JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024
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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024
20 Har vest of Ideas
Center-pivot sprinklers, Square Turn tractors, Vice-Grips, even flat iron steak –Nebraskans grow agriculture worldwide by solving problems at home.
By Alan J. Bartels
26 From Ranch to Mansions
When his parents’ Alliance ranch began to fail, Dan Nelson turned to a new line of work – wallpaper designs – and new heights: Paris apartments, Christian Dior stores and celebrity homes.
By Tim Trudell
32 Ice Eagles
Once a rare sight, America’s bird, the bald eagle, proved tenacious, and with a little help, is on the rise in Nebraska.
By Tom Hess
40 Forging a Faith
Faith is forged in the fires of tribulation, something pioneers with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knew when they founded Winter Quarters, the first city in Nebraska, and for many, their final resting place.
By Matt Masich
54 Winter Reading Roundup
Nebraska Life’s pick of recent books will fill your winter hours with tales of survival, flights of fantasy and overcoming adversity.
By Lisa Truesdale and Tom Hess
Gering, pg. 16
Ogallala, pg. 32
Venango, pg. 20
Mullen, pg. 66
Burwell, pg. 20
Bartlett, pg. 62
Norfolk, pg. 20
North Platte, pg. 32 Taylor, pg. 15 Loup City, pg. 60
Columbus, pg. 14, 22
Seward, pg. 14
DeWitt, pg. 20
Blair, pg. 62
Omaha, pg. 20, 40 Valley, pg. 20
Lincoln, pg. 20, 26
After almost disappearing decades ago, eagles soar across Nebraska in far greater numbers to the delight of the state’s photographers.
Sunken boat rises for World War II exhibit in Seward; life-size “Villagers” stop traffic in Taylor; remodeled Model A that saved blizzard victims amazes visitors.
County seats are anything but boring in this test of your Nebraska acumen. Answers on page 62. No peeking!
Soup’s on! How sweet the sound of those words at mealtime on cold days. Try these easy recipes.
Loving tenderness is in the hearts and flowing from the pens of these Nebraska poets.
Alan J. Bartels discovered that getting stuck in the mud isn’t the drag it once seemed.
Readers of Nebraska Life share their stories. Find out how you can be published, too.
With his yellow lab Khloe, photographer Erik Johnson captures pink light on a snowy Sandhills landscape.
Poetry, pg. 51
Last Look, pg. 66
Over the next 10 years in Nebraska, $100 billion will transfer from one generation to the next. There is always a transfer from generation to generation, as parents pass away and leave their estate to their children. But if the heirs no longer live where they grew up, that wealth may leave as well.
Imagine if just five percent of this abundance were given back to the places where it was made and accumulated. Think of the impact that kind of money could have on education, health, prosperity, and quality of life. Harnessing just a small percentage of the transfer of wealth could be a gamechanger for the future of our hometowns.
This is your opportunity to enrich its future. We’re asking you to consider leaving just five percent of your assets to your favorite Nebraska hometown or to Nebraska Community Foundation to benefit all of our communities. When we all leave five, our hometowns thrive!
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024
Volume 28, Number 1
Editor & Publisher
Chris Amundson
Associate Publisher Angela Amundson
Creative Director Darren Smith
Senior Editor Tom Hess
Production Assistant Victoria Finlayson
Advertising Sales
Marilyn Koponen, Katie Shannon
Photography Coordinator
Amber Kissner
Subscriber Services
Carol Butler, Janice Sudbeck
Nebraska Life Magazine
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As the winds swept across the plains this winter, carrying whispers of tales from times long past, I found myself enveloped in the warmth of stories that you, our readers, so carefully crafted and sent to me for publication.
The Winter of 1948-49, etched in the annals of Nebraska’s history, resonates deeply as we reflect on life on the farm and the enduring spirit of resilience that defines us as Nebraskans.
In the cozy embrace of Nebraska Life magazine, your narratives breathe life into the pages, painting vivid portraits of a bygone era and weaving a tapestry of memories that span generations. From the crackling of snow under a snowcat Model A to the shocking accidental plunge into a country church baptistery, the rhythm of generations of Nebraskans come alive through your stories.
In the digital age, stories unfold not just through words but also through the visual tapestry of the world. As we delve into the narratives that shape Nebraska, I invite you, our cherished readers, to add a new dimension to our storytelling: photography.
As we bid adieu to the chilly winter months and eagerly await the arrival of spring and summer, I can’t help but feel a sense of excitement brewing in the air. And what better way to celebrate the changing seasons than by capturing them in all their glory through the lens of your camera?
So whether you’re a seasoned pro or just a humble smartphone snapper, I want to see your photos of Nebraska in all its glory. Snap a pic of that stunning sunset over the prairie, capture the joyous pageantry of a county fair, immortalize the simple beauty of a wildflower meadow in full bloom, chronicle family outings at your favorite Nebraska lake or state park. To borrow from a retired Nebraska tourism slogan, “the possibilities are endless,” and the more creative, the better!
Send your photos to editor@nebraskalife.com, or drop them in the mail to the address at the front of this magazine. And who knows? Your photo just might find its way onto the pages of our magazine, for all the world to see.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to each of you for being part of the Nebraska Life family. Your stories, your photos, your subscription renewals, and your unwavering Nebraska spirit make this magazine what it is – a celebration of all things Nebraska, from the past to the present and beyond.
So here’s to you: May your cameras be at the ready, your eyes keen for beauty, and your hearts full of Nebraska pride. Let’s make some memories, capture some moments, and show the world just how amazing our state truly is.
Until next time, keep those stories coming and those cameras clicking. And remember, no matter where life takes you, Nebraska will always be home.
Chris Amundson Editor & Publisher editor@nebraskalife.com
Where did the goal posts go?
The letter from Richard Conard (“Stadium history in the making,” Mailbox, November/December 2023) inspired me to write about my experience at the stadium. I was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and was at that game, too (1959, Nebraska-Oklahoma).
A fellow in our house had season tickets and he wanted to go pheasant hunting because he just knew Oklahoma would annihilate the Huskers. I had never been to a Husker game, so I offered him a quarter for his ticket. Well, we all know the results of the game.
Yes, the goal posts were pulled down and groups made off with the parts. At one point as they were shaking the posts to get them loose, I saw that one of the uprights was about to snap off. I thought if that hit someone it was going to be bad. I began to move away, and it broke off and hit a fellow in the forehead, leaving a large bleeding gash. It didn’t seem to bother him as he wandered off hanging on to his piece of the goal post.
One of the goal assemblies, minus the uprights, was taken to the governor’s mansion and given to him. Our house, The Brown Palace, was just two blocks from the governor’s mansion, so late that night a group of us went over and relieved the governor of the responsibility.
We had 50 members in our house. I had a hacksaw and one of the members asked to borrow it. That is how our goal post ended up in many pieces.
My piece came from the top of the post with some of the cross pieces forming a T. It was 2 feet high and 4 feet across. At close of the school year, I took my portion and located it in a place of honor over the bar at Jiggs Place in Curtis. In May 1962 when Jiggs moved to another town, Leo Viersen took the post and placed it in his automobile repair shop in Maywood. It remained there at Viersen’s Garage until it was sold (late 1970s), and Jack Viersen hauled it to his residence at North Platte.
After a time, he called the Athletic Department at the university to see if they wanted this treasure. They did not. He found Bill Schnase at the Maywood centennial celebration (1987) and transferred guardianship to him. It stayed in his in-laws’
garage for a while, and then he took it to his home in Omaha.
While in Bill’s care, he had a neighbor that had an electric hacksaw. The treasure was slowly disappearing. They decided it was time for me to take over the care of the treasure. It is now hanging on my back fence here in Augusta, Georgia.
Many years later, I was at a Rotary meeting in Madison, Indiana. I had just met the new commander for the Jefferson Proving Ground that is located there. He was from Nebraska and had been in the stadium for that same game. He said, “Let me tell you what happened to a friend of mine after that game.” It was the same fellow that had his head gashed that I mentioned earlier.
Lowell Fritsche Augusta, Georgia
Fonda’s cookie makes the plate
I was looking for a new and special cookie recipe for Christmas baking and found it in Fonda’s Favorite Sugar Cookie (“Flat Water News,” November/December 2023). The simple-to-make dough was easy to roll out and handle. I used a snowflake cookie cutter and sprinkled them with sparkling white sugar. They were included in my cookie plates for neighbors. I loved the delicate orange flavor and now they are one of my favorites too.
I enjoy all your wonderful and informative articles and look forward to each issue. Keep up the great work.
Pam Lemke Bruning
The writing prompt
As is customary, I read every word of the November/December 2023 issue cover-to-cover without stopping. Thank you sincerely for your hard work and that of your staff.
I am interested in your daily prompt service (“Editor’s Letter,” November/December 2023). I am a writer, and I like to teach creative writing. I could use the prompts in my lesson plans. Thank you if you can share that information with me.
I am currently reading the book North of the Platte, South of the Niobrara by Bryan L. Jones. I think it would be worth your time to check it out. I am a native Nebraskan and I raised my family in Brown County. Oh, how I love the Sandhills.
Julia McMillie Greeley, Colorado
Editor’s reply: Hello, Julia. Storyworth is the writing prompt service.
and still reading
Thank you for putting together such a wonderful magazine. We read it cover to cover. For years we have received it as a gift from my husband’s office girls, but he retired this last year (just one of the reasons I wasn’t ready for him to.) But he did and we are treating ourselves with this gift to enjoy and share with others. We look forward to every issue.
Janell Micek Pierce
Editor’s reply: Thank you, Janell and Chuck, for subscribing to and giving Nebraska Life We appreciate all our subscribers.
Thank you for the gift of “Prairie Christmas Lessons” by Joan McCullough Looker in “Storyteller” in the November/December 2023 issue. It is a masterful example of the spare, efficient use of language to form vivid images in the mind, primarily from a 9-year-old’s perception of real-life events intersecting with thematic material of the season. Several features of the writing that impress me are:
• The presence of many historical facets of life in mid-20th century rural Nebraska which serve to invite compari son and contrast with the present.
• Observations about relative values that become apparent with life experience.
• A recounting of the apparent thought processes that noted similarities between the author’s small-town childhood context and the Christmas story.
• The ability to skillfully tell a story in a compact form, one that invites the reader to participate in a personal experience.
Keep those thoughtful articles coming – of the seven print magazines and several online sources I access regularly, this is the one that focuses specifically on a wide variety of Nebraska topics. As a former Nebraska photographer, I also appreciate the photography in Nebraska Life from the well-known and less-wellknown parts of the state.
Robert Achterberg Austin, Texas
I just read your letter in the latest magazine where you wrote “Joan grew up in Western Nebraska – on McCullough Island near Brady.” The map on the page before shows Brady and it is nowhere in Western Nebraska but more south central. I live in Rushville – now that is Western Nebraska!
