To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
Those words “have become among William Blake’s most oft-quoted lines, and argue for seeing the grand in the very small, and pondering those metaphysical concepts beyond the comprehension of man by observing them at a local level.”
Miners and Stockmen’s Steakhouse & Spirits, Valentine’s Day & the Pony Express
In 1884 the town of Hartville was born, named after Major (Brevet Lt. Col). Verling K. Hart when Wyoming was still a territory. Hartville, Wyoming, population 62, incorporated in 1911, was a thriving area during the copper and iron mining days.
The ore from Hartville to Badger Wyoming used 10 ore wagons and sixty horses. By 1900, the railroads arrived.
Miners and Stockmen’s Steakhouse and Spirits is the oldest business in Wyoming and certainly the oldest in Hartville, Wyoming, population 62. It is now a quiet community. Except at the Steakhouse. It is the only business left and is still open Thursday through Sunday 5:00 – 10:00 p.m. Reservations aren’t mandatory but highly recommended.
They are known for serving top-grade steaks, along with 35 kinds of whiskey. Oh – and you might want to order your dessert early because it is in such high demand you might miss out. You won’t leave hungry. Only with a desire to come back as soon as possible.
It has served thousands of men- immigrants from all over the world -scratching a living out of the earth, as well as cattle rustlers. There used to be maybe a dozen bars serving nearly 800 people. It was a rough and rowdy place, as most mining towns were in that era. The last shootout on Main Street was in 1912.
The town housed several bordellos, dance halls, and gambling facilities. It also boasted an opera house with live vaudeville productions, two newspapers, stables, cafes, bakeries, and several mercantiles.
They managed to build a school that doubled as a church on Sunday. As you can see in my photo there are bars on the small block building behind the restaurant. The jails held many, many unruly drunks – until Prohibition came to town. (It was either going to jail or church on Sunday!) Then the restaurant (not the current building) became just a restaurant with a hidden stairway to the basement where drinks were still served to a few. After Prohibition, the stairwell was no longer needed, and it became a restaurant and bar again.
When the mines closed in 1980 the town was in danger of losing its post office. Some of the creative people in town, headed up by Daniel Offe, decided on a commemorative stamp in hopes of securing the future of their mail service. They chose one for Valentine’s Day. The stamp is a little different each year and is collected by people worldwide.
Pony Express comes into play in this event. They ride into Hartville with all the valentines they’ve collected from neighboring areas of Guernsey and Platte County. The children especially love this event as they get to pet the horses and experience history in the making. It doesn’t hurt any that Offe’s 90-year-old mother makes cinnamon rolls for the occasion. Along with coffee and visiting it’s an event to remember.
My maiden name is Hart, so reading about the history and the steakhouse piqued my interest considerably. We made dinner reservations and headed across the state to sample the outstanding food and spent the previous night in Guernsey, about five miles from Hartville. The weather had gotten so bad that we decided to head for home. A very disappointing development. I want to go back someday and sample that wonderful food. It’s definitely on my bucket list.
My father-in-law was a pretty good chef and he taught my mother-in-law, Pauline, to cook after they married. In fact, he had his own restaurant for a while. It was right across the street from Cudahy’s Meat packing plant located at 2300 N. Broadway Street in Wichita, Kansas – an awesome place for it. Cudahy’s is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was the largest packing plant in the country at the time with over 13,000 employees. That might have meant a lot of lunches for Noah to fix!!
My husband pointed out the cafe to me many years ago before the buildings along there were torn down. It was a simple little frame structure. I wish I had taken a photo of it.
Noah Ahijah Johnston had a system figured out so he could feed people rapidly – bacon and eggs, biscuits or hotcakes for breakfast – hamburgers, hot dogs, and fries, or chili for lunch. He had fast food before fast food was cool! (As I am writing this his firstborn is in our kitchen whipping up a batch of chili.)
Hamburgers, French fries, and a Coke was the iconic date night meal for Bob and I when we were young. It still makes for some pretty tasty munching. The oldest hamburger chain was White Castle, also in Wichita, established in 1921. Noah was just ahead of them. They undoubtedly got the idea from him…
As the new bride of his eldest son in 1958, I was slicing some onions for him at a family dinner and he said, “Blankety, blank, you call that thin?” I never could slice them to suit him, so he did it himself. He could be a grouchy old goat, but I loved him anyway.
