Hometown Series - Liz of Becoming

Happy Thursday! The weekend can't come soon enough, Sean is putting on a 5K as a fundraiser for his team, my parents-in-law are coming down for that and then I have a bridal shower in the afternoon, which I'm making cupcakes for AND also it is a 3 day weekend for me!
Today the hometown series is continuing and Monday we were in Houston and today we are heading north to Nebraska to a town of 300 people! Take it away Liz!




Hey readers of Henning Love.

I'm Liz of Becoming , and this is my hometown. Actually it is a 'village' according to the state. The village of Nehawka, Nebraska. :)

About 300 people live in Nehawka, I think. Its pretty much your typical tiny farm town. It has a post office, and a bank, and a co-op (which includes the grain elevator, gas station, convenience store, and crop stuff like huge tanks of anhydrous ammonia). It has a bar, a community building, a trucking company, a ballfield, and a log cabin library. Plus houses.

It is indeed a real log cabin, and quite old.

Everyone knows everyone else. Like all small towns. And this of course is a good thing and a bad thing. Its pretty much impossible to live a nice private life. o_O Seems like there rumors are always going around ... though really, where do you not run into that? No big deal, right ... well, sometimes it is, but we survive. And for that downside, there are lots of good sides to people :) Basically you have 300 next door neighbors, and all of them would do anything for you, from babysitting, to lending tools, to driving your paper route for you in the dead cold winter. (True story.) Not to mention the folks who live outside town, who dig your little old car out and drive you places you need to go in their huge pickups, during crazy blizzards. (Also true.)

In summertime the town pretty much centers around baseball and softball. It makes good memories. When I think of summer in Nehawka, its all warm sunset evenings and dusty kids everywhere and funnel cake smell and grilling hamburger smell and the baseball popping in the catchers mitt.

There is a legend and some kinda cool history surrounding Nehawka. The history first: it was just about the first town in the area (1855) and it survived a lot of other little towns close by which had lame names like Stringtown, Waterville, Mount Pleasant, and Factoryville. And the town was a bit bigger deal back in the day. It had 2 newspapers once. And a manufacturing company, as seen below.

An old ad for a Nehawka business. I think the Sheldon mixer mixed cement ... ? Not sure.

However, for moi, the most fun is the legend of the Weeping Water, the creek along which Nehawka is situated. A long long time ago, centuries probably, two Indian tribes were deadly enemies. They fought a battle right along the banks of a creek. Apparently it was a very brutal battle which ended in the men of the one tribe being pretty much annihilated, and only a sorry handful left of the other. And all the women and babies and old folks from the losing side came out to bury the dead, and of course there were many tears.

The people left of the losing tribe decided to return to that place every year and mourn their losses. And, all of this weeping and moaning, and all of their many tears, over the years, eventually led to a little stream, which grew to a brook, which grew to a good size creek. It runs over a rocky bed, and is twisty and uneven and steep on the sides, and (legend says) if you listen closely, you can hear the murmuring and crying of the Indian women. A very old French map, probably one of the first ever made of the place, calls that creek "L'eau qui pleure", water which weeps, and the name of Nehawka is the Indian word for "rustling water".

(Nehawka probably would've been called Weeping Water, except that the town 10 miles up the creek had already taken that name. Phooey.)

Thank you for reading :) I had fun putting into words how I felt about my town. I wasn't sure how many people would be interested in reading about a town of 300 people ... but then I thought, shoot maybe it'll be good for a laugh at least. :D

Yes, that is a flagpole in the middle of the street. It's a small town thing don't you know.

Thank you Liz for showing us around Nehawka and participating in this series. Living in a town of 300 would definitely be a change if I did it and that legend was really neat to read about.

Check back next week for two more wonderful hometowns you will get to read about!