Rena Krotz Rushville
PLEASE SEND US ...
Send your letter to the editor to editor@nebraskalife.com or to the mailing address at the front of this magazine. Each month, one letter writer will receive a free 1-year subscription. This issue’s winner is Pam Lemke of Bruning.
We want to read about your best Nebraska memories, adventures, travels, friendships and community service. How long should your story be? Start with 200 words and go up to 800 words. If available, please send photos. Send to editor@ nebraskalife.com.
Nebraskans love to take pictures. Send your digital photos of activities, nature, wildlife, travels, attractions and community events to photos@nebraskalife.com.
In each issue you will find breathtaking outdoor adventure, mouth-watering recipes, stunning photography, captivating stories and humor from every corner of Nebraska. Whether you’re a longtime resident, newcomer or distant admirer – if you love Nebraska, then this magazine is meant for you.
U.S. soldiers depart a Higgins boat on D-Day in Normandy. Drought revealed a “ghost” Higgins boat at the bottom of a California lake (below).
by DARREN IVY
Columbus in Platte County is separated from Seward in Seward County by 52 miles, but the two towns are united in World War II history. The inventor of the ship that helped deliver American soldiers to the shores of Normandy on D-Day was born in Columbus, and one of the few surviving ships he built is now on display in Seward.
Andrew Jackson Higgins, inventor of the Higgins boat, was born in Columbus in 1886, 30 years after the town was founded. He grew up in Omaha, designing and building his first boat at age 12 in the basement of his family’s home.
Higgins attended Creighton Prep School and left after his junior year to join the 2nd Nebraska Infantry, a National Guard regiment. While in the Nebraska militia, Higgins received his first amphibious training – on the shallow waters of the Platte River.
The shipbuilding company he founded in New Orleans, Higgins Industries, produced more than 12,000 Higgins ships. President Dwight Eisenhower later told a historian that Higgins boats helped win WWII.
Higgins is honored with a memorial in Columbus that includes statues of U.S. soldiers disembarking on D-Day from a Higgins boat. The idea of the memorial began as an inspiration from the historian
at Seward’s Nebraska National Guard Museum, Col. Gerald D. “Jerry” Meyer.
Seward, the Fourth of July City, unveiled the Higgins “Ghost” Boat No. 3117 on July 4, 2023, at the National Guard Museum. It took part in seven World War II battles. It is called a “ghost” because it decayed for decades at the bottom of a California lake until a drought revealed its location in 2021.
Dr. Van and Becky (Cattle) Vahle, and the late Virginia Cattle, longtime owners of the Cattle Bank & Trust in Seward, donated the money to bring the boat to Seward. Higgins boats are sentimental to the Vahles. Becky’s father, Maj. John Cattle, rode onto the shores of Sicily in one in 1943. The boat now ports in a special display at the museum, which is open to visitors.
“Many veterans have remarked that ‘I wouldn’t be alive if not for Andrew Jackson Higgins,’ ” Meyer said. “ ‘His boats allowed me to get off fast enough to get to shore and fight.’ ”
by CHEYENNE ROWE
Alongside U.S. 183 in the village of Taylor, pop. 140, the seat of Loup County, appear life-size, blackand-white, even ghostly cutouts of the sorts of people who once brought Taylor to life – a farmer, a cowboy, a lamplighter, berry pickers, boys heading for the fishing hole, churchgoers, more than 120 cutouts in all.
The so-called Taylor Villagers sprung from the imagination of Marah Sandoz, related by marriage to the late Nebraska author Mari Sandoz. She owns Marah’s Treasures, a shop at the corner where U.S. 183 intersects with Nebraska Highway 91. Sandoz began in 2003 creating the Villagers to slow down the 250,000 motorists who pass through Taylor long enough to consider buying souvenirs and a tank of gas.
It’s worked, Sandoz said. People visit her store to buy replicas of the Villagers, and maybe a slice of cream pie, too.
Marah has no formal training in art, but no matter. All she needed was her equal love for history and Taylor. She’s invested. She bought Taylor’s historic Pavilion Hotel. Built in 1887 in hopes that the railroad would arrive – it didn’t – the hotel became registered as a national historic place in 1989. It is closed.
Sandoz maintains the Villagers outside the hotel, and other locations, such as the historic Congregational Church, giving the Villagers a fresh coat of black and white paint, choosing to mimic the look of old photos. The buildings serve as historic backdrops, like movie sets.
The railroad may not have arrived in Taylor, and Loup County may remain the 10th least inhabited county in the nation, but travelers receive a greeting from 120 Villagers who never tire of waving and smiling from Taylor’s past.
Motorists on U.S. 183 and Nebraska Highway 91, where they intersect in Taylor, can’t help but notice life-size, black-andwhite “Villagers” from all walks of life, and a few animals, too. They’re so popular, they regularly get a fresh coat of paint.
by TOM HESS
The Winter of 1948-49 dumped so much snow that it suffocated cattle and shut in ranch and farm families, but some stranded people needed immediate medical attention. The American Legion in Hemingford had the answer: a hail-Mary style solution now on display alongside corn and sugar beet equipment and remnants of pioneer life at the Legacy of the Plains Museum in Gering.
The Hemingford Legion had bought a Model A Ford Sport Coupe, and in an emergency order, flew in from Wisconsin and dropped by parachute a skis-and-track attachment that converted the Model A into a snowmobile. The Model A could not run through snow; the snowmobile ran on top of it, able to bring a doctor to patients trapped in the countryside and patients to
the hospital in Alliance. Volunteers also delivered much-needed fuel, food and medicine to those in need.
A farmer near Hemingford, the late Lawrence R. Grabher, later bought the snowmobile in 1952 at an American Legion silent auction. He used the snowmobile for deer and rabbit hunting. At the back end is a rumble seat where the hunters would ready themselves for a clean shot.
Grabher took the snowmobile to a Denver Model A shop in 1976, where the vehicle received new upholstery, a new roof and a new coat of paint. The Model A had been its original color, black, but it was now painted yellow.
Born in 1926, Grabher died in 2006. His daughter, Sandra Wood, remembers with mixed emotions riding in the snowmobile to school three miles away and visiting neighbors in the evening during
93% of 2022 grads found work or continued their education.
89% of 2022 employed grads are working in Nebraska.
82% of 2022 grads continuing their education are doing so in Nebraska.
snowstorms. She enjoyed the thrill of the ride but not the frigid temperatures. “The snowmobile had no heater, and we would freeze to death,” Wood said.
Wood is as fascinated by her father’s snowmobile as the public visiting the vehicle at Legacy of the Plains. She keeps decades-old copies of articles on the snowmobile clipped from newspapers and magazines. The articles help her recall certain details – dates, places – but memories of the rides to school and the countryside remain vivid.
Now museum visitors can use their imaginations to build their own memories. The snowmobile was donated to the Legacy of the Plains Museum in 2012 and remains on display. There’s not been snow nearly as deep since the Winter of 1948-49, but plenty enough to see in your mind’s eye Grabher’s Model A snowmobile chasing deer around Box Butte County.
questions by CHRISTOPHER SHORT
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1David McCanles was killed near Fairbury by what soon-to-be famous gunslinger whom he called “Duck Bill?”
2 What Cherry County community known for aquatic recreation bills itself as Nebraska’s “Heart City?”
3 Benkelman native Ward Bond portrayed Bert the cop in what classic film?
4 The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad reached Thedford in 1887. What year did the community incorporate?
Questions were originally published in September/October 2018 issue.
5 He may or may not have told young men to “go west,” but what former New York newsman has a Nebraska county and county seat named for him?
6 The large shamrock painted on an O’Neill intersection has how many leaves? No peeking, answers on page 64
7
Kearney, county seat of Buffalo County, was previously known by what name?
A. Kearney Junction
B. Buffalo Junction
C. Crane Corner
8
Ogallala is home to an art gallery dedicated mostly to what material?
A. Sandhill crane feathers
B. Petrified wood
C. Cow pies
9 Wahoo’s Daryl F. Zanuck was a co-founder of which major Hollywood film studio?
A. Twentieth Century Pictures
B. MGM
C. Universal
10
Arthur was once home to the smallest courthouse in the United States. Now it is a museum. What is the square footage?
A. 248
B. 728
C. 1,248
11 Harrisburg, in Banner County, was named after the capital of Pennsylvania.
12 Norfolk is the county seat of Madison County.
13 Though Harry was from Independence, Missouri, Bess Truman was born in Tekamah, Nebraska.
14 Alma, in Harlan County, was platted where soldiers from Fort McPherson clashed with Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in 1871.
15 Wheeler County was named for Horatio Nelson Wheeler.
BY ALAN J. BARTELS
Nebraskans grow agriculture by solving problems
The sun sets on a field irrigated with Ogallala Aquifer water, sunlight glistening off the spray from inventor Frank Zybach’s invention.
Nebraskans know a thing or two about reaping what they sow. The Cornhusker State, also known as the Beef State, routinely ranks at or near the top of national rankings in production of row crops and livestock. Beyond those commodities, many of the agricultural seeds planted by innovative Nebraskans have grown to benefit farms and ranches far from Nebraska and around the world. Take pride in this brimming bushel backet of Nebraska’s contributions to modern agriculture.
Frank Zybach didn’t care much for doing the farm chores that came along with growing up on the family’s land near Columbus in the early 1900s. Far ahead of his time even though he left school part way through the seventh grade to help on the farm and his father’s blacksmith shop, Zybach was only a teenager when he invented a driverless tractor to plow the ground in concentric circles. That contraption didn’t catch on with the ag community, but Zybach was still seeing circles when his next innovation revolutionized production agriculture worldwide.
Inspiration struck Zybach after keenly observing a farmer awkwardly irrigate crops by towing a long pipe equipped with sprinkler heads around a field. Zybach got to work.
By the late 1940s, he’d engineered and assembled a five-tower irrigation rig on wheels capable of irrigating a 40-acre field. By the early 1950s he’d received a patent for an irrigation setup equipped with a 600-foot-long boom capable of watering an entire section minus the corners. The center pivot was born, and bountiful crop circles of green began sprouting up across Nebraska and the Great Plains. They now appear on six continents.
Valley Manufacturing improved the design after securing Zybach’s patent. Now known as Valmont Industries, the Omaha-based company sells to hopeful farmers everywhere who thank the heavens for Zybach’s Nebraska invention while still optimistically praying for rain.
Columbus farmer Frank Zybach (top) invented the self-propelled center-pivot irrigation system and received a patent in 1952. Rowse Rakes (right) began as a family farm solution that caught neighbors’ attention. Sqaure Turn Tractors turned heads.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” is an oft-cited proverb. In rural Nebraska, invention is a way of life. Statewide, farmers and ranchers devise contraptions, machines, or jigs to get the job done for their own operations. Many of these creations never go beyond a workshop, never see a showroom floor. Such was almost the case for Freeman and Betty Rowse of rural Burwell.
