Warning: This story contains depictions of the deaths and tribulations of cute, fuzzy and feathered little creatures. Children, non-farmers and other super-sensitive individuals may be offended by exposure to the real world.

By Bob Copperstone

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Chickens -- the raising of them and the eggs from them -- played an outsized role in my boyhood in mid-century Wahoo.

Some of my recollections are pleasant. Others, not so much.

Those fowl memories occurred at my Aunt Clara and Uncle Jerry

Bartusek’s farm north of Ceresco, where I spent many a summer vacation.

Feeding the chickens was one of my chores, hauling buckets of feed around the barnyard. That was pleasant enough, watching the eternally hungry and ever-grateful flock come charging at me in a clucking and screeching cloud of dust.

But my favorite chore was what could be called the human-versus-chicken game of hide and seek that I played with the hens.

Most of the eggs were conveniently laid in the hen-house area, but Aunt Clara explained that biddy hens are endowed by nature to be super-secretive about where they made their nests and hatched their babies.

I got very good at my job. I stalked the wandering hens to their well-hidden nests and ignored their outraged squawking when I reached under their nestled posteriors to snatch a clutch of eggs.

* * *

Also in the “fond” chicken-house category are my memories of the farmers’ eternal war against the common sparrow (or “spatzie,” as my older cousins called them by their German name).

As cute and chirpingly charming as the sparrow is depicted in John James Audubon’s paintings, the farm boys see only infestations of disease-carrying lice hiding under those darling, fluffy feathers.

The farm’s chicken-house’s rafters were teeming every night with spatzies, which, in turn, were crawling with lice. The birds gotta go.

One autumn night, when I was very young, three of my Bartusek boy cousins rousted me from my comfy feathertick bed. They had declared war on spatzies, and I had been drafted into the troops.

That was so exciting! I was issued my weapon – a plain, wooden shingle that was wielded like a paddle.

The rules of war required us to blind the enemy with the flashlight beam. The spatzies would be panicked into flight, and we’d swat them down with our paddles, which were surprisingly efficient weapons.

All this yelling, crashing and thrashing scared the dickens out of the hens and set them all aflutter.

Aunt Clara opposed our murderous forays, not because she was a bird fancier, although she was a kindly soul and might have a soft heart toward the spatzies.

But, hell’s bells, now the super-agitated hens wouldn’t lay eggs again for the next 24 hours or longer.

Aunt Clara regularly sold the farm’s eggs every Saturday at Torrens Produce in Wahoo, and our war on spatzies resulted in less money in the family’s pocketbook.

Uncle Jerry wasn’t happy, either, at the wasting of flashlight batteries on such frivolity.

* * *

In Wahoo, as in any other rural Midwest town at that time, the lowly chicken played an important economic role.

We had the square-block-sized Blue Star Produce, an odorous chicken-slaughtering factory on the eastern fringe of downtown. It was one of the few industries bringing in dollars and jobs to Wahoo.

I got to thinking, why don’t I cash in on this poultry bonanza? I was about 10 years old, I’d been around chickens a lot, and I craved my own spending money. What could go wrong?

Besides, the Blue Star itself would unwillingly supply me with inventory, and for free! There were always a few flocks of wild chickens roaming the neighborhoods around the factory, escapees from the loading docks. I’ll just scoop them up and I’m in business.

I arranged with my Mom for the family restaurant, the Wigwam Café, to buy my produce. But I hit a snag when the wild chickens decided to remain wild, and could outrun me with ease.

Undaunted, I noticed that chickens couldn’t always outrun street traffic, so I picked up a couple of fresh roadkill whose intact feathers hid any carcass damage and took them to the Wigwam.

Mom agreed that they looked good. But, by the way, she asked, where did you get them?

(…Well, nice try, Bobby.)

* * *

However, Mom encouraged my entrepreneurial spirit and financed the purchase of a dozen live chicks from the Wahoo Hatchery. They were dyed different pastel colors, left over from Easter, but their feathers would soon outgrow the dyes.

I commandeered a doghouse in the back yard and staked out a chicken-wire fence around it. About 8 weeks later I produced edible broilers, as good or better than the Blue Star ever did. I don’t remember the price the Wigwam was going to pay me, but I’m sure it was fair market value.

It was early summer vacation time, and my parents had insisted that the whole enterprise was on my shoulders.

As much as I dreaded it, and we hadn’t really discussed it, I assumed the slaughtering was also my responsibility.

In my young life, I had witnessed countless killings of chickens. Aunt Clara, with grim determination and gritted teeth, would grasp the bird’s head around the neck. With a sudden strong, smooth spin of the wrist, the carcass would be flung a short distance away, and the head would still be in her fist. Nothing to it, right? It looked so easy.

Uncle Jerry, when he killed the bigger turkeys and geese, used an axe. One swift, sure chop did the job.

I went out one morning to survey with satisfaction the plump livestock that my hard work had produced. I thought I would finish the job and surprise my folks to do the killing all by myself. They’ll be proud.

So the die was cast.

I chose the neck-wringing option. It seemed quicker and less bloody. Stepping over the fence, I cornered the first unlucky pullet, which squawked and beat her wings mightily. I swallowed hard, grabbed her by the neck and gave her a tentative spin.

Big mistake! There should be nothing tentative about it. This was not like Aunt Clara’s example at all.

The intact hen landed at my feet, her neck awry, staring up at me with an accusing eye. I spun her around again, with the same useless result.

Panicking, I ran to the garage to get an axe. I wanted to use Uncle Jerry’s quick-kill method. Anything to get this nightmare behind both me and the chicken. But I managed to botch the third attempted murder, too.

The axe was heavy and I was a skinny little kid, so I had to awkwardly tuck the handle under my armpit and grip the iron blade way up front. I’d be lucky if I didn’t injure myself.

My eyes stung with tears. I brought the blade down as hard as I could on the struggling chicken's neck and ... chopped off her beak!

That set me really wailing. Mom heard the commotion from the house and rushed to help. She quickly dispatched that hen with an expert spin as good as that of her sister Clara’s, and together we finished off the rest of the flock.

As Mom pointed out that day, my education in neck-wringing overlooked an important detail: You must grip the fowl’s neck extremely tightly. I did not do that. The neck just spun ineffectively in my loose fist.

Who knew that? I sure didn’t.

That day, I swore I’d never put myself, nor any chicken, through that ordeal again.

And I’ve spent the ensuing 70-some years keeping that promise.

By Bob Copperstone

Throughout its active existence, The Nebraska Ordnance Plant near Mead was an early part of my life in Wahoo. Some of my school-yard friends had bomb-maker parents, I guess you could say.

We children weren’t particularly aware of the bomber plant’s (That’s what we always called it, always adding the “er”) deadly but necessary wartime mission. I do remember somber snatches of gossip about how our little spot on the map could be targeted by Axis enemies with bombs of their own.

I’m sure other children shared my unease, but we didn’t dwell on it. After all, we had grownups all around us, and some of those adult relatives were soldiers and sailors, to boot.

