Columns

Saturday’s weather prompted me to jump in the Jeep and take a meandering tour of the country this past weekend. A trip that originally I thought might take a couple hours soon turned into a near 300-mile, seven-hour drive along many roads that I hadn’t driven since my growing-up days in Central Nebraska.

It had been several years since I had driven what we always called the river road between the Interstate 80 Wood River exit and Highway 10, just north of the Minden exit off of Interstate 80.

The reason? To view the start of the spring migration of the Sandhill Cranes.

Sesquicentennial...It’s a word that takes a little work to have it roll off the tongue when you try to say it, but this year, that word has a great deal of meaning to the community of Sutton, as the community prepares to celebrate it’s own sesquicentennial this year.

As a matter of fact, according to historical facts, a week from this Sunday marks the official start of Sutton’s 150th year as a town. Settled first by Luther French, who homesteaded the area after leaving Painesville Geauga County, Ohio and headed west, landing on what is the original site of what was officially called Sutton on Aug. 12, 1871.

French, however, first set foot in what became Sutton on March 14, 1870, and after doing some light research at this point, it sounds as if Sutton became quite the lively town over the early years of settlement. His home, a dugout of course, was

It’s sub-district basketball season, which means falling into that familiar routine we have each year of covering games on Monday and Tuesday nights, and then staying a little later on Tuesday’s to get those games in that week’s paper.

Much like in year’s past, I found myself heading west toward Kenesaw Monday night to cover the Harvard boys in the D1-7 Sub-district game between our Cardinals and Franklin.

The game was a close call all the way through, with Franklin taking the lead in the first half and then Harvard swooping in for the narrow lead in the second.

And I just have to note that I have a love/hate relationship with these kinds of games.

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Wrestling, in my world of sports coverage, wasn’t full of many high moments until I moved to Clay County. Since my term with the CCN, I’ve had the luxury of covering many state medalists. Yes, I have covered other state medalists over my 30 some odd years of covering high school wrestling in Nebraska, but it wasn’t until I came here that I was able to witness my first state champion, Tyler Bailey in 2015, then again in 2019 with Ignacio “Iggy” Rivera.

Then comes along a young man who truly turned wrestling into a whole new realm for me.

Joseph (Joe) Hinrichs.

A “kid” that I touted highly as a true young man last year when he won his first state championship in the Class C 152-pound class.

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With everything going on in the world today, let alone in just our country, it’s difficult to keep up with all of it.

Not only that, it’s difficult to keep up with reliable resources that aren’t onesided and give you all the facts.

This is probably why I don’t watch/read the news much. Now, I know I’m in the news business, but when it comes to finding reliable news outlets and sources to consume said news, I find it hard to do.

While I still believe our local, community newspapers and even television news crews do their best to bring all the facts and keep their opinions out of things that aren’t opinion pieces, I can’t say the same for many bigger news outlets.

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Social media, as many of you know who read the Bull each week, can at times really dig deep within me...I mean really deep. Such has been the case with this super deep cold snap that we’ve all had to endure for the past week and a half or so...though it feels much longer than the 10 or so days.

Case in point, Monday as information was being released about the potential “rolling blackouts” to help the power grid, especially in the midwest from the Canadian border to the Mexico border, we shared a post giving followers of our social media sites a heads up that power may just go off without any notice, and that it could be off for 30 to 60 minutes or longer with the flip of a switch.

When a response to said information doubts our information and to ask, “Any reason why you would know this?” kind of just took me back for a second.

But then I thought back to a Twitter post that I put up last year while in Omaha for the 2020 state wrestling championships.

Kelly Clayton Borders, age 56 of Sutton, passed away peacefully surrounded by family Monday, Feb. 8, 2021 in Lincoln. He was born May 10, 1964 at Osmond, to William and Ruth (Austin) Borders. He worked at Friesen Chevrolet in Sutton for many years.

KC is survived by his brothers Scott (Carol) Borders of Scottsbluff, Steve (Gina) Borders of Sutton; sisters Dee Dee (Dale) Downing of Broken Bow, Laurie (Barry) Sheridan of Sutton; nieces Mindy, Kea, Brandi, Jennifer, Stephanie, Chantil; nephews Ryan, Nick; and his best friend, his dog Haley. He was preceded in death by his parents; brother Randy Borders; and nephews Cory and Blake.

Interment services will be held privately by the family at a later date. Memorials may be directed to the family for a later distribution. Leave online messages for the family at NebraskaCremation.com.

Wrestling is another one of those sports I never really got into.

Growing up my brother participated in wrestling for a few years and all it did was give me a heart attack when he was on the mat because of the positions he would get into, or would get his opponent into.

Other than that, I never really understood the hype about wrestling, but in my defense growing up I was never really the sports type anyway.

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Nebraska is certainly the land of many weather situations, and over the course of the past few weeks, especially beginning this past weekend, we’ve all seen (and felt) how mean Mother Nature can get, because someone certainly ruffled her feathers to reap the bitterly cold temperatures upon the midwest, and in my own eyes, especially Nebraska!

I have to admit, at least in my recent memory, Saturday morning was perhaps the toughest travel day that I’ve endured possibly since the Christmas storm of 2009, my first year at the Clay County News.

Friday I attended the Sutton wrestling teams sub-district meet at Raymond Central and with my Saturday setting up to be in and around the Seward area, I elected to stay Friday night in Seward. Saturday’s activities were to start at East Butler High School in Brainard, followed by basketball games for the Southern Nebraska Conference at Centennial High School in Utica.

A month into this first session of the 107th Nebraska Unicameral Legislature, all legislative proposals have been introduced and committee hearings are underway.

Nebraska citizens are encouraged to contact their local lawmakers about their support or opposition to specific bills. Lawmakers represent the interests of the residents in their districts, but they only know to communicate the information received from the public.

Clay County sits within District 38 whose representative is Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil. Contact his office at 402-471-2732 or dmurman@leg. ne.gov.

HOW A BILL BECOMES A LAW