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 unease, but we didn’t dwell on it. After all, we had grownups all around us, and some of those adult relatives were soldiers and sailors, to boot.
Also, I had been experiencing the war almost from the beginning of my childhood. One of my earliest memories was of one of many 1940s nationwide blackout practice to prepare for wartime bombing raids.
Like other little kids, I thrived on pleasant routine, but this was too scary. The windows were hastily covered with blankets and heavy tablecloths and drapes. All the lights in the house were switched off, and we could peek outside and see that all the streetlights and car headlights had been doused.
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A school bus carried children from the military housing units on the sole residential street to schools in Wahoo.
I’m not sure how Wahoo’s West Ward and North Ward portioned out The Plant’s incoming pupil population. And I suppose St. Wenceslaus Catholic and nearby small-town schools were involved, too.
Most of us were unaware of it, but the sudden flood of people coming in to work at the new Ordnance Plant caused a teachers’ shortage, as well as crises in staffing other professions. The bomber plant wages were quite a bit higher.
From Clean Used Cars to Cleaning Clothes
Not too many people remember that a downtown location at 120 W. 5th St. , now the site of the D&D Laundry, had once been the OK Used Car lot.
The site is between the Wahoo Barber & Beauty Shop wooden building on the east, and the brick Titles Lounge Sports Bar.
If you look closely, two decrepit, rusty lampposts still hide in plain sight on either side of the laundry. Each post had a high-wattage floodlight on top and, below, a cylinder light fixture fitted with four vertical florescent light tubes to illuminate the lot. Only the east cylinder remains today.
In the 1950s Chevrolet operated OK Used Car lots nationwide as adjuncts to their dealerships. Anderson Auto Co. here was just south across 5th Street.
I remember the OK lot sold other company’s brands but I’m not sure if non-GM cars were included. The main idea of the corporation connection was to reassure car buyers that Chevrolet stood behind their product.
According to motorcities.org: “OK Used Cars had completed a series of tests [on their for-sale vehicles] before being sold to the public, including a safety inspection, drain and flush of the cooling system, complete lubrication and tire rotation.”
Photographer/farmer Joe Vculek, Wahoo’s unofficial historian, notes that Wahoo Implement Co. was located at that site in 1910. Later, Biggerstaff Furniture and Mortuary did business there, but the building burned down in 1948.
The site became vacant when Anderson Auto stopped doing business downtown, probably in the 1970s. The present laundry building is one of the newest in downtown Wahoo.
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