Freeman (Fee) Rowse spent about a month and a half back in 1959 converting an old dump rake into a hydraulic hay rake. Having figured out what needed to be done, the second hay rake only took him a week to complete. Both of his rakes were intended for use by the Rowse family.
Somehow word got out about the unique inventions, and visitors began showing up to watch as the Rowses put up their summer hay (they could have at least offered to help!). Before long, Fee was building hydraulic rakes for his neighbors. Betty did her part by painting each of the implements with a paintbrush.
In addition to its signature hydraulic hay rakes, the company soon began producing double sickle bar mowers. In 1976 they designed and patented a trailing mower. Bale movers, windrow fluffers, wheel rakes, and calf cradles joined the growing product line. The dirt scraper Fee built for use while building a house eventually made it into the product line, too.
Rowse Rakes’ Ultimate V-Rake turns 20 in 2024. Implements produced in the original plant 22 miles north of Burwell, and in the newer O’Neill location, are sold through implement dealers in 32 states. Still in the Rowse family, grandsons and great-grandsons are at the helm of the Nebraska family company today.
Nebraskans being at the forefront of agricultural innovation is nothing new, and we’re not talking about the famed World’s Largest Plow that has been an attraction in Gothenburg since 1988.
In 1913, as American agriculture was transitioning from beasts of burden to the use of internal combustion powered automotive implements, farmer A.T. Kenney and machinist/engineer A.J. Colwell began building a machine of their own in Norfolk.
The ability of their K-C tractor to plow clear up into the fence corners of fields
and then negotiate tight maneuvers to turn around led to the name the machine is known by today. Controlled by levers mimicking the motions farmers of the time used to direct their horses, orders began rolling in by 1914. Production of the machine powered by a 510-cubic-inch Climax four-cylinder engine soon outgrew Colwell’s shop space and moved to a facility on Seventh Street in Norfolk.
Kenney and Colwell sold their company to Illinois-based manufacturer Albaugh-Dover, and in 1917 that company founded the Square Turn Tractor Company. A new facility was erected on a stretch of 11th Street in Norfolk known today as Square Turn Boulevard.
The company’s executives hoped to pay 400 workers as much as $3 per day, a hefty wage at the time. Weighing in at an equally hefty 7,800 pounds when equipped with an Oliver brand three plow gang, a new Square Turn tractor cost farmers $1,385.
Production of the Square Turn tractor ceased during World War I and never recovered. Still, the Square Turn left its mark. Colwell’s innovative “Giant Grip Drive” transmission is credited for hastening the end of the widespread use of the horse as a draft animal.
The only example of a Square Turn Tractor on public display in Nebraska is parked in perpetuity at the Elkhorn Valley Museum in Norfolk, only blocks from where the ahead-of-its-time agricultural innovation was invented.
Danish immigrant William Petersen tried his hand at farming after moving to Nebraska in the early 1920s. Eventually, he opened a blacksmith shop in DeWitt. The automobiles that this inventor at heart tried to engineer didn’t last, but one of his inventions is a staple of farm and ranch repair found in most toolboxes in Nebraska and beyond.
Needing a simple, portable way to secure the metal he was working on, Petersen came up with the innovative idea for a set of locking pliers. He made prototypes of cardboard and wood before hammering a working example into existence on his dented forge. Patents were awarded in 1921 and 1924 and Petersen began selling his Vice-Grip Pliers to area farmers and others from the trunk of his car. Soon,
LIVING HISTORY (ABOVE AND RIGHT)
A 1949 ad (above) helped promote DeWitt blacksmith William Petersen’s Vice Grip Pliers, which proved so popular he opened a plant in DeWitt (right). The GrainGoat (below) measures a crop’s moisture.
his Petersen Manufacturing Company opened a production facility in a former drugstore in downtown DeWitt.
Military contracts helped keep the family company going during World War II. The company incorporated in the 1950s, and innovations such as the “easy release lever” that was added in 1957 fueled the company’s growth.
In 1998, in anticipation of the company’s 75th anniversary, gold- and chrome-plated collector’s versions of the famous tool were released. A decade later, DeWitt’s grip on the landmark invention slipped when changes of ownership led to manufacturing moving to China and 330 workers from DeWitt and the surrounding area losing their jobs.
Hometown hope was renewed when a Minnesota-based company reopened the DeWitt plant and began producing a similar locking plier. The venture didn’t last, but the sign on the edge of DeWitt proclaiming the community as the “Home of Vise-Grip Tools” remains. The brick monument stands as a symbol of small-town Nebraskan ingenuity that continues helping hard workers every-
where with an honored place in shops and toolboxes around the world.
Farms in Nebraska and across the Great Plains continue to grow larger. Some farmers now plow, plant, and harvest thousands of acres. Farm equipment has grown, too. Convoys of commuters routinely but unintentionally line up behind 12-, 14-, or even 16-row combines each fall.
As harvest time approaches, farmers drive those behemoths from field to field so that their on-board sensors can measure the moisture content of a field and determine if it’s ready for harvest. That process is time consuming and burns fuel, and unproductive if the grain is too wet and a return trip is necessary. Venango inventor Martin Bremmer thought there had to be a better way.
Bremmer and his wife, Patti, live on land that has been in his family since the late 1800s. While growing up, he would work summers on the family farm. After college he moved to the farm, married Patti, and began his own farm operation. He remembers so many hours wasted
driving to fields in a combine only to learn that the field was not ready.
“Many of the older farmers would chew a few grains of wheat to see if their field was ready, and I often wondered why someone hadn’t invented something to revolutionize the moisture testing method,” Bremmer said. After complaining to Patti for the umpteenth time, she said, “Why don’t you be the one to invent the darn thing?” So, he did.
The GrainGoat is a 17-pound labor saver that hangs by a strap from a farmer’s shoulder. The handheld machine – essentially a mini combine – isn’t practical for harvest-
ing our state’s fields of gold. But the device can be tossed in a backseat or the bed of a pickup and taken from field to field to efficiently test the moisture content of crops.
The GrainGoat uses battery power to do its thing – collect, clean, and test the sample –while farmers’ fuel-guzzling combines stay parked in the ready until needed.
Settings can be adjusted for the type of crop to be sampled. The invention marketed through the Bremmers’ Windcall Manufacturing holds the first U.S. Patent ever for a hand-held combine for small grain. Bremmer has always been a tinkerer.
“I’ve always thought there was a way to build a better mousetrap. My mind leans that direction with everything I do,” Bremmer said. “I build things around the farm to make our lives easier. I think most farmers are guilty of that.”
DO YOU KNOW an innovative Nebraskan whose ingenious inventions got the job done but never became known beyond where they were created? We would love to hear about these inventors and their uniquely Nebraskan creations. Drop us a line at editor@nebraskalife.com.
“Beef…it’s what’s for dinner in Nebraska” is a well-known slogan thanks to a popular radio and TV campaign. Our state’s connection to beef cattle is stronger than most. After all, Nebraska is “The Beef State.” Cattle outnumbered Nebraskans more than five to one in 2023. So it should come as no surprise that one of the best-selling cuts of beef of all time originated in Nebraska.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Dr. Chris Calkins spent more than 40 years on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s meat science faculty. For three of those years, Calkins bullishly studied cattle carcasses and extracted cuts that professional butchers had overlooked.
From the chuck portion at the front of the animal, well beneath the shoulder – a portion commonly ground into hamburger or used for roasts – Calkins found a particularly tender and flavorful chunk. The small slab was thinner than the thick and juicy popular steaks of the day. Calkins was hopeful but uncertain if the toothsome cut would catch on.
Calkins got his big break when more than 100 meat industry executives gathered at UNL dined on Calkin’s cut – what became known as the Flat Iron Steak. Marketing efforts and early support from restaurant chain Applebee’s put the Flat Iron Steak on the public’s menu. From its introduction in 2002, to 2009, the new cut added an estimated $50 to $70 to the price of a single beef animal.
Calkins retired from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2022. The savory steak he helped pioneer more than two decades ago has Beef State carnivores licking their chops and Nebraska’s cattlemen fattening their bottom line.
Wallpaper designs took Alliance ranch son Dan Nelson to new heights in Lincoln and beyond
BY TIM TRUDELL
Dan Nelson grew up on a ranch in Alliance, watching his parents struggle to keep their land while others around them folded. Dan attended Kearney State College (now University of Nebraska-Kearney) to pursue a business degree, but they lost the family ranch. Like so many other sons and daughters of Nebraska farms, Nelson had a decision to make: without ranch work, how would he pay his bills, make his mark?
Nelson tried restaurant management but found his sweet spot in creating custom wallpaper designs installed on the walls of upscale Lincoln and Omaha homes. Beyond Nebraska, his work appears in Saks Fifth Avenue, Paris apartments, Moscow mansions, Christian Dior stores and in the homes of celebrities like LeBron James and Steve Harvey.
Nelson’s path from an Alliance ranch to upscale homes started in his sister’s garage in Lincoln and next a small studio he built in the backyard of Nelson’s home that he later shared with his wife, Jodi, and two small children, Janssen and Aden.
That journey began when his parents moved to the Lake of the Ozarks and bought an older house in need of a makeover. Nelson’s trip to Missouri would prove life changing.
With the house gutted, creating a blank slate, the Nelsons discussed ideas for a new look. His older brother suggested a wallpaper technique he saw in Dallas, Texas. Painting and distressing rolls of brown craft paper and then gluing it to the wall. Nelson had no idea yet that he had just entered his life’s calling.
Nelson’s wallpaper company is now named Vahallan, which Nelson founded in 1997. Turning to his Nordic ancestry, the
Swede from Alliance based the name on Valhalla, the place of Nordic lore, dropping the first l and adding an n. Nelson wanted his company name to convey strength; Valhalla is where Viking warriors killed in battle would gather in the afterlife.
Vahallan operates in a nondescript building on 6th Street in south Lincoln, surrounded by grain elevators, industrial buildings and railroads on one side and houses on the other. Artists create custom wallpaper that will eventually become the focal point of rooms around the globe.
The company’s corrugated aluminum exterior is as humble as Nelson’s first wallpaper design efforts, back in the Lincoln home where he first created his first samples to show architects and homeowners.
Unrolling smooth brown paper, Nelson ripped it into uneven pieces. Pouring a variety of paint colors into a previously pris-
tine metal tray, he took a clean roller and dipped it into the paint, coating the bumps and crevices as it moved deeper into the wallpaper. Spreading paint over the ripped pieces, he created a work of art that even Paris designers would be proud to show.
