Occasionally It Snows in Christian County

Snow yesterday, gone today

Tuesday afternoon was cold and very windy. Sleet began to fall as darkness approached. Soon the temperature dropped enough that the precipitation began sticking to the roadways.

When Isaac arrived home from work at 10:00 p.m., he had seen a car in the ditch and had wondered at one corner if he might end up there, too. He had turned the steering wheel, but the car kept going straight -- straight across the road, straight toward the ditch. Then, the tires grabbed, and he was suddenly headed in the direction he had wanted to go.

School was cancelled yesterday (Wednesday) in Christian County, and also in three adjoining counties: Todd and Muhlenberg in Kentucky and Montgomery in Tennessee. Also, classes were cancelled at the Community College. Dennis, who went to work at 5 a.m., verified that the roads were treacherous at that hour.

I took the photo above as I drove to work about 9:30 yesterday morning. The slick coating on the roads had mostly melted, but snow continued to fall through early afternoon. By nightfall, there was little evidence that snow had ever fallen; nearly all of it had melted away.

After I arrived at work, I found out that approximately half of my co-workers weren't going to be there. Supposedly the roads were still too bad for them to make it. I think the real problem might have been that they didn't have babysitters for their children who were home from school for the day.

Old Bank Renovation in Hopkinsville, KY

First City Bank and Trust building at 9th and Main

The First City Bank and Trust building sits on the southwest corner of 9th and Main streets in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The building has been vacant since 1975, but it's now being renovated.

Five apartments will occupy the second floor, and the first floor will be a professional office suite -- probably a law office. Nowadays, law and justice are two of the main enterprises in Hopkinsville's historic downtown.

The City of Hopkinsville bought the building, about 5-1/2 years ago, for $65,000. Soon after the purchase, grants were obtained to replace the roof.

City leaders hoped for enough grants to renovate the building's interior, but adequate funds were not offered. In October, 2007, the Hopkinsville city council approved a $1.3 million loan from the Kentucky League of Cities to complete the renovation. A sign on the building states that a TEA-21 grant has also contributed.

Asbestos and lead paint removal, as well as structural repairs to the building, have made this an expensive and controversial project. When the building was purchased, local real estate appraiser, Mary Lee Norfleet, thought it was a foolish move:

"That $65,000 that shouldn't have been spent in the first place pales in comparison with what this will cost eventually," she claimed.

Source: "Old bank project has promise -- and pitfalls," by E. L. Gold, published in Kentucky New Era, July 20, 2002. (Subscription required.)

Ms. Norfleet claimed that she'd seen estimates of $1.3 million for the building's renovation. As it happens, the recent loan was for that exact amount. When the loan for the renovation was announced, the mayor's office stated that rental income will cover the repayment of the loan.

I had imagined that this building might be from the 1920s, but the Kentucky New Era says it was constructed in the late 1800s. ( See "Architects hired for old bank renovation," by Jennifer Brown, Kentucky New Era, July 18, 2003. Subscription required.) The building's exterior seems streamlined and modernistic in comparison to other Hopkinsville buildings of similar vintage.


UPDATE 6/20/08: The Kentucky New Era (cited and linked in the previous paragraph) was mistaken about the date of the First City Bank's construction. After the stock market crash of 1929, three local banks merged to form First City Bank. Their new place of business, this building I've written about here, was completed in 1930.

"Severe in form, the brick and stone structure is ornamented in the streamlined, futuristic style of the 1930s that is loosely called Art Deco." (Source:" Hopkinsville and Christian County Historical Sites, written for the Kentucky Heritage Commission by Kenneth T. Gibbs and Carolyn Torma, copyright 1982 by Gateway Trust.)
I'm glad that the city council decided to complete the renovation with a loan, since grants weren't forthcoming. I hope that the public will get a chance to admire the results before renters take possession.

1880s Settlers in Northern Nebraska

Old book about a Pennsylvania colony in Brown County, NE

Tonight I've been browsing through the digitized edition of To and Through Nebraska by Frances I. Sims Fulton. It tells a bit of the story of some Pennsylvanians who homesteaded as a colony in Brown County, Nebraska, in the early 1880s.

It seems that in the early 1880s, around Bradford, Pennsylvania, there was an oilfield boom and bust. Many people who had speculated with their life savings lost everything.

Seeking a new start in life, the author's brother and other westward-leaning men organized "The Nebraska Mutual Aid Colony." When they had enlisted enough investor-homesteaders, they purchased 640 acres in northern Brown County, Nebraska, as a townsite. Each member was guaranteed two lots in the town plus a share in the sale of future lots. Members who wanted land were supposed to buy or homestead within ten miles of the town.

The author, a young single lady, traveled from Pennsylvania to Brown County, Nebraska, with the first group of colonists. They came by train to Stuart, Nebraska, and then went overland to the settlement area. Her intent was to give an eyewitness report about the situation to her family at home. Her father had invested, but he was worried about the settlement's distance from the railroad.

