Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1961)
THK KKONTIKK, O’Neill, NiJiraska, Thursday, January 19, 19fil Prairieland Talk "Livery Stables to Filling Stations" By ROMAINE SAUNDERS, 4110 South 5i»t St., Lincoln 6, Nebr. O'Neill today has three hotels located in the Inisiness part of the city. In the 1.880's there were six hotels and five livery stables. In that earlier period the “first class" hotel was a three story frame build ing that stfxxi at the corner of Fourth and Fremont streets. One wild windy day it burned down and nothing stands today when* it had stood. Up the street at the corner of Fourth and Everett streets stood the hotel with Rosco Conklin at the desk, who punched a cow Itoy in the jaw at one time. This hotel still stands. Two doors west of the bus depot was the Mitchell hotel and across the m ne street was the Dewey House. Saunders Where the K. C. hall now stands was at one time the Arcade Hotel, and it was here that Billy Wrede shot and killed Sheriff Barney Kearns and where Doc Middelton hung out when he cam? to town and from where he was taken to serve a term in the state prison for horse stealing. Where the postof fice now stands on north Fourth street was a hotel in pioneer days, later became the home of B. S. Gilles pie family, then taken over by the John Skirving family. Hotel Evans (now the Western) on th? south side of Douglas street between Third and Fourth streets was started about 1889 by Wes Evans and was the towns “best hotel” for some 15 years, Evans and his wife taking over the management of the Golden hotel when it was completed. The remains of Mr. and Mrs. Evans now at rest in the abode of the dead up on the hill. Livery barns are no more, hut everywhere stands a “filling station.” * * » A cordial letter comes to me from E. P. Loy of Clarksville, Ark., another from Prairieland who thought the gems of life were to be found in regions beyond. But Mr. Loy, like others that left us, has memories that he cherishes. Back in the “horse and t>uggy” days he was in the draying business in O’ Neill and knew us all. An O'Neill friend sees that E. P. gets The Frontier, and so from time to time names appear that are familiar to him. Mr. Loy also writes of his boyhood days in a country school at the time of the great blizzard of January 12, ’88. After leaving O’Neill he was for a time in one of the counties west of Holt, then to that great state to the south of us where he now holes up. Nice to hear from you, Mr. Loy. * * * Another governor, another president. The sun rises and sets as usual, we eat and sleep and go about life’s daily program happy or sorrowful as ever. And we respect and honor those now in high places of state and national authority. Johnie had a fancy little dog that a neighboring rancher took a fancy to up here in the cattle countn of North Nebraska. Johnie, said that cowpunchei you can look over my herd of some ten thousand cat tie, pick you out ten cows, and they are yours fo that dog. Johnie, the little kid early in life got int< the cattle business. He now a grown man strut about on the streets of our Capitol City. * • • At it again at the State House in Lincoln, thosi honored gents proposing to hook a sales tax on th< citizens of our state. Tax—if you have no propert; but do have a little money the assessor will get you Two patriotic citizens near and dear to me are aske< to dig up $65 tax on the auto they must have to ge about in. Tax on the horse and buggy a half century ago—nothing much. * * * A walk in the open about everyday makes foi healthy living, a sturdy pair of legs and sound mind. Friends along the way to spend a little time with discussing world problems. I saw them again today, John and Lew and Tom, Sue and Mary too. We visit one with the other, go on our way and meet a little child with a sweet smiling face, and we stop to grow young again. A clerk in a store, a busy business man serving his customers, a gent in shirt sleeves at his desk checking over his record of orders—these are busy men and women but al ways time for a friendly chat. And so it is day after day Traveling along life’s lengthening highway A smile, a cheering word, a friendly hand Thats what we have on prairieland. * • • The first week of this new year it was 66 years since the lifeless body of Barret Scott was taken out of the icy waters of the Niobrara river. Scott had been hung at the Whiting bridge by the few remain ing Vigilanters of northern Holt county. Scotty— what had he done to bring him to a tragic end? He had helped the needy with county funds at a period of distressing hard times on prairieland. His bones are at rest in a grave up there on Prospect Hill. Where is the one who put the rope about Scotty’s neck and left that boot heel mark on his victim’s bald head? He too lies today somewhere in the abode of the dead. * * * * State Senator Frank Nelson of Holt county pro bably spent the weekend his first this year with relatives over near Omaha, then back to Lincoln where he is a permanent fixture when state senators gather at the State House to do their stuff. State Senator Fern Hubbard Orme concluded to stay home on the job and not go to Washington to substitute for Congressman Weaver in a gathering of officials to determine how to care for the aged of the country. Editorial The Most Logical Plan State