Once dried, Nelson balled up each sheet and smoothed it again, creating a distressed appearance. Reassembling them on the wall as if putting together a jigsaw puzzle, Nelson covered the apartment wall with his artistic decor. Once finished, he stepped back, admiring his handiwork. Gone were the staid designs of the past and before him a magnificent modern look that his roommates complemented.
“You know, in California, you could make a living doing this,” quipped his neighbor, a transplant from the Golden State. Encouraged, Nelson created 10 samples of his wallpapers painted with blues, reds, greens – any color that would attract the eye of a customer.
Armed with his samples, he met with interior designers around Lincoln. Don’t leave your day job, one of the designers told him. Another designer, it turns out possibly the only forward-thinker of the lot, told Nelson he may be on to something.
Nelson was then invited by an Omaha interior designer to decorate a couple of walls in a home as part of the annual Street of Dreams tour in Omaha. The tour attracted thousands of people where they would see his hand-painted work as they toured bedrooms, bathrooms and living rooms of some of the most-attractive homes in west Omaha. Nelson ended up handing out over 500 business cards.
Vahallan’s designs are unique because Nelson encourages the artists to use their imagination in creating the wallpapers.
From the early days of ripped brown paper to today’s style of mixing textures, lines, colors and patterns, the company’s website now features over 50 collections.
Vahallan founder Dan Nelson (left) looks through his company’s collections, which number 50 (center). Vahallan employee Courtney Mathewson hangs a style of wallpaper called Tulla.
One artist who applied to work at Vahallan right out of high school was Matt Monks. Working alongside one another, the duo traded new ideas and styles. Monks has moved up from being the first true full-time employee to the Chief Operating Officer, overseeing the daily routine of the business.
“I walked in and told him ‘My friend said you were looking for help,’” Monks said. “Dan said, ‘Great, you start tomorrow.’ It’s a cool place, creative and different. No two days were the same. There was no air conditioning, no heat. We’d run our hands under hot water to warm up. It wasn’t that bad, but it was rough.”
The excitement of not knowing what to
expect day-to-day keeps Monks at Vahallan.
“There’s always a new obstacle or a new problem to solve. It’s going to dry too fast, or the paint’s not quite the right color,” he said. “It keeps you energized, knowing you’re gonna have something new to deal with every day.”
While his customers may primarily be located around the world, Nelson’s Husker State roots run deep when it comes to his team, with several artists and other employees being Nebraska natives.
Jared Schulze dips his hand into a bucket of paint, his mind flashing back to kindergarten as he runs his fingers across a blank canvas. The self-described “Hick from Hordville” spreads his fingers across a ten-foot-long blank can-
vas, creating custom-designed wallpaper. He’ll add paint to another four panels, eventually creating a 100-square-foot work of art that will hang on the wall of someone’s home.
The lead artist at Vahallan, Schulze sometimes pinches himself. He never thought of himself as a true artist. With no formal art training beyond high school, Schulze relied on his natural talent to succeed with Vahallan.
“I was just kind of always the creative one, the artistic one, in my class and my little town,” he said. “I had art class every year, even taking advanced art. There came a point where it’s like, ‘I don’t know if I’m really into this. What am I going to do with it?’”
In October 2007, that question was an-
Naranjos (left) is one bold choice in the Valencia collection. The Traccia collection (top) is available in browns, reds and greens. Production manager Jared Schulze (bottom) has his choice of colors.
swered, and Schulze followed the road to Lincoln, leaving his family’s farm.
“It was early fall, I was picking up irrigation pipe with my dad and, you know, probably complaining about how badly the Huskers were doing, and a monthand-a-half later, I’m starting a 17year career. Professional finger painter,” Schulze said.
He found his niche with Vahallan, working alongside extremely talented artists. Today the company hires many of its artists from the University of Nebraska art school.
“It’s physical work; you’re working with your hands a lot,” Schulze said. “For me, it’s more about being detail oriented and creative than being a great artist.”
That sense of organization led to Schulze eventually becoming the Vahallan production manager, leading a team of eight artists. Schulze and his team have created tools to help them, such as a new finger-painting device that allows them to dip it into paint and apply it to the canvas, keeping their hands much cleaner. Just about anything becomes a tool for creating designs, from broom brushes to scrapers.
The team creates amazing pieces of wallpaper, each hand-painted with designs with the goal of matching one sheet to another.
Initially partnering with both interior designers and wallpaper hangers, Vahallan today works exclusively with interior designers. The designers will order one of the creations offered on Vahallan’s website. Artists paint the design, and the company sends it off to the customer, where the interior designer will have it applied to the wall. Sometimes, Vahallan will create specifically requested designs, Nelson said.
Reflecting on his career and the company he built, Nelson thinks back to the entrepreneurial class he took at Kearney State College his senior year. The class sparked his interest in owning his own business and he never looked back.
Once a rare sight, America’s tenacious bird is on the rise in Nebraska
When eagles aren’t diving for fish in the waters of Lake Ogallala near Kingsley Dam Eagle Viewing Area, they conveniently perch on leafless trees.
When Kingsley Dam releases water, Lake
stirs and fish rise to the surface, giving eagles and photographers alike a memorable show.
BY TOM HESS
CCertain colors swell the hearts of Nebraskans: the red, white and blue of Old Glory; the sea of Cornhusker red for the homecoming game at Memorial Stadium; and lately, the bright white head and yellow beak of mature bald eagles, five years and older.
Singing of the National Anthem at Memorial Stadium averages 105 decibels during a football game. The sounds eagles make in their quieter domains require a closer listen; a gull-like “Peal Call”; the descending notes of a “Chatter Call”; and the “kuk-kuk-kuk” call.
America’s bird, the bald eagle is commonplace in Nebraska today, with more thriving nests than the state can count. Landing and taking off from their nests or seated on a branch as if posing for the cameras, they lift the spirits of patriots. The bald eagle has been America’s bird since 1782, when it became part of the Great Seal of the United States.
Not so long ago, you couldn’t see even one bald eagle in the wild in Nebraska.
One hundred fifty years of practice and policy – the loss of eagle habitat, aggressive hunting, and the pesticide DDT –made the eagle disappear.
The problem wasn’t just Nebraska’s, and neither was the solution. Federal law protected eagles (1940) and a federal ban on DDT took effect (1973). The first occupied eagle nest in Nebraska was spotted in 1991, 18 years after DDT use ended.
One nest wasn’t enough. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service set a goal for Nebraska of 10 active breeding pairs. And Nebraska answered the call. It reached the goal in five years. Twenty years later, by 2016, the number nearly tripled to 161. By 2019, the state estimated 300, some nesting in places that they hadn’t before. Eagles were adapting; they just needed a little help.
Bonnie James of North Platte noticed the change. She often visited Cody Park,
along U.S. 83 and the North Platte River, with its antique carousel, a statue of “Wild Bill” Cody, and a railroad museum. She would bring her camera because she enjoys photographing wildlife migrating through there: duck, geese and peafowl.
In a 2014 visit to Cody Park, an eagle flew directly over James’ head with a duck’s head in its talon. Now she counts six active eagles’ nests. She’s seen eagles fighting over a goose, a reminder that
eagles sometimes eat more than just fish. Nebraskans are learning about eagles now that they encounter them wherever they live.
Tiara Brown of Omaha, an eighthgrade science teacher, learned that eagles, typically shy around humans, can adapt to humans in an urban setting. She finds them in a collection pond near her home.
Brown had her 2-year-old in a stroller and walked to the pond behind nearby restaurants where eagles land on their way
to Chalco Hills Recreation Area in Sarpy County. “We walked to within 30-40 yards of the eagles, and they stuck around, letting us watch them,” Brown said. That’s rare, “especially with your kid there.”
Brown uses a Canon 80D to photograph eagles at Chalco Hills and Flannigan Lake, a flood-control reservoir in Omaha’s Papillion Creek Watershed. But on the day of her stroll, she had forgotten her camera. Her child will be too young to remember the moment. But all
A gap in winter ice at Lake McConaughy invites eagles to wait for a complete crack and access to a winter meal of
signs point to a thriving eagle population for years to come. Brown and her child will get another chance now because she won’t go for even a short stroll empty-handed.
Where there’s water, there are fish. And where there are fish, there are eagles. When Kingsley Dam – built in 1941 to form Lake Ogallala and Lake McConaughy – releases water, stirring Lake Ogallala, fish rise to the surface and eagles feast on them. But it wasn’t un-
til 1996, the year Nebraska reached its goal for breeding pairs, that the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District built an eagle-viewing facility at Kingsley.
Teri Elmshaeuser, who’s worked for 16 years as a loan officer with Pinnacle Bank in Ogallala, took up photography as a hobby after her first husband died in 2005. When Kinsley Dam releases water, things get busy. When the dam is quiet, so is eagle activity. Whether busy or qui-
et, Elmshaeuser is poised. She opens the driver window of her Jeep Wrangler, a high-clearance vehicle that gives her a view above the weed line. Her camera is steadied and resting on a bean bag. It’s sunny, so her camera is set to freeze frame eagles in flight.
In photography, she’s self-taught. “I’ve taken a lot of bad pictures,” she said, but Elmshaeuser is tenacious, like America, like Nebraska, and like the eagles she observes, photographs and admires.
Despite hardships, pioneers with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founded the first city in Nebraska
story
MASICH
Pioneers with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrive at their new Nebraska home in 1846 in the painting “Entering Winter Quarters” by Scott Snow. The settlement, built on land that became North Omaha, was bounded by high bluffs and drained by two creeks. The emigrants had to build a ferry to cross the Missouri River from Iowa.
PIONEERS WITH The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founded Winter Quarters, the first city in Nebraska, at present-day North Omaha. Built as a refuge from the violent persecution they faced in Illinois, Winter Quarters marked a new chapter in their tribulations, as what was supposed to be a temporary stopping point became, for many, a final resting place.
Disease ravaged the pioneer settlement. So many people died along the banks of the Missouri River in 1846 that the gravediggers couldn’t keep up. “You might see women sit in the open tents keeping the flies off their dead children, sometime after decomposition had set in,” wrote Thomas Kane, a friend of Church leader Brigham Young.
Little remains of Winter Quarters today except its cemetery, filled with hundreds of graves whose headstones have long since crumbled away. However, these pioneers didn’t die in vain. Their comrades’ resolve was steeled during this time of suffering. It was from Winter Quarters that the pioneers launched the final stretch of the exodus to their Promised Land in Utah, a journey that more than 70,000 of their fellow pioneers would retrace in the years to come.
Nebraska very well could have been the place where the Saints fell apart. Instead, it was the place where they came together.
WHEN BRIGHAM YOUNG set out with the first wagon train on their westward migration, their destination wasn’t Nebraska or Utah. In fact, they didn’t know where they were going; they just knew they didn’t want to be in Nauvoo, Illinois.
