I’ve long enjoyed community celebrations. Though I was only 4 years old when Superior staged a diamond jubilee celebration, I remember that celebration and the one and only 4-H fair held two years later in Superior.
My favorite celebrations are those which feature history. History was the original focus of Superior’s Lady Vestey Festival and while history is still part of the festival, it seems to no longer be the primary focus.
I’m glad two local celebrations have kept their focus on history.
Earlier this week, the Jewell County Historical Society sponsored the 44th threshing bee. While some wheat was threshed, the bee includes other activities which showcase what farm life was once like. If you didn’t attend the threshing bee, you missed an opportunity for a hot but fun time walking back into history.
In less than a month, the little community of Oak, population about 60, will continue the Oregon Trail Day tradition started 55 years ago as part of the Nebraska Centennial Celebration.
Oak may be a backroads community today, but before the development of the transcontinental railroad, it was situated on what for the time corresponded to a modern interstate highway. That highway was known as the Oregon Trail and thousands of travelers passed by what was to become the Village of Oak.
Every four years, with the help of many people who live outside of Oak, the community retells the local stories related to the trail.
I consider Oregon Trail Days a must-see event. I was honored one year to be asked to narrate the Parson Bob story.
As a youngster, I didn’t like playing the athletic games many youngsters played. My favorite games involved cowboys and their horses. I’m thankful that from age 6 through 18 my parents provided me with horses I could ride while enacting my dreams.
When I rode to the river to play, I kept watch for Indians hiding in the willow trees which grew on the sandbars. I envisioned explorers coming around the bend in canoes made of willows and animal skins.
My ponies must have thought me to be crazy as I galloped them through the pastures, jumping off to hide from imaginary attackers.
After a wind storm broke a number of tree limbs, the broken limbs were gathered in the pasture and used to construct a shelter like I expected the early settlers may have built.
Dad once let me build a fort out of square prairie hay bales. I could climb the bales to a high lookout point, and take cover behind walls made of stacked bales. Arranging the bales was hard work for this youngster but I was sorry when it came time to feed the hay.
I built a dug out shelter in what is now Dr. Teachworth’s parking lot and pretended I was a border patrolman. I would crawl out of the below ground-level shelter, climb onto my horse and dash off chasing an imaginary illegal attempting to cross the border.
With binoculars in hand, I climbed to the top of the natural gas line’s filter my family called “The Scrubber” and surveyed the countryside for illegal activity.
Perhaps I had read too many of Zane Grey’s western novels, but all through my childhood, I dreamed of living on the American frontier in the middle 1800s.
I seat on the bluff near where my father said an early settler had a dugout and tried to imagine what it like to live there.
If I go to Oak on Aug. 6, I’ll have an opportunity to see how others reenact events from 1864 which helped shape the lives of this area’s current residents.
Attending shows like the threshing bee at Mankato and Oregon Trail reenactments at Oak, remind me to be thankful to be alive in 2022 with conveniences like hot water showers, air conditioners, refrigerators and microwave ovens.
Now I dream about having my own private swimming pool.
This week a social media friend who also grew up riding horses posted pictures taken while playing in her swimming pool and in Saturday night’s rain. I smiled when she wrote, “On my headstone it will read ‘the lady who never grew up and was always barefoot and playing in the rain.’”
Regardless of our age, it is often fun to revisit our chilldhood.
Saturday Rita got to do that when she took the four kittens born 12 weeks ago in the backyard of our home at 500 Commercial, to the farm where she was raised in southern Osborne County.
The current family living on the farm plans to make farm cats out of those kittens and playmates for their 3-year-old son.
Saturday was also the 96th birthday for Rita’s mom who was able to leave the nursing home and accompany Rita to the “farm.”
At the farm, Margaret got to hold and pet for nearly 15 minutes the kitten I had knicknamed Speedy,
Speedy is the smallest of the litter but he seems to be the smartest. When I ventured into the back yard, he was always the first to greet me. He was the first to purr when held but after a short time he squirmed and wanted to dash off to investigate the unkown.
I’m surprised he was content to be held so long Saturday morning. Do you suppose he sensed his role in helping the 96-year-old birthday girl remember a time when she came to that farm as a young bride, more than 70 years ago?
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