Stories from Thursday, January 7, 2016

Jan. 28, 1930 - Jan. 5, 2016 NORTH PLATTE, Neb. -- Bert B. Housman, 85, of North Platte, passed away Jan. 5, 2016, at Great Plains Health. He was born Jan. 28, 1930, to Floyd James and Grace Lodema (Mosley) Housman at Palisade, Nebraska. Bert graduated from Hayes Center High School with the class of "48"...

Listen my friends, and you shall hear one of the best lists ever written about the common sense philosophy of those of us who live in the Heart of America. It's called simply, "Advice from an Old Farmer." I don't know who wrote it -- whether it was one person or many different folks -- but I do know it clearly expresses the advice I have heard through the years in my travels through Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa...

McCOOK, Neb. -- Commercial air service continues to decline at McCook Ben Nelson Regional Airport and may not see improvements until this summer at the earliest. Boarded passengers were down 17 percent in 2015 after a disastrous 2014 which posted a 79 percent decrease, according to enplanement reports from the city...

Fishermen found ice thick enough to support them Tuesday afternoon at Swanson Reservoir near Trenton, Neb. Elsewhere in the state, an ice fishing seminar set for Mahoney State Park Saturday had to be canceled because there was not enough safe ice. Be sure to check on local conditions before venturing out on the ice...

You're much more likely to be elected president of the United States than to win Saturday's Powerball drawing -- which will be the largest in history, an estimated $675 million -- but won't keep millions of us from trying our luck. Someone in Lincoln did win a "meager" $1 million in Wednesday night's drawing, but the best way to double your money is still to fold it in half and put it back in your wallet...

I shouldn't have done this but if I had to guess, I have a feeling a lot of mom's before me have done the same thing. One early morning, a couple weeks before Christmas, I woke up way before my alarm, panicking about all I needed to get done before Christmas...