December 2008 Archives

That Labor Day weekend, after being Up West for the Chafin and Adel graves, Jim and Sue took me to sites close by, the first being the area of Loal and Minnie Luckert's farm as Lowell Vawser told us.  Loal was one of Captain John's second family with Julia Witt Dannert; Loal's oldest, the only son, Gerald/Bud, died this year.  Jim had been told Bud had Captain John's Civil War sword, but Bud's widow corrected that misinformation in her comment.

 This area is south and a bit east of Center, and other Luckerts lived in the area, including Oscar.  I am always annoyed by out-of-state bores/boors complaining how flat Nebraska is because they whiz across it on Interstate 80, the Great Platte River Road for pioneers, and, yes, much of it is fairly level.  But I grew up in the Northeast, which generally looks like the two photos below of the Loal Luckert farm site.  Often hiding glacial moraine deposits--lots of gravel pits--with fossils like the plesiosaur found just north of Center in 2003, this hilly terrain is what I and other Center boys happily explored.  Most of the numerous farms I grew up with are completely gone, though we spotted some foundations for this one down in the bottom.  Another big change is the weedy invasion of the eastern red cedar, beginning to fill in the spaces darkly between the native trees.  Those are evident in the second photo's foreground along the fence line.  

 

Not that far east is Morrillville Cemetery and, once, the Morrillville School.  Straight west of the two was the Luckert farm of Dad's boyhood not a half mile down the road.  It once looked like this.  His earliest memories were of a dugout, though, mainly a cave with a wooden front added with door and windows. 

My photos were taken from the road intersection by the school site, the farm within easy walking distance west, the cemetery a short ways east and looking like this, one of the few country cemeteries badly kept--though Dad once tried to clean it up--and desecrated by a herd of cattle which toppled and sometimes broke tombstones besides leaving their dung.

Sue had to hold up the child's tombstone for Sara Stocking.  Another child's tombstone has a family name still familiar in the Bloomfield area, Case. 

 

 

 

 

In the view west from the cemetery gate, the wooded Morrillville School plot is beyond Chester to the right on the main county road running north-south, about a mile south of the Koftans' Old Brick House, with the Luckert farm west beyond the school site, as shown above.  (The trees at the left are a current farm.)  The most interesting family discovery was this listing of the cemetery trustees.

On this stamped metal, under "First Cemetery Trustees" are the names, H.W. Morrill, G. Cole, S. Case, C.W. Jones, and T.M. Clark.  C.W. Jones is, of course, my Justice of the Peace great grandfather, whose pictures and grave are in a recent entry.

After lollygagging around all morning, I smacked myself the way Gibbs does his staff on NCIS and did some errands in and around taking the following photos.  First is the huge mural on 13th Street I had mentioned in the Kerrey Bridge photo set, seen there at a distance, done by a Philadelphia artist, Meg Saligman, with local help.  I barely parked long enough to get the photos, the complete-mural one out the window while I was waiting at the stoplight.  Hope they tear down the ugly building blocking the view across the street before the new stadium goes up.  I know Peter Kiewit is at the left edge, then a waitress.  At the right of the waitress' head is the iconic College World Series sculpture, The Road to Omaha.  At the north end, seen in the stoplight photo, I make out St. Cecilia's twin spires and perhaps the Nebraska capitol in the distance, all under the arch.  The rest of the figures I can't remember, but everything is Omaha-related.  And those are trees in front of the mural, not weeds.

Next was Lauritzen Gardens' annual poinsettia extravaganza, with the trains but not the buildings of the Model Railroad Garden this year.  As some of the photos show, tree poinsettias rise above the banks of various poinsettias, all enough to instill the holiday spirit.  Sleighs full of large gifts are featured too.

A novelty this year was Winter Rose in three colors, very full and smaller, looking more like dahlias, the white, pink, and red ones below. 

And, finally, the Durham's Christmas tree in its Art Deco surroundings, the ticket windows at left festooned for the season.

I found the family photos taken in 1938 at the Mormon monument southwest of the old Niobrara State Park.  At left are Fern Peters Koftan and Audree Koftan Ellingson; at right are Fern and Laurence Koftan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below are Laurence and his father, Joseph Koftan; then Earl and Audree Koftan Ellingson.

                                                                    

The triple set below are self-labelled and related to the remark in the last entry about the birds and animals at the park superintendent's.  Marilynn Peterson, the daughter of the county attorney, was my best friend/like a sister, since our mothers were good friends and went to movies together every week (with us, of course).

