Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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It started as a way to pay for a wedding but has now turned into 45 years of helping families celebrate the Fourth of July. Hamilton Fireworks, in Orchard, first started when Donna and Darrell Hamilton needed to pay for a November wedding in 1981 and decided to sell fireworks during the summer to cover those costs. "My husband and I were getting married in November and we sold fireworks that July," Donna Hamilton said. "A friend of ours hooked us up with somebody and we sold them out of the...
Jake Rosmarin has never set foot inside an Omaha restaurant. And yet, in the past month, he has eaten Reuben egg rolls from Paddy McGown's, a burrito bowl from Bomb Taco, a box of candy from Chocolat Abielle, buffalo chicken pizza from Mama's and, of course, a Runza. These and many other Omaha takeout standouts have been delivered directly to his address: A door located inside the University of Nebraska Medical Center National Quarantine Unit. Rosmarin, an Instagram-famous travel blogger from...
Dorothy Lynch is a color not found in nature. It's a salad dressing eaten on virtually every other food. Some Nebraskans love it. Other Nebraskans love to hate it. No one else has ever heard of it. Of the tens of thousands of impoverished Scandinavians who fled crop failures and religious oppression for a fertile and free Nebraska in the late 19th century, probably only two are connected to something in Nebraskans' kitchen today. In 1913 in Cushing, Danish immigrants Edd and Meda Scott Peterson...
Basketball hoops, a commercial smoker, Dorothy Lynch salad dressing and copper mugs are among the 16 Nebraska-made products in consideration for the fourth annual "Coolest Thing Made in Nebraska competition." Handlebend's Hideaway cooper mugs square off against Bish Enterprises world's largest folding corn head in the first week of competition sponsored by the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance. Voting for round one is open to the public through...
The 2025 version of Orchard Free Days pays homage to an all-American - and all-Orchard - tradition: baseball. The Class C Area American Legion Tournament will be held in town beginning July 25. Fans of the game will see plenty of action, as contests will continue through July 29. Participating teams include Creighton-Bloomfield, Crofton, Hartington, Plainview, Ponca, and Tri-County. THURSDAY, JULY 24 Festivities kick off Thursday, July 24. Summerland Softball will offer concessions at the...
Over the past 25 years, Dollar General stores have become a fixture of the retail landscape in rural Nebraska. Now, there are 142 chain "dollar" stores - 115 of them Dollar Generals - in Nebraska towns with a population smaller than 10,000. OAKLAND - If you drive down U.S. Highway 77, you won't see the grocery store that has managed to keep afloat in this town for more than 100 years. It's five blocks off the highway, on Oakland's main drag. What you will see is a bright yellow sign, beckoning...
This week, my family has been buzzing with excitement for our first trip to the College World Series in Omaha. With our new home-state Huskers out, we threw our support behind our previous home state team, the LSU Tigers, hoping they'd be playing in the game for which we had tickets. Early one morning before I had finished my first coffee, my wife, surprised at our luck, told me she saw online that LSU would indeed be in that game. Eager to confirm and view the bracket, I went straight to...
Cheryl Riege and Abby Mosel saw a need in the Page area-and planted the seeds of a new tradition. Their idea blossomed into the Page Farmers Market, which opened Saturday, May 17, at the Page Village Park. The market will run every Saturday through September 13, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Inspired by her visits to vendor fairs and markets in Elgin and across northeast Nebraska, Riege noticed that some communities lacked a similar gathering place. That observation sparked a simple question: "Why don'...
Starting charting summer travel plans now and add several local spots to the list. Corner Hardware and More, in Orchard, River Mill Coffee Company in Neligh, Flat Iron Bar and Grill in Atkinson, Bloomin Daisies Floral & Gifts, Stuart and Winnetoon Mall & Post Office are among the 2025 Nebraska Passport program stops. The Passport program urges travel throughout Nebraska. Visitors collect stamps to earn prizes while supporting Nebraska tourism destinations and local businesses. "Year after year,...
I’ve been in a bit of a funk this past week. After a meditation session, some of the reasons became clear. This Friday would be Mom’s 87th birthday. If she were earth-side, we’d have Italian food - either lasagna or pizza - and wine, even if it meant a bottle of inexpensive “FWP,” or fine wine product, like her sisters refer to it. In April, she will have been gone 10 years. It seems like yesterday I held her hand as she slipped away, taking her last breath. A second reason for the blues: I...
My family has always loved to travel. Whether it was camping trips, a road trip to the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal or a drive to the Black Hills to see relatives, we could put some miles on the family car. My dad was exposed early to international travelers. The family farm hosted agricultural exchange visitors from France and India. My dad served in Japan during the Korean War, so he’d seen a far flung part of the world, and befriended a family there who later sent a daughter to live wit...
Pricking his finger with a small needle, Anthony Warrior squeezed a drop of blood onto the test strip. As he saw the number illuminate, the then-40-year-old Absentee Shawnee citizen and Muskogee descendant knew his days of bad eating had caught up with him. With his weight nearing 500 pounds and his blood sugar dangerously high, Warrior was facing a future of possible blindness, kidney failure and limb amputation – all complications of unchecked diabetes. If he didn't address his eating h...
Phil Whitmarsh starts a lot of conversations with an offbeat question: Have you ever played a 500-year-old guitar? Eventually, he'll hand you Mary Kate. The instrument resembles a Fender Telecaster, the six-string synonymous with Americana twang and favored by artists like Bruce Springsteen. Mary Kate looks and plays like a Telecaster, but the sound is different. It's the wood, says Whitmarsh. That wood once helped hold up the old Woolworth warehouse in Omaha's historic Old Market. In a few...
