Our state senator when I was growing up was John Forsyth of Niobrara, powerful enough in the Legislature to keep rebuilding and repaving Highway 14 between Niobrara and Verdigre, his pet project,which kept sliding into the Verdigris Creek and Niobrara River. Notice whose name heads the list in the form letter.
The head of this deer hung on our front deck.
Above, in his 80s, I think, he pitches softball at a Koftan family reunion. Jerry Steege, husband of Deloris Koftan Steege, is behind him. Below is what gave him recognition far beyond Knox County. As long as I can remember, some kind of card game went on at the station, Center's own little Las Vegas. Or, I should say, Male Gossip Central, because Dad found out more scandal than Mom did in the courthouse and usually told me what I'd done at a dance in another town I'd gone to. Grandpa George W. Luckert preferred cribbage while taking care of the pumps, windshields, oil checks, but he and his son also played rummy, pinochle, poker, euchre with anyone willing to lose some coins. I can remember card games going on in the office part long after hours, the garage and pumps closed. Later the game moved to the rear of the Quonset shop, the table usually a wooden spool, the kind that held cables. Dad's being busy didn't stop the regular players, the customers, the salesmen, strangers from playing straight through the day, Dad buying a coffee urn to supply the players. (His son-in-law, Sue's husband, Jim, who took over the welding business, runs the same coffee-fueled game today, replacing urns as they wear out.) Dad's father and brother were notorious gamblers in earlier years, which might have explained his fondness for gambling. What it meant to us was that he'd come home with his coverall pockets sagging with coins and dollar bills. He never lacked for change for his children. And that's how Jim Javorsky happened by one day and took this prize-winning photo. Dad was indignant because people wrongfully thought he was looking into Rex Risinger's hand (our neighbor) ) to cheat, which Jim's title certainly suggests, and he always protested that he'd already folded and was merely curious about Rex's hand. But Dad was duly proud of ending up at Disney World. (I should add that the area was a card-playing hotbed. Mom belonged to the Center bridge club; Grandma and Grandpa had a card club hosted by its various farmer members.)
Dad was a very creative welder. On his own, he made hay cages, big octagonal cages on old car wheels that proved handy to ranchers as far away as the Dakotas and Wyoming for moving haystacks. The cages opened and could be narrowly collapsed when not in use or being towed. He invented a snare-proof collapsible boat anchor he had me try to get patented, but someone had beat him to the same design. He had worked it out on his own, trying various designs and testing them on his boat. (I've failed to mention that we almost always had a boat, graduating from a wooden one when I was young to fancier plastic speedboats by the time of the girls. Built his own boat trailer, naturally, and reworked a former family car to have a big, square, open back end with door, the Fish Wagon.) He was the only welder I knew who would work on automobile gas tanks--that's how good he was--which had a tendency to blow up. He could duplicate parts farmers mangled and make them all sorts of feeders. Men simply told him what they needed, and he'd make it. Here's the boat anchor. The triangular part was hinged.
Mark Donley Feddersen sent me the photo of Dad in front of a feeder he'd welded from the time of a Feddersen family visit, 1963, I think. Thank you, Mark. [Good view behind Dad across the street to what had been Mary's Cafe (then Cassie's) and Freddie's Store with the awning, the Crosley brothers' Center Garage the competition. Only the garage exists today, the other two buildings razed.]
Because Joan Burney mentions how proud Dad was of his first grandchild, Justin John (for Dad) Rohrer, as a last sportsman note a paragraph from Mom's letter to her sister, Audree, for Audree's birthday. Dad had just given Mom a new Word Processor typewriter that gave Mom fits, so I'll simply type it out.
"Jack has been getting quite a kick out of going to grade-school games, first football and now basketball. Justin plays every time, and it is a thrill for him to see his grandson play. He always said he hoped he would live long enough to see him play. . . . Sue still bowls on Tues. nights, and he is always interested in that, too. Of course, he still sponsors a Luckert's bowling team and goes once in a while to watch." Of course.
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