Senator Cecil Craft of North Platte has aroposed in the Legislature a bill calling for what we feel is a logical re-districting of the state’s Con gressional districts. There have been many suggestions about how to reduce Nebraska’s present four districts to three. However, LB 122, Senator Craft’s proposal, seems to us the most sensible—certainly as far as western Nebraskans are concerned. It would extend present boundary lines of the state’s Fourth District south to the Kansas line, and cast to include Antelope, Boone, Nance, Merrick, Hamilton, Clay and Nuckolls counties. In effect, it would divide Nebraska into a large "“western” Congressional district, a smaller “cen tral” district, and still smaller “eastern” district. All would be approximately equal in population, as required by law. Certainly western Nebraskans, both north and south, a great deal in common economically. They share a wheat-and-cattle economy in the dry lands areas, and a com-and-sugar beet economy in the irrigated valleys. It’s logical that a Representative in Congress speak for many persons with common interests. And assuredly wheat growers or cattlemen in Red Willow county have more in common with farmers or ranchers in Cherry county than they do the mer chants of Lincoln or the manufacturing plants of the Missouri valley. The Purse Strings Lancaster (S. Car.) News (Ind.) The idea that the Federal Government must come to the aid of education unless this nation is to face some vague disaster in the indefinite future stems from an erroneous national survey and a choice collection of selfish motives. The national survey, conducted several years ago, almost convinced Congress that the states could not meet their educational needs in either plant or teaching personnel without Federal aid. Although this survey was successfully challenged as a weighted report, the idea implanted at that time has persisted. Federal bureaucrats and national educational organizations support Federal aid to education be cause they find nothing alarming in the idea of Federal control of schools. They deny that aid would mean control as a tactic to confuse opponents but any historian among them knows that the accep tance of Federal funds means also the acceptance of supervision. In a letter to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin describing w+iat Federal aid to schools would mean, Fred E. Wright wrote: “I speak of the so-called need for Federal aid to education. I speak of Federally-approved school children attending Federally-approved school build ings, using Federally-approved textbooks, riding Federally-approved school buses, eating Federally approved menus in Federally-approved cafeterias, taught by Federally-approved school teachers using a Federally-prescribed curriculum. I speak of Pennsylvania supporting the schools of Arkansas, and Arkansas doing the same for South Dakota. "Is it too much to hope that the American people will not let themselves fall for this unconstitutional solution to a problem which each community must face for itself? Is it too much to expect that Pennsylvania, and each other state, will decide what its own needs are in education and continue to solve it own problems in this field? As Simple As A-B-C There's something drastically lacking in the cur rent battle over the Federal aid to education issue. The spendthrifts who want the government to subsi dize our schools don’t explain how the schools would operate. Shucks that’s easy. By 1968, the school superintendent would do it this way: Parent: My child says the cafeteria food is bad. Superintendent: Why tell me? Write the Secre tary of Agriculture. Parent: How come my boy was kept after school for throwing spitballs? Superintendent: Detention for spitballing was upheld by United States Supreme Court versus Joy ner, May, 1967. Janitor: I want a raise. Superintendent: No problem. Call your Congress man. Teacher: Can I order some new history books? Superintendent: Not in this election year. Parent: How long is Christmas vacation this year? Superintendent: Did you vote in the last election? Principal: Where are the erasers, chalk and pen cils we ordered? Superintendent: You’ll have to wait. Military ap propriations were increased last month. Proud Father: Look. My boy Scott is awfully smart. Could he skip first grade? Superintendent: Is he a Republican or Demo crat? "Making" Money If the U. S. government started printing twice as many new one-dollar bills as it took out of circulation each year, everyone knows what would happen. We would have inflation of the worst kind. Without realizing it, Americans are asking the government to do what amounts to much the same thing. They are demanding that Congress spend more and more money on more and more services and social welfare programs. If the government took in enough taxes to pay the extra expenses, that would be one thing—but over the years the govern ment has spent $290 billion more than it has taken in. When the government needs money it doesn’t have, it can deposit a promissory note in a com mercial bank; then it writes checks against the deposit. People who receive the checks cash them, and the government has “created” money where none existed before. The effect is the same as if the government had printed that amount of new money without withdraw'ing any old money from