Finally, I had forgotten I had this O'Neill Photo postcard of the old Niobrara State Park swinging bridge, obviously considered a tourist sight.  This looks south toward State Highway 12 beyond the evergreens and seems taken from one of the rentable rowboats.  The park entrance is at the left, hidden by the shelter house.

I have a set of bad family photos as interesting for their background as for us, but first I have some extras related to the old park, a prime recreation ground for northeast Nebraska in the 1940s and 1950s.  Uncle Chet Luckert and his family came up annually from South Omaha to spend a summer vacation in one of the little cabins.  I went to church camp at the camp facilities with dining hall, crude dorms, camp buildings.  Center High School had its annual school's-out picnic there.  And most of our big family reunions on either side were there.  Gavin's Point Dam's backing Lewis & Clark Lake up across the northern border of Knox County completely altered the landscape, as the Missouri silted in and became a marsh of braided rivulets much like the Platte, except for its main channel, and the Niobrara, for the same reason, silted in and flooded out the old town and the old park I grew up with.  The new park sits farther west on the high hills above the old park and the confluence of the two rivers, as the new Niobrara also sits up on the hilltops above the old town, now a golf course, on the east side of the Niobrara.

One good memory was the only way we could get to South Dakota without having to drive east to Yankton or west to Spencer, the paddle-wheel ferry chugging from a spot a bit east of the present Standing Bear Bridge over to the tiny SD hillside village of Running Water.  Cars would line up to drive aboard, and then everyone would get out of the cars and stand at the railings, marvelling at the huge, then dangerous Big Muddy, as the ferry skirted boils and sandbars to make a big curve across the river.  The whole time-consuming process was in the days when we still had patience, of necessity.

Third cousin Mark Donley Feddersen sent me a much better 1948 view of the ferry after I made this entry, so I insert it here.

Niobrara State Park had a closed-water system, meaning that it had fresh water into it off the Mormon Canal, at that time a hidden channel behind a screen of trees and shrubs around the western edge, and, yes, dating from the 1846 winter a group of Mormons came up by Ponca invitation from the major Mormon site of Kanesville, now Council Bluffs, and mostly froze to death; a small monument (of which I also have family photos--see next entry) sits southwest of the old park site.  The park basically ran from a small lagoon at the south end by the entrance, seen in the photo below, to the large lagoon at the north end where there was swimming and a diving tower.  At the south end was a popular swinging bridge, and here are some photos of it, the pair of Mom and me on it.

   

 

More clearly in the background of the pair below are the tiny cabins along curved side roads at the front/south end of the park, as well as one of the large rustic shelter houses that had big stone fireplaces and picnic tables.  There were also larger log cabins for rent toward the middle of the park.  The supertintendent's house was across the highway south of the entrance, with a small area of caged exotic birds such as golden pheasants, peacocks, chukar, and an eagle and animals like rabbits, foxes, two fawns.  [See next entry.]  The major park road went about a third of the way in and then became a one-way loop to the north end.  Nothing is left of the old park but a marsh of hillocks of tangled trees, cattails and other water weeds in shallow water, and the swift, narrow channel at the western edge.  

 

 

 

  

When we didn't have color film, rare and expensive then, hand-colored tinting filled in the sepia or black-and-white prints, of which this is a prime bad example, though the pink blotch comes from something dropped on it much later.  Dad and I are at a family picnic, the Adirondack-style rustic furniture the reason I include this photo.  The plentiful rough wooden chairs, benches, and tables alike, painted white, were usually grouped near free-standing stone fireplaces. 

 Look who's a baby on the Fourth of July, 1946!   David Larry Koftan, shown off by his Aunt Audree, who's still holding him as Grandma Fern makes faces.  Then Audree mugs.  If you look at the car in the background above, you'll see first Earl (I think) and then Fern (the same dress) leaning on it to talk to its occupants.

Laurence is at the left on the Adirondack bench and Fern at the right, Velma obviously behind the camera, since she's never pictured.  She probably didn't want credit for these fuzzy photos. Below Audree is holding Penny Jean in a partially exposed-photo fog, but what I like is the diving tower with all the men lined up in the background.  This is the north lagoon, as safe and as big as swimming pools got then, this one as popular as it looks.  (By my sisters' time 25 years later, a modern elevated pool was built.)  Nearby were combination toilets-changing rooms and a large pop stand open on four sides that served all kinds of nostalgic goodies, including the dark brown ridged bottles of Orange Crush and the first Nehi pops I ever had (grape was my favorite, though the orange, strawberry, and root beer weren't bad).  Of course, the bottles were heavy glass, not plastic litter or recyclable aluminum.  Pop then was a nickel.  Candy bars, hot dogs--I don't remember what all, but the stand was always crowded.  West of it a ways was a large stone-edged goldfish pond and, consequently, the most prized shelter houses were near it.