Also, I had been experiencing the war almost from the beginning of my childhood. One of my earliest memories was of one of many 1940s nationwide blackout practice to prepare for wartime bombing raids.

Like other little kids, I thrived on pleasant routine, but this was too scary. The windows were hastily covered with blankets and heavy tablecloths and drapes. All the lights in the house were switched off, and we could peek outside and see that all the streetlights and car headlights had been doused.

* * *

A school bus carried children from the military housing units on the sole residential street to schools in Wahoo.

I’m not sure how Wahoo’s West Ward and North Ward portioned out The Plant’s incoming pupil population. And I suppose St. Wenceslaus Catholic and nearby small-town schools were involved, too.

Most of us were unaware of it, but the sudden flood of people coming in to work at the new Ordnance Plant caused a teachers’ shortage, as well as crises in staffing other professions. The bomber plant wages were quite a bit higher.

From Clean Used Cars to Cleaning Clothes

Not too many people remember that a downtown location at 120 W. 5th St. , now the site of the D&D Laundry, had once been the OK Used Car lot.

The site is between the Wahoo Barber & Beauty Shop wooden building on the east, and the brick Titles Lounge Sports Bar.

If you look closely, two decrepit, rusty lampposts still hide in plain sight on either side of the laundry. Each post had a high-wattage floodlight on top and, below, a cylinder light fixture fitted with four vertical florescent light tubes to illuminate the lot. Only the east cylinder remains today.

In the 1950s Chevrolet operated OK Used Car lots nationwide as adjuncts to their dealerships. Anderson Auto Co. here was just south across 5th Street.

I remember the OK lot sold other company’s brands but I’m not sure if non-GM cars were included. The main idea of the corporation connection was to reassure car buyers that Chevrolet stood behind their product.

According to motorcities.org: “OK Used Cars had completed a series of tests [on their for-sale vehicles] before being sold to the public, including a safety inspection, drain and flush of the cooling system, complete lubrication and tire rotation.”

Photographer/farmer Joe Vculek, Wahoo’s unofficial historian, notes that Wahoo Implement Co. was located at that site in 1910. Later, Biggerstaff Furniture and Mortuary did business there, but the building burned down in 1948.

The site became vacant when Anderson Auto stopped doing business downtown, probably in the 1970s. The present laundry building is one of the newest in downtown Wahoo.

By Bob Copperstone

Having grown up in Wahoo in the early 1940s, it was inevitable that World War II would cast a somber shadow over my childhood.

The Nebraska Ordnance Plant (“bomber plant” as it is still called) was near the village of Mead, a mere nine miles east of Wahoo.

It wasn’t talked about too much, but for years it festered in the back of our minds that our little dot on the map was certain to be in Nazi gunsights if Germany invaded the U.S.

The bomber plant gave a face to the undercurrent of a silent anxiety of war that hung like a noxious fog over many phases of our day-to-day existence.

Even though I had only a toddler’s understanding of that deeper fear, one day in about 1944, the NOP became the focus of a sudden family crisis.

My dad, Hank Copperstone, had hired on there as line foreman (his age had excluded him from the military draft.)

One day he came home unexpectedly in the middle of the day. The family gathered around him and everyone was very sad. We kids sensed the worry among the adults, and we were frightened.

Daddy was telling Mommy (Irma) that his production line had been improperly using a wooden paddle to stir the explosives, a process that made the job quicker, but was not safety-approved. Since he was a supervisor, they had to let him go.

To calm his children, Hank took us aside and, kneeling, explained sadly that Daddy had been “fired”.

After that day, I grew to adulthood with the entire family never letting me forget the time that little boy Bobby had inspected his father head to toe very closely before asking, “Daddy, where did you get burned at?”

* * *

Schools in Wahoo and other surrounding communities were strongly impacted by the NOP’s employees who lived on-site on Joyce Circle within walking distance to NOP.

Many children living there went to school in Wahoo and perhaps to other school districts in surrounding areas. I remember seeing Wahoo school buses on the gravel road (now County Road 10) that ran from southeast Wahoo directly to Joyce Circle.

Plus, almost everyone in Saunders County and nearby areas had friends or relatives who drew paychecks from the bomber plant.

The community had a nice little park in its grassy circle’s center, and there were occasional picnics and concerts open to visitors. My sisters were invited to schoolmates’ birthday parties there.

Some original homes remain today in private hands. Most are just as neat as they were in the 1940s and ‘50s. Some have added garages, sheds and other amenities. And there are still a few apparently abandoned houses.

* * *

The NOP was an enormous boon to Wahoo’s economy. I believe the plant had 24-hours of shifts. To accommodate them, the Wahoo, Chief and the short-lived Victory movie theaters offered first and second showings per night, and were frequently sold out. I remember the ticket prices were 25 cents for adults and 14 cents for age 12 and younger.

Also, there was briefly a USO entertainment center for servicemen (and presumably the NOP officers) with pool tables across the street west of the Wahoo Theater.

Almost no one today remembers the Victory movie theater any more. My own recollection is confined to watching a film short there about children with polio-ravaged lungs. The dreaded polio epidemic was in full force at that time.

The film showed an auditorium filled with row after row of so-called iron lungs. Children inside each machine were being kept alive and breathing. It made a huge impression on me. I didn’t want to be one of those kids! Was that my doom?

No one I talked to seems able to pinpoint the Victory’s location. All I can be sure of, it was somewhere off the northwest corner of Fourth and Linden streets. The theater just seemed to drift away after the war. I believe all three theaters were owned by the same pair of ladies, whose names escape me now.

* * *

After WWII, the plant’s massive bomb production waned, and the officers were reassigned and moving out of the Joyce Circle houses. It was a traumatic time for both the officers’ children and for the kids in Wahoo. They had practically grown up together.

My own family was caught up in the parting sorrow because my younger sister, Janie’s, best friend, Debbie Wallace, faced having to quit Wahoo High School and move away with her family.

But after much tearful deliberation, my family and Debbie’s agreed to take her in until she graduated in a year or so. It was traumatic for her to leave her family, but the plan worked out fine, and she graduated with Janie in 1959.

The Copperstone family’s connection with the NOP was quite strong. In addition to taking in Debbie, two years earlier my older sister Rochelle’s good friend, Bonnie Prior, roomed with us on weekday nights all through high school until graduation in 1955. Bonnie would go home on weekends.

And I learned recently that another NOP family had worked out a similar plan for their daughter. The girl finished out her high school senior year by renting a long-term room in a local motel, joining her family after graduation. I never discovered her name.

My late uncle Audry (sic) correct spelling) Copperstone, who began working for Firestone at the NOP as a firefighter in 1943 until it closed in 1963, was one of the few local NOP employees who was able to keep his job, since fires are a constant danger regardless of the presence of humans.

* * *

The huge tract of farm land that was gobbled up by the NOP as a sacrifice to the powerful and soundly successful “war effort” has mostly been returned to both private use and for the University of Nebraska experimental agriculture purposes.

