Aside from the train picture with white-ink caption, the road photos are just out of Center a ways on State Hwy. 84, the old highway to Bloomfield we used all the time I was growing up. Center sits in a bowl of hills, somewhat protected, as the hilltops around us were not. The road to Creighton in those years into the 1950s followed the Bazile Creek till just south of Bazile Mills, where it leveled out on a flat before Creighton. It had 13 bridges in 11 miles, so I'm fairly sure we didn't venture on it, besides which we were oriented toward Bloomfield by family history, so I'm sure the photos are of the Bloomfield road. And I remember one small trip east with Mom just to take photos. Our highways were gravel then, and everyone had tire chains. Like the highways all over the state, certainly in our area (with Niobrara's 47 inches, Holt County/O'Neill's 60-70 inches), long stretches were single-lane cuts: cars had to back up for whoever was in the cut first or to use occasional wind-bared spots or pull-outs created by the snowplows. Once, when we played basketball at Plainview, a semi and cars got stuck in the long single-lane cut at the west edge of the town; Neal's bus service from Creighton had to come down, and we all had to file past the stranded vehicles and be bused home. Also, it was not unusual for the crossbars on power/telephone lines to rest on drift tops--or even be buried--which might be the explanation why Center, getting its electricity from Creighton, had no power for two weeks, the amount of time we were also snowbound with no traffic in or out. And, as I've mentioned previously, the town women, notably Mom, were furious when the first truck in after those two weeks of isolation was a beer truck, beating the milk and bread trucks.
The photo at right is looking down the main sidewalk from Mary's Cafe door, next Loyd Stedry's tavern/beer joint with the tarpaper brick, then after a space the hardware store with tin "brick" siding run by probably Jim and Mae Danaher or Art and Loretta Eggers at that time. The rest, not visible, were Weaver's Grocery, Brockman's Sand & Gravel with a barber shop at the front, Clark's Abstract, Stevenson Abstract, and the Post Office in this block. Back of me was Freddie's general store. To the left visible beyond my mitten at the crossroad/town square is Ellingson's general store, which I have a much better photo of later. The photo was mainly for the wind-driven snow that seemed perpetual in those days.
Below to the left is Dad's station/garage at that time, my mitten under his Texaco sign. To the right is Main Street from the south end looking straight north up State Hwy. 13, the post office on the left and the Knox Hotel on the right where State Hwy. 84 crossed. I'm sure Dad had much to do with clearing the streets, his being mayor meaning he was Jack of all trades/problems. He had a commendation from the Army (see Operation Snowbound in the preceding entry) because he showed the Army's weasels and flying boxcars with their hay bales and the Air Force helicopters and ski planes where to go to feed isolated cattle and identified farms for rescue missions. These helicopters were the first I'd ever seen, rather a sensation with their noise and rotor-whipped snow clouds, as they used our baseball field next to Frank and Myrtle Foster's as their landing pad. And Dad got to ride in them! Dr. Swift of Crofton, whom I'm sure the Ellingson cousins will remember, used the air service to provide medical aid to Verdigre, Niobrara, Santee, Verdel, towns without doctors.
These are not of our worst weather. For one, the streets are cleared, when much of the time they were drifted over. Often Dad had to simply wade through snow to check on his shop and station. And, while the courthouse had no business nor did most of Main Street, a few vehicles are visible. Those wouldn't have been townspeople, meaning at least some farmers, probably, were able to drive in.
Mom obviously let me take the Brownie around town with my dog, Jigger, so the next sequence is the county courthouse, kept open as an emergency center--as it was during World War II blackouts--besides which the sheriff and deputies lived in Center, the sheriff next door to us if it was Ed McQuistan. Some of the other courthouse employees lived in town--Mom didn't yet work in the assessor's office--such as the county school superintendent, Dora Rock, below the post office. But most were commuters from the four towns around us and certainly couldn't get to work. Only three cars on the right and a truck in the middle are visible in the distance on Main Street. Someone took my photo at the monument on the right. Judge Frank Barta and his wife, Rose, lived in the background house south of the courthouse. My fancy wrought-iron bed was once theirs.
The double photos at the right are the front courthouse sidewalk at the top, usually lined with cars on courthouse business, looking south through the trees at Charlie and Mabel Ellingson's, now where my sister Sue and Jim live. That house is in the center in the bottom photo (no house next door yet), the picture mainly to show how levelly full the courthouse lawn was. The same was true everywhere, of course. Mom's clothes line and the narrow sidewalk to it north of our house had to be repeatedly shoveled out, lucky me. The drifting was chest deep on me.
The first, largest photo below is the best one I have of Ole Ellingson's store with its covered arcade, and I was happy to find it for my cousins, even if it's a snow picture. North across Hwy. 84 is the Knox Hotel run by Martha/Ma Cain with her husband, Jim, once town marshal. I think Bill Glover was marshal by the late Forties. Hwy. 84 was the road east to Bloomfield and west to Verdigre. The following left photo is looking west down Hwy. 84 toward that same main intersection with Hwy. 13, with Ole and Loova Ellingson's house at the left, east/behind their store. Their store is visible at the left in the right photo, the view past the hotel and, across the street, the post office. Except for the main business section, sidewalks were scooped only from house to street, and we walked around town in the streets, as here.