The members of The Church of Jesus Christ (commonly called “Mormons” at that time) had settled in Nauvoo in 1840 under the leadership of the Church’s prophet and founder, Joseph Smith.
Within a few years, Nauvoo had grown to 12,000 people, comprising most of the membership. By 1844, Smith had many followers, but also many enemies. Neighboring non-members disagreed with the new brand of Christianity, resented the power he amassed and took exception to his practice of plural marriage.
Smith was arrested after ordering the destruction of the offices of a newspaper that criticized him. While Smith was in jail awaiting trial, an angry mob stormed the
building, shooting and killing him.
With their prophet martyred, the Saints were in turmoil. Brigham Young, a carpenter originally from Vermont, stepped into the leadership void. Young was one of the Church’s earliest members, and he was the head of its Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He and the rest of the Saints realized that the animosity toward them did not end with Smith’s death. They were justifiably afraid vigilantes would shoot them down in the streets of Nauvoo, or that the U.S. Army would be sent in against them.
Young started organizing their escape. He held a meeting in January 1846 to gauge his people’s readiness to load their possessions into wagons and set out at a moment’s notice. He was aware, he wrote in his journal, that “evil is intended toward us,” and that their safety depended on departing “before our enemies shall intercept and prevent our going.”
The greatest anti-Mormon sentiment was reserved for the Church’s leaders, so Young reasoned that he and the rest of the Quorum should leave first. They wanted to cross the plains, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and Nauvoo.
Perhaps they would go to California, or Vancouver Island, or “some good valley in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains,” Young wrote. Young’s lead contingent, more than 3,000 strong, crossed the frozen Mississippi River into Iowa in February 1846. They were soon followed by thousands more men, women and children, traveling in covered wagons and hoping to reach the Missouri River within three weeks. It would take them four months to cross Iowa.
The spring unleashed torrential rain, which turned the Iowa roads – barely existent in good weather – into thick, impassable mud. Fevers broke out in the wagon train, and people started dying. Bereaved family members could only give their loved ones a quick burial before pressing forward. Despite such hardship, the pioneers’ morale remained surprisingly high. It was on this brutal slog through Iowa that poet William Clayton wrote “Come, Come Ye Saints,” which remains one of the most popular Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint hymns. The lyrics speak to the emigrants’ optimism in the face of relentless adversity:
And should we die before our journey’s through, Happy day! All is well! We then are free from toil and sorrow, too; With the just we shall dwell!
YOUNG GOT HIS first glimpse of Nebraska on June 14, 1846 when the wagons reached the banks of the Missouri River near present-day Council Bluffs, Iowa. There he met Peter Sarpy, the French-American fur trader who had built outposts on both sides of the river. Sarpy’s ferry was the only way to get across the river, but there was no way he could transport the thousands of pioneers who wanted to cross. They decided to camp on the Iowa side and build a ferry of their own.
With the summer already upon them, it seemed unlikely they could reach the Rocky Mountains before cold weather returned. Still, with rumors circulating that the Army might be coming to stop them from going any further west, Young wanted to put at least one more river between the members and their persecutors. Complicating the
matter was the fact that the Nebraska side of the river was the territory of the Omaha and Otoe tribes, and the emigrants would need government permission if they were to stay there.
The pioneers were thinking primarily of their own troubles when they left Nauvoo,
The timing of the Saints’ exodus thrust them into international intrigue.
but the timing of their exodus thrust them into the thick of war and international intrigue. While the members were crossing Iowa, the United States declared war on Mexico. Simultaneously, the United States was teetering on the brink of war with Britain over control of the Pacific Northwest.
The U.S. government was worried about the influx of 10,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into the frontier. Many members
were angry with the government for not protecting their constitutional right to practice their religion, and U.S. officials feared they might join up with one of the nation’s enemies. In the sparsely populated West, Church members were a huge force that could potentially tip the scales in the international balance of power.
A solution to the Church’s and government’s worries came about unexpectedly. Envoy Jesse Little, who had been sent to the East Coast to drum up government support for the westward emigration, met Thomas Kane, a lawyer whose father was friends with President James K. Polk. Kane had read newspaper accounts of the harsh treatment Church members had received. He wanted to help them, but he also wanted to help the United States in its war against Mexico.
Kane and Little came up with a proposal to pitch to the president: The Church would send some of their men as soldiers to help the war effort against the Mexican territory of California, and in exchange the United States would lend assistance to
Of the hundreds of recorded deaths at Winter Quarters, nearly half were infants age 2 or younger.
their exodus. The president agreed.
When Army recruiters showed up on the banks of the Missouri to gather what became known as the Mormon Battalion, many members were aghast. Why should they fight for a country that treated them so poorly? Young, on the other hand, was delighted to help the Army – but he agreed to raise the 500-man battalion only after the government agreed to let his people settle for two years on Omaha and Otoe territory in Nebraska.
The Mormon Battalion brought countless benefits: The land deal gave the Saints a place to stay; serving the nation in time of war was great for public relations; the Army, instead of hindering the emigration, was now paying Church soldiers to go west; and much of the soldiers’ pay could be funneled back to their families to buy provisions.
NOT LONG AFTER the Mormon Battalion bid their families goodbye on July 21, the ferry across the Missouri started taking settlers and wagons across the river into Nebraska. Young’s initial plan was to wait until they had all crossed and then take the Great Platte River Road to Grand Island and spend the winter there. Gradually, Church leaders realized that their people were too exhausted to go further that year, and the spot on the bluffs near the river had good water and plenty of grass for their 10,000 head of cattle. They would winter on the Missouri at a place they named, simply enough, Winter Quarters.
The pioneers were on Omaha and Otoe land, but the tribes welcomed them. “We heard you are a good people,” Omaha Chief Big Elk said at a peace meeting. “We are glad to have you come.” It seems the Indians felt a kind of kinship with these whites, as they all felt mistreated by the government. They were also more favorably disposed to the Saints because the settlers did not intend to stay long.
August was spent cutting hay from prairie grasses – as much as 2,000 tons of it – to keep their cattle fed through the winter. Beef, bacon and cornmeal was about all the pioneers had to eat, and many had to use coffee grinders to turn the dried corn to meal. Young decided to build a grist mill, and he used his
experience as a carpenter to oversee its construction. Though the internal workings are long gone, the exterior structure, now known as the Winter Quarters Mill Museum, still stands in North Omaha’s Florence neighborhood.
Winter Quarters started out as a collection of tents and covered wagons, but it soon grew into a bona fide city. The original plans called for 41 blocks and 16 named streets. A bishop was in charge of each block, helping to manage and take care of the people there.
Buildings were erected using timber felled nearby, though some people made do with sod houses or even caves dug into the bluff. By the end of 1846, Winter Quarters had nearly 3,500 people living in 538 log cabins and 83 sod houses. The population later reached a peak of 4,000 in 800 total houses. When emigrant Hosea Stout moved into a crude shanty on Nov. 24 he wrote that it was the first time his 7-month-old child, born on the journey
across Iowa, had ever been inside a house. The citizens of Winter Quarters lived Spartan existences, but they were able to buy essentials shipped in from St. Louis – textiles, hardware and other goods – from Bishop Newel Whitney’s store. Many people tended cattle or worked in the mill, and there was even a small industry making baskets out of reeds. People usually bartered. One doctor who helped a pregnant woman was paid in bushels of turnips, buckwheat and beans.
AS WINTER ARRIVED, Young still hadn’t announced the final destination of their cross-continental trek, but the Church leader’s decision was made a bit easier with the late November arrival in Winter Quarters of Pierre-Jean De Smet, a French Catholic priest returning from missionary work in the Rocky Mountain West. De Smet had lots of information about the Great Basin and the Salt Lake Valley. “They asked me a
thousand questions about the regions I had explored,” De Smet later wrote, and his description of the Salt Lake Valley “pleased them greatly from the account I gave them of it.”
Another visitor was Thomas Kane, the non-Church member ally who had been so instrumental in securing their refuge at Winter Quarters. Kane and Young became fast friends, and would remain close the rest of their lives. Young named the settlement on the Iowa side of the river Kanesville in his honor.
Unfortunately, Kane contracted one of the fevers that continued to devastate the camp. He spent a month recovering, while all around him others suffered with similar illnesses. Kane heard mothers lamenting over their dead children. One sick man’s pathetic groaning became so unbearable to listen to that Kane – to his shame – felt glad when the man died.
The malaria and other illnesses of the summer months gave way to diseases of
The Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters recounts the hardships members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints overcame in Nebraska and on their journey west. The museum includes exhibits, artifacts and interpretive films, and is free and open Monday-Sunday.
The Mormon Pioneer Cemetery, Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple, Winter Quarters Mill Museum and Mormon Pioneer Bridge are all nearby.
Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters 3215 State St., Omaha • (402) 453-9372
malnutrition during the winter. Winter Quarters was particularly hard hit by a malady known as “black leg” or “black canker” – most likely scurvy brought on by the lack of fruits and vegetables in residents’ diets. Of the recorded deaths in Winter Quarters, nearly half were infants age 2 or younger. All told, about 600 of the members lost their lives in Nebraska; between 10 and 15 percent of the pioneers who set out on the great exodus never made it past Winter Quarters. Even so, Kane was amazed by the Saints’ resilience. “They could make sport and frolic of their trials, and often turn right sharp suffering into right round laughter against themselves,” he wrote.
As spring neared in 1847, Young prepared to lead an advance party to find their new home somewhere in the Great Basin in what is now Utah. In April, 143 men set out on the trail. Meanwhile, the rest of the members – about 4,000 in Nebraska and 7,000 across the river in Iowa – continued improving their settlements and waited for word on their next move.
When Young’s party reached the site of present-day Salt Lake City in July, he declared: “This is the place.” He returned to Winter Quarters in late 1847 to lead his people to their Promised Land. While he was back on the banks of the Missouri, he was elected president of the Church –a role that had remained unfilled since Joseph Smith’s death.
Winter Quarters, the de facto capital of the Church’s movement at a critical point in its history, was abandoned by the end
of 1848. The outpost on the Iowa side remained occupied for another few years as a way station for the huge numbers of emigrants who followed. By the 1860s, the path Young forged across the plains was followed by more than 70,000 pioneers.
They moved on from Winter Quarters, but the trying experience there has remained an integral part of their lore.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints later returned to the area to build a temple and the Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters, a museum where people can learn more about their journey. The most powerful reminder of the hard road they traveled is at the adjacent Mormon Pioneer Cemetery, where a large bronze sculpture depicts a mother and father gazing down in sorrow into the grave of their dead child.
Church members continue to make pilgrimages to honor their forebears at Winter Quarters. At the Mormon Trail Center, Elder Dave Tervort of Utah told of his ancestors’ sorrows on the road to Nebraska. Both parents in the pioneer family died on the way, as did several of the children.