Gone are the armed guards at the former entrance gates, as are the half-dozen or so water towers that once dotted the skyline almost from horizon to horizon. Only a few towers remain. The massive complex of buildings that were occupied by throngs of workers has disappeared.

I am among those who innocently continued to live near-normal wartime lives while the enormous war machine that was the Mead Ordnance Plant was born, and thrived, and then died. My far-from-perfect memory, and that of others, can capture only a tiny slice of its complicated, massive history.

Surely, today there are locals like me who retain memories of the NOP’s wartime past, and I wish I could hear all of all of them. Unfortunately, we such humans are no more permanent than the bomber plant itself, or than the untold thousands of bombs made here that were dropped to win the war.

But fortunately, the nuts and bolts of the bomber plant, from inception to operation to the wrecking ball, have been captured for all time by a rich collection of photographs, newspaper articles and museum memorabilia.

If only human memories were not so fleeting.

* * *

Because of our fading memories, and the decline of the populace from that era, we seem to have arrived at a sort of forgiveness for the minus sides of the NOP. But the minuses sometimes bump up against actual facts and work against total truce. The minuses include:

--Landowners were forced by eminent domain to sell their land on the false promise that they could buy it back after the war.

--And toxic waste was recklessly dumped on the NOP over the years. To this day, another war is being waged on poisons that lurk in the wells, streams, air and soil around Mead, foiling all efforts to find an effective solution. So far, we are losing this war.

--Also, perhaps emulating the bomber plant’s poor examples of waste disposal, bad actors in recent years followed the government’s muddy footsteps. They dumped poisonous herbicide filth on that same once-arable soil around Mead, in pursuit of quick profits from dirty-fuel ethanol.

* * *

Today, while reviewing my recollections, I realize that one of my own personal bomber plant complaints has been festering for some 78 years, so I suppose it’s time to follow the example of forgive and forget.

OK, Uncle Sam, I forgive you for burning my Daddy.

My wife arranged an early check-in time at our New Orleans Air BnB, we wanted to get rid of our bags before wandering through the city. An Uber abandoned us at our residence for the next several nights, Paige had found a signature New Orleans shotgun house so we could get the signature New Orleans experience. We carefully followed the check-in instructions, decided we were in the right place, and knocked on the front door.

No answer.

Ok, give it a few minutes.

Still no answer.

Try knocking again? Ok here it goes... still nothing.

Can you double check to make sure this is the right place? Ok, can I see? Yeah, looks right. Did he respond when we said we were coming early? What exactly did he say? Alright, that seems pretty clear. Uhhh… I mean I don't know what to do... can we call him? Oh wait I think someone's coming.

Someone did eventually come. He wasn't wearing a bathrobe, but in my mind as I recall this morning, I picture him in a bathrobe. He had clearly just woken up, and despite the fact that our Air BnB host was

a solid 20 minutes late for our pre-arranged check-in time, he just played it off as though everything was going according to plan. He told us to leave our luggage by the door. I guess he needed some extra time to get our room ready. That’s fine, waiting a little longer is a small price to pay to ensure that our experience goes smoothly.

We came back later for our official introduction to our living quarters. There were a few details our host wanted to make sure we didn’t forget.

“You may see my girlfriend hanging out on the couch, she’s over here a lot.”

Ok, the guy is in a committed relationship. That’s kind of nice.

“Here’s the thermostat, feel free to adjust it but there isn’t any heating, most houses in New Orleans don’t have that. Just cooling.”

Got it. Paige had read that on the Air BnB listing. It seemed standard across the options we were comparing. Not a big deal.

“I sometimes smoke medical marijuana in the house, does that bother you?”

Well, I suppose if it's MEDICAL marijuana. I mean what kind of monsters would we be to deprive a sick man of his MEDICINE? I'm not an animal after all.

The orientation was over, we went out for dinner.

After the appropriate number of selfies and gift shops, we decided to turn in after supper to get a good night's sleep ahead of another full day of adventures. We had lights out around 10:30pm, which really isn't too different from a normal evening at the Beaty household back in Omaha.

But this wasn’t a normal evening, and we weren’t in Omaha.

Our room was on the second floor at the top of some rickety wooden stairs. It was impossible to be discrete while scaling these steps and turning the corner to where we would be sleeping. Some sadist had also inconveniently placed the light switch on the outside of the room.

As we were just entering our REM cycles, my fading out of consciousness was knocked loose by the sound of someone starting the expedition up the creaky old stairs.

FLASH.

The lights turned on. My wife and I struggled to orient ourselves until my dilated pupils adjusted just enough to see the silhouette of our host standing in the doorway holding a bed comforter.

He wasn't wearing a bathrobe, but in my mind, I imagine him still in a bathrobe.

“Oh! I didn't realize you were in here. I just finished up washing your bedspread.”

I checked the clock. It was 11:00pm.

•••

Night 2.

It was unseasonably cold in New Orleans. It normally wouldn't have been a big deal, but these old shotgun houses (or at least one old shotgun house in particular) are drafty as hell. You could feel the inhale and exhale of the room as if you were sleeping inside a pair of lungs. Once we had been provided with all our bedsheets, the first night was tolerable, but things cooled off considerably on day 2.

I knew there was no furnace. But I was desperate for answers when I woke up in the middle of the night shivering like Leonardo DiCaprio fighting for room on a floating door next to the shitty rich girl he had just hooked up with. I covered myself in every spare article of clothing that I felt comfortable having absorb my nighttime body odor. Still not good enough. I rappelled down the creaky old stairs to the location of the thermostat. I knew this was a waste of time, but I felt like I needed to at least try. The thermostat still had buttons after all, which I relentlessly pounded with the ferocity one reserves for playing Mortal Kombat on Sega Genesis. Back up the stairs to check on the furnace that— indeed— does not exist.

I started searching for another solution. There was an unoccupied room next to ours, which I assumed had to be full of extra blankets. As it turns out, this wasn’t a second bedroom. Random s**t was packed into every nook and cranny of the 300 square feet. Broken gym equipment, U-Haul boxes, and redundant kitchen appliances blocked my path as I searched for anything resembling a blanket. I suspected our Air BnB host had murdered his upstairs roommate and moved all his belongings into this space so he could make some extra rental cash.

I was beginning to wonder how many extra towels the bathroom had but then found, not-a-blanket, but something blanket-like. It wasn’t my first choice, but I was reminded of a fresco in the Nebraska State Capitol building that depicted a scene from a blizzard where settlers slit open the stomachs of their dead livestock and crawled inside for warmth. It could be worse.

Not satisfied with my smallpox blanket, Paige sent our host a message. Predictably, he was still up. Within minutes we heard the familiar creak of the stairs, he turned on the light, opened the door, and lugged in a space heater that resembled a satellite dish with a heat bulb inside. It even made this crazy laser beam sound as it warmed up. It was the kind of thing with warning stickers plastered all over the sides, telling you not to fall asleep using it because you may inadvertently light yourself on fire. We went to bed anyways.

