By Bob Coperstone
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 talking point for people who enter the plant. He called it a piece of Wahoo history.
Historical? Sure it is, to a lot of people. It's got to be nearly a hundred years old.
But to me, it's more than an old landmark. Whenever I drive past it today, I'm flooded by boyhood memories of lazy summer afternoons, of swimming pool fun under a scorching sun, and family togetherness while growing up in Wahoo.
* * *
It's the middle of summer in maybe 1948. I'm a skinny boy about nine years old. My older sister, Rochelle - she'd be 11 - and l are trudging down the gritty, sun-baked gravel road that is now an extension of 12 Street. My younger sister, Janie, may or may not be with us today. She's only seven.
We're going swimming at the Wanahoo Park/Dance Island's huge sand bottomed concrete pool maybe about a mile from our house on Ninth Street near Broadway. We're carrying our swimming suits, mine wrapped in a chlorine- and mold scented bath towel. We swim almost every summer day, and I don't take the time to hang my odorous gear on the clothesline to dry. The municipal pool hasn't been built yet, and the polio epidemic panic hasn't yet forced the Wanahoo pool to shut down.
We step off the pavement at the highway corner where the Skelly gas station stands, and hit the gravel road. Not many people know it now, or even at that time, but that road used to be the gravel highway out of town to Omaha.
To our right, on the south side, stands the sturdy, metal-roofed corncrib, a familiar, solid structure that keeps us kids within its view for about a half mile, almost to the Sand Creek bridge. We turn left at the entrance to Dance Island. The bath house is another couple of hundred yards farther.
We frolic all day in the huge pool. Too soon, the day's over and we're dead tired, but we still have to walk home.
Weary and sapped by the hot sun, we again reach our old friend, the sentinel corncrib, which means we are getting closer to home.
Refreshments await us just across the road from the corncrib at the Skelly gas station. The grumpy old man there never welcomed us kids, and he scowls at us. But he likes our nickels well enough, and allows us to fish for bottles of Nesbitt orange pop in the ice-water cooler. The pop is great, and we are refreshed for the final leg home.
We will do it all over again tomorrow, and almost every day after that until summer vacation is over.
* * *
Today, the corncrib still stands, as does what's left of the Skelly station, which is undergoing a slow, well-earned renovation. But the grumpy old man at the station is gone, along with my childhood. But memories remain, freshened each time I see the gas station and corncrib.
When Mr. Teggart's factory started going up and the bulldozers were leveling everything, naturally I became concerned. The corncrib was almost hidden by overgrown trees by then, and it appeared to be in the way of progress. I drove out to take photos, anticipating its disappearance.
Memories came flooding back as I walked toward the corncrib with my camera. One of the sharpest memories was of my father.
* * *
My dad, Hank Copperstone, who with my mom, Irma, owned the Wigwam Cafe, had an old, bad joke that he always told when we drove past the corncrib. It was to give us kids numerous fits of giggles.
"That's where a man ran himself to death," Daddy would say, pointing at the circular crib. Someone would bite: "Why's that?"
"He was looking for a corner to pee in!" Dad fairly shouts, and we all howl with laughter. "Oh, Daddy, that's naughty," we'd chide him, but we couldn't stop giggling.
After the first couple of times he told it, someone in the car - not always Dad- would drag out the joke when we passed the corncrib on our way out of town or to Dance Island.
To this day, I always get a groan, if not a smile, when I repeat that old story. "My dad says that's where a man ran himself to death," I always say, pointing to the corncrib. I think my friends get tired of it, but I won't let a groan stop me. The telling of it lets me love my dad and my family all over again.
As I circled the corncrib snapping photos (no, I didn't run myself to death), I finally reached the east end.
Tucked into the underbrush against the corncrib was a portable toilet for the construction crew to use.
As I lined up the outhouse through the camera viewfinder, I suddenly realized the irony, and burst out laughing. I couldn't help it.
Dad would have loved it. At last, there was a corner to pee in !
Bless you, Mr. Teggart, for making room at your factory for the corncrib of my memories, and I join others in welcoming you to your new community. May the Wahoo of your present be as pleasant as the Wahoo of my past.
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