Weather Report from Gene & Vie's House

Just thought I'd let you know about our weather.Sunday night at 12:30 am our weather alert went off and said Sioux City and areas around us are in a bad storm warning.(of course it really started about 10 PM) but at 12 I told Gene that I had better get our flag in the house.it was lightening and thundering and slow rain then but man, I was so lucky as soon as I came in the house it really started. We got about 1 1/2 half inches of rain then and that wind was clocked at 93 mpr at our airport which is about 7 miles from us. Here it was about 79 we were told.

Gene and I were looking out at the trees and man some were almost to the ground....pretty scarry if you ask me. Some trees around Sioux City were twisted and pulled up from the ground. Lots of damage.

The past two days and nights we have had rain and last night the thunder and lightening was pretty bad, BUT no wind with it. We got 2 2/10s inches last night.

Our place is in a valley as there are hills around us. If it rains hard, we have to watch it so we don't get flooded. We have lived here 27 years now and have been lucky so far even though it has been close sometimes.

Well just thought I'd tell you about our weather here. Do hope that you all don't have an experence like this.

Gene and Vie Pennell

Green Crossing More notes

I got several comments by email today regarding Green Crossing.

Apparently it is a Railroad Crossing where the tracks cross a road. Leah Brewer talked to Bob Yost today and also Kelly Morris who both say it is the railroad crossing and still says "Green Crossing" along the railroad as the tracks approach the road.

Floy Ruggles wrote this note:

I had never heard of Green's Crossing before. The couple lived 4 miles east of Haigler right along the highway. We lived just north of there. The house and everything else is gone at the corner of the intersection of hwy 34 where the Greens lived. Sophia Zuege confirmed that it was the place where the Pennel's lived when we were neighbors. Helen Pennel started highschool with me. She had an older brother, Herb, who was already out of highschool. The place where we lived is still standing but in bad shape. The barn is gone. Daddy stored watermelons in the haymow of the barn - in the straw. We would eat the good part out of a watermelon and throw the rest out the window (of the barn) to the cows or goats. Ash Roundtree bought the place when we left. Vernon Trembly's lived there when we were having Vacation Bible School in Haigler. She brought her kids to Bible School. I think the cream station that the Green's operated was on the east side of Main Street about the middle of the block or a little north of middle. Don't take that as a fact. I haven't confirmed it yet.

1935 - 1937 - Comments by Floy Ruggles

I was ten and in the fifth grade when we moved to the Armstrong place (Fred & Erma Zuege's lived there later). I really do not remember where Alice was then. She was home some of the time. When we moved to the Ritchey place, a mile or so northeast of there, she was teaching and was home part time-weekends and vacations. She was going with Rich Gregory then and got married about the time we moved to the Andres place about 4 miles west of Haigler.

During the school year of 1935, Edward Wall and I walked to school together. He would watch for me to cut across their pasture and come out to join me. After we moved to Ritchey's place, I walked through the field to Zuege's and Roy and Dale joined me then all four of us walked together.
Doralene White walked home with us as far as their turn off but could not see us from the house in the morning.

I think Roy Zuege's mother was Erma. They had a girl, Helen I think, that had not started school before I graduated from eighth grade-and moved. I stayed with them the last week or so of school because my parents moved before school was out. Then they had another girl later.

I stayed out of school one year after eighth grade. My parents thought maybe by the next year they could afford to send me to Platte Valley Academy. But the next year was not any better, financially, so I started Haigler High School. They moved to Parks the last six weeks of school and I transferred to Parks for the remainder of the year. For a few days or weeks I rode an old brakeless bike to Haigler to school. Then I got to ride with Tom Pierson and his wife, along with Dorothy Bush (later Clegg) and Helen Pennel. Piersons lived in Parks, I think, and came to Haigler every morning to work and back home in the afternoon. I think Tom had a mail route and Viola worked at the bank.

While we lived in Parks, Ed and Nellie Jensen came to work in this part of Nebraska and the Seventh-day Adventist Conference men began to realize we existed. My folks were encouraged to send me to Platte Valley Academy, near Shelton. I was told later that my dad had written to the Academy, soon after I started, saying that he was going to take me out because they could not see a way to keep me there. But the principal, Adam Rudy, persuaded him to leave me there. By God's grace, their $20 was there every month and I worked the other $20 at 19 cents an hour. I had a 2 hour study period before lights out in the evening to study and prepare 4 subjects. I was on the high honor roll throughout the next three years - also by the grace of God. I always studied my Bible Lesson thoroughly first, then did the others in the time remaining. I worked all afternoon and during free periods starting in the dining room and ironing room the first year. The next year I went to work for the Business Manager in the school office.

Refer back to the 1937 Entry