Bodley’s Hill

The job in Wahoo began to become somewhat boring and one incident prompted me to look at other possibilities.

It was a small thing, but aren’t most events that “break the camel’s back?” I had carried a story about some function at the Wahoo Country Club a couple weeks ahead of the event. When the organizers asked me to run the story again, I gave the standard response, a story is news only once, unless something new can be added. If they wanted to encourage attendance, they would have to run an ad.

This did not sit well with the people from the Country Club and since Darrell was a member of the board, they went to him and the second story got published.

To me it was a matter of principle and the fact I was not supported cemented my decision to seek other avenues for my work.

With my army service I qualified for the GI Bill so I decided to go back to school. I had become interested in law in my undergraduate days because of my roommate and his friend in that curriculum. They had since graduated and were practicing law in Wilbur, Nebraska.

I applied to law school at UNL and was accepted in the three-year program starting that fall of 1954.

I continued to serve in the National Guard at Wahoo. Being familiar with the unit was not the only reason I didn’t transfer to a Lincoln outfit. There was this girl named Janice Owens I had met and for some reason I wanted an excuse to come back to Wahoo once a week.

I didn’t start going out with Janice right away. I started out dating Peggy Davis, Janice’s best friend. We all hung out at Shannahan’s (although Janice drank only plain 7-Up). I don’t know how we got switched around but I have always had a hunch it was contrived.

Before we even knew each other, Janice had tongue-in-cheek plans for me. I played for a local softball team and even though the army had helped me gain quite a few pounds, I still maintained that small waist I had shown in college.

At one of the games, when Janice and Peggy were in attendance, Janice said, “See that skinny guy out there? If I could get hold of him, I sure would fatten him up.”

More than 50 years later and 30 or 40 pounds heavier, she has accomplished her goal.

We eventually met and went through the usual rituals of young adults in a small town. It was necessary to find a secluded spot to do some “necking” and in this case it was called Bodley’s Hill. This was simply a seldom traveled road out in the country where a car could park for some time without being disturbed.

Beside Shannahan’s, we spent many Saturday nights at the Frog Pond, a dance hall on a lake near Wahoo. It has only been recently that I knew the real name of the place, Wanahoo Lake, when a proposed recreation area was announced there.

The Frog Pond was typical of small town Nebraska where liquor by the drink was not legal. Instead, the establishment sold the set up, Coke, 7-Up, et cetera, and the customers brought their own bottle and mixed their own. Janice got really serious then, she mixed a drop or two of wine in her 7-Up for her heavy drinking. That may have been one of the early versions of a wine cooler.