The family’s 10-year-old son dragged his mother’s body across the frozen Missouri on a makeshift sled to be buried in the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery. The extended family of the orphaned children, who weren’t members of the Church, wanted the youngsters to return with them back East, but the children refused. Other member families took them in, and they went on to thrive in Utah, where Tervort and his family remain to this day.
It’s natural for Church members to be proud of the sacrifices their pioneer ancestors made on their exodus, said Elder Jay Crandall, the Mormon Trail Center’s director. However, he thinks mere reverence isn’t the best way to honor their spirit.
“These pioneers would be grateful we are proud of them,” Crandall said. “But the bottom line that we stress is that they would be happier if you did something with the opportunities they gave you, whether it’s Mormon pioneers or other pioneers. Now it’s your turn.”
This article was originally published in the July/August 2015 issue of Nebraska Life.
Ward off winter by warming up with a hot bowl
recipes and photographs by DANELLE
McCOLLUM
What better greeting after exposure to the chill outside than the sight and smells of hot and hearty soup? Yes, you can warm your and your family and friends with soup from a can, but why? Take a little time, but not too much, and assemble simple ingredients to prepare these filling, wholesome meals.
What could be a simpler solution to the chill of winter than adding every ingredient into a slow cooker, set the timer, and relax.
Add everything but the salt and pepper to a lightly greased slow cooker. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, stirring occasionally. Just before serving, season with salt and pepper, to taste.
4 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup uncooked quinoa
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
1 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 cups cooked, shredded chicken Salt and pepper, to taste
Ser ves 6
This light, creamy, Thai-inspired soup is a bold way to warm and comfort you and fill your home with welcome aromas.
Preheat grill for medium-high heat. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Grill until cooked through, then slice into strips. Set aside. (If grilling the chicken isn’t an option for you, just cut into bite-size pieces and sauté it along with the onions.)
In a large Dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat. Add the oil, curry paste, onions and red peppers and cook until the onion is soft. Stir in the spinach and garlic and cook for a few more minutes, until spinach is wilted. Stir in the chicken stock, coconut milk and red pepper flakes. Bring to a simmer and cook for another 10 minutes. Just before serving, stir in the cream. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Garnish with cilantro, cashews and pomegranate seeds before serving.
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp green curr y paste
1 small onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups chopped baby spinach
4 cups chicken stock
1 can (15 oz) coconut milk
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 cup heavy cream
Chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish
Toasted cashews, for garnish
Pomegranate seeds, for garnish
Salt and pepper, to taste
Ser ves 4-6
Beef meatballs in a tomato-based broth fill hollowed out bread bowls, and topped with gooey cheese.
Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook until soft, 4-5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, diced tomatoes and beef broth. Stir in the Italian seasoning, and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Stir in the meatballs, along with half of the mozzarella and all of the Parmesan cheese.
Simmer the soup for 5-10 minutes while you preheat the broiler. Cut the tops off of the bread bowls and scoop out the insides.
Place the bread bowls on a large baking sheet. Fill with soup, then top each bowl with equal amounts of the remaining mozzarella. Broil for 2-3 minutes, or until cheese is browned and bubbly. Serve immediately.
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup diced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
4 cups beef broth
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
2-3 dozen small frozen meatballs
4-6 bread bowls
3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper, to taste
Ser ves 4-6
Nebraska poets remember moments between loved ones past and present, their first time meeting, or their last time together, and the land that witnessed such enduring unions.
Carol Lukas Franssen, Steele City, Missouri
It was the Nebraska State Fair of ’65
When we first met, He stole my scarf as an excuse to see me again; But this was the time of phone books, not the internet, and he couldn’t spell my last name ...
Then at the hayrack ride a few weeks later
We met for the second time, So I stole his heart in hopes that he would keep searching for me ...
Fifty two Septembers later
We spell our last names the same. We’re still stealing glances and flirting as we continue to enjoy
The fair weather of our love.
Jim Bahm, Norfolk
Hand in hand
On a Cuming County farm
A man and woman
Walk at sunset
Her hand warm as toast, Soft as a butterfly’s kiss, His not as warm
But getting there
And sandpaper rough, They watch the sun settle Over the horizon
Like a slow wink of an eye, And they feel the warmth, See the beauty
Of orange and yellow Kissing lip to lip
Under the fading blue sky
A mirrored reflection
Of themselves
Dennis Miller, Lewellen
In ways too deep to fathom and with every ounce of life does my inmost being love thee
Beyond my highest hopes and in ways too wonderful to imagine does my inmost being love thee
With all joy and sadness and in every hope and fear does my inmost being love thee
Of this you may be certain You are and always will be
My Beloved
Sister Diana Rawlings, Wichita, Kansas
Love Me Tender, Mom, with your tomato canning and corn freezing chores standing for hours in our blue kitchen sweating from the stove top burner in 100-degree August heat.
Love Me Tender, Dad, taking on a second job at the brick yard in evenings and weekends the summer of ’62 a broken leg the same week the family was without health insurance was not what you wanted to do.
Love Me Tender, Carolyn Marie, sitting with me through those long and dark high school days, holding my life questions gently
Love Me Tender, Nebraska City, expansion of corn fields, sunrises at Goose Hill, listening to ice crackling in the Missouri River flowing south to its destination shaping in my soul my home.
Mary Louise Hubert, Elgin
It happened, love, by happenstance at Neligh’s American Legion Hall late of an afternoon late in the fall late, too, in our lives at an old folks’ dance.
Ah, but there were some younger ones, too, who love country music from an earlier day. Among all the bands that come there to play, t’was Bittersweet had me dancing with you.
“I’ve never danced,” I said, when we stood face to face and hand to hand.
“Don’t look at your feet, you understand they’ll come along,” you smiled at me.
This Sunday again, in the afternoon, we’ll likely go there to be with our friends when Bittersweet plays as they did then, and for our wedding dance, this past June.
Daniel Wittfoth, Cambridge
A father’s heart
Only grows stronger as the years drift by More than understanding even when right or wrong Is hard to define
Above all else
It is love tested without end held deep and precious
A father’s heart that forever binds until the end of time
A father’s love only grows stronger as the years drift by …
Laura Hilkemann, Firth
As he carefully carried
A piece of pink, strawberry cake
On a white, paper plate, The daily visitor’s cane slowly Tapped down the long hall to Room 102 In the memory care wing.
“Who are you?”
Asked the white-haired woman in 102.
“I’m Lloyd. Your husband,” He said while settling Into the blue, stuffed chair As he did every day.
“Is that cake?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s for you.”
“Is it somebody’s birthday?”
“No, today’s our 65th wedding anniversary.”
“I like strawberry,” she said happily.
“I know.”
“Well, happy birthday.”
“Happy birthday, dear.”
Betty Schmelzer, Lincoln
Under the moon
Two lovers spoon Act crazier than a loon
Decide to take the walk
Call a preacher to do the talk
Attended by parents and the flock
Rings, apparel, flowers, cake Reservations for a reception to make Invitations must be sent
Lots of money to be spent
Let us forget all of that
Grab your coat and hat
To elope will be more fun
To a judge we will run
To wed will then be done
Off on a honeymoon
Be back home soon
Go ring their doorbell And wish them well
SEND YOUR POEMS on the theme “Blooms” for the May/June 2024 issue, deadline April 1; “Coming Home” for the July/August 2024 issue, deadline May 1; and “Fertile Ground” for the September/October 2024 issue, deadline July 1. Email your poems to poetry@ nebraskalife.com or mail to address at the front of this magazine.
by LISA TRUESDALE and TOM HESS
With average high temperatures in the 40s and lows in the 10s, and an average of 20 to 40 inches of snow, Nebraskans can go outside and ride a toboggan or go water tanking in the Sandhills, or they can curl up at home with hot chocolate or a latte and a copy of Nebraska Life and a good book, especially one that deepens a reader’s love of our Nebraska home. What follows are six books released in 2023 that will entertain and inform.
Caril Ann Fugate: Guilty or Innocent?
In January 1958, a horrific eight-day murder spree shock-ed Lincoln. Also shocking was the fact that the accused killers were teenagers.
Charles Starkweather was just 19 years old, and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, 14. The coverage of the case captivated the world and led to multiple movies loosely based on it (like Natural Born Killers), songs about it (Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska”) and numerous books.
Harry N. MacClean grew up in Lincoln. He knew of Charlie Starkweather, and his family knew some of the victims. Yet that’s not why this former lawyer and author of several other true-crime books chose to write Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree That Changed America
Instead, it was a 1988 interview with Fugate that he came across when he was researching a possible book character who was “somewhat like Caril.”
“She was dramatic and very convincing in her claim of innocence [in that interview],” wrote MacLean. “Everything I’d ever seen or read about her almost assumed ab initio that she was. She had been tried and convicted, but that was in the justice system of the 1950s. Maybe the issue needed to be reexamined after all these years.”
In Starkweather, MacLean lays out the facts of the case, and the pertinent backstory – the troubled lives of both Starkweather and Fugate. He discusses the trial and the sentencing with his lawyer hat on, and he gives the reader his opinions related to Fugate’s guilt or innocence. Yet he’s also careful to offer up enough leeway for the reader to draw their own conclusions.
“In an effort like this one, the author seeks to come up with a coherent narrative of events,” wrote MacLean. “One doesn’t –because one can’t – attempt to establish the actual truth of what happened; rather the author sets forth a (hopefully) convincing presentation of the way he sees it and why he sees it that way.’
Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree That Changed America
By Harry N. MacLean
Counterpoint, 432 pages, $30
A stricken farmer remembers his helpers
Harlan Brandt will never forget that horrific day in 2013, when he was violently thrown from his tractor and landed in a ditch along the highway in Antelope County, Nebraska.
“I felt a hand in the middle of my back,” Brandt later recalled. “I blinked. I seen a bright light. I blinked again. The light was brighter. A third time I blinked; I couldn’t see. The next thing out of my mouth was, ‘God, if you want me to go to heaven, I’m ready.’”
The rural Nebraska cattleman, now in his 70s, believes he died that day, then came back to life. When brothers Kent and Kevin Warneke first heard Brandt’s story, the two former newspapermen knew the tale was worth sharing with others. Yet they didn’t want to focus solely on the near-death experience; there are plenty of those stories out there, they thought.
As they dug further into the events of that day, and into the stories of all those who offered aid – at the scene, on the way to the hospital and for weeks and months
afterward – they had an idea: Why not tell the Brandt’s story from the viewpoint of the many Good Samaritans who helped save him, along with how and why the desire to help others is especially prevalent in rural America?
The Warnekes’ new book, Saving Harlan Brandt: A Survivor and His Good Samaritans, recounts the events of that horrific day. It lays out the details of the crash, then tells the stories of the motorists who stopped to help.