In both the diving-tower photo and the one above of Earl leaning against the tree, usually our lifeguard/swimming teacher, one can see the park's popularity with cars parked around the lagoon.  (Of course, this was the Fourth.)  In another overexposed photo below looking south, on the north side of the swimming lagoon, the posts in the water with a cable through them marked the edge of the safe area for children.  I'm at the right holding on to the cable, Mike looking at the camera, Denny going off right (?).  Finally, we three boys, Mike turned looking at me, Denny on the hood of our car.

 

    

After my sister's as-usual splendid (and fattening) meal, I went out for a sunny afternoon walk, thinking Chester, their dog, would go with me.  He went out the other way with Sue a bit later, so that we ultimately met up west of town.  Other than the first two, an unusual marblized texture on a huge cottonwood log on the creek bank, these are good nostalgic sights for me.

I know that we have several French names in places (our original county name of 1857 is L'eau qui court) and Native American families (Rouillard, Frazier), though I don't know how Bazille Creek got its name, only that Jean Frederic Bazille was one of Monet's and Renoir's best friends, as talented as they (but far richer), untimely killed in the Franco-Prussian War.  In a completely digressive aside, I learned that from one of the most authentic, brilliantly acted documentaries on artists I've ever seen, the BBC America 2006 documentary on The Impressionists.  When I was growing up, the Bazille curving around the west side of Center was many times deeper than this--even in the photo I think the bottom is visible--and flooded badly in summertimes.  Dams and irrigation have depleted it, but in my days it's where we went skinny-dipping or wore trunks if visibility was an issue or girls or mothers were along, a good way to cool off in hot summers.  State 13 followed its well-known scenic valley from Creighton through Center to Maiden's Leap east of Niobrara, and Sunday drivers would ask us questions or directions when we were hanging out at the courthouse fountain or on the post office steps.  Dad did a great deal of hunting and fishing where it ran into the Missouri, today a popular wildlife area entirely different also.

In the photo below, the hills in the background always seemed a grouping of three, so I named them the Three Sisters.  Today a huge, wary wild turkey flock lives at their base, where once Billy Hillberg, our resident eccentric bum with a college education, lived in a hovel full of his collected junk and rigged a cable chair across the creek to get into town during high water.  The cottonwoods at the right follow the sweeping curve of the Bazille where it took out and buried a steel highway bridge in my high school days.  (This road I'm standing on going west out of town was our route to Verdigre, now moved a mile north.)

Between Chester and the cornfield, along this farm road, is the grassy flat southwest of town where Dad coached the Center softball team, including sister Sue,  to good seasons.  When I was very young, Von Rentzells lived to the left close to the creek.  In high school days we scavenged the remains.  In the far middle distance along the fence line, I discovered eastern wahoo trees, small and shrubby, with a notable four-lobed fruit that looks like pink bubble gum.  I transplanted two to our hedge, gone now.

A lovely view looking back east at the curving highway approach to town on the south past Jim and Sue's.  Center lies in a bowl of hills, which we always felt cozy in and which Dad called Peaceful Valley.  Today, naturally, it's a nuisance as far as cell phones working.  They don't, and that's all I have.  But I have deep affection for these hills we tromped all over.

 

 

 

The community area for the Koftans' Brick House and the Luckert farm was Morrillville, the school and cemetery six miles east of Center and a mile south of the present State 84 between Center and Bloomfield, the vanished hall and store (?) another half mile north from that highway, where I slept on coats spread on chairs while my parents danced.  All three Koftan children--Velma, Audree, Larry--went to District 15, as did several generations of the Luckert family down through my second cousin, Patti Stocking Wright, Clark's oldest, when she lived with her grandmother, Lizzie (Elizabeth) Luckert Stocking.  I think I've run this photo before but will do so again.  Audree is in the center with a distinctive dark sweater on, Larry in the front wringing his hands.

The school stood here on this corner, south a half mile or so from the Brick House, east a short distance from the Luckert farm.  I took these photos when Jim and Sue and I were exploring Luckert family sites after being Up West for Koftan family sites over the Labor Day weekend.

I was excited to discover that the old storm cellar was still there, away from the school, steps down to a cement-vault haven from storms.

Dad/Jack Luckert rescued the schoolhouse, setting it in our back yard where he restored it, having to install a completely new floor, and earned a sound scolding when he went auction hunting and came home with a $150 bell.  He even found maps and familiar pictures of Washington and Lincoln, old desks and textbooks, my old globe, a handbell for ending recess or restoring order, all the paraphernalia to re-create the country school he and Mom had grown up with, of the sort she later taught in.

