Opinion

No more Gentleman's Waiting Room

Friday, February 6, 2004

Snow was on the minds of plainsmen during late December 1902. Fifty passengers on the Burlington running from Denver to Deadwood were buried under 10 feet of snow for 20 hours. The train was completely hidden. It took 10 hours for 50 men from Sidney, Nebraska, about 15 miles away from the trapped train to dig them out.

Snow was beginning to bring thoughts of skiing to these children of the pioneers also. It was a relatively new sport to the United States. An article in the Dec. 26, 1902, McCook Tribune said because of, "the small expense and informal nature of the sport" that skiing was just right for Americans. A pair of skis and a pole cost about a dollar-and-a-half and the runners were from 6 to 7 feet long.

The Burlington railroad was filling its ice-houses in McCook and elsewhere on the division with ice from the Cambridge lake. The ice was 10-12 inches thick and "of a fine quality."

Ice at McCook being put up by Walsh and Lee was about 10 inches thick, clear and solid.

A business I had never run into, The Hadell Mercantile Co. placed an ad in the Dec. 26, 1902, McCook Tribune that they were closing out by Jan. 2, 1903. However, I found in the Jan. 16 issue a notice of a "pillow show" that the firm was holding on Jan. 20 from 2 to 9 o'clock. They were to have 300 sofa pillows on exhibition in their storeroom. The really interesting part is that they were charging 25-cent admission and were serving refreshments. The ad did say, "Something entirely new." I'll say.

Well, later, on Jan. 23, I read that the ladies of the Methodist Aid society had been sponsoring the pillow exhibition and made about $50-60 that day. Between 300-400 "handsome and valuable" pillows were on display and the ladies could vote for their favorite. Mrs. F.M. Kimmell got first with 46 votes and Mrs. Louis Suess got second with 20 votes. The ladies thanked M.U. Clyde for his generous use of his storeroom.

Wow, our soap operas today are a lot more graphic than the following account of the activities of a princess, but leaving all the details to your own imagination is just fine with me. The crown princess of Saxony, an Austrian archduchess disappeared from Dresden, supposedly as a result of a love affair with an American dentist.

"Her parents, who have three young daughters still unmarried, disowned her and drove her from the castle." One of her four brothers took her side and accompanied the crown princess. She had a husband (who was having affairs of his own) and children in Dresden that she left. The princess had threatened to leave several times before because of her husband's affairs but her father, the grand duke of Tuscany always insisted that she forgive her husband. They finally called her mentally deranged and left it at that.

In the January 23, 1903 Tribune, right above the account of H.C. Clapp's King Pedro card-party was the following item: "Dr. Lewis Schlessinger of Chattanooga, Tenn., who practiced the most ancient cult-spiritualism-among us recently, has been startling the citizens of Holbrook, since, with his great skill and marvelous knowledge. He is due at McFadden's Pasture or Beaver City, next." Now, not everybody passing through got to entertain at McFadden's Pasture. Maybe it was the Bieroc Café of its day!

There was an article showing the complete text of the messages sent by way of the Marconi trans-Atlantic wireless telegraphy between Cape Cod and Cornwell, England. The messages were between President Theodore Roosevelt and His Majesty King Edward. Isn't it amazing that big leap in technology was just a little over a hundred years ago? It's hard to imagine what the next ten years will bring in "wireless technology."

In St. Louis at that same time there was also an operation in which doctors closed a gunshot wound made to the heart of a 19 year old boy. With three stitches, made "between pulsations" the wound was closed and the patient lived. This is 1903! Of course, remember ... Dr. B.B. Davis did brain surgery here in McCook in 1890 so ...

The gentlemen's waiting room at the old wooden depot in McCook was no more after February of 1903. The room was divided east and west and when completed was to be used as a ticket and express office combined. "There will be no separate room for men hereafter." The ticket box that was being used at that time was to be removed and there would be a man in the new ticket/express office at all times ... a real convenience to the public.

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