When the colonists arrived at their selected settlement area, things didn't go quite as they had planned. Some land around the townsite had already been homesteaded by strangers, and some of the colonists weren't able to get land nearby as they had planned.

The author's father wrote to her, saying that he couldn't bear to relocate at his age, so Miss Francis Fulton gave up the idea of being a homesteader. But before she went back to Pennsylvania, she spent several months in Brown County with the colonists, recording her experiences for the benefit of others who might want to emigrate to the area.

When she left Brown County, she traveled to Long Pine, Valentine, and Fort Niobrara to see the scenery. (These are still scenic areas today) She had heard stories about the wild cowboys at Valentine, so she traveled with a middle-aged married lady. They had no problems, and she observed that some of the cowboys were truly just boys. She also visited the Platte, Big Blue, and Republican River valleys in Nebraska before returning to Pennsylvania.

The book is an interesting account of a young Victorian lady's great adventure on the Nebraska prairie, one of the last American frontiers. If you like Nebraska history, I think you'll enjoy browsing through the book. And the price is right -- free.

Note:
Holt Creek and the Keya Paha River are mentioned, so I think the settlement was near the Nebraska / South Dakota state line in present-day Keya Paha County, NE. To be specific, I think it was northeast of Springview in the Burton area. A letter from one of the colonists is quoted in the book; the heading is "Brewer P.O., Brown Co. Neb." A history of Keya Paha County lists Brewer as a post office in 1884; however, Brewer is not shown on an 1895 map of Keya Paha County.

Keya Paha County isn't actually in the Nebraska Sandhills, but for simplicity's sake, I'll give this post a "Nebraska Sandhills" tag. The Sandhills are certainly not far away.

Old Children's Game: Anty Over

A nearly-lost playground game

In one-room country schools, all the students played games together at recess. The rules and rituals of the games were taught to the young by the playground elders, who had been taught in that same way when they started school.

The passing-down of traditional games from older to younger children ended when the little country schools were closed. A few games have survived, but so many have been forgotten.

For example, "Anty Over" was a game that my schoolmates and I enjoyed playing when we attended a one-room school in Nebraska, fifty years ago. I doubt if my own children have ever heard of this ritualized ball game.

[H]e rose and strolled back again past the little schoolhouse, and it was recess. Long before he reached it he heard the voices of the children shouting, "Anty, anty over, anty, anty over." They were divided into two bands, one on either side of the small building, over which they tossed the ball and shouted as they tossed it, "Anty, anty over"; and the band on the other side, warned by the cry, caught the ball on the rebound if they could, and tore around the corner of the building, trying to hit with it any luckless wight on the other side, and so claim him for their own, and thus changing sides, the merry romp went on.

Source: The Eye of Dread by Payne Erskin. Published 1913, by Little, Brown & Company, Boston.

We played the game very much like it is described above, with one minor addition. If the attempt to throw the ball over the schoolhouse was unsuccessful, we yelled, "Pig's tail!" Then, when the next throw was attempted, we yelled "Anty anty over!" again. Or sometimes, "Anty eye over!" which was our way of saying it fancy.

After the ball went over the schoolhouse, a few moments of high suspense followed. We didn't know if the other team had caught the ball or not. If they hadn't caught it, they would call "Anty over!" pretty soon and throw the ball back. But if they had caught the ball, they were going to run around the schoolhouse and try to tag us.

When the other team came around, they usually split up and came from both sides of the schoolhouse at the same time. Because we didn't know who had the ball, we didn't know which way to dodge! The only escape was to run wildly around the schoolhouse to the side the other team had just vacated.

Our teachers always warned us to be careful of the schoolhouse windows, and I don't remember that we ever broke any of them, though we certainly rattled the window screens a few times with our badly thrown balls.

In Dialect Notes, published by the American Dialect Society in 1895, alternate names listed for Anty Over included Anty-anty-over, Antny-over, Anthony-over, Baily-over, Colly-over and Colly-up.

Hot Salt Packs Remembered

Old-time earache remedy

Earaches are part of my earliest memories.

There are two things I remember vividly about them. One thing is the unpleasant sensation of ear-drops trickling through the inside of my ear and down into the depths of my head.

My other memory about earaches is the hot salt packs my mother fixed for me. I could lay my head on their good warmth and feel the pain of my ear melt away.

The hot packs were simply homemade cotton bags, about the size of a potholder, filled with salt. My mother warmed them carefully in the oven, and they held heat for quite a while. The warm salt had a distinctive odor that only warm salt has. I would still know it if I smelled it.

I think the heat was naturally moist. Salt loves to soak up moisture, you know.

Apparently we didn't have an electric heat pad. It was the mid-1950s -- maybe heat pads hadn't even been invented yet, or maybe they were too expensive for country folks like us.

Hot salt packs were an old-time earache remedy that my mother probably remembered from her own ear problems as a child. An 1868 book of advice for mothers suggests this very treatment for earache: "Apply to the ear a small flannel bag, filled with hot salt—as hot as can be comfortably borne..."