I woke up an hour later sweating through the storage room blanket.

•••

Night 3.

It was yet another full day. We had fed a raccoon some marshmallows. Held a baby alligator. Saw the future burial site of Nicolas Cage (who knew he was such a planner). And while Paige met her idol that runs a baking blog , I got yelled at by some people sitting on their porch watching chickens walk around their front yard. We had hit all the New Orleans attractions.

We went to bed content with our vacation and satisfied with the totality of our experience in the Big Easy.

For the most part.

Dead asleep. Middle of the night.

FLASH.

AGAIN.

A young, confused women walked casually into our room. Made eye contact and yelled:

“Oh, S**T!”

She darted out of the room, turned off the lights, and ran back down the stairs. Paige and I—both semi-conscious— looked at each other in the most confused state we’ve been in during a very confusing stay.

I took the opportunity to pee, made sure the heat lamp hadn’t incinerated anything, and laid back to sleep under the mover’s blanket that doubled as my bed comforter.

Paige’s phone lit up. She had a message from our host.

“It happened again! I can't believe it! I'm so sorry! She was looking for my bedroom and thought it was upstairs.”

So…

There's a lot to digest here.

To summarize: our Air BnB host that we were paying to let us stay at his place invited a girl back while we were staying there. The same host that told us he had a girlfriend. A girlfriend we may see laying around on the couch from time to time. I think it’s safe to say she would know her boyfriend's bedroom is not at the top of the stairs.

But infidelity aside, HE BROUGHT A GIRL BACK TO HAVE SEX WITH HER WHILE WE WERE PAYING TO STAY AT HIS HOUSE.

Despite being freezing and sleep deprived, none of these details were lost on me in the middle of the night.

The next morning, Paige and I had a lot to catch up on.

“Well after that awkward encounter do you think he still got lucky last night?”

“I know for a fact that he did.”

“What do you mean?”

“You probably couldn't tell. You sleep with earplugs.”

“Ohhh…”

After much debate we decided not to leave him an Air BnB review.

By Bob Coperstone

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A Corner to Pee In

I am delighted to read in the Wahoo Newspaper that the Omaha Steel Castings Co. is planning to preserve the old circular cement corncrib at the entrance of its new factory at the northeast part of town.

OSC President Phil Teggart has told Wahoo folks the structure would remain standing as a talking point for people who enter the plant. He called it a piece of Wahoo history.

Historical? Sure it is, to a lot of people. It's got to be nearly a hundred years old.

But to me, it's more than an old landmark. Whenever I drive past it today, I'm flooded by boyhood memories of lazy summer afternoons, of swimming pool fun under a scorching sun, and family togetherness while growing up in Wahoo.

* * *

It's the middle of summer in maybe 1948. I'm a skinny boy about nine years old. My older sister, Rochelle - she'd be 11 - and l are trudging down the gritty, sun-baked gravel road that is now an extension of 12 Street. My younger sister, Janie, may or may not be with us today. She's only seven.

We're going swimming at the Wanahoo Park/Dance Island's huge sand­ bottomed concrete pool maybe about a mile from our house on Ninth Street near Broadway. We're carrying our swimming suits, mine wrapped in a chlorine- and mold­ scented bath towel. We swim almost every summer day, and I don't take the time to hang my odorous gear on the clothesline to dry. The municipal pool hasn't been built yet, and the polio epidemic panic hasn't yet forced the Wanahoo pool to shut down.

We step off the pavement at the highway corner where the Skelly gas station stands, and hit the gravel road. Not many people know it now, or even at that time, but that road used to be the gravel highway out of town to Omaha.

To our right, on the south side, stands the sturdy, metal-roofed corncrib, a familiar, solid structure that keeps us kids within its view for about a half­ mile, almost to the Sand Creek bridge. We turn left at the entrance to Dance Island. The bath house is another couple of hundred yards farther.

We frolic all day in the huge pool. Too soon, the day's over and we're dead tired, but we still have to walk home.

Weary and sapped by the hot sun, we again reach our old friend, the sentinel corncrib, which means we are getting closer to home.

Refreshments await us just across the road from the corncrib at the Skelly gas station. The grumpy old man there never welcomed us kids, and he scowls at us. But he likes our nickels well enough, and allows us to fish for bottles of Nesbitt orange pop in the ice-water cooler. The pop is great, and we are refreshed for the final leg home.

We will do it all over again tomorrow, and almost every day after that until summer vacation is over.

* * *

Today, the corncrib still stands, as does what's left of the Skelly station, which is undergoing a slow, well-earned renovation. But the grumpy old man at the station is gone, along with my childhood. But memories remain, freshened each time I see the gas station and corncrib.

When Mr. Teggart's factory started going up and the bulldozers were leveling everything, naturally I became concerned. The corncrib was almost hidden by overgrown trees by then, and it appeared to be in the way of progress. I drove out to take photos, anticipating its disappearance.

Memories came flooding back as I walked toward the corncrib with my camera. One of the sharpest memories was of my father.

* * *

My dad, Hank Copperstone, who with my mom, Irma, owned the Wigwam Cafe, had an old, bad joke that he always told when we drove past the corncrib. It was to give us kids numerous fits of giggles.

"That's where a man ran himself to death," Daddy would say, pointing at the circular crib. Someone would bite: "Why's that?"

"He was looking for a corner to pee in!" Dad fairly shouts, and we all howl with laughter. "Oh, Daddy, that's naughty," we'd chide him, but we couldn't stop giggling.

After the first couple of times he told it, someone in the car - not always Dad- would drag out the joke when we passed the corncrib on our way out of town or to Dance Island.

To this day, I always get a groan, if not a smile, when I repeat that old story. "My dad says that's where a man ran himself to death," I always say, pointing to the corncrib. I think my friends get tired of it, but I won't let a groan stop me. The telling of it lets me love my dad and my family all over again.

As I circled the corncrib snapping photos (no, I didn't run myself to death), I finally reached the east end.

Tucked into the underbrush against the corncrib was a portable toilet for the construction crew to use.

As I lined up the outhouse through the camera viewfinder, I suddenly realized the irony, and burst out laughing. I couldn't help it.

Dad would have loved it. At last, there was a corner to pee in !

Bless you, Mr. Teggart, for making room at your factory for the corncrib of my memories, and I join others in welcoming you to your new community. May the Wahoo of your present be as pleasant as the Wahoo of my past.

By Bob Copperstone

Empty Bird Nest Grief

It’s taking the orphaned baby robins such a long time to die…

It’s breaking my heart, and I feel helpless, but I don’t know how to save them.

They seemed doomed to die, and to my horror and remorse, I’m partly, if not completely, to blame for their peril.

In a grim ritual, I check the nest every couple of hours, hoping to see the mother robin feeding and warming her babies. She hasn’t returned, though, and the babies are slipping away, weaker and hardly moving.

