In about 1962 two of my great uncles began spending their weekends in a small, somewhat rundown house east of Carleton, Nebraska. I believe Uncle Preston "Press" Bailey actually bought this house, and if my memory is correct, Uncle Jim Bailey found the house and suggested it to Uncle Press. Uncle Press was in his late 60s or early 70s and lived in the Hotel Lindell in Lincoln where he was once a state senator, and where he still worked for the Nebraska Railroad Commission. Uncle Jim, nearly the same age, lived on his farm with his son, Russell, and his daughter-in-law, Wilma Fay and their two boys. So my guess is that the old boys thought they needed a place to get away from it all on the weekends. They called their place "The Hideout".
I was never inside the Hideout, but I hope they had a TV and watched baseball games or had some other sort of wholesome activities. My Grandmother, Mary Lu, apparently had her own opinions about the Hideout. She incessantly referred to it as the "Boars' Den". Now a boar is a big adult male hog, and so I guess a boars' den would be where the two old boars shaded up on hot summer weekends. But one can easily imagine other qualities of a boars' den that may have been on her mind. We will not go into these other qualities here, as this is a family web site.
As far as I know, visitors were never invited out to the Boars' Den. But I would see the old boars around town in the mornings, taking their coffee or perhaps buying supplies at Weddel's general store. But by the second half of the afternoon they were ensconced in the Boars' Den and their cars were parked in the shade of a cottonwood tree out front of the house. And the house was pretty far off the road, so it was just a shady, mysterious place for me.
One hot July afternoon the clouds built up to thunderheads, and we had a nice cool rain from about six to six thirty in the evening. Then the sun came out and it was a lovely, cool summer evening. My grandfather, Floyd, and I were spending the evening sitting out on Floyd's front porch. Floyd was playing his harmonica and singing a few verses now and then. We were telling stories between songs. A car hadn't past in front of the house in 20 minutes or more.
Then my grandfather put his harmonica down, stood up and looked down the road to the east.
"What the hell is that?" he said quietly.
Press' car was about a hundred yard away, dead in the middle of road, inching toward town at about...will, I would guess it was moving at about two miles per hour.
"Looks to me like Uncle Press and Uncle Jim are coming in to town to be social this evening." I said.
Floyd did not respond but continued to stand and stare down the road at Press' blue and white Oldsmobile as it crawled its way toward town.
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| Uncle Press' Oldsmobile looked just like this. |
After a few seconds Press addressed himself to Floyd, inviting him to accompany his younger brothers in the Oldsmobile on their way to town for refreshments. Floyd had remained standing on the porch and declined the invitation. Then, there was some conversation between Jim and Press and they issued another invitation for Floyd to reconsider. Floyd did not hear all the words this time and shouted, "What?" Now anybody who knew Uncle Press, knew that he always really turned up the volume when somebody couldn't hear him, and he shouted loudly at Floyd to reconsider. At this point Floyd shouted back at his younger brothers, saying something that I believe I can clean up here and simply summarized as "Get the hell out of here, you @#$%&*'s" At which point the younger brothers said something that can be summarized as "Party Pooper!" and the big Oldsmobile began to roll slowly westward, toward town and refreshments.
