Botched hangings and other tidbits from history

Every time I go to the store to get eggs, I'm astounded by the fact that there are at least 4 types of eggs to choose from: Eggs, Large Eggs, Extra Large Eggs and JUMBO Eggs each appropriately a little more expensive by the dozen than the first.

My personal opinion is that the "Eggs" classification is made up of a product that a normal pullet would have been embarrassed to leave in a nest when I was growing up. I kept thinking that it was me, that my five year old self memories of that sunny side up egg were just "large" due to the fact I really didn't want to eat it so it looked huge on my plate.

Then I noticed that some recipes were calling for large eggs. Hmmm, apparently Betty Crocker had caught on to the sham, but instead of increasing the eggs to four, her box called for large! I can see where that would be necessary. It's not like my mom would say: "Susan, go out and get me three pullet eggs and a broody hen egg so I can make this cake"!

Anyway, remember when all the yuppie nutritionists were talking about how eggs were bad for you and all the egg farmers were going broke because of it? Well, maybe this is the hen's justice for that idiocy. They are on a strike that may last forever, and me, well, I'm going to be buying Jumbo Eggs for a long time because I like the way they look on a plate; over easy now, if you don't mind!

Eggs aside, here are some tidbits that I found when researching mysteries, all taken from the pages of the McCook Tribune!

"The action of the board of supervisors of Custer County (Broken Bow) in allowing Sheriff Jones $300 for hanging Haunstine is being criticised by a great many tax payers. The price is thought to be exorbitant." (July 10, 1891). (I'm with Sheriff Jones on this one because I read the account of the hanging. First of all around 2,000 people broke into the yard where the hanging was to occur. Then they got the prisoner up on the scaffold, he said his apologies and the drop door was opened only to have the rope around his neck break and the prisoner fall to the ground. So Sheriff Jones had to climb down the scaffold, get the prisoner, find a better rope and proceed to carry out the sentence again. I'm thinking that was pretty traumatic even in those days.)

From the Norfolk dispatch printed in the Tribune on the same date as above: "Twenty little Indians arrived today from the Genoa Indian School to go to work in the sugar beet fields. They will be put in a field by themselves and can earn from $1 to $1.50 per day. Sixty-seven arrived from Lincoln yesterday and went to work in the fields today. There are at present about six hundred men and boys in the vicinity of Norfolk at work in the beet fields and there is room for 500 more."

"H. Wootton went last Saturday to McCook to see his parents. Mr. Wootton had neither seen them nor heard of their whereabouts for nearly thirty-five years. Early in childhood they become separated, neither knowing where the other lived, or that they were alive. Last Saturday, upon hearing that there was a family residing at that place by the same name resolved to go over with the faint hope that they might be his long sought parents, which to his delight, proved to be. He returned the first of the week greatly relieved in mind to know where they lived and that they were alive. "(Reprinted from the Curtis Enterprise in the McCook Tribune, August 26, 1909) A 35 year search for someone that was less than 60 miles away!

SWNGS monthly meeting will be held Saturday, Feb. 4, at 1 p.m., 110 West C, Suite M-3. Our library will be open for research at that time.