Yesterday afternoon, soon after I discovered the nest and looked in, they mistook my shadow for their parent, straining their heads upward, with gaping beaks, cheeping frantically for food.

I kept vigil at my window, far from the nest so I wouldn’t cruelly get the babies’ parental expectations up, and hoping to see the mother giving nourishment. As night fell, my panic increased. But the babies spent the night alone, naked to the elements and hungry.

Next morning I looked out the window. My heart sank. No mother yet.

They were still huddled together, terribly weak and barely moving. One of them feebly opened its beak, but just for a second or two, then sagged back down.

The fledglings are in a down-lined nest of soft grasses perched atop some lawn tools under the eaves of my garage, about eye-level. It was an odd place for a nest, but it was camouflaged and just fine, until I blundered in.

I was poking around the tools hanging on the garage wall. I was making a bit of a ruckus and was startled to come across the nest, almost right before my eyes. I didn’t realize until later that a robin, probably a parent, was squawking at me from a nearby rooftop.

I didn’t touch the nest, but it was too late. The damage was done, and the parents undoubtedly abandoned this nest to build a new, safer one, as mandated by their stern mistress, Mother Nature.

My death vigil continued, as I wracked my brain to think what I should do. Maybe the humane thing to do is to end their misery (and mine) myself. But I can’t. I just can’t.

I don’t know the first thing about feeding baby birds, and what if my interference scares away the parents? Would I simply be prolonging their deaths?

It had been about 22 hours since I blundered into their lives and cut off their food supply. All I can do now is watch.

It was cool and drizzling outside. The starving babies were sheltered under the eaves, so at least they could stay dry.

Until they die.

* * *

Epilogue

I’m sorry to say that I had lost track of this sorrowful saga when I was away for a couple of days.

When I caught up, the nest was empty. There were some loose down and feathers on the ground beneath, and the mangled remains of only one of the babies.

There was no way to tell exactly how the babies met their fate, outside of the certainty that a cat or other predator did the dirty deed at the end.

I did feel an uneasy relief that I wasn’t proud of, though, to be shed of the heart-wrenching ordeal. I believe execution by cat would have been the quicker death.

But I’m left with a nagging uncertainty. Did I do the right thing? Should I have fed them? Should I have given them more shelter? Put them out of their misery?

I’ll never know now, will I?

The Cute Little Rodents and How They Stunk

I actually like the idea of mice and a lot of other rodents. They’re cute -- Mickey Mouse cute, sometimes.

I love their ears, their bright, beady eyes, their twitching little noses and whiskers.

When I was about 8 years old, I wanted a hamster pet. Bob Smith, my friend Raymond’s older brother, was breeding and selling them, along with a veritable zoo-full of other beasts and fowl creatures over the years.

If I remember right, he wanted fifty cents apiece, so I bought a couple (It might have been a dollar-fifty per). We scrounged up a cage and exercise wheel and set the hamsters to work entertaining us kids.

Only a day or so later, we thought it would be fun to take them out of the cage to race them along the bedroom wall baseboard.

The hamsters, being basically wild and yearning to be free, took off like rodents out of hell along the baseboards. Like a flash, they immediately ducked into a previously unnoticed mouse hole and were never seen again.

We didn’t even have them long enough to give them names. And we never knew who won the Wahoo 500-Inch Hamster Race.

* * *

As I said, I am fond of hamsters and other rodents, including squirrels, chipmunks, beavers, prairie dogs, porcupines, groundhogs and even rats.

(When he was a kid, my cousin in California, Jack Husebo, persisted in loving the heck out of a pet white rat, even though his mother, my Aunt Betty, was terrified of the species.)

And one time I was rummaging around an old tree stump and uncovered a nest with a mother mouse and four babies clinging to her teats. That presented a quandary. Should I exterminate the pests, babies and all?

As a boy I had spent many summers at my aunt and uncle Clara and Jerry Bartusek’s farm near Ceresco, so I recognized a farmer’s corn-crib enemy when I saw one.

But I didn’t have the blood-lust a farmer might have to destroy a hated foe, so I set about rescuing mama mouse and her babies, who remained attached to the mother even as she scurried away. I scooped the whole family up in a paper cup and moved them safely away.

But in Wahoo one winter a couple of years ago, a mouse incident really tested my feelings about rodents when a family of field mice decided to come in from the cold and set up housekeeping in my newly-purchased home.

A creature-killing frost was looming, and I was really conflicted about my uninvited squatters.

I decided to cohabit with my little intruders. After all, how much can they eat? (Answer: Everything they can get their cute, thieving little paws on).

If I stayed very quiet at night, watching television, a mouse would venture out to forage for crumbs on the carpet, or I’d catch a quick glimpse of it scurrying about. Kind of entertaining, actually.

That kept on for a few days, and I was getting used to my new roommates. Maybe this could work out after all.

Unfortunately, the first little guys began to sublet their new boardinghouse to numerous others of their kind.

One day I moved the toaster, revealing a mess of damp, chewed paper nesting, sprinkled generously with the cutest turdlets and accompanying dribbles, along with the darlingest stink.

I finally had to face the fact that I no longer had a friendly real estate arrangement with a rodent -- I had an infestation.

The rear of the refrigerator top yielded a similar cache of excrement, and then I knew the mouses’ lease was up. I couldn’t continue to patrol the house carrying a bucket of soapy water, Pine-Sol and bleach, looking for nests.

So I served an eviction notice in the form of some ingenious d-Con traps, which did the job neatly and odorlessly.

I feel badly about it to this day, but a landlord’s gotta do what a landlord’s gotta do.

To my chagrin, a house-wide cleanup crew after the eviction revealed that the mice had headquartered in a large, damp nest in the bowels of the sofa I always lounged in and sometimes slept on. I hired Fonzi, a local handyman, to bust up the now-ruined sofa and haul it away.

I know d-Con is probably cruel, as it causes internal hemorrhaging and a long, drawn-out death for pests, but it saves me from seeing the mangled, rotting mouse carcasses and evidence of the death throes. The dCon is also odorless and relatively safe for pets and babies.

However, I didn’t fully escape the unpleasant aspects of the extermination task, as I had hoped.

One day about a year later, to my lip-curling horror I discovered a tightly rolled ad magazines behind the living room sofa.

I unfolded the newsprint pages to reveal the dried-out, mummified but odorless corpse of one of my former tenants. It had crawled in there to die, just as the d-Con ads promised they would.

The dreaded chore is behind me now. Each autumn I take the coward’s way out with ample d-Con applications to avoid direct mouse-to-me contact. No more seasonal mouse-nest stink, either.

But I have a tiny twinge of remorse for the many mousie deaths I am responsible for. I have just enough guilt to imagine being haunted by their Disney cartoon-image ghosts.

When I die and, with luck, go to heaven, I can only hope that the humans’ paradise is far away from mouse heaven.

I don’t want to be revenged by the ghosts of my former rodent roommates who undoubtedly carry a hefty d-Con grudge against their evil, murderous former landlord.