circulation. Of course, expansion of the money supply by the banking system is not in itself something to be condemned. In fact, as the country grows, we are sure to need more money to keep the economy operating. What is dangerous is the abuse of the money-creating facilities of the banks in order to expand government expenditures without collecting additional taxes. Such abuse is bound to lead to in flation and reduction in value of everybody’s money. A plain bar of iron is worth about $5. This same bar of iron made into horseshoes, is worth $10.50. If made into needles, it becomes worth $3,285, and if turned into balance springs for watches, it attains a worth of $250,000! The same is true of another kind of material_ man—whose value is determined by what he makes of himself. Frontiers Ago r 50 YEARS AGO • O’Neill has made rapid strides in the past ten years. The census returns show the population has nearly doubled since the census > of 1900. In that year it was a s little over eleven hundred. The census of 1910 shows a popula tion of 2087 . . . The annual ice harvest has been in progress the ! past two weeks and the ice ; houses about town are all filled r up with an unusually good quanti ty of ice. The very cold weather with but little snow has made t fine ice . . . H. W. Reed has t moved his restaurant to the r Cress building first door east of Horiskey’s grocery. Good meals served and lunches at all hours . . . Last Saturday Judge Malone issued a marriage license to William J. Foxworthy and Norma Tuttle, both of Stuart . . . County Attorney Whelan thinks he may find it necessary to take some steps to reduce the evil of small boys smoking. Boys in knee pants are seen every day knocking the ashes from their pipes just before entering school. 25 YEARS AGO A find that roused intense in terest in boys was made below the power dam on the Niobrara river about thirty miles north of here a few weeks ago. Wood choppers in what had been a part of the channel of the stream found buffalo skulls where a herd had died in the quick sand. Per naps a prairie fire or blizzard frightened them and they entered the water only to die in the relentless sand . . . Contractor O’ Brion of Grand Island who has the contract for excavating for the new courthouse, arrived in the city Tuesday and this after noon workmen started on the preliminary work, such as re moving some of the trees on the courthouse lawn . . . Charles Hoyer seemed to think he was driving on a paved road from coast to coast when he was help ing George Hansen put up ice. The report is that he loaded the box on the back of his car with cakes of ice, drove from the pond to the Hansen home, backed up to the ice house, be fore he discovered that he had lost all the ice on the way in. 10 YEARS AGO Holt county’s winter of 1950-’51 stands a good chance of making history of a different kind. Fresh in the minds of most of the citi zenry are the rugged winters in recent years. But Califomia-like weather has been the rule thus far this year. Tuesday the mer INSURANCE Hospitalization Mutual of Omaha LIFE United of Omaha Oscar Spitzenberger Bo * 667 Telephone 888 O'Neill, Nebr. Office at 429 North 3rd Street 38tf cury climbed to 63 degrees . . Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Bruder longtime Holt county residents will celebrate their golden wed ding anniversary on Tuesday Jan. 23 . . . Mrs. Augusta Me Pharlin, 82, widow of the late J H. McPharlin and a well-knowi O’Neill resident, boarded f chartered plane at the Municipa airport here Monday and heade< for Denver, Colo. Mrs. McPhar lin will visit her daughter, Mrs Alfred Steverson at Denver am then fly to the West Coast ti visit her son, Dr. J. H. McPhar lin jr., at Salinas, Calif., and ; son Eldon McPharlin, a Lo Angeles attorney. 5 YEARS AGO W. R. (Bill) Tenborg on Thurs day celebrated his 82nd birthda; anniversary with a party held a the home of his granddaughter Mrs. Walter Meier in O’Neill . . Dewitt Gunter, a retired farme from the Frenchtown localit; near here, now is minus boti legs. Several years ago in Siou: City he submitted to the amputa tion of one leg. Friday at Univer sity hospital in Omaha, off cam< the other leg. Both amputation: are above the knee. . .Amelia wil have to close its two-year high school after this school year State Education Commissioner F B. Decker said Friday in Lin coln . . . The post office at Ew ing has been advanced from a third-class to a second-class rating, the 1955 receipts being in pxcess of $8,000 ... A Cessna 170 aircraft enroute from Brook ings, S. D., to Laramie, Wyo., passed low over O’Neill Saturday afternoon, couldn’t locate the Stuart-Atkinson airport and final ly landed in a farm field about six miles west of Atkinson. The Long Ago At Chambers 50 YEARS AGO Mr. Cheeney of Sheridan was in town last Saturday trying to make arrangements to run their telephone line into Chambers . . . Miss Clara Higgins entertained a party of friends at a Candy-Pull, Wednesday evening. Games were played and at midnight a dainty lunch was served . . . Mr. and Mrs. E. V. Sageser, who have been visiting in Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa, for a few weeks, returned home Tuesday . . . Joe Myers who went to the Methodist hospital in Omaha, last week, to have his eyes treated is getting along as well as possible . . . The new building of Mr. Martins on the Samon place is being rapidly erected . . . Mr. Saxton died Saturday night at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Tom Thompson, north of Amelia, from old age. Interment was in the Chambers .cemetery. His home was near Inman. 