Editor's Notebook

A friend’s story shared on a social media site reminded me of my grandmother.

My mother regularly drove an automobile. She used a special skill my father taught her to get through the water holes that separated our house on Blauvelt’s Hill and Superior.

A Republican River flood had washed out the north approach to stateline bridge which served the “new” highway opened a handful of years earlier.

With the new road closed, highway traffic was diverted over the former route we called “the old highway,”

In the 1920s, Superior businessmen paved a portion of the route but they did not elevate the road surface and subsequent floods had deposited silt and sand in the adjoining field to such an extent the paved highway was below the level of the adjoining fields. After a big rain or flood, the paved road was like a long, narrow pond. After the fields had dried up there were still pools of water left trapped on top of the pavement.

As a high school student, I used one of those pools as a setting for a tire ad published in the Superior yearbook. I pictured muddy school mates wading through one of the pools because Rosemary’s car wasn’t equipped with the proper tires and had gotten stuck.

The concrete made for a solid driving surface but the water was often so deep the running engine’s fan splashed the water back on the distributor stalling the vehicle in the water hole.

Mother learned to drive to the edge of the water hole, turn off the motor, shift into low gear and then push the starter button. The engaged starter motor would propel the vehicle through the water hole. Once on the other side, my mother would restart the motor and continue on her way.

I was told Grandmother Blauvelt had driven in her younger days, but never having seen her drive a car, I questioned she knew how. My grandparents had only one vehicle and Grandfather did all the driving.

There had been a school house located along the Kansas portion of Old Highway 14 (the road was then closed) which was west of the present route. The school had been located about one mile south and a half mile west of where I was raised.

I don’t remember what happened to the school house. It had closed when the rural districts were consolidated more than 20 years earlier. I suppose somebody, perhaps my family, tore it down or moved it.

Dad and Grandmother were involved in moving the vestibule and cleaning up the site. I wasn’t old enough to be of any help but one day I got to go along. When their work was finished, Dad drove his small farm truck home and Grandmother drove our car with me as a passenger. It was a memorable trip, probably because it was the only time I ever got to ride with her.

Not all grandmothers are good drivers.

Recently a friend shared a story told by her father about the day he saw his grandmother drive a Model A automobile.

The story goes something like this:

When my dad was a kid, it was common for the neighbors to share a boar. Not sure why but Dad’s family was herding the pig back to the neighbors and Grandma, who did not regularly drive was to follow in the Model A and pick them up. Grandma invited a friend to join her for the trip. They were visiting and not watching where they were going. Grandma drove over the pig.

The guys trying to herd the pig had been yelling at her to stop but she wasn’t paying attention. The Model A almost tipped over while passing over the hog but it landed back on all four wheels and Grandma continued on.

The boar survived the encounter with the automobile but was stiff and sore for several days. It eventually did get back home to the neighbor’s place.

According to the story, when later asked, “Didn’t you know you ran over the pig?” She replied, “Well bless your little heart. I thought I had hit a bump in the road back there.”

And that was the last time she was ever asked to drive the car.

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On the front page of Feb. 4, 1954, issue of The Express, it is reported several farmers had lately seen deer in various parts of Jewell and Nuckolls counties. Mrs. Eugene McGinnis, who lived along the Republican River in the next section north of where I was raised, reported seeing eight of them in a group near her family’s home southwest of Superior the prior Friday. Earlier she had seen as many as 14 in the timber along the Republican River.

Glen Hutt lived about four miles east of the McGinnis home. He also had reported seeing a band of eight deer.

Deer sightings no longer make the paper like they did then but a note in this week’s From the Files column, reminded me of a story and picture of a deer inside this newspaper’s warehouse building that made the paper 30 years ago.

I hope I am never again called to let a deer out of a building. The animal gained entrance to the newspaper building crashing through a door glass. As a number of excited youngsters and a Superior policeman gathered near that door, the deer was too frighten to leave the way it came in.

When I arrived, the deer was at the back door, jumping nearly to ceiling looking for a way out.

I opened the door and got of the animal’s way as Rita snapped a picture of the fleeing deer. Ron Thompson, was standing on the sidewalk near the corner of Fifth and Kansas streets and reported the deer ran right past him as it dashed for safety.

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In 1954 Nuckolls County had the only combination parochial and public school in Nebraska. It was located in the St. Stephens church south Lawrence. The four lower grades were parochial with 35 pupils and Ileen Kathman as teacher. The upper four grades with 20 pupils had Caroline Brockman as teacher. The public school district paid rent to the church for the room it used.

The arrangement known as the Nuckolls County hybrid school had functioned for about 30 years.