As Told By C.S. Beaty

I always thought I had a normal childhood. At least normal enough. Normal enough to eat macaroni and cheese for lunch and get told by my mom to “stop yelling” after my older brother hit me in the head with a miniature baseball bat. But when my childhood stopped being present tense and moved into past tense, I received new lenses to look at the past. I became an uncle, so I knew what it was like to be an uncle. I knew what it was like to have nieces and nephews. And when that happened, my parents became gran...

Hey, I wrote a book! And I want you to come drink a beer with me to celebrate!

Come to Vis Major and you’ll find my book, some books from my friends, and some Grand Island music for purchase.

Can’t make the party but still want to read about how stupid I was? Loser* will be available in a few weeks on www.csbeaty.com!

Loser*: A Survival Guide to High School Popularity

While a teen in small town Nebraska, Chris took purity pledges, listened to e...

By Bob Copperstone

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Wedding in the Sand

I’ve had a chance to recover from my trip to California, and now I’ll share some reminiscences with my friends.

The trip was a destination double wedding of my nieces, Janie’s girls, Kathy and Tina Matschiner, who both live in Lincoln. Tina’s guy, John Robinson, and Kathy’s Russ Black are terrific people. I’m so happy f...

By Bob Copperstone

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Letter to Editor

Nov. 16, 2024

Bargain-Basement Comics

By Bob Copperstone

All the daily newspapers serving our part of eastern Nebraska are owned by a single entity, and share a thrifty, barebones half-page comics section. Recently they announced another shuffle.

We lost Doonesbury, among other worthy strips, and left these dregs behind:

“Family Circus”: The epitome of insi...

By Bob Copperstone

A wonderfully quaint wooden viaduct once spanned Wahoo’ s Second Street between Chestnut and Broadway.

It was a formidable, three-stage bridge with an approach, level top, and descent. It carried traffic over a small ravine, while the Chicago & North Western Rail Road (that’s how they spelled the company name then) freight trains passed underneath.

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The “Vy-Dock”, as we kids pronounced it, played an importan...

As it turns out, the only real difference between stroking the head of our pet cat Bengals and the head of a live cheetah, is that the cheetah seems to enjoy it more.

I had the Cango Wildlife Ranch in Oudtshoorn, South Africa to thank for this knowledge, where they let you go into the animal cages and pet the animals. Granted, it wasn’t all the animals. And the line was too long to pet a full-grown cheetah, so my wife and I elected to stroke the head of a smaller “junior cheetah.” But still. You don’t...

By Bob Copperstone

Dumpster-Diving Into History: Citizens Rescue Nearly Century-Old Bound Newspapers

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WAHOO -- If it weren’t for just plain luck -- aided by the city library director, a history-loving studio photographer and a museum curator -- a slice of Saunders County journalistic history would have perished from local view.

In recent weeks, the interior of the Wahoo Newspaper’s former headquarters at Sixth and...

It was a Saturday night that bled into Sunday morning when Patrick Kane— the Chicago Blackhawk’s number one overall pick in the 2007 NHL draft—was arrested along with his cousin for charges of felony robbery, theft of services, and criminal mischief. The high-profile athlete was back in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. When the Kanes’s taxi arrived at their destination of Eastwood Place in South Buffalo, their fare was $13.80. They gave the driver $15.

When 62-year-old Jan Radecki gave them back a dollar and said she didn't have the other 20 cents of change, Radecki allegedly “was punche...

My parents had their 50th anniversary this year, and during their party, I pulled them aside to ask them a series of questions about their relationship. My six -year-old son and eight-year-old daughter came up with the initial questions, but since those were all pretty stupid, we asked AI to write the rest of the interview for us.

This is that interview.

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CHRIS:

All right...

By Bob Copperstone

When I was growing up in Wahoo in the 1940s and early ‘50s, carnivals made my summer vacations even more golden.

That’s right, carnivals PLURAL, three of them. (Four, counting Ashland’s, but I couldn’t walk that far.)

First off, there was the downtown Wahoo street carnival (today barely remembered by most people), second was the Saunders County Fair carnival, and third, of course, late summer bought the giant Nebraska State Fair to Lincoln. (Our parents had to drive us to that one.)

Summer was, and...

By Bob Copperstone

Root Beer Recollections

Pulling memories out of one's childhood is often a risky, hit-and-miss effort, and the results may sometimes (most of the times?) fall short of absolute historical accuracy.

