In my early years at The Express, I wrote a story telling our readers about a Kansas businessman’s plans to open a Pizza Hut at the north edge of Superior. For me the story had special meaning as the location he picked for the new business was where a house my grandfather built in the 1920s had been located for about 30 years.
My grandparents house was originally located on the Kansas state line, just east of where Highway 14 entered Kansas and turned west.
My father was about 10 years old when the family moved to that Kansas farm. I recalled his stories about the winter he slept on the screened-in porch and had to flick snow off the covers before getting up in the morning. In a nearby cottonwood, he built a tree house and installed electricity.
We may think wind turbines and ethanol are new products but that isn’t so. In its early years the Blauvelt Station sold a motor vehicle fuel that contained alcohol made from corn. It wasn’t called ethanol at that time but the fuels were similar.
Before an electrical line was extended from the hydro electric plant at Superior to the farms along the state line west of Superior all the electrical power for the Blauvelt farm and the gasoline station was generated on the farm by wind a powered generator system developed by a family friend from Hardy. Dad said they were never without power as long as they had the windpower system and batteries but it was difficult to find appliances made to operate on the direct current the system produced.
The house was nearly ruined by the 1935 Republican River flood. The flood swept away the farm’s garage, chicken house and windmill. It moved the station building off its foundation. A two-story house located nearby floated down stream and broke up as the flood water receded.
Dad thought his failure to securely close the back door when fleeing the flood waters saved the Blauvelt house. When the water hit, it pushed the door open and quickly filled the house with water. The water was so deep, it almost reached the mattresses. A log carried by the flood waters went through a basement wall and into the home’s basement. The flood waters buckled the home’s hardwood floors.
The house was repaired and the family moved back in. When my parents married, they built a house at the southeast corner of the farm near the top of the hill. When the highway was relocated, the station was moved to join the house on the hill. After the start of World War II, Dad was serving in the Army Air Corps and his parents left the house on the bottom and moved into the house on the hill. The portion of the farm located to the west of the new highway was sold to Hugh Hill. He moved the house to his property at the north edge of Superior. There it was often used as the living quarters for the manager of the Hill Oil Company’s Hilltop Cafe. When gathering information for the Pizza Hut story, I was pleased to learn the house would be spared. It was moved to Nelson and is now located north of the Nelson Medical Clinic.
This September I wrote a story about plans to recycle the former Pizza Hut building. The new owners hope to have it ready to reopen as a steak and smoke house in late May. Many considered that story to be good news for Superior.
Last week heavy equipment was moved into Superior and a former motor vehicle display lot was cleared and regraded in anticipation of a retail store being built there. I remember when the block was home to large rooming houses.
When I was in grade school, a welding shop was located in the cement block building which served as the motor vehicle dealer’s office. The operator of that shop made my first motorized vehicle. Dad and I had him rig an old gasoline engine, much similar in size to what was then used on lawn mowers to power the bike. I hoped it would have enough power to climb Blauvelt’s Hill but it didn’t. I still had to get off and push the bicycle up the hill.
One try was enough. If I had to push a bicycle up the hill, it took less effort to push one with two wheels. And going down the hill on two wheels was more fun than riding the three-wheeled bike that was prone to tipping over.
For this week’s paper, I’ve written a story about plans to develop a computer farm in the Kottmeyer Business Park. If that development is as successful as the developer hopes, it has the potential to triple the amount of electrical energy sold by the Superior Utilities Department.
Seventy years ago this month, Howard Crilly wrote stories about the opening of the Crest Theatre and an expanded J. C. Penney Store.
I was only five years old when that story was printed but I was awed by the new facilities. If all goes as planned, a future issue of this newspaper will contain a story about the company and its Superior store. I have located several pictures taken at the grand opening and plan to include some of them with the story.
My mother was thrilled to have the larger J. C. Penney store in Superior. It replaced a smaller store located in the building that now houses the Superior Vision Center. I was intrigued by the smaller store’s pneumatic system that whisked payments from the checkout counters to the cashier who was housed on a deck at the rear of the store. There the transaction was recorded and the change sent back to the clerk who passed it to the customer. I dreamed of some day having a similar system to zip my toy cars around a playroom.
I was also intrigued by the less sophisticated system that moved the sale reports from the auctioneer’s box at the McKee Sale Barn to the office. I dreamed of building a system for the Blauvelt Station that would eliminate the need for the driveway attendant to walk from the pump island to the cash register in the station office and back when settling up with a customer.
The station building had been elevated so a canopy could extend over the inside drive. It was up only two steps but running up and down those steps all day was tiring. The office later was moved to a ground level location and though we had to walk farther, it was less tiring.
When I grew tired of hanging clothes out to dry, I dreamed of having clothes lines which operated on a pulley system. I wanted to stand at the basement door, hang a garment on the line and then roll it out to dry.
If we oldsters had maintained the imagination of a youngster, where do you suppose we would be today? I was reminded this week of Thomas Edison, a lifelong dreamer. Before he died in 1931 he had amassed a record of 1,093 patents, 389 for electric light and power, 195 for the phonograph 150 for the telephone, 141 for storage batteries and 34 for telephones The building which now houses this newspaper’s office. once was home to a Kinetoscope parlor. The Kinetoscope was an early motion picture system developed by Edison.
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