After his death, my sisters and I signed an agreement whereby the schoolhouse was moved to the Knox County Fairgrounds on the east side of Bloomfield where I photographed District 15 the day after Thanksgiving as it sits for future generations.  In the large Knox County Fair 125th anniversary book this year, Dad was given an excellent write-up for his restoration, which we were grateful for.  As shown, Morrillville School sits right next to the football field where Sue's sons played on Bloomfield's then powerful regional teams, all three selected for the annual all-state game in Hastings. 

 

The day after we went Up West to locate the Chapin and Adel graves and see the Peters homestead, Labor Day Sunday, Sue and Jim, my sister and brother-in-law, took me to see Luckert family sites near Center and also the startling new alien invasion of cornfields north of Bloomfield.  At that time the Elkhorn Ridge Wind Project was just getting underway, the beginning of a $140 million project to produce 80 megawatts of power by gigantic windmills that make the little Sandhill shorties dwarfs indeed.  When I was little and we went Up West north of Newport, I relished the child-sized eight-to-ten-foot windmills (maybe a bit higher but not much), which didn't have to be tall like the ones I grew up with, not in the windy, low rolling Sandhills in the state's center.  Imagine my surprise at this two miles north of Bloomfield.

Several of the 265-foot towers east of the Cemetery Road lacked rotors back then, like the one nearest the telephone pole at right.  The best shot I got suggesting their size is this one, with two tiny pickups at the base.  Actually, they're big pickups but--Anyway, Jim said most of the towers have elevators as well as computerized equipment for maintenance.  Each rotor/blade is 100 feet. 

They seemed to me to be the alien creatures from H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds marching across the alfalfa and corn fields with their Star Wars' Imperial stormtrooper white plastic.

By the day after Thanksgiving, the system was up and running, providing $10,000-$12,000 per tower for a ten-year lease, as I recall, to a farmer whose fields were invaded.  The huge windmills had not yet crossed the highway when I saw them in September, so I was in for further astonishment when I headed north up Cemetery Road, after taking all the grave photos in the last entry.  The view below was what I saw when I got over the first hill north of the Bloomfield cemetery.  Incidentally, that first mile intersection down by the white building in the foreground is where I turn to go a mile and a half west to the second Koftan farm site, the one I grew up with.  

These giants miniaturize farms.  I'm not surprised they are meant to provide enough power for 25,000 homes from the biggest wind farm in Nebraska.  A smaller one is nearby in the Crofton area.  I have read that they are very noisy, but this day they were turning very slowly.

I had driven through the impressive Tehachapi Pass wind farm, one of California's three largest, which has more in tighter clusters, but the Bloomfield project has a powerful effect on anyone who's grown up in the area.  The view at the left below is with the tower sign; the view at the right is to give some indication of size by my little pickup I was leaning on.

    Long after I had written this entry, I discovered that Knox County has a good cemetery index on the Internet, but the Bloomfield cemetery is unfortunately, confusingly split into its chronological sections so that one has to sort through these five categories for his family graves:  Bloomfield Original, St. Andrew's Catholic, Lutheran, Memorial, and Centennial.  For instance, my parents, Jack and Velma Luckert, and maternal grandparents, L. J. and Fern Koftan, along with Clark and Dorothy Stocking are in the Memorial section, but my paternal grandparents, George and Anna Luckert, and both sets of great grandparents, Jones and Luckert, are in the Bloomfield Original.  I also discovered I misread the cluster of gravestones around "Captain John" [John C.] as grouped below:  all the names should end with Luckert, except William Dannert, a son of Caroline Juliana Witt Luckert's first marriage.

The day after Thanksgiving I took several photos of grave markers for Dad's side of the family, though by now any blog-entry reader will know this is the key cemetery for me, with parents, Jack and Velma Koftan Luckert, buried by maternal grandparents, Laurence and Fern Peters Koftan.  They are on the first row very close to the first or southernmost entrance on the main west side, the landscape photo of some help to anyone searching.  Unfortunately, Grandpa Koftan's vase is missing, and Grandma's is broken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  On the top of the highest hill is a very large Luckert marker, for my great grandfather's family.  It was shadowed so on the name side that I took photos only of the individual markers on both sides, which tell family history by their names and dates.

