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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...
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...