By Bob Copperstone

Having caught the bi-wheeled fever from Dad’s hill-climber Harley adventures, and as I stumbled into puberty, I chafed to dip my toe into solo motorized cycling.

I got my chance when word got around in Wahoo that Lee Houfek was selling his Cushman scooter. I wanted it very badly. To my surprise, Dad bought it for me. I was only 13.

I’m sure he had a tough time winning Mom over to the scooter idea. But after all, he understood a young boy’s craving for motorized propulsion

.

And he, himself, had caught the fever during much of his early married life. Before he finally got the hill-climber, Dad was always joking to us kids about use buying him a motorcycle. He’d tease us, asking how we are coming along with a (nonexistent) “Buy Daddy a motorcycle” piggybank.

If he saw us with any coins, or if we talked about buying something else, he would say, “Oh, boy! Are you going to buy Daddy a motorcycle now?”

I took him seriously.

One spring day he saw me with a quarter in my hand. I was going to buy one of those balsa-wood glider airplanes at Kolterman’s dime store.

I knew what Daddy was going to say. He looked longingly at my quarter, and that made me very sad, because I had repeatedly failed to buy him a motorcycle. I just didn’t want to disappoint him yet again.

I looked up shyly to meet his eyes, then held up the coin in my open palm and offered in a thin voice: “Here, Daddy.”

He just stood there for the longest time. I guess I had called his bluff.

“Oh, Bobby, I was just kidding,” he said, kneeling and reaching with both hands to clasp my shoulders and pull me closer to him in a warm hug.

I don’t remember if he ever again asked me to buy him a motorcycle.

* * *

Besides my adventures on Dad’s hill-climber Harley, and his subsequent H-D hog, and my Cushman scooter, I came close to adding a Cushman Eagle.

The Eagle resembled a small-wheeled motorcycle (thus its allure). A guy would straddle it motorcycle-style instead of stepping through it. The Cushman factory in Lincoln stopped production in 1965.

My friend Ray Smith had one for sale.

This one was well-used but very attractive. New ones’ engines displaced 349cc, generating 8 horsepower, and could hit 52 mph.

But Ray’s Eagle’s engine was bored out and otherwise enriched for more power. And I was determined to exercise that power and took it for a spin..

I rode the beast northwest of town to Luther College Hill, a gravel incline that was almost as locally famous as Bodley’s Hill. (I heard that in the 1920s, bragging rights belonged to the driver of the car that could make it to the top of Bodley’s in high gear.)

Unhelmeted, I paused atop the hill overlooking the Luther College campus, then gunned the gutsy engine to begin the plummet down the freshly graveled road.

Yep, the speed was there, all right. Maybe too much speed? I began to have full-speed second thoughts. I eased up on the hand throttle, and my toe almost unconsciously took the opportunity to tap the brake (I can’t remember if the Eagle had a hand brake).

But it was too late.

Even with the wind whistling past my ears, I could hear the sickening metallic sound of the drive chain snapping loose, accompanied by a terrible fishtailing and complete loss of control because of the locked rear wheel.

The only way I could go now was down. And down I went, pancaking the machine, as gravity dictated.

I must have been thrown free and avoided being ground up under the skidding, heavy bike frame and engine.

I don’t know how long I lay sprawled flat and hurting in the middle of the road. I looked up the hill and spotted a cloud of dust coming right at me. A rattling, vintage 1920s sedan shuddered to a skidding stop right in front of me.

The driver immediately jumped out and began tongue-blistering me for blocking his road. I’m sure he wouldn’t have stopped at all if he could have gotten past the accident scene.

I didn’t try to argue with him -- I was too busy bleeding.

I recovered my senses and, limping a little and hurting all over, I skidded and wrestled the machine off the road. The broken chain had wrapped around the axle and locked the rear wheel tight.

My new friend didn’t even offer to help me, nor did he ask after my health, but continued to grouse about being delayed.

The topic of his rant concerned the value, if any, in the continuation of my existence here on earth. (He was against it).

I recognized his angry red face as that of a local farmer, Chauncey Beadle, whose son, George Beadle, was a Nobel Prize recipient and, later, one of Wahoo’s Five Famous Sons.

(That Nobel Prize, for plant genetics, was awarded in 1958, the same year Chauncey and I met on Luther College Hill.)

I don’t remember how I got the wounded machine back to Ray Smith, or how I explained its sorry state. I never did offer to buy it.

By Bob Copperstone

Some of my fondest Wahoo childhood recollections are cemented into my memory by three motorized two-wheeled vehicles.

Thanks for reading By C.S. Beaty! Subscribe to read the first chapter of the book Chris is writing about being a loser in high school.

They include a racing motorcycle, a docile motor scooter and, later in my adult life, a highway-hogging 750-cc Japanese cruiser.

Like probably every boy in the world who ever pushed a toy truck around the sand pile, I almost painfully ached to have an actual internal-combustion engine vehicle of my own, preferably two-wheeled.

My cycle odyssey began when I was about 10, as a passenger on my dad’s 1940s vintage Harley-Davidson hill-climber. (I think they imported that model from Europe, but it carried the Hog’s badge).

Often on a summer Sunday, Dad would plop me astride the rear fender on a hard leather pad, and we’d head north of Wahoo to the motorcycle hill-climbing venue outside Morse Bluff.

The climbs were fun to watch.

The racers competed against the clock, gutting their way up an impossibly-steep trail, clinging to their stripped-down, howling and growling machines -- music to our ears.

The gutsy cyclists would furiously grind dirt and gravel, dodging gullies, loose soil, rocks and other obstacles, doing their damndest to stay aboard and in competition.

They had kill-switches fastened to their bodies that would shut off the engines if (more likely “when”) they were thrown from their machines.

Those days, the hill-climber bikes were recognized by a bread-loaf sized leather cushion on the rear fenders (you remember that was my passenger seat on our way to the race). The racer would scoot back and sit on that pad for increased weight-distributing traction to the powered rear wheel.

As welcome as that pad was for that purpose, I’m here to tell you I didn’t welcome it all that much. My shaken kidneys hurt like hell as we bounced along the washboard gravel roads, dad on his cushioned and sprung leather saddle, and me clinging grimly to his waist, often bouncing high enough to show light under my butt.

Most of the bigger bikes of that era had long, wide saddles to accommodate both driver and passenger, but ours was a stripped-down hill-climber with an abbreviated driver’s seat. Dad hated to see me in pain, and would stop often to rest my kidneys. I was too old to cry, but I sure wanted to.

They didn’t make motorcycle kidney belts for kids, though, and I learned why they called them “hard-tail” Harleys. My tail was definitely harder by the time we got home.

* * *

It was that hill-climber bike that introduced both Dad and me to the joys of motorized, two-wheeled propulsion.

After puttin’ around Wahoo in that smaller bike for a few years, Dad got a chance to move up to the big boy toys.