Often, I will pluck a plum from my memory, only to have friends or relatives who were there with me pluck altogether different fruits from their own remembering.

Which are the correct ones? Oddly enough, all of them are the right ones, and none are incorrect, per se. Each human memory is colored, edited, beautified and...

By Bob Copperstone

I Was a Teen-Age Soda Jerk

Beginning at age 10 in 1949, and lasting through my teen years, I found myself rather unwillingly behind the soda fountain, feeding and refreshing the sugar-rushed customers at downtown Wahoo’s Wigwam Café.

My parents, Hank and Irma Copperstone, had purchased the Wigwam, along with partners Clair (Muzzy) and Dorothy (Dodo) Miller.

My sisters Rochelle and RoJane (Janie) and I were, of course, pressed into service to help make a go of the family business.

I was paid the prevailing wag...

By Bob Copperstone

Hi, folks: I'll share with you some fond memories of harvest time on the farm.

I know that most of you were never farmers. Me, neither.

But thanks to my Aunt Clara and Uncle Jerry Bartusek, the seeds of farm memories were planted deeply into my young mind, and I am gleefully reaping their harvest today.

Here is my take on the memories, written for the upcoming newsletter of the Saunders County Nebraska Genealogy Seekers (Gen Seekers).

Farm Harvest Memories

My favorite...

By Bob Copperstone

The placement of the city of Wahoo on Nebraska road maps quite handily positions Wahoo almost equidistant from each of three of the largest cities in the state.

Omaha: (approximately) 45 miles; Lincoln: 40; Fremont: 35.

Wahoo had its share of good doctors, optometrists, dentists, general practitioners and such, but for more specialized cases, we relied on a creaky-old bus system to take us to one of the Big Three cities.

I have loved big-little Fremont since I was growing up in Wahoo in the 1950s.

During...

I’ve never liked being called the “baby of the family,” even if it is accurate.

My sister, Denise, is 12 years older than me, so naturally our adolescent life experiences didn't have a lot of overlap. By the time I finished kindergarten, Denise was already out of the house. After she moved away for college, it didn’t take long before I noticed her spending a lot of time with a "friend" of hers named John.

I liked John, but we didn’t have much in common. He was a few years older than Denise, so the age...

I'm using a mint green Hermes Rocket typewriter to write this. It resides underneath my computer monitor when not in use since its low profile was designed to be so compact it could be toted around war zones for correspondences in Vietnam. Or something like that. It was the coolest looking typewriter when I typed “typewriter” into an eBay search bar after being infatuated by the documentary California Typewriter. It was my third typewriter, fourth if you count my Lego typewriter—which my kids do.

My second typewriter was a present from my Uncle Bob. I have...

By Bob Copperstone

Coins of the Realm, and Where to Find Them

While I was “Growing Up Wigwam” in the 1950s, I treated downtown Wahoo as if it were my own little kingdom.

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My kingdom’s capital city, of course, was the Copperstone family-owned Wigwam Café, where my very soul resided, and where I played out my royal existence.

Prince Bobby, if you pleas...

Warning: This story contains depictions of the deaths and tribulations of cute, fuzzy and feathered little creatures. Children, non-farmers and other super-sensitive individuals may be offended by exposure to the real world.

By Bob Copperstone

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Chickens -- the raising of them and the eggs from them -- played an outsized role in my boyhood in mid-century Wahoo.

Some of my recollections are pleasant. Ot...

By Bob Copperstone

Throughout its active existence, The Nebraska Ordnance Plant near Mead was an early part of my life in Wahoo. Some of my school-yard friends had bomb-maker parents, I guess you could say.

We children weren’t particularly aware of the bomber plant’s (That’s what we always called it, always adding the “er”) deadly but necessary wartime mission. I do remember somber snatches of gossip about how our little spot on the map could be targeted by Axis enemies with bombs of their own.

I’m sure other children shared my un...

By Bob Copperstone

Having grown up in Wahoo in the early 1940s, it was inevitable that World War II would cast a somber shadow over my childhood.

The Nebraska Ordnance Plant (“bomber plant” as it is still called) was near the village of Mead, a mere nine miles east of Wahoo.

It wasn’t talked about too much, but for years it festered in the back of our minds that our little dot on the map was certain to be in Nazi gunsights if Germany invaded the U.S.

The bomber plant...