Orchard Community Club invites area residents to celebrate homecoming during the 2024 Orchard Free Days celebration, scheduled for July 25 to 28. Thursday, July 25 Kickoff the weekend celebration at the dive-in movie at the Orchard Swimming Pool, sponsored by the Orchard Public Library and Village of Orchard. The event is free and the movie will begin at dusk. Friday, July 26 On Friday, make plans to attend the Orchard Historical Society's chicken dinner. Serving will begin at 11 a.m. and...
r Saturday, July 13 with a full slate of activities. Festivities will begin at 9 a.m. with the Frederick Cronk Memorial Trap Shoot. At 11 a.m., wander over to the volleyball court for the kid's sand dig. Or head to the Page Fire Hall for grilled burgers and hotdogs. They will be served until 1 p.m. While at the fire hall, check out the craft and vendor fair which will run from noon until 3 p.m. More information is available by calling Kathy at 402-338-5966. Noon will also bring the pingpong ball...
Scotti Fullbright 1951-2024 Scotti Dean Fullbright, beloved husband, father, grandfather and friend, was promoted to his 'Long Home' on May 28, in Wichita, Kansas, after battling an infection in his body for several months. He was born June 3, 1951, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to parents Paul and Myrna (Wilcox) Fullbright. He was a rambunctious child by all accounts and his early life was punctuated by tragedy when his father passed away suddenly when he was just 13. In his high school years, his...
Scotti Dean Fullbright, beloved husband, father, grandfather, and friend was promoted to his 'Long Home' on May 28, 2024, in Wichita, Kansas, after battling an infection in his body for several months. He was born on June 3, 1951, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Paul and Myrna (Wilcox) Fullbright. He was a rambunctious child by all accounts and his early life was punctuated by tragedy when his father passed away suddenly when he was just 13. In his high school years, his family, including siblings...
Baseball, hot dogs and apple pie are considered All-American staples. Should ranch dressing be added to the list? The condiment - oh, it’s more than a salad dressing - is an every-meal accessory for a couple of our grandkids. Drizzle it on pizza? Check. Add dry ranch seasoning to oyster crackers for “squeaky snacks,” as my kids call the treat? Absolutely. Dip chicken strips and fries in a dollop or twenty? All the dang time. Buy it by the gallon? Heck no, not in this house. (Dorothy, on the o...
"Wear sunscreen.” That is the first piece of advice given in “The Sunscreen Song,” a list of recommendations to the graduating class of 1999, set to music by Baz Luhrmann. It’s solid advice. Trust me, I wish I’d taken the same guidance when my mom pounded it into my head. I kinda, sorta listened, but when you’re 18, you think you’re invincible, that you are way smarter than everyone else, and you’re going to live life on your terms. I get it. Here’s my advice to you, members of the class of 2024...
APPROVED BILLS SUMMERLAND PUBLIC SCHOOL Amazon Capital Services, Inc., Sup, 1,341.02; Amazon Capital Services, Inc., Sup, 249.31; Barnhill Piano Services, piano tuned, 125.00; Boyd’s Electrical Service, Inc, serv/sup, 473.13; Bud’s Sanitary services, LLC, March/April, 2,496.00; Capital One Bk(USA), NA, sup/rooms/meals (partial reimb-activity), 5,317.32; Capital One Bk(USA), NA, sup/rooms/meals, 1,352.31; Clearwater Market, sup, 97.30; Climate Systems, Inc., Remote training, 150.00; ColdType Publishing, print, 392.70; Corner Hardware and Mor...
That's where a 12-foot windmill, designed by Summerland art student Caydence Schumacher and constructed by advanced welding students Garrett Napier and Mike Umphress, finished in voting at the Norfolk Home and Garden Show. Summerland industrial technology instructor Michael Odell announced how the project fared on Monday. The competition honors the legacy of Ken Iverson, former president of Nucor Steel. The windmill will be displayed at Johnson Park in Norfolk for a year. Odell said the IT...
Last week's poll question has stirred a craving for pizza. Specifically, Mom's homemade pizza. The crust wasn't fancy. Usually, she whipped up the recipe printed on the Bisquick box and added a few herbs and spices to make it her own. She'd brown seasoned ground beef, mince a yellow onion, chop black olives into rings and dice mushrooms and green peppers. A thin coating of pizza sauce and generous amount of mozzarella made it a special treat. Homemade with love, not a quick and easy takeout...
When John Neligh, William B. Lambert and John B. Thomson viewed the sprawling Elkhorn Valley, near present-day Neligh, in 1873, they could not have imagined how the original 500-acre tract would develop into a sprawling city, intersected by two major highways. After 150 years, the intersection of old and new will merge, as Neligh residents celebrate the city's sesquicentennial. While a handful of events are scheduled for Thursday and Friday, the bulk of activities will take place Saturday, July...
How many brackets were busted over the weekend as the field of 64 narrowed? I'm not talking about college hoops. I'm talking about voting in the Nebraska Beer Bracket, a 64-brewery tournament that aims to "crown the best beer in Nebraska." The brainchild of Sarah Baker Hansen, a former Omaha World-Herald food writer, the bracket extends beyond Omaha and divides the state into four regions: Omaha, East, West and Capitol. Baker Hansen, along with the graphic design team from Hanscom Park Studios,...
Celebrate the new year at Orchard United Methodist Church. On Dec. 31, a family-friendly New Year's Eve party will be held from 6:30 to 10 p.m. Supper, which will feature a party sub and pizza, will be served at 6:30. A movie will start at 8. Games, fun and snacks will be in store for all ages....