His nephew, Jerry Bartusek Jr., had recently purchased a beautiful, muscular (1000cc), full-sized Harley-Davidson. Not long afterwards, while getting used to the bike, he lost control on pavement gravel and laid the bike down, suffering painful road rash and vowing never to climb back on. Junior quickly sold the bike to Dad.

Dad’s new ride was fondly nicknamed in the industry a “knucklehead” because its engine’s rocker-box ends resembled a clenched fist.

It was the company’s first overhead valve engine, boasting a satisfying 37 horsepower. It was produced from 1936 to 1947 and marked the beginning of a Harley history of muscular motorcycling.

Dad rode the hell out of that Harley, in all weather, even winter. He loved that bike. I never did get to solo in it, though. I was a skinny little runt as a kid, and it was too much bike to handle.

And anyway, when I was 13 I had my own motorized wheels – a Cushman scooter, which will be the topic of the next chapter of this Uncle Bob’s Growing Up Wigwam blog.

* * *

When Dad died of heart failure in 1968, I came back to Wahoo from California for the funeral. The Harley was still under a tarp in the alley behind the Wigwam Café.

Many of us in the family believe the bike may have played at least a part in Dad’s decline in health.

One day, he had untypically jackknifed the bike, falling hard to the bricks at the Wahoo City Hall intersection.

Toward the end, after the spill, he wasn’t very much of the same Harley Hank anymore, in all aspects of his daily life. I wasn’t around in Wahoo, and I don’t know if he ever rode the machine after the spill.

To my disappointment, I was in no position to own it, ride it or fix it since I lived at a trailer park in Monrovia, California, where I had just began my first job at a daily newspaper

.

Mom eventually gave the motorcycle to Dale Nichelson, a gem of a neighbor who always kept Dad’s Harley mechanically ticking, for free.

Dad was handy around the house (when I was 12, I helped him rebuilt a new bathroom with his own hands.) But I never saw him take a gasoline engine apart.

So Dale, true to his sterling character, sold the bike it to some brothers from Omaha, and promptly gave every cent of it back to Mom.

From there, history details are very sketchy, but it was said that the bike was sold again to someone who restored it ground up. I don’t know where that knucklehead beauty is now. It is undoubtedly being on proud display somewhere even today. I hope so.

I hated to miss the chance to own one of Dad’s bikes, because the bike was in pretty good condition. More importantly, it held a flood of pleasant boyhood memories.

Even today, whenever my bumped tailbone feels a twinge, I am subconsciously swept back to the summers of the 1950s, and I am holding on for dear life on the bumpy road to Morse Bluff.

NEXT: Free at last! On the road at age 13, piloting a brilliant red dream machine of a Cushman scooter.

You Can’t Bank On a Tree

In July of 2019 people at the Wahoo State Bank, next door to the Wigwam, planted a tree out front. The city ordered it removed, sparking a minor squabble amongst Wahoovians. I put in my two cents:

* * *

July 13, 2019

A tree grows in Wahoo.

Or does it?

A newly planted young sapling juts out bravely from its nursery spot in the “bump-out” curb in front of the sleek new Wahoo State Bank building.

It is straining to put down roots, as all the while certain people aren’t sure the baby tree should even dare to exist.

To the surprise of many, probably including the people who planted it, this fragile sprig has triggered a mini-storm of controversy.

Solid arguments have arisen at a City Council meeting and around town, both pro and con, and they all carry weight.

The City Council has ordered further study of the matter, guaranteeing a fair hearing for both sides, and there should be little worry that a reasoned decision will not result.

But whether the young tree stays or is uprooted, there are two facts that should be kept in mind for future meditation:

1- That trees and their silky leaves absorb carbon dioxide, a main contributor to climate change, and release oxygen, which we are glad to inhale.

And,

2- That the bank, without asking taxpayers for a dime, planted the tree in good faith, no doubt with the beauty and benefit of the downtown community in mind.

Good deeds should not go unrewarded.

* * *

Unfortunately, my two cents didn’t buy the sapling a reprieve, and it was yanked out. The controversy was a pleasant give-and-take, though, and the bank’s CEO wrote me a nice thank-you note for taking his side. I don’t know what happened to the sapling, but I hope it was adopted by a kind tree-hugger.

Bank Clock’s Time Was Up

As a small boy, I had a powerful attachment to a huge, impressive time machine.

When this wonderful machine called to me, I fled my favorite Tonka trucks, my Lionel train, my toy bulldozer – even my trusty bike, and ran to the corner of Fifth and Linden streets in downtown Wahoo.

For some reason, I considered that my clock worship was considered consummated if I stood directly under that giant when it clangorously broadcast its Westminster-chimed message to all of downtown.

Because this machine did, indeed, call to me. Loudly. Often. Regularly. You could set your watch by its calls. And a whole lot of people did exactly that.

My time machine was the huge, four-faced chime clock that jutted proudly and heavily from the south-east corner of the Wahoo State Bank.

You see, the bank is two doors east of the Wigwam Café, where I spent a good part of the days and evenings. My parents, Hank and Irma, had owned and operated the place since 1949 and I was 10 years old.

My pilgrimage successful, I could return to my more conventional playthings.

* * *

The old clock’s impressive size and its deep, resonant tones remain forever in my memory.

I can even sing the notes in tune with the famous chime sequence. (Nobody ever has, nor probably ever will, desire to hear me sing those notes, but they are there, stuck in my brain, just in case).

I think the clock struck the hours, quarter-hours, half-hours and 3/4 hours. To be frank, I also remember that my mother, Irma, among other merchants and employees who had to listen to the cacophony, complained about the continuous parade of gongs.

Actually, such public clocks came into use at the turn of the century, when relatively few could afford the luxury of a timepiece.

McClintock-Loomis Co. of Minneapolis made these bank clocks for only nine years, from 1908 to 1917, so that would probably help date the age of my massive musical friend.

When the venerable old clock was replaced by the digital box, I, for one, was happy to always know the temps, and I marveled at the state of modern progress that brought them to me.

The original clock had four faces, visible from all directions. If I remember correctly -- and I don’t know if it was even mechanically possible -- the four dials didn’t always keep the same, identical minute.

Today’s clock pre-dates the founding of the Wahoo State Bank itself. A photograph from the Historical Society Museum’s Anderson-Haney Collection in Wahoo shows the building’s name, chiseled in stone, as the Saunders County National Bank, its corner graced by the imposing, four-faced clock I knew and loved all those years later..

(In fact, one of my now-out-of-state relatives recently toured her hometown and just assumed that the present clock was the old one).

* * *

For a more complete overview of the clocks’ histories, I refer to excerpts from an excellent item in the July 1, 2020 issue of the Wahoo Newspaper:

By Lisa Brichacek

WAHOO – A piece of history anew now hangs above the corner of Fifth and Linden streets in Wahoo.

A new clock arrived at the corner where construction is wrapping up on the new Wahoo State Bank and was hoisted into place on the front of the building.

Wahoo State Bank President [now CEO] Greg Hohl said it was a big day, given the clock is one of the elements that speaks to the long-history of the bank.