Must have gotten Mom outside on a sunny day to take pictures of Jigger and me. These photos are also deceptive. Several times we could not get out our front door, snow drifted up above the window ledges. Dad would go around from the enclosed back porch, the wind keeping that north entrance somewhat clearer while filling our southern porch, and shovel his way in. The house at the right is that of the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Joe Beran and their spinster daughter, Marie, until she married Edward McQuistan, who moved in with them. She worked at the courthouse, and Ed was sheriff at the time. Berans were Czech and still spoke Czech, as to their grandchildren from Verdigre, whom I was friends with.
The snowplow often left big chunks of the hard snow. The alley behind me in the bottom two photos was for Pease's car--no garage so that it was parked outdoors. He was superintendent--we always lived next to the superintendent because that's what that house was moved in for--and our coach, but he didn't care much for winter and only scooped out to the front sidewalk and over to the cleared alley. Dad might give me a start on our front walks, but that was basically my job, especially because the school was closed for weeks and days at a time, dependent upon the rural students, the buses unable to run. Pease periodically would warn us by phone and ring the bell so that we townies all had to go up the hill to make an appearance for state records and generally horse around for a morning.
What I find remarkable remembering that time was how self-sufficient we were and how it could never happen again. Only the county attorney, Keith Peterson, had an electric furnace and a number of electrical appliances, though I think Grace had a bottle-gas (propane) stove like the rest of us because she could cook. (Their daughter, Marilynn, was like a surrogate sister.) The rest of us had coal furnaces or coal oil stoves, so those three were passed around town to homes that had heat for overnight. Even the courthouse and school had coal furnaces, the church an oil stove. Shoveling coal, stoking the furnace, and carrying out the ash were also my jobs. Today I don't even know if coal stoves exist or where one would buy that very unGreen fuel.
Anyway, while we joked about the electricity going off if a bird sat on the line from Creighton to Center (summer thunderstorms were a strong reason for that drollery), we could at least heat our homes and cook and bake. Everyone I know, certainly Mom, had candles and kerosene lamps or those Aladdin mantle kerosene lamps like Grandma and Grandpa Koftan had with the bright hanging nets. We didn't have Aladdins but did have 3-5 kerosene lamps always kept fueled (the general stores uptown sold kerosene then, another product I wouldn't know where to find today). And the candles were in the top buffet drawer. Further, as I think I've told elsewhere, Dad was always very inventive, besides being the local bottle gas dealer. He brought home a car battery and a headlight and rigged the headlight to our dining room chandelier so that it flooded the table, great for crafts and card playing, though we ordinarily used kerosene lamps. I might add that this was before REA electrified our farms.
While the stores ran out of produce and staples fairly quickly in those two weeks of total isolation, all the women canned, so food was not a major issue. That was what summer gardens were for and why we kids took syrup cans (like pint paint cans) and picked wild grapes, chokecherries, elderberries, and wild plums to sell door to door. Canning was a big deal, the only freezers being in the tops of our refrigerators, except for Petersons, who had the first large freezer I ever saw. We canned--and I do mean we--peas, string beans, corn, tomatoes, carrots, beets, pickles (dill, sweet, hamburger, watermelon), apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, beef, rendered lard, with wild grape, chokecherry, plum jellies under paraffin tops, all sitting on basement shelves. Dad usually bought a big burlap bag of potatoes for a cool basement spot, where onions were kept and sometimes carrots in a washtub of sand. So what we lacked were like fresh salad produce: lettuce, celery, cabbage (we did can that but not often), green peppers, fresh tomatoes, also cereal except for oatmeal and Cream of Wheat. A couple weeks without those was no hardship. Of course, we didn't have a fraction of the prepared foods now in supermarkets. Milk would've been a problem, but World War II had taught us how to handle the same kind of shortages. We used powdered milk (and maybe powdered eggs?) and canned milk when the regular milk ran out. No bread came in on trucks, so we baked our own: when Freddie's, Ole's, and Weaver's were out of yeast, the women kept starter, and, if someone forgot and used up her starter, a loan was made. Mom had hers in glass jars on the kitchen counter. (I don't remember whether our bread then tasted like sourdough. I was just happy to have home-baked bread and biscuits. What better smell than baking bread?!
So we didn't starve, and we didn't freeze. We had warm clothes anyway and shut off unneeded rooms. Our furnaces kept the basements warm enough so I don't remember any frozen water pipes. We didn't have television but revered our radio programs and had battery radios like Grandpa K. did, we subscribed to a lot of magazines and had books which we actually spent much time reading, and we made our own entertainment, whether playing cards or making crafts. People did visit and share meals, especially in the daytime. I drew pictures from, say, my Bambi comic book, one of which I still have, besides which Mom. a schoolteacher, and Grandma K. were big on crafts, so I always had those. That was the winter I learned and zealously played the only card game I've ever really loved, canasta, then a big fad. Dad and Grandpa Luckert played cards a lot, Mom with them if they played pinochle, though she preferred bridge. I had started piano but wasn't very good yet. I had my dog, books, and a number of games such as Lincoln Logs, my old Tinkertoys, an Erector set, the town's largest stash of comic books, the Bible in comic-book style--well, you get the idea--besides which, as I've often said, I loved winter and got to spend as much time sledding as shoveling outside when it was OK, not howling and hurling heavy snow horizontally. So what sticks with me is that it was all a big adventure of no school and happy self-reliance that will never happen again, though three days without electricity here in Omaha from a memorable ice storm had me repeating what I'd learned then, cosily shut up in my bedroom with my kerosene lamps, candles adding warmth, battery radio, books, quilts stacked on my bed. Back to 1949 it was.
