Prairie Life Examined

We’ve had a couple of heavy storms lately, with winds up to 90 mph! They have made a bit of a mess, tipping trees over, breaking branches off, or just sending leaves all over.

Sunday morning a lot of the new freshmen were moving into the dorms at Union Adventist University. Union has a tradition of helping the girls move in, since there is no elevator in the dorm, and most of the freshmen girls end up on fourth floor. So, since we had help moving our girls in many years ago, we thought we should pay it back by helping out the new crew.

The only reason I went into this long tirade is that during that morning, my friend Paul, who takes care of the physical plant for the university, asked me to help him relocate the Bobcat backhoe. And he nicely let me drive it, and move some dead branches around. I’m crazy enough to enjoy that! (But not quite crazy enough to ask him to photograph me at the helm!)

Tuesday we had a fun mission: we got to drive some of Becky’s baked goods to Grand Island, where she is entering them in the Nebraska State Fair competition. We had thought we’d get the goodies checked in, then check out the fair. Ooops! The fair starts Friday. It was only open for entering stuff for the exhibitions. Well, we saw a lot of artwork, and a funny looking trapper guarding some stuff, but our afternoon at the fair was not to be.

We saw signs for the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer, also in Grand Island. We’ve driven past signs for the Stuhr Museum countless times on trips between Denver and Lincoln, but never stopped. Now we were already here, with a free afternoon. Let’s check it out!

The first building looks more like a mausoleum than anything else… I guess the flat roof is reminiscent of a flat prairie…

When we entered, we were instantly grateful for the cool, (it was 93 degrees outside) and surprised at the stark whiteness and emptiness. The huge atrium has bilateral curved staircases, flanked by four little pools with dome shaped fountains.

Once you get past the atrium, into exhibits, it looks much more like a typical, nice museum.

The museum is full of interesting items from the late 1800’s.

Here’s a great invention: Dog Power! Make your dog “Work his passage!” I think “First Prize” was a brand name.

Here’s the actual Dog Power machine:

The Velocipede was commonly used in the 1880’s by railroad “Signal Maintainers, who tended to oil lanterns, batteries, or repaired railroad signals.” They could hit 12 mph, but by the 1890’s gas powered versions make these obsolete.

The Heartometer was a precursor of the EKG machine. It was the first medical instrument to record measurements with vision instead of sound. It would record “blood pressures, pulse rates, force and character of heart actions, and peripheral vascular circulation through the extremities” with different colored pens on a graph. [1930’s]

Far scarier than the Heartometer was this “Permanent Wave Duart.” [1930]

The first such electric curler was invented in 1905, and included extremely hot curlers with a variety of chemicals… some reports listed cow urine and water.

I’m wondering why the procedure took so many workers! Maybe they were needed to collect enough cow urine!

I’ve heard of “Magic Lantern” shows, but this is the first I remember seeing an actual device. Apparently they were all the rage in the mid 1800’s. Somewhat like a slide projector, (remember those?) they would project from long rectangular transparencies that could be moved to give the effect of motion. Some were set up to project two pictures simultaneously, and one could be rotated or moved for dramatic action! They grew increasingly sophisticated till actual movies were produced in the late 1800’s.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. were somewhat like the Amazon of the day. From Sears stores, or more likely, from their catalogs, you could buy just about anything imaginable. Even houses! Here are a couple pages about the “Winona” model – a very nice little house, even with an internal bathroom! All for only $1,715! Of course, you had to put it together yourself. Maybe this was the impetus for Ikea! [1920]

In an era before TV, Radio (or internet) people found interesting ways to amuse themselves. The exhibit below talked about how you could arrange some books into a fence on your table, bat a string ball or cork back and forth with the lid off a cigar box, and you had early Table Tennis! [Speaking of Cigar Boxes – When I was in elementary school we were asked to bring a cigar box as part of our school start up supplies! Great for storing pencils and whatnot. This was in an SDA school! Haven’t seen cigar boxes on back-to-school lists for a while!]

A huge barn holds dozens of old cars, tractors and other farm implements. Including this “Horse Power” treadmill, very similar to the dog version seen above.

Tons of antique cars, and even more tractors. Some of the tractors had wheels 8 feet tall! If I look like a zombie here, it’s because it was in the 90’s inside the barn.

Juxtaposition of new and old vehicles.

They have a railroad town, with buildings preserved and moved here from original locations, usually here in Grand Island.

Most of the buildings are fully furnished, some even with folks in costume. Below is the print shop:

The Tinsmith’s workshop:

The Blacksmith:

The general store had this fun poster… You can see the mother watching as her little girl heads to school, fortified by a good serving of Grape Nuts. I still love them today!

Many homes are onsite, and since we were about to melt, we only entered a few of them.

Well furnished and decorated, they were interesting.

We were told this house was built by a carpenter, showing off his skills to a prospective bride.

He really was very good, and evidence of his skill is everywhere in the home.

I think she approved, married him, and they lived for a while in the house.

This “Generator” is unusual… this was before electric appliances were around. It doesn’t generate electricity; it makes acetylene gas for lighting. Granular Calcium Carbide would be added to water and Acetylene gas was produced. This could be piped through the home to fuel lanterns. I know very little about this as a home lighting system, but I have read that early cars used the same system for headlights. An expensive car could have lanterns in front, with fancy cut glass panes. There would be a small supply of the calcium carbide, and a valve that could be opened on the dashboard, letting water drip and starting gas production. Then you would press a button on the dash, and an electric glow plug would hopefully light the gas and you could drive at night! But if you pressed the button before enough gas was produced, you could burn out your glow plug or drain the battery. If instead, you waited too long, too much gas would be produced, and the resulting explosion would blow all the glass out of your fancy headlight. I can’t imaging how much fun this would be to light your home with!