The clock is a replica of one that once hung on the corner of the old bank building.

[Editor’s note: The replica clock has three dials, or faces, not four, like the original].

Hohl said that first clock was taken down in 1966, but many people in town still remember it. The reproduction company, Electric Time Company Inc., in Massachusetts knew it well too.

“Once I showed her a picture, she said it was a McClintock model immediately,” Hohl said.

Watching it be uncrated and lifted into place Friday morning, he agreed, too, that it looked like the clock that once hung from the bank that his great-grandfather helped to open on that corner in 1932.

Hohl has heard from many people that they were glad to hear the replicated clock face was coming back.

That original clock was sold. A digital clock and sign had replaced it on the corner.

“I think sometime after they regretted they took it down, but they didn’t save things like that back in the 60s,” he added.

* * *

So, what happened to that clock?

If it was sold, no one seems to know to whom, nor where it is now.

The actual clock, like so many other touchstones of my youth, has evaporated into the past. But it continues to serve me with happy memories, and will do so for the rest of my lifetime.

Oh, how time flies … away.

By Bob Copperstone

As a 10-year-old in 1948, I watched as the downtown Wigwam Café, run by my parents, Hank and Irma Copperstone waged an energetic but fripendly rivalry with the Fairview and Day & Nite cafés on the highway.

The Wigwam’s competition was north of downtown along the combined U.S. Highways 77 and 30-Alternate route that cut through Wahoo, and included the Whirla-Whip and Dairy Queen ice cream shops, among others.

It was a vigorous but subdued rivalry. Lillie Gibson, who owned the Fairview Café on the highways (and the City Café downtown), was the queen of that highway and wore her crown graciously as a well-respected civic leader.

Now, my dad, Hank, was also a respected businessman, and was much more outgoing and gregarious than Lillie.

Every night, after locking up the Wigwam and well after almost every downtown business had gone dark, Hank would seek the bright lights of the enemy territory and invading Lillie’s bright Fairview Cafe corner for coffee and camaraderie.

The Texaco and Frontier gas stations and, before my time, the Good-Fill station) at 12th and Chestnut, along with the Day & Nite Café, combined their fluorescent beacons that attracted Hank (and often me) like the proverbial moths to a flame.

The Day & Nite was a less-gaudy dive bar and grill. I loved it because it always had a pinball machine that sucked coins out of my pocket whenever I sneaked in there. Unaccompanied children weren’t really welcomed there, but they apparently liked my nickels well enough to let me spend them there.

Back at the Fairview, Hank always got a huge kick out of the inevitable ribbing he took from Fairview’s customers when he burst through the door. “Whassa matter, Hank?” customers would shout, “Gotta come here to get a GOOD cuppa coffee?”

“Hell, yeah,” Dad would roar, then plop down on a stool at the counter and yell at the waitress, “Gimme a cup of your awful coffee!” For the next hour or so he’d give his teasing tormenters as good as he got. He loved it.

Many years later, Dad told me that Lillie Gibson had confessed that she appreciated his patronage at the Fairview, and thanked him. But she half-apologized that she just couldn’t bring herself to return the favor at his Wigwam Cafe.

An early Day & Nite memory: At first, Hank and Clare “Muzzy” Miller, an early partner with us in the Wigwam’s business, often went straight to the Day & Nite after “closing up” the café. Irma and Muzzy’s wife, Dorothy were puzzled at first when their husbands started getting home very late – at sunrise, sometimes.

The truth was, the guys were gambling. Not exactly regular casino type gambling, like at cards or slot machines, but shady, nonetheless.

The café owner had smuggled in a pernicious type of pinball device that was called a “one-ball machine”. I was able to get a peek at it one day (I was about 10 or 11 and not allowed to go there nights with Dad and Muzzy).

As near as I could tell, the gambler would feed dime after dime into the slot, each coin raising the odds, until the pinball would be allowed to run a winning or losing course down the machine. Probably very much like a more-modern Pachinko game). If you fail to win, your dimes were lost. Win, and the machine paid off at the high odds you paid for. Hundreds of dollars were won and lost.

‘City Route’ Steers Traffic to Wigwam -- Although the highway truck stops had the advantage of heavier traffic than the city route, the federal government gave downtown (and the Wigwam) a boost by designating Fifth Street and Linden Street as City Route 30-A through downtown, with signs that routed some traffic completely away from the truck-stop trade.

That route, east a couple of blocks on Fifth Street off the highway, led traffic practically right up to the Wigwam’s front door. That was good for us, because Mom was making her famous pan-fried chicken dinners on Sundays at that time.

The City Route continued to Linden Street, then north at the bank corner eight blocks to the highway at 12th Street. A right turn took traffic straight out of town toward Omaha. By that time, traffic had completely bypassed the truck stops. (Westbound traffic was similarly guided away from the Fairview, and trucks didn’t use the city route, unless they had gotten lost.

Arrow Sign Detours traffic -- To Lillie’s discomfort, a huge, lighted arrow sign pointing east on 5th toward downtown (and away from the Fairview) appeared over the highway at the courthouse corner at 5th Street.

The northernmost highway merchants, including Lillie, had opposed the arrow, since tourists were steered away from Lillie’s café and her adjacent Fairview Motor Lodge (motel).

The arrow sign was buffeted badly by trucks’ antennas and other superstructure that broke the neon tubing and, later, smashed the replacement individual light bulbs.

As a consequence, the sign often remained unlighted, and the sign had to be taken down. The neon tubes were replaced by non-electrified tiny, loosely hinged reflective metal tabs that fluttered in the wind.

Finally, though, the sign succumbed to laws preventing overhead signs on federal highways (most of Chestnut Street was federal highway 77) and was taken down permanently.

Today the original metal sign is stored indoors on city property. There had been talk of re-installing that sign along the new Route 77 Bypass near Lake Wanahoo. But the arrow had suffered much rust and damage, and today a new arrow of about the same size sits on a hill above the Bypass. It points south toward downtown Wahoo at the Chestnut Street exit. This time, there was no Lillie Gibson or other opponents to protest.

The Saunders County Museum briefly explored acquiring it several years ago, but the city was unwilling to part with it, museum curator Erin Hauser said recently.

City Café Auction Seen as Victory: Although Lillie Gibson owned the downtown City Cafe, and benefited to some extent from the City Route, the Fairview was her main business, what with its attached “Fairview Motor Lodge,” precursor to the modern motel;

Eventually, Lillie sold the City Café and the contents went under the auctioneer’s hammer. Hank came away with a great deal of restaurant equipment, including a much-needed, newer commercial dishwashing machine.

That day, after the auction at sundown, Dad and I were carrying some of our winning-bid items a half-block down Fifth Street to the Wigwam. With his typical humble pride, Dad softly, quietly, confided to me that he thought we had “won” our lengthy downtown rivalry. Hank and Irma: 1; Lillie: 0.

But it was a peaceful war, and Lillie had been a formidable, but ever-dignified and worthy foe.