He liked to fish but never was successful at it. If you wanted a day of futile fishing, getting his line out of a tree, using one of his newly purchased gadgets guaranteed to catch fish, and listening to his colorful vocabulary, you would want to go with Noah. He always had lots of thinly sliced onions to go on the sandwiches he packed for lunch. I think he wanted to put fish on his café menu but it didn’t work out.
I never knew the name of his restaurant but I’d say there was a good chance it was simply called “Noah’s Café.” He didn’t operate it very long because he usually had a new adventure in mind. In the spring of 1920, he traded the business for a 1919 Studebaker along with some cash and went on his way. No one seems to know what his next endeavor was.
The building is long since gone and so is my father-in-law, but I’ll be chuckling about his onion comment until the next time I see him. He’ll probably be slicing onions somewhere…
I went to the grocery store this morning – something I’m enjoying less and less, but so grateful we still have food to buy. I have been hearing about eggs costing over $8.00 but they haven’t shown up in my store until now. They had some for $3.69. Guess which ones I bought. I guess I’ll have to back off on baking!
We built our first new home in 1968 at Milford Lake in Kansas. Some new pieces of furniture were needed and a dining table was the first order of business. We entertained a lot and wanted a table and chairs big enough to do the job and sturdy enough to last. We had no idea “sturdy enough to last” would mean until the end. We bought a maple Tell City set, which was a big deal at the time.
When I started to write this I decided to do a quick check on the company and found a fun bit of trivia. Jacqueline Kennedy saw some of their chairs at Saks Fifth Avenue in NY City, liked them, and ordered 425 for the ballroom at the White House. Hers were fancy, so different from our Early American-style maple Continue reading →
We were gifted with an absolutely gorgeous fall this year – and it didn’t seem to want to go away, which was fine with us. The pumpkin patches were beautiful, combined with an array of colorful and oddly shaped squash, delicious apples, corn shocks, and fields of bailed hay – always very photogenic. I am a sucker for old wooden wagons, antique tractors, and hayrides to complete the picture.
But it is winter now, 14 degrees last night with snow on the ground. We have everything as ready as it can be for the four feet (or more) of snow that comes our way and keeps us company until July. Well, maybe not quite that long.
For those of you that love playing in the snow, this may be a good winter for it, if the predictions I’ve read are accurate. I’ll just take pictures of it.
Change your cell service, they said. It’ll be easy, they said.
I didn’t want to change cell service, but I had no choice. Old people like me prefer not to change much of anything! I have a natural aversion to big companies, but I wound up with one! We all thought everything was just ducky since it was all working. Then I got an email telling me to get my service changed.
I told them I already had, two weeks ago. Upon checking they determined that my number had not been ported- out, or not ported- out properly – I was never sure which. So – they did it and that’s when everything became not so easy!
Nothing would work!! Nothing.
All kinds of things were going on behind the scenes between three entities and I kept checking with them. Nothing was getting any better. More weeks passed with the email messages continuing, telling me I needed to get it changed. Everyone was trying, but nothing was working. Two more port-out attempts were made before they said, “You are completely out of our system now.” Two days later I got another email telling me to git-r-dun. Sigh. Still – nothing was working.
I was a skinny 11-year-old girl going from store to store in downtown El Dorado Springs looking for work. Being tall, I could pass for thirteen but they had a way of asking my age first thing, so I had to admit to being only eleven. I was usually told they’d had kids thirteen years old but never eleven. No employment was found. Not even at the drugstore I loved so much with its amazing smells, paddle fans, ice cream, and comic books.
Later, when I was old enough, I did find employment at the 4-Corner Diner. Then I could buy the black and white saddle oxfords, can-cans for underneath my dresses, even those hideous hoops that were in style. How on earth did we manage to sit down! I seem to remember that they went out of style pretty quickly.
The three-story school building that we attended had concrete steps and I don’t recall ever using a handrail – or even if we had any. I just zipped up and down them, no problem, and never stumbled. Now I would have a hard time with them even with a handrail.
As we start the new year out we are filled with memories of the past 12 months – the most difficult period of time in history for most of us. Hopes and prayers for better times in 2021.
I ran into Santa recently and we had a nice chat over cookies and milk. He was considering new career choices and asked me what I’d do if I were him.
I quickly told him that I’d get a different job. Well, maybe not, the way unemployment is right now, but it’d be worth a try. I’d at least stop having white put on my traveling suit. Those chimneys turn it into read and soot! I’d also stretch gift delivery time into a lot longer than one evening! It must really tire out the reindeer to travel so far in one night, and who can afford to pay overtime anyway?
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