   

 

Either from the German province of Westphalia or Saxony or from Pennsylvania, John Christopher Luckert was the great grandfather who came out to Nebraska Territory after the Civil War to fight Indians/Native Americans, who allegedly disappeared for a time into the California Gold Rush by Dad's gossip or who was in the Army in Wyoming and Arizona by his own falsified autobiographical sketch, who was supposedly stationed out of Fort Omaha at Niobrara, the oldest town in Knox County and second oldest in the state, who left his New Jersey family and remarried a widow, Julia Witt Dannert, having a second family out here.  He's the John C. of 1842-1923 with the Civil War marker at the corner. (As I have mentioned, allegedly Gerald/Bud Luckert, who recently died, Loal Luckert's only son, had "Captain"--a rank he never reached--John's Civil War sword.)  My grandfather, George W., came out finally to find his father and ended up staying too, his mother also remarrying back East, leaving him [and us] with his half brothers and sisters.  That was like a separate family to us when I grew up.  His second wife, whom we knew as Julia Witt Dannert Luckert, is buried under the name Caroline (her original name was apparently Caroline Juliana), but I do not have a photo of her grave, nor can I explain how I missed it.  She died on Christmas Day, 1944, and is in some old family photos I have since posted. 

The Henraetta, I assume, is John C.'s mother married to Andrew J. Luckert, my great great grandmother.  I have no idea who the Father and Mother John Frederick and Marie Louise are.

The only other one I know much about is the John who died young, December 1889-December 1908, because Dad said he was named for Johnny, though Dad was born in 1906.  The story I knew about John's death involved a dance and his brother, but the 8 January 2009 Bloomfield Monitor had this item in its "100 Years Ago--1908" section:  "John Luckert, aged 21 years, shot and instantly killed himself at the place of his brother-in-law, Julius Stein, last Sunday.  He had just returned from hunting; his gun lay in the bottom of the buggy.  Mr. Luckert reached in, took hold of the muzzle; and in drawing it out, the hammer of the gun caught on something and discharged.  The load struck him in the right side, causing instant death."

This William Dannert Luckert is not to be confused with the Bill/William Dannert married to Ricka Wenke, both buried in Creighton's Greenwood Cemetery. 

Straight down the hill under a cedar tree are two Jones markers, these the source of our Welsh and English bloodlines.

The red one is another set of great grandparents, Charles and Elizabeth Jones, a great uncle, Walter, next to them.  Look over the O in JONES or the second large tombstone left of the tree trunk, and that is the large Luckert marker on the hilltop.  Mom and Gram always told an amusing story about Charlie Jones' burial, claiming that his wife stood at the gravesite until it was filled in to make sure the ornery old devil was good and buried.  I wouldn't repeat that, but others, not family, had also heard the story.  He was, by the way, a Justice of the Peace.

 

L-R:  Charles Jones (father), Fred Jones (brother), Anna Jones Luckert, Walt Jones (uncle).  Anna Jones Luckert is, of course, my paternal grandmother.

This four-generation photo has in the back Anna Jones Luckert and Charles Jones, the mother and grandfather of Elizabeth (Lizzie) Luckert Stocking, holding her oldest and only boy, Clark.  Everyone in the photo is buried in the Bloomfield cemetery.  But to find George and Anna Jones Luckert and Verne and Elizabeth Luckert Stocking, you must take the farthest north entrance on the west side, as suggested in the photo below.  Looking northwest, at the top left corner the break in the fence can be seen for the gate.

The view looking southeast across the set of graves is this, the Bloomfield standpipe in the distance right of the two evergreens.  The long rectangle in the left center is the Luckert tombstone; the largest upright to the right past a gap is the Stocking tombstone.  Aunt Ella's white cement runs out of the photo above the Luckert marker, with Aunt Betty, Cousin Barbara, and Charles Jones the next in order to the right/south.

Here are my paternal grandparents.

At their feet eastward are paternal Uncle Rich's first wife's grave, the mother of Alton, his oldest son, and the sister of Uncle Chet's first wife; next to her are paternal Aunt Betty's grave and that of her nine-year-old daughter, who drowned  in the Fremont lakes.  And next to them is a Charles Jones, 1888-1968.

To the south of George and Anna Jones Luckert are Verne and Elizabeth Luckert Stocking.  I have an insertion to make, because I got distracted and neglected to take a separate photo of Uncle Verne's marker.  I feel particularly guilty because Aunt Lizzie always told the story that I, always a mama's boy, went from Mom to Uncle Verne, which made the bond a special one, though he died when I was only one or two.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Their oldest, son Clark and his first wife Dorothy, are buried southeast of my parents.  Their second oldest, Anne (AnnaEtta) and her husband, Harold Alexander, are buried west of her mother and father, but I couldn't quickly locate that grave either.  Which means I also have aunts and uncles and cousins in the Bloomfield cemetery.