Puffs

I thought I knew what I was going to write this week, but a trip to Lincoln and then back home on Sunday changed my mind.

I have no understanding of what the 1930s and the “Dust Bowl” days and years were like, but anyone who was out Sunday maybe got a little taste of it.

Nancy and I were driving home from an event in Lincoln Sunday afternoon as we encountered a strong wind as soon as we left the city. Corn stalks, husks and dust . . . were the primary things a person could see. I had images of pictures I’ve seen of the dust bowl days that showed huge clouds of dust blowing in the wind. I wasn’t looking for that, but as we neared Davenport, we started seeing a heavy, brown cloud that looked different than the rest of the sky which was so dust filled, vision was limited to a mile or so.

Just west of Davenport we decided those heavy, brown clouds were not either clouds or dust, they were smoke. The closer we got to the 10-mile corner east of Lawrence, the stronger the smell of smoke enveloped our car.

From the highway we could tell the fire was still quite a distance south, later learning it was about 8 to 10 miles south.

The trip from Lawrence to Lincoln has been made many times but this trip home may be one of the most memorable for us.

For the past few years we in south central Nebraska have gotten familiar to seeing smoke in the air. However, that smoke came from fires elsewhere, not in our own back yard. That smoke came from California and even Canada and close by Kansas or western Nebraska.

It was interesting that in this month’s edition of the Nebraska Game and Parks’ magazine, “NEBRASKAland” there was an interesting article about “prescribed burning.” It was about the burning of more than 400 acres in a northern Nebraska state park.

The results of the burn were great and it did a great deal of good for grassland restoration and control of those red cedar trees.

Controlled burning in farming country has not been as well accepted for the very reason we saw Sunday. If they get out of control, a great deal of damage can be done and it takes a good deal of manpower in knowledge to control them.

Seeing grassland disappear to red cedar and weeds is sad indeed, but the ‘controlled burns’ need to be a little more controlled.

When I heard that my grandfather used horses and plows to establish “fire breaks” around homesteads, I was amazed. I really wonder if those 75 foot fire breaks would have been enough on days like Sunday.

I’m thankful for all those willing and able to go out and control these fires. From what I understand there were no injuries or deaths from Sunday’s fire, but in other parts of Nebraska, volunteer fire fighters have died this year in the performance of their duties. May God bless them all.

A O

Last week I printed memories of Eleanor Rempe about the Lawrence Telephone Company since the building that housed the business was destroy recently. Here are the other two short stories about her memories of that time, long, long ago.

“When a fierce fire wiped out several business places on the west side of Main Street, she was called to the switchboard again. The rest of the night was spent putting through long-distance calls. Owners and others were calling their relatives. The local operator was required to make a ticket of each long distance call and file them for the bookkeeper.”

“The Lawrence Telephone office was in the south-west room of the house now owned and occupied by Lawrence and Agnes Ostdiek. People in town always paid their rent each month and they had until the 10th of the month to pay and receive a 25 cent discount. The morning of the 10th the operator would be given a list of all those not paid. It was her duty to call each one to remind them it was the last day of the discount. One time she was working the night shift (8 p.m. to 8 a.m.). At 10 p.m. a local business man, long deceased, was pounding on the door wanting to get in and pay his rent. He had a little too much booze. Eleanor switched the light on in the booth and told him to lay his money in there, which he did. The next day, Mr. Henry Gilsdorf told her if that ever happened again to just push that button which was the town’s fire whistle.

A O