There’s Truman Rossman, who happened upon the crash just moments after it happened; he grabbed a towel from his car and used it to help stop the bleeding from Brandt’s head and tried to keep him calm and still. There’s Vonnie Pitzer, who heroically stopped her SUV in the middle of the westbound lane and turned on her hazard lights so that other cars couldn’t happen along and make the accident even worse.
trying to stop the bleeding and also keep Brandt from moving. As Morgan walked back to her car, she remembered thinking, “He’s going to be lucky to stay alive.”
The book also includes compelling “Sidelights.” These are companion chapters about things like lending a hand, the sacrifices volunteers make to help others, and what makes the rural parts of this nation so special.
Pitzer knew Brandt personally, but later recalled that she didn’t even recognize him because of all the blood. And there’s the off-duty nurse, Diane Morgan, who came upon the scene just before the ambulance did and who assisted Rossman in
There’s even a chapter in which some of Nebraska’s elected officials – including Governor Jim Pillen – share their own stories of being on the receiving end of a Good Samaritan’s kindness and assistance.
“The overriding message,” the Warnekes wrote in the intro, “is that modern-day Good Samaritans are alive, well and plentiful throughout Nebraska and throughout rural America.” The book is available at barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com and other online retailers.
By Kevin Warneke and Kent Warneke Trilogy Christian Publishers 138
pages, $16
The village of Halsey, pop: 76, straddles Thomas and Blaine counties. Next to it is the Nebraska National Forest, a collection of hand-planted trees that cover 25,000 acres of former grassland. The trees greatly outnumber the people.
How this forest came to be, and what it means for human society, is addressed by three essayists and portrayed through black-and-white photographs, where composition, not color, captures the eye. The words and pictures are collected in Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln imprint, Bison Books.
The forest is the brainchild of Charles Edwin Bessey, a professor of botany at UNL who died in 1915 and whose bust appears in the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
Bessey requested Nebraska Sandhills land from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and started planting trees of all types. The federal tree nursery he created on the south bank of the Middle Loup River, the first of its kind, “is now saving other forests, with trees from the nursery supplying important botanical infrastructure to forestall soil erosion and propel healing from fires,” writes essayist Katie Anania, assistant professor of art history (modern and contemporary) at the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts at UNL.
Rose-Marie Muzika writes that portions of the forest show the kind of resilience that will enable the forest to persist.
The forest photography of Dana Fritz, who has an eye for composition like Ansel Adams, will persist in the memory just as long as the trees stand.
Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape
Photographs by Dana Fritz
Essays by Katie Anania, Rebecca Buller and Rose-Marie Muzika
University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books 144 pages, $25
The U.S. District Court of Nebraska had seen nothing like it. No U.S. court had. The judge, Elmer Scipio Dundy, allowed a Ponca chief who’d been jailed to speak in his courtroom. What the judge and others in the courtroom heard shook them, as recounted by Lawrence A. Dwyer, an Omaha attorney and Creighton University law school graduate, in his book, Standing Bear’s Quest for Freedom
The author sets the scene of Standing Bear’s quest. At 9:30 p.m., on Friday, May 2, 1879, the incarcerated Ponca chief stood to speak in Dundy’s courtroom, his interpreter beside him, extending his right hand for several minutes before turning to look directly at Dundy and stating, “That hand is not the color of yours. But if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine, will be the same color as yours. I AM A MAN. The same God made us both.”
Standing Bear continued speaking, and as he did, the courtroom was silent.
Dundy ruled 10 days later that Standing Bear and other Poncas had the rights of every other American to seek their day in court and be heard. The journey from servitude to citizenship followed a tortuous path, which the author describes in detail.
Ma-chu-nah-zha, as the Ponca people called Standing Bear, grew up on ancestral lands near the Niobrara River.
The author describes step by step over decades how the U.S. government, through a number of presidential administrations and broken treaties, drove a peaceful tribe off its ancestral land. The government later seized from Standing Bear a home with two rooms. They took cows, steers, horses, hogs, chickens, turkeys, corn, wheat, plows, axes, hatchets and pitchforks.
A map in the book shows the forced march of the Ponca’s “Journey of Sorrows” from their land to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, between May 16 and July 9, 1877.
Standing Bear met with President Rutherford B. Hayes in Washington, D.C., who
told him to return to Indian Territory. His sister, grandmother and mother-in-law all died before he returned home. The death of his son soon followed. Standing Bear and about 30 followers left Indian Territory in January 1879 for their homeland to bury his son. They were arrested for doing so and imprisoned at Fort Omaha.
The book then describes how Standing Bear got his day in court, with the help of an empathetic journalist and lawyers. After his court victory, Standing Bear slipped away and buried the bones of his son on their ancestral property, as he had promised to do.
Standing Bear’s Quest for Freedom: The First Civil Rights Victory for Native Americans (second edition)
By
Lawrence A. Dwyer
University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books
232 pages, $20
Sandhill cranes star in a sci-fi thriller
Agiant asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, making a furious beeline for the fictional town of Little Springs, in Western Nebraska. The small town’s residents are bracing for the impact, wondering how big the asteroid really is, and whether it will annihilate all they know and love.
But wait. An asteroid doesn’t have a head and arms and legs. It’s not an asteroid, but a three-mile-long (yes, miles) alien creature, seemingly dead upon arrival, looking like a cluster of hills in the distance. With the arrival of this alien – dubbed “the giant” –Little Springs is completely overrun with government and military officials, soldiers, protestors, conspiracy theorists, spies, curious onlookers … and dangerous criminals. It’s more than the town’s sheriff, David Blunt, can handle.
Godfall, from author, former crime newspaper reporter and western Nebraska native Van Jensen, is definitely what you’d call a “mashup” of literary genres. With an alien, it’s of course leaning toward science fiction, and it’s also a murder mystery. Yet with Jensen’s vivid descriptions of the beauty of Western Nebraska that set
the novel’s scenes so perfectly, this book could also be considered a travel narrative. In what other science fiction/murder mystery do Nebraska’s famous sandhill cranes figure so prominently?
“The cranes grew louder. In ones and twos, then all at once, they beat their wings and pulled themselves into the sky, flying so close overhead that David and Sunny could hear the soft whap-whap-whap of wing against wind,” Jensen wrote. “They moved not as single birds but as one great body, each linked with the other, so that as one dipped or soared or turned, all did the same, etching a grand pattern overhead.”
By Van Jensen
University of Nebraska Press 308 pages, $22
In the winter of 1948-49, one snowstorm after another buried Nebraska, from Nov. 18, 1948 through Christmas, New Year and into April 1949. Winds repeatedly re-drifted the snow, defeating the efforts of men in snowplows who had no cab or windshield to protect them against the cold and wind. Nebraskans had seen nothing like it since the 1888 blizzard and the “black blizzards” of the 1934 Dust Bowl.
Chronicling the white-stuff calamity of 1948-49 is Nebraska native Barry D. Seegebarth, in his book, The Nebraska Winter of 1948-49: Stories of Survival.
The author recounts two major initiatives to get Nebraska moo-ving again: Operation Haylift involved dropping hay bales from C-47 and C-82 planes to within a hundred yards of startled, starving cattle, approximately 2.5 million of them in the area of Nebraska hardest hit by the Jan. 3, 1949, blizzard. Operation Snowbound deployed 673 bulldozers, 123 snowplows and 116 Army Weasels, a Jeep-like body with tank tracks, to clear roads for cars that were 15 to 20 years old, due to the Great Depression and metal rationing during World War II. Leading the charge in both campaigns was Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Pick of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who had helped build the Ledo Road between China and India.
The Weasels kept agriculture, health care and postal service running. They delivered cow’s milk to dairy processing plants, meat to butchers, patients to hospitals and mail to rural addresses.
Survival stories abound. For a Gordon-area class of 13 students, snow didn’t mean a day off from the classroom. They and their teacher were traveling by bus when a Jan. 19 storm hit, stranding them. They reached Gordon Creek Hereford Ranch, where the teacher continued instruction in her makeshift classroom until snowplows arrived Feb. 12.
The Nebraska Winter of 1948-49: Stories of Survival By Barry D. Seegebarth
The History Press 144 pages, $18
Lincoln, Nebraska, at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Bruce F. Pauley
$29.95 paperback THE FIRST MIGRANTS
How Black Homesteaders’ Quest for Land and Freedom Heralded America’s Great Migration
Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld
Preface by Angela Bates
$36.95 hardcover THE NEBRASKA SANDHILLS
Edited by Monica M. Norby, Judy Diamond, Aaron Sutherlen, Sherilyn C. Fritz, Kim Hachiya, Douglas A. Norby, and Michael Forsberg
$34.95 hardcover nebraskapress.unl.edu
January - April 2024
An entertaining & educational series of programs, activities, and classes for your learning & enjoyment! See the schedule on our website:
3133 W. Hwy 34 • Grand Island, NE (308) 385-5316
Madison Cou y MADISON COUNTY IN NEBRASKA BEGAN WITH LEWIS AND CLARK
Experience history and much more at Madison County Museum
Remember the past. Build the present. Create the future.
Hours: 1:30-5 pm
Mon-Fri or call for appointment 402-454-2313 or 402-649-1881 FREE ADMISSION
212 S Kent St • Madison, NE
madisoncountyhistory.org
learning24hrs@gmail.com
Visit this unique cultural experience in LaVista!
Explore our exhibits featuring the Immigration Room, Music Room, Sokol Room and Josef Lada calendars from the 1940s. Our gift store offers many beautiful Bohemian items from the Czech land.
8106 S. 84th St. • LaVista 402-686-9837
CzechAndSlovakMuseum.org
The May Museum takes you back to turn-of-the-century Fremont life. Tour the landscaped grounds, a Nebraska Arboretum Site.
Open late April-late Dec. Wed-Sat, 1:30-4:30 pm | Final tour available at 3:30 pm
Admission: $5 for Adults, $1 for Students Free for ages 5 and under
Louis E. May Museum
Dodge County Historical Society
MayMuseum.com 402-721-4515 | 1643 North Nye Ave | Fremont
by ALAN J. BARTELS
Alan once used the buttstock of a pellet gun to dig out his car. He now travels with a shovel in his trunk.
After a lifetime spent outdoors, I never forget the highlights: bumper hauls of morel mushrooms, big fish caught or lost, and getting stuck in mud.
Four decades ago, after several days of unusually warm winter weather, some fellow teenaged friends and I climbed into my mom’s Chevelle and drove to Pibel Lake. The spring-like temperatures inspired us to gather our fishing gear and drive from our home in Greeley to the small lake in southern Wheeler County.
Turning off the blacktop and onto the dirt road, we could see that there was no ice on the lake and that we had the place to ourselves. We saw a mud puddle ahead, spanning the road, so we rolled up the windows and accelerated. A dirty deluge covered Mom’s beautiful blue muscle car, and the mud anchored the wheels in the middle of what now seemed like Wheeler County’s newest lake.
