The Roaring 20's in the Wild West

One of the benefits to carpentry is spending time with folks as I remodel their homes. After the shock of having their living quarters destroyed, people warm up to me as I begin to piece things back together. By day three I'm just one of the family, enjoying hot coffee and homemade cookies. If I'm real lucky, and the kitchen isn't torn up, I even get to enjoy a home-cooked noon dinner. On one such job I had the pleasure to work for Carl and Cindy Olson of rural Broken Bow.

At the dinner table I heard stories about Cindy growing up on the L.D. Mercer ranch thirteen miles northwest of Thedford. Carl told of his stint in the navy where he patrolled the shores of Vietnam. I enjoyed the conversations almost as much as I savored Cindy's superb cooking. Life was good.

One day as we were eating a scrumptious dessert, Carl started on a story about his grandfather in North Platte. Charles (Hervey) Cole was born on the 12th of November, 1893. He grew up in the Platte Valley where he married Edna May Woodman and they settled down in North Platte to raise a family. Maybe "settling down" aren't the best words to describe their lives though. Hervey took a job with the FBI to feed the nine little mouths that Edna bore in the early years of marriage. The "Roaring Twenties" were certainly that for this young family.

Hervey's assignments with the FBI included shutting down houses of ill repute and catching bootleggers. The Prohibition may have outlawed whiskey during this fourteen-year time frame, but it certainly didn't create a society of church-going saints. One night he was working Front Street, looking for bootleggers when a gangster thumped him on the head and threw his body on a west bound freight train. It was the end of the line for this meddling government agent-- so everyone thought.

Hervey gained consciousness somewhere in eastern Colorado where he staggered off the train and wandered aimlessly around the railyards. He couldn't remember a thing about his life. An area farmer saw him zig zagging incoherently about and asked him his name. Hervey thought a minute and replied, "I don't know." When asked where he was from he had the same answer. The kindhearted farmer told him to get in his car and he would give him a job raising sugar beets.

A year and a half went by and one day Hervey developed a nose bleed out in the field. For some reason his amnesia suddenly left him and he could remember everything. He told his boss the news and the nice man offered to pay all his back wages and help him get a train ticket home. "There's one more thing that I need you to do," Hervey added. " I need you to write my wife a letter describing what happened."

Back in North Platte Hervey found his wife milking cows at a local dairy to get by. She took her long lost husband back after reading the letter.

Charles Hervey Cole bought a gas station in North Platte and a small farm that is now part of the Union Pacific yards near the Golden Spike. He passed away at the ripe old age of 67.

Stories like this abound in the Sandhill region and each one fascinates me. If you have a good one, I'd love to hear it!