon gear pulled by a team of horses or mules. A...
I enjoyed Saturday’s spring-like weather and appreciate the rain which followed but I am not looking forward to the colder temperatures and the possibility of snow which conclude the forecast for this week. That might be different if I had plans to put up ice. There was a time when putting away ice was a regular winter activity. Recently while reading an issue of the Ruskin Leader published in 1923, I came across a story distributed by the University of Nebraska Extension Service which advised every farm should have an ice house and farmers sho...
Producing a paper has been a bit of a challenge this week for this old editor. I approached Monday with great enthusiasm. During the weekend, I had assembled some interesting copy and I thought I would enter the new week with a good handle on this week’s paper. But when I tried to send the copy to the printer on Monday, my computer balked. It didn’t want to share. I could see the copy on my screen but it refused to let me send it anywhere and the computer program would crash. Before Monday was over, I couldn’t even open our desktop publi...
Our Kansas subscribers had an opportunity to go to the polls Tuesday and select those who will serve on school boards and city councils. This is an off-year in Nebraska and the polls were closed. That wasn’t the case in Nuckolls County in 1903. Had we gone back in time 120 years ago this week, we would have had an opportunity to select those who were to fill various county offices. From the stories printed in the 1903 papers, it appears it was a spirited election with many folks seeking a county job. In the days preceding the election, well a...
Elsewhere in this issue is printed the obituary for Gorman Foley, a retired pastor I have much respect for and former resident of this area, I was in high school when I met Gorman at the Polk Bible Camp near Polk, Nebraska. At the time, he was pastor of a Congregational Christian Church at Clarks, Nebraska and he accompanied campers to the camp. I was helping a Lincoln, Kansas, high school principal run the camp book store and concession stand. I was impressed with Gorman’s Bible knowledge and interest in photography. Keep reading to learn more...