My wife arranged an early check-in time at our New Orleans Air BnB, we wanted to get rid of our bags before wandering through the city. An Uber abandoned us at our residence for the next several nights, Paige had found a signature New Orleans shotgun house so we could get the signature New Orleans experience. We carefully followed the check-in instructions, decided we were in the right place, and knocked on the front door.

No answer.

Ok, give it a few minutes.

Still no answer.

Try knocking again? Ok here...

By Bob Coperstone

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A Corner to Pee In

I am delighted to read in the Wahoo Newspaper that the Omaha Steel Castings Co. is planning to preserve the old circular cement corncrib at the entrance of its new factory at the northeast part of town.

OSC President Phil Teggart has told Wahoo folks the structure would remain standing as a...

By Bob Copperstone

Empty Bird Nest Grief

It’s taking the orphaned baby robins such a long time to die…

It’s breaking my heart, and I feel helpless, but I don’t know how to save them.

They seemed doomed to die, and to my horror and remorse, I’m partly, if not completely, to blame for their peril.

In a grim ritual, I check the nest every couple of hours, hoping to see the mother robin feeding and warming her babies. She hasn’t returned, though, and the babies a...

By Bob Copperstone

Having caught the bi-wheeled fever from Dad’s hill-climber Harley adventures, and as I stumbled into puberty, I chafed to dip my toe into solo motorized cycling.

I got my chance when word got around in Wahoo that Lee Houfek was selling his Cushman scooter. I wanted it very badly. To my surprise, Dad bought it for me. I was only 13.

I’m sure he had a tough time winning Mom over to the scooter idea. But after all, he understood a young boy’s craving for motorized propul...

By Bob Copperstone

Some of my fondest Wahoo childhood recollections are cemented into my memory by three motorized two-wheeled vehicles.

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They include a racing motorcycle, a docile motor scooter and, later in my adult life, a highway-hogging 750-cc Japanese cruiser.

Like probably every boy in the world who ever pushed a toy truck around the sand pile, I almost painfully ached to have...

You Can’t Bank On a Tree

In July of 2019 people at the Wahoo State Bank, next door to the Wigwam, planted a tree out front. The city ordered it removed, sparking a minor squabble amongst Wahoovians. I put in my two cents:

* * *

July 13, 2019

A tree grows in Wahoo.

Or does it?

A newly planted young sapling juts out bravely from its nursery spot in the “bump-out” curb in front of the sleek new Wahoo State Bank building.

It is straining to put down r...

By Bob Copperstone

As a 10-year-old in 1948, I watched as the downtown Wigwam Café, run by my parents, Hank and Irma Copperstone waged an energetic but fripendly rivalry with the Fairview and Day & Nite cafés on the highway.

The Wigwam’s competition was north of downtown along the combined U.S. Highways 77 and 30-Alternate route that cut through Wahoo, and included the Whirla-Whip and Dairy Queen ice cream shops, among others.

It was a vigorous but subdued rivalry. Lillie Gibson, who owned the Fairview Café on the highways (and the City Café downto...

By Bob Copperstone

Since I was a kid playing on its rooftops 70-some years ago, Wahoo’s downtown skyline profile hasn’t changed all that much.

The buildings, with a few exceptions, remain standing stoutly in place much as I remember them. But there are lots of changes to the contents of the (mostly) brick structures.

The gradual transformation over fairly recent years may have escaped the notice of longtime residents, but their eclectic diversions have made Wahoo a more interesting place to visit, shop and live.

Thanks for reading By C...

An episode of the animated version of the Garfield comic strip features the obese, anthropomorphic feline explaining his worldview in regards to nutrition and culinary criticism.

The cartoon cat employs what he tags as "The Chair Test." His explanation is simple: You place a sample of the food in question on the seat of a chair and then ask someone to sit on it.

Garfield hypothesizes that a food’s value can be ascertained by this simple procedure. No reaction from the test subject? The food isn’t worth consuming.

To demo...

By Bob Copperstone

The Wahoo Public Library in 1949 is an intimidating place, housed in an upper floor of the grim, 1891-vintage City Hall.

I’m Bobby, a skinny 10-year-old town kid standing in front of the building just as the sun is going down. It is a gloomy and cold early-winter evening. Spooky shadows are beginning to fall, made even more ghostly by the low-wattage streetlights which were beginning to switch on, offering only a sickly illumination.

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By Bob Copperstone

My connections with dentists in Wahoo as a young boy had always been fraught by distrust on my part.