25 YEARS AGO A Triple A Rhode Island Red hen owned by Jimmy Doherty was hatched in February in 34, and began laying eggs the follow ing August. It was observed by the owner that once in 30 days this particular hen was laying a double yoke egg and continued the good work until she moulted in the fall of 35. Then it was found that she laid two eggs one larger than a turkey egg, which contained a smaller egg . . . Mrs. Myra Anderson was surprised at her home Saturday afternoon in honor of her 83rd birthday . . . Richard Burtwistle was unfor tunate in having his right hand nearly severed Saturday p.m. while he and other men were sawing wood. They were on the Burtwistle premises but a long distance from the house. The men rushed him to Stuart for medical attention. WHAT QUALITY! WHAT BEAUTY! WHAT A PRICE! HI WHAT A SAVING! | t%e new • >—SM. “■»> >1 W« ia|f • U|b»< C«—r«l M * h*. Vaow. prbilpl* *ybp • !■ * PwtLhtTrp * BMMpalaHMrkMMd FREE LIVE DEMONSTRATION IN OUR STORE DANKERT'S SERVICE 619 East Douglas Chambers Phone 410-W O’Neill Phone TV 2-2101 A Poem From Mrs. Eby ... —Let Jesus Be Your Guide— Can you picture a builder with out plumb line with him? 1 How his buildings would lean, 1 never stand straight and trim, Or a ship without a rudder way down below, without a direct 1 course knowing just where to > go. Or maybe a car with faulty ig 3 nition go limping along till it 3 comes to a station? That’s life without Jesus, no di rection or guide to point out the way and walk beside, / 'Ibese are three pictures of life t to be free, we need Jesus on , board to guide you and me, ' This old world seems full of , drifting souls, who have no dy namics, no definate goals. The world is crying out for strong Christian youth who have cour age to live for Jesus and truth, And youth asks the question in this trying hour, where can we find that kind of power? The answer comes through when Jesus Christ says, “Just follow me young folks and you shall be lead." (Della Stuart Eby) I "The | EDITOR" Have you read this little story yet that is making the rounds? The lady at the supermarket checkout counter was unloading her purchases. Out or the shop ping cart came three packages of cigarettes, four cakes of soap, two bottles of hand lotion, a bot tle of suntan lotion, a jar of face cream, a pair of canvas work gloves, two knitting needles, four flashlight batteries, two maga zines, a phonograph record, six glasses, a quart of milk, a dozen eggs, a TV dinner and a package of frozen chicken. As the lady paid her bill, she com mented, “Food is so expensive nowadays that it is no wonder that the farmers are getting rich.” —BJR— Then there was the country editor who finally wearied of all the hue and cry that followed each of his editorial blasts. This week, he decided to duck all the public issues, so he simply re printed the Ten Commandments. Next day, he got a note from an angry subscriber saying: “Can cel my subscription. . .You’re getting too personal! —BJR— A father and mother can sup port a dozen children through thick and thin, but the children want the government to support the old folks. —BJR— i Do You Know Your Neighbor? “Know Your Neighbor” is not a contest. There are no prizes given for correctly identifying the person pictured. The only reward is the satisfaction of knowing your neighbor. Last week's Guess Who was Jim Sessions, Western Home Improve nent representative in O’NeilL Here’s an O’Neill businessman you’ve met. It’s nice for children to have pets — until the pets start hav ing children. —BJR— And last but not least we offer this story: The little fellow was strolling down the street leading his little yellow dog when suddenly he en countered a big fellow with a huge bulldog. “Keep your dog away from my dog,’’ shouted the little man. “I warn you.’’ The big guy snorted and said: “That’s a laugh. What could a little yellow cur like that do to my big ibulkiog?” Then bang! The fight started. Just when it looked as if the bull dog was about to dispose of the little yellow mongrel, the little dog opened up its mouth and whammo! That was the last of the big bulldog. Naturally the big guy was flab bergasted and he screamed at the little fellow: “Say what kind of dog do you call that?” “Well,” said the little fellow, “before I cut off his tail and painted him yellow, he was an alligator.” A Better Tomorrow With a Good Today It's natural to want the best possible future for the children in your family. Bringing them up in a progressive community lays a firm foundation for their future success and happiness. Your hometown Co-op works side-by-side with you to improve every aspect of your community’s life. By making it possible for you to obtain quality products and services at fair prices, the Co-op raises living standards and encourages healthy business competition. Enjoy the advantages of trading with your Co-op firms. They are your good neighbors, helping you build a better tomorrow ... Co-opfi are afi American ^ Elgin Farmers Cooperative Exchange Bassett Farmers Union as Basketball Association