Frontier County news 41 years ago

My grandmother, Flora, raised Hollyhocks. Actually, you don’t “raise” Hollyhocks, they raise themselves sometimes in incongruous areas of your garden, but my love of the flower comes from my grandmother who would take a full bloom and a just peeking out bloom and with a simple toothpick create a flower princess all dressed up for the dance by joining the two. Grandma’s were always in the alley along a fence, hardly watered and yet covered with flowers stems standing 4 or 5 feet tall.

This year is a stellar year for Hollyhocks! I have blooms 7 feet tall stretching into the limbs of a small tree. When we had company last week, they happened to be seed-savers, so I cut several seed pods to send home with them.

I’ve always called them alley flowers, but when I looked up some criteria for raising them from seed, I found that the old timey name was “outhouse flowers” because people would plant them up against outhouses to screen the area but also make it obvious to visitors where the outhouse was located. Seems perfect to me, beauty against a less than desirable, but necessary, building.

The following news items came from the Frontier County Enterprise, “The Only Newspaper in The World That Puts Frontier County First”, Thursday, March 29, 2007, edition.

Dave Heineman was Governor of Nebraska and shared the following: “Recently, I signed into law legislation restructuring the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. Nebraska’s senators sent LB 296 to my desk early in the session so that we could begin the process of making changes that will be needed to restructure the three agencies currently known as the Health and Human Services System (HHSS) and merge them into one single department.” Continuing he stated: “The restructuring effort is about making the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services more accessible, easier to understand and more effective for the people we serve.”

I can’t help but read about HHSS and not think of Betty Boehm who ran the department in McCook for years. Betty was a no-nonsense kind of woman and had she still been with HHSS in 2007, I’m pretty sure she would have had some interesting comments on the layers of bureaucracy created then and even more so today. Betty worked when you could still smoke in offices and meetings and her little slide top ashtray was her signature accessory! (This comment should in no way be interpreted as a dig at the workers in our local office, they are understaffed, over-regulated and still manage to take care of those in need.}

The Curtis Raider (basketball) 3 on 3 team “ captured the 5th-6th grade boys Division Championship on Saturday, March 24, at Southern Valley Jr/Sr High School. The Raiders defeated teams from North Platte, Cozad and Pleasanton in pool play before defeating a team from Arapahoe for the tournament title.”

The “Stepping Back In Time” section by Colleen Ehlers, held the following reminiscences: “The MVHS students placed in the top ten at the Mid-Plains Inter-High Technical-Scholastic contest (3/27/1997). They are Dusty Owens, Amber Hill, Erin Myers, Tyson Hammond, Billy Davidson, Jeremy Cole, Kenny Wiiest, Dallas Farr, Jeff Vanderbeek, Derek Dempcy, Christina Weeth and Kort Kemp.” From April 1, 1982: “A 20-year ring was presented to Bob Brown by Melvin East at the firemen’s annual ball.” From March 28, 1957: “These seven UNSA beauties are contending for the goddess crown. They are Sharon Barnes, Mary Ann Pifer, Irma Burton, Marilyn Rozgensees, Marilyn Wood, Mary Ruppert and Rowena Sarge.”

Frontier County has a unique history of its own which has been captured in several books many of which are available for research at the SWNGS library. Our open library hours are Thursdays from 1-4 PM and we are located in the Temple Building, 322 Norris Avenue, Rooms 2-7 on the second floor. There is an elevator available for your use.