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 even blocked by our each of our personal experiences.
Today, my capricious memory drifts to the unlikely topic of ROOT BEER, and the role the soft drink played in Wahoo during the summers in the 1950s.
We gathered there and refreshed ourselves with frosty mugs of root beer. I often watched the counter help dip the clean mugs into a basin of clear water and immediately pop them, still dripping wet, into a freezer chest to allow an icy coating to form.
I remember there was a succession of two root beer outlets during those years, both of them at the Fourth and Linden site.
The first was a wonderfully bizarre Richardson’s Root Beer brand outdoor trailer stand in the shape of a gigantic root beer barrel. It occupied the parking pavement across Fourth Street north of the high school. There was an eager student customer base, including me.
The second root beer vendor was indoors, behind the barrel stand’s former location fronting Linden. The brick-front building had been the Lampert Hatchery site (today it’s occupied by insurance agencies).
The Lamperts, who owned the hatchery, might have been the proprietors, but I don’t know for sure.
I do, however, have a vivid recollection of what it felt like, on a blazing hot summer day, to take great gulps of rich, tangy- sweet root beer, and feel little bits of the mug-frost touch my tongue on the ambrosia’s way down my throat.
Oh, Yeah! Summertime!
Town Softball Field Beckoned to Kids
In the early 1950s, and probably including the late 1940s, Wahoo had its own men’s softball league field in the southwest corner of town at Second and Laurel streets.
Today the ball field has long since vanished, replaced by (or perhaps restored to) corn and soybean cultivation. At the time, Dr. Frank Machovec owned and farmed the acreage where the ball field area stood.
The field itself was pretty basic, with a single loudspeaker, no dugouts as such, and sparse spectator seating. But it sported a carefully hand-raked infield.
Surrounding Saunders County towns and villages fielded teams, and the Wahoo Democrat newspaper usually published the scores. I think there was a team from as far away as Fremont.
I don’t remember much about the makeup of the team. They were just hometown boys and men who loved to play the game. They didn’t produce any major league stars like Wahoo’s Pioneer Nite Baseball League’s Bob Cerf.
Often they would hire a stable of riding burros for a rousing donkey softball game that drew a nice crowd. The mayor and town businessmen and merchants awkwardly rode the stubborn beasts to the cheers of the crowd.
I was small and skinny, so one night I was picked to ride a large, mean-looking sheep for the “mutton-busting” feature.
I was confident that I would be a rodeo hero that night. A big guy picked me up and plopped me astride the animal at home plate.
I immediately grabbed two handfuls of matted wool before the big guy unexpectedly goosed the skittish beast. I had no chance to clamp my legs tight, and we galloped full speed up the infield. I didn’t even reach the pitcher’s mound, but was awkwardly unhorsed (de-sheeped?). Score: Sheep 1, me, 0.
* * *
In 1950, when I was 11 or 12, school had let out for the summer, daylight lingered, crickets were chirping, and long summer evenings stretched out before me and my buddies. My cousin, Gary Kracman, was probably my most constant companion. We needed a place to vent our restless energy.
We found that vent in the lighted (actually low-wattage by modern standards) softball field. It was a beacon for restless pre-teen boys. It was often where the action was in Wahoo on any given night..
We didn’t watch a lot of the games, though. For instance, cigarette butts could be scrounged from under the rickety wooden stands.
Some of us dared to put the vile stubs to our lips and gingerly lit them. We would suck, puff, cough, retch, and then quickly spit them out. There were no king-sized or filter cigarettes yet, making the short discards’ burning tips mighty close to the face. Our throats burned, bits of used tobacco clung to our tongues, and a nasty taste lingered in our mouths.
We certainly found no physical pleasure in this foul activity, but we did it because smoking was a grown-up, daring, rite of passage thing to do.
We also used the dark ball field corners to plan nighttime raids on local watermelon and tomato patches.
I know that our summer antics were nothing like those of the kids in the excellent 1986 movie, “Stand By Me.” We didn’t have a dead kid’s body to find in Wahoo, like in the movie, but the ball field still served our entertainment purposes well.
In 1950 Wahoo, though, after the game, as the outfield lights were snapped off and the car engines were starting up, almost everybody had experienced a fulfilling night.
The spectators got their money’s worth (a few coins), the unsalaried ballplayers played athletically well (win or lose), and the concession stand drew in a few bucks.
As for us kids, we had stayed out of trouble for another summer vacation night and matured a little bit more, all in a safe, friendly, family environment.
Best of all, we had enjoyed the type of fun that had beckoned us in the first place to the bright lights of our town’s priceless (to us) softball field. 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.
