McCook, 1883: The end of year two

The building on left, the Bieroc Café building, was the Post Office from the 1880s until 1904. The center building, the Tribune Office is now the Sehnert Bakery. Not shown is a vacant lot between the Tribune and the Meeker-Phillips Building, now occupied by the Retro Planet store and The McCook Abstract Co. The vacant lot, located between the Tribune and Meeker Block is now the Rishel Building, which houses Longnecker Jewelry, and was built after 1900.

From H.P. Waite's Collection of McCook Tribune Stories

McCook Tribune December 5, 1883:

McCook is to have a place other than the Church and the Band Hall where public meeting can be held. The Church serves the purpose when the gatherings are of such a character that they can properly be held there. The Band Hall is suitable for all sorts of public meeting, but its capacity is limited. Dances are usually held in the dining room of one of the hotels.

But McCook has, for sometime, felt the need of a place in which larger audiences can be seated than can be accommodated at the Band Hall, and where more persons can dance at one time than can do so in the dining rooms of the hotels.

A man from Chicago, one Joseph Menard, is about to erect a building 50 x 140 feet in size on the lots immediately north of the Citizens Bank (now occupied by McCook Carpets Plus and The Sports Shop, at 206 and 208 Norris Avenue. The building was for a long time known as the Menard Opera House.) The ground floor will be used for mercantile purposes. A hall, 40 X 50 feet in size will be provided on the second floor, with a stage 15 X 33 feet. The ceiling will be 14 feet high. The structure will be the finest and costliest west of Hastings to be used thusly.

Troubles at a Social Event -- Dec. 12, 1883:

The social dance that was to have been held in the Band Hall one week ago, but which was postponed on account of the inclement weather, was held last night. Some young toughs, at different times during the evening, disturbed the dance by pounding on the side of the building. Judging from the terrific noise produced, they must have wielded large chunks of wood.

The culprits who created that disturbance at the dance were found to be older members of "Genus Homo" than was first supposed. Their conduct was induced by imbibing too freely of "Tanglefoot." Their identity was discovered, and they were brought before the local Justice of the Peace, who administered punishment in the shape of fines, which the gentlemen paid. Such outlawry has no place in a civilized community, and must be discouraged, in similar fashion, every time the perpetrators are apprehended.

Mr. Kimmell, who had newly arrived in the new community in November to assume ownership of the Tribune, turned nostalgic as he described his first Christmas in McCook.

Dec. 25, 1883: This day was observed quietly for the most part, except for the occasional explosion of fire crackers. All business houses were closed, which gave the streets a Sunday aspect. The only place of entertainment is the Skating Rink, and this was crowded early and late with merry-makers. Tonight the band serenaded a number of the residents on Mt. Zion (the name given to that part of the settlement, which is on "the hill".)

Last night the church was filled to its capacity by those who came to witness the Christmas exercises of the Union Sunday School. The church is an ugly wooden box, cheaply constructed, because money for its building was not plentiful. The interior presents four bare white plastered walls, pierced on the north and south with several many-paned windows. There is no altar, merely a wooden pulpit, crudely made by unskilled hands, set on a platform raised a few inches above the floor level. The floor is on matched boards, and it is uncarpeted. For lack of funds there are no pews, but only wooden chairs.

The church is used as a place of worship on Sundays, and as a school room on five days of each week. At night it is lighted by smoking kerosene lamps in brackets along the walls.

There was no Christmas Tree, because even had there been money with which to buy one, none was to be had. The front of the room was decorated with homemade banners and mottoes and stings of popcorn.

The program was varied. The anthem, "Glory to God in the Highest" was sung by devout, but uncertain and untrained voices, to the doleful and wheezy mutterings of a cottage organ. There were recitations by some of the little folks, a declamation suitable to the occasion by one of the older members of the school, a song by the infant class. Then there was a search by a delegation of children for Saint Nicholas, who, of course, was found and came, rosy cheeked and flaxen bearded, clad in a fur overcoat and jangling a string of sleigh bells. He carried a pack, from which he dispensed bags of candy and nuts to the young people.

The weather has been perversely un-Christmas like. When one considers the Christmas season, he thinks of deep snow, bitter winds and gray skies. Today a brilliant sun has arched the Southern Quadrant of the heavens. The frost that whitened the ground in the early morning quickly disappeared, and at noon a warmth, reminiscent of Spring, pervaded all outdoors. The dun colored prairie swept in all directions to the blue rimmed horizon.

Christmas is the day of all days of the year that reunites families. It is the day of all others that those who are members of a family wish to be at home. To the homeless, or to those away from home, it is a time of great sadness. Many young persons, spending their first Christmas here among strangers in the unusual environment of this rude and uncouth land, recalling Christmases past, have been unutterably lonely. This day has been different from any Christmas they have known. They had not supposed there was any place in this Christian country where the festival of Christmas was celebrated in any manner other than that in which, from their earliest childhood, they had seen it celebrated. They had associated the observance of this holiday with a stately church, having a lofty oak beamed ceiling, mullioned windows, through which the sun spreads paths of color, and a beautiful altar, which on Christmas Day is ablaze with lights and is festooned with evergreen and holly, with chimes rung from a carillon, with the grand old Christmas Carols, with a surplused choir, with music swelling from a deep-toned organ.

They were aghast, shocked, stunned at the absence of these emblems of sanctity. They wondered if the ideals of Christianity mean the same to the men of this rough country that they mean to those who are familiar with the trappings of the older order.

But when they recalled the incidents or the homely service of the night before, they knew it was in keeping with the traditions of the Nativity, that it was inspired by the true spirit of the season.

They knew, too, that from this seeming chaos will evolve a culture as fine as that of any other civilization, because those who have come to this raw prairie have the desire and the determination that it shall. They knew that what had seemed to them the substance was, in fact, but the habiliment of faith, and that the foundation of religion is rigidly simple. They knew that here things are not ready-made, but that if they would have them better or different than they are, the task of making them so, is theirs.