No cell phones? Kids had "Time on Their Hands"

by Larry Miller

On a winter day back in 1947, the Lincoln Journal-Star published a story about how high school students in Chadron were spending their time.  The report was based a survey of 77 high school students and was conducted by Chadron State Teachers College.  We don't know if the kids were from Chadron Prep, Assumption Academy, Chadron High – or all of those schools.

It wasn't front page news, but the page 6 story offered some interesting contrasts with today's young people – most of whom are attached to a smart phone or some other "social media" device.

Slugged "Time on Their Hands," here's the text of that newspaper report from 70 years ago:

"A survey conducted by the state teachers college at Chadron in the local high school has brought out some interesting statistics as to how these pupils spend their time.  

Most of the students had outside work, averaging an hour and three quarters daily; an hour and 28 minutes is spent listening to the radio; a little over an hour watching or participating in sports; an hour reading; 48 minutes playing a musical instrument; 36 minutes on dates.  They attend the theater twice a week on the average.

Only two of the seventy-seven students surveyed cannot dance.  Twenty-eight percent receive an average weekly allowance of $2.05, while those who work earn nearly four dollars in their out-of-school time."

It would be interesting to compare those findings with contemporary data.  

We'd hazard a guess that only two of seventy-seven students surveyed today CAN dance.  We're also inclined to think that kids aren't reading books much these days.  Although we suspect they do spend more than an hour reading – but it's top-heavy with short bursts of items from Facebook and other social media.

And 70 years ago, if you asked someone if they had a cell phone, they likely would have thought you had the misguided notion they were doing time in the basement jail at the old City Hall with a pay phone at the end of the hall – not a device appended to their person nearly 24/7.

Not sure which of those two scenarios is worse.   ...Sigh.

12 Nebraska towns you've likely never heard of

The Lincoln Journal-Star has written about 12 little-known Nebraska towns.

See how many of them you know -- or maybe have actually visited!

CLICK HERE

We were familiar half of the communities -- and actually have visited some of them.  Of course, there were a few we'd never heard of.  But we suspect that many Omaha and Lincoln-area residents haven't heard of Marsland or Antioch, or numerous other tiny panhandle settlements -- some of which today would likely be considered "ghost" towns.

Information about these little-known towns was gleaned from what's called the Virtual Nebraska project, which "emerged out of the Consortium for the Application of Space Data to Education (CASDE) project, which began in September 1995, after Senator Bob Kerrey challenged personnel of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to find a better way to apply NASA's space data holdings to education."

The site was created by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It offers a wealth of information, including Landsat satellite photos, color infra-red images, educational modules, tutorials, and much more.

One of those components is Nebraska -- Our Towns. It deals with historical information about cities and towns all across the state, searchable by county and/or town name.  A few years back we contributed a bit about Whitney to the Our Towns database in the form of a link pointing to our Whitney Reflections website.  

As you explore Our Towns and read through information about Chadron, Whitney, Crawford, Marsland, and other communities in Dawes County and Nebraska, you'll probably find that the information is far from comprehensive, and there is likely information that needs to be better documented.  

Nonetheless, we found Virtual Nebraska to be not only an enjoyable diversion for learning about Nebraska communities, it also contains a real abundance of information that any Nebraska should find interesting and helpful.

Enjoy!