I hated dental appointments, and a dentist was anything but happy to see me come trembling in with a well-founded fear of seemingly inevitable pain.

There were three dentists practicing in downtown Wahoo in the 1950s – Drs. R.E. Sklenar, William L. Kling and William Houfek.

Dr. Kling often drew the short straw as my dentist. Bad news for both of us, I guess. His office was ri...

By Bob Copperstone

I suppose most every family creates its own routine of visits to relatives on holidays.

Christmas Eve visitors at our house visitors usually were Mom’s brother and sister-in-law and their son and two daughters. Gary, the son, was one of my best friends while we were growing up.

His family had always had a rather rough time of it, I remember.

His dad was a rarely successful door-to-door salesman and was almost always on the road. Gary’s mother waited tables at the Wigwam Café and elsewhere, or ha...

By Bob Copperstone

The Power of Positive Santas

While I lived in California some decades ago, I fell into a Christmas groove of donating to a police fund that delivered new toys to kids from needy families in Los Angeles County.

The Arcadia Police Department would ask the donors to help distribute the presents. I would love to have seen the happy kiddies receive my gifts.

During this one particular Christmas, though, I was working the editorial night shift at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and couldn’t go.

By Bob Copperstone

It's rather a well-grounded Christmas custom in our family here in Nebraska to use the "Secret Santa" method of gift-giving.

It is a holiday lifesaver for this old bachelor.

Every word, paragraph, text and original theme in the letter comes out of my tiny little brain. People have asked if they could copy the letter, and I am happy to oblige.

I toyed with copyrighting it, but to what end? Lots of bother as well as a little bit selfish, I think. If I receive a chuckle or...

By Bob Copperstone

Before my parents, Hank and Irma, acquired the Wigwam Café in 1949, Hank worked in heavy equipment construction for the county and the Meese Construction Co. in Wahoo (“I’m a cat-skinner by trade,” he would proudly say, referring to Caterpillar bulldozers).

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Irma was a much sought-after cook (including at the Wigwam, of course).

Dad’s work often took him all over the state for weeks at a time, and when...

By Bob Copperstone

I was 9 years old in 1948 when my parents, Hank and Irma Copperstone, took half-ownership of the Wigwam Café in downtown Wahoo with Clare (Muzzy) and Dorothy (Dodo) Miller.

I spent a great deal of the remainder of my childhood exploring the restaurant’s main floor and basement.

Believe me; I missed neither nook nor cranny of that fascinating building.

The Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a secret international social and charitable fraternity, owned the building and occupied the second floor, renting out the first floor and basement to the...

By Bob Copperstone

Lucille’s Gift Shop’s Comic Book Treasure

For years, Lucille’s Gift Shop, originally on the corner west of the Wigwam Café in the LaGrand Hotel building, was a thriving business in downtown Wahoo.

I confess it now: I had a real crush on Lucille Herrick. I loved that woman dearly.

I couldn’t help it. I was only 8 years old, and she let me read her store’s comic books.  For free! What’s not to love about that?

Lucille was like a second mother to me...

By Bob Copperstone

Shabbily Dressed for Travel

So after school lets out, I go first to the Wigwam. I see my dad, Hank, at the sandwich board or fountain, or cash register, or working the room as host, greeting customers. 

“How’s your dinner?” or “Where’re you folks from?” he asks the tourists, always with a pleasant, infectious smile.

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U.S. Highways 30-A Alternate and U.S. 77 through the city are...

By Bob Copperstone

A Wahoo City Council public hearing, which partly discussed confiscated graveside flowers at Sunrise Cemetery, packed the meeting on Tuesday.

At the time, I was unaware that many, if not most, of the protesters were there because they were furious that correctly-placed flowers and other displays had been swept up and destroyed in a mass cleanup designed to head-start a new set of regulations.

I asked to speak at the hearing because I believe a firmer administration, with a fair and sustainable set of rules, can...

As a young college student no longer under the constant care of my parents, I reveled in my ability to do the things I wanted. Bedtimes, diets and study habits were all up to my discretion- the only limits being the lack of steady income.

I’ve always loved travel, and no longer needing my parents’ say-so, my spirit of adventure came alive when my buddy, Josh, invited me to watch NHL hockey games around the country.

Our wanderlust didn’t match our travel budget. We became experts at public transportation, splitting gas money, staying at che...