We didn’t have cell phones back then. One of us was going to have to walk a mile back to U.S. Highway 281 and look for help. But first, we baited our hooks and tossed out our lines. After all, it was still a nice day, and the prospect of hooking a bunch of bluegills made our plight seem less severe.
The slurry of Wheeler County clay was still dripping off of the Chevelle when a pickup turned onto the same muddy road. Hoping the driver had a chain, we climbed up the bank to meet our potential rescuer. A couple of thoughts came to mind when we saw that it was the local game warden. Uh oh. With the coming of the new year, I’d forgotten to buy a Nebraska State Parks entry permit. And none of us had bought a new fishing license.
In no time at all, the warden had a log chain hooked to Mom’s car, put his truck in reverse, and gently pulled the car out of its prison. He never asked to see our permits and didn’t say anything about not having a park sticker. The man simply wished us good luck and drove away.
The following winter, I high-centered that same car after a pheasant hunt, while turning the car around on the edge of a picked corn field about 10 miles northwest of Greeley near the ghost town of Belfast. That was a long cold walk in the dark.
And then there was the time that we dropped my friend Robbie’s 1965 Bonneville into the marshy deep ditch on the north side of Lake Ericson. Thankfully, a Good Samaritan from Greeley came along a minute later and yanked Robbie’s land yacht back onto dry, level ground.
Wisdom may come from experience, but it didn’t seem like I’d learned my lesson when just a few years ago I got my Ford Focus stuck at Sherman Reservoir Wildlife Management Area near Loup City. Yes, a mild winter day had seduced me yet again. Using the buttstock of a Czech-made pellet rifle that had been bouncing around in the trunk for years, it took me about an hour to dig the car out.
I could go on about similar events, and now carry a shovel in each of my vehicles. Maybe I am growing up.
A former coworker once told me, “You weren’t really stuck if you got yourself out.” I’m not so sure that I agree.
Regardless, and any ego aside but a little mud never hurt anybody. And at least for me, getting stuck a time or two, or three, has left me stuck with pleasant, humorous memories of Nebraska’s outdoors.
by Beverly Bartak Weikel Sloan, Iowa
Because I grew up in Wheeler County and have lived in Iowa for years, I’ve experienced unseasonable blizzards. None, however, compares with the Winter of 1948-49, which held Nebraska hostage for months.
The first big storm hit on Nov. 18, 1948. I was 5 and a first grader at District #1. I had been wishing for snow for weeks, so I was excited when I awoke to a light snowfall. By noon recess at our country school, the snow was up to my waist.
Soon after, parents began arriving to take their kids home, until only my older sister, Judy, and I were left at school with our teacher, Miss Pierson, and the three Nolle brothers. The six of us started down the dirt road, hand-in-hand, through the increasing snowfall and wind, heading for Nolle’s place where Miss Pierson boarded, about a mile from the school. Partway to their long lane, Miss Pierson suddenly disappeared! She had stepped off the edge of an unseen culvert and sunk into the snow-filled ditch.
Just then, my dad appeared through the swirling snowstorm. I wasn’t surprised; I knew he’d rescue us. He pulled Miss Pierson out of the snowdrift and walked with us the rest of the way to Nolle’s home. Then he turned around and walked the two miles back home, where Mom was waiting with my brother, Allan, not knowing if or when Dad would make it.
Later I found out that Dad had started after us in the car, got stuck, walked home and got the pickup, got stuck a ways past the car, again walked home, drove the John Deere tractor past the car and pickup, got stuck, and decided to walk after us. Many died in that storm; what a blessing Dad made it home.
Meanwhile, Miss Pierson, Judy and I were safe at Nolle’s. We spent another day and night, and the following morning was calm and sunny. All of us kids went outside to play in the snow. That’s when dad came riding in on his saddle horse, Brownie, leading our pony, Beauty. I sat in front of dad in the saddle, and Judy rode Beauty, safely connected to us by the rope. Instead of traveling the snow-packed roads, we cut across pastures and came up past our barn south of the house.
Our school was closed for a month. Judy and I spent hours playing in the snow, building a snow house, and sliding down the chicken house roof. Our dad borrowed a neighbor’s team of horses to get hay for our cattle. Most of our groceries, mail, and even medicines were delivered in small planes equipped with snow skis, one being piloted by my Uncle Harold Savidge. If we waved him down, he’d land in our north pasture.
Even Santa had to change his plans that Christmas Eve. As we worried if he would even make it that night, a loud knock sent Judy and me to the front door. There sat a huge, bulging gunny sack, with a note from Santa attached. Santa had written that the snow was too deep for his reindeer, so he had traveled by plane. Inside the sack were oranges, nuts and candy, plus a gift for each of us. Mine was a Betsy Wetsy doll. By an amazing coincidence, my Aunt Marie had sewn a full wardrobe for just such a doll, and my dad had renovated a doll crib that my Grandpa Bartak had made originally for Judy. The next morning, Judy and I followed the footsteps left in the snow – from the front door, down the lane, to the north pasture, where we saw the skimarks from Santa’s airplane.
The blizzards would continue until April. As a highly imaginative child, I was sure that my wish for snow was the underlying cause of that winter’s storms.
Send your short stories about life in Nebraska to: editor@nebraskalife.com
by Rita Willmott Bayfield, Colorado
Ilearned the value of hard work, loyalty, honesty, integrity and respect for others on an 80-acre farm near Blair. Spring was spent helping my father plant soybeans and enjoying the fresh smell of the earth and clothes from our clothesline.
Summer was painting our barn and grain bins, waving at the National Guard as they drove along the highway on their way to training, and walking the bean fields to hoe weeds. I sold my father’s sweet corn at the end of our driveway to passersby for $1 a dozen.
I accompanied my mom to take meals to my dad working into the night as he harvested crops in the fall. I saw farm technology progress, from a two-row corn picker to navigating a large combine with a cab. I learned to fall asleep to the sound of grain bin dryers. The highlight of raking leaves in the yard was listening to Lyell Bremser of KFAB as he called the Cornhusker football games.
We loved being outdoors year-round, especially in the winter. We would sleighride down the hill and over the terrace behind our barn on the wooden toboggan gifted
Trivia answers from pages 18-19:
General: 1. James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok 2. Valentine 3. It’s a Wonderful Life 4. 1914 5. Horace Greeley 6. 3
Multiple Choice: 7. A 8. B 9. A 10. B
True or False: 11. True 12. False Madison is the county seat of Madison County. 13. False 14. True 15. False
Valentine (top left); Ward Bond (bottom left); Arthur County Courthouse (bottom right)
NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Farmers rescued their livestock as blizzards buried Nebraska during the Winter of 1948-49.
by our grandparents. I can still picture going airborne over the terrace with my brother, his eyeglasses flying off, and the roar of laughter as we brushed off the snow and headed up the hill for more runs.
My mother taught me to cook, clean and sew. I developed a knack for making peach pie. My mother and I drove to our neighbor’s farm for fresh eggs. Another neighbor, the beekeeper, kept us supplied with honeycombs and jars of honey. In a pinch, another neighbor was happy to loan us some flour to make bread, so we didn’t have to make a trip to town. We reciprocated with a fresh loaf. I remember my mother’s joy the day we replaced our icebox with a refrigerator.
We ran to visit the gas delivery driver that filled our tanks for farm equipment as he gave us treats from the bag in his cab. Crickets, a black Shetland pony gifted by our grandparents, tried to get rid of us by heading straight for our clothesline every time we saddled him up for a ride. We rode a go-cart in circles around the house and took our minibike down a long, unattended county road to our uncle’s house and back.
We enjoyed visits with our farm friends. If we were quiet and polite, they provided a bottle of Pepsi and snacks. And we did the same when they visited our farm.
by Dorothy Rieke Julian
An elderly man in our church told of his long-ago experience while attending a small rural church. His father had left his Bible at the church on the edge of the baptistry. The family read from the Bible each evening before going to bed, so the son, Eddie, volunteered to go after it.
He put on shoes, gloves and his heavy coat sewn from an Army blanket and started walking to the church, a few miles from their house.
A brisk wind was blowing, and snow swirled about on the ground. As he moved north against the wind, Eddie’s teeth began to chatter. He wondered why in the world he offered to go after that Bible. Couldn’t they do without reading it one night?
It was dark by the time he reached the church. Kerosene lamps no longer lit the sanctuary. The big stove was no longer bright with the heat of fire. No longer were women talking about recipes or men consoling each other on the low corn yield. It seemed eerie to Eddie.
He felt the back pew and moved forward. He carefully walked down the center aisle toward the front platform. Each floorboard seemed to have its own sound. He reached the baptistry and felt the edge with his cold hands. He stepped forward to pick up the Bible when all at once, he tripped over a step and tumbled forward into the shallow water. He was soaked to the bone.
As he raced down the road toward home, his breath came in gasps, his soaked pants felt like they were freezing to his body, and his fingers and toes felt numb. He had never been so cold in his life.
When he reached home and turned the doorknob, his sister opened the door and screamed in terror. His mother ran forward, grabbing Eddie by the arm and pulling him into the kitchen. Everyone wanted to help, but mother knew what to do. She gave the order to fill the tub with cool water.
Soon, he was revived enough to laugh about his experience. As he talked, he realized that the Bible was still at the church, probably floating in the baptistery.
photograph by ERIK JOHNSON
Snow had fallen in Western Nebraska one day when hobbyist photographer Erik Johnson decided to head west from his home in Lincoln toward Mullen in Hooker County across Nebraska Highway 2. He let his eyes guide him through the back roads. On one empty road he saw the perfect blend of light and line.
“Soft pink light on the sand hills, the road meandering to the horizon,” he said. “That caught my eye.”
Weekend photography is Johnson’s obsession, and such a photo is the reward that drives him to keep going, turning down one road after another. He’s always accompanied by his 12-year-old yellow lab Khloe, who is eager to run in open fields. Lately they have been taking longer trips west, all in search of the next perfect composition of light and line.
There will always be new places to explore in Nebraska because the land is so vast, Johnson said. He also has his favorite jaunts: Lake McConaughy, Nebraska National Forest at Halsey and Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
Nebraska’s landscape provides a sense of adventure – so does meeting the people who live here.
“I like to meet new people who welcome me into their homes,” Johnson said, “to find those with stories to tell.”
IN EACH ISSUE, Last Look features a reader’s photograph of Nebraska – landscapes, architecture, events, people or wildlife. Submit your best shots for the chance to be published in Nebraska Life. Send digital images with detailed photo descriptions and your contact information to photos@nebraskalife.com or visit nebraskalife.com/contribute.
THIS PHOTO was shot with a Nikon D810, and exposed at ISO 250, f/16 for 1/75 of a second.
