THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506220225
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 50 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Ediorial
SOURCE: Ron Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
HAY SPRINGS, NEB.
The Sand Hills of Nebraska have always held a special place in my heart.
My great-grandfather, my grandfather and my father homesteaded here on 160 free acres that became theirs when they built homes and lived on the land for five years.
I grew up here, riding a horse to a one-room school for eight years on the lonely High Plains where cattle roamed by the thousands and neighbors were out of sight miles away.
I broke horses and herded cows and mowed and stacked hay in the summer, and scattered the hay on the snow-swept prairie in the winter, before I graduated from the eighth grade and boarded in this little town of perhaps 800 people while going through high school.
We got electricity and running water in 1950, when I was 17, and then I headed out, like millions of Americans, to find my place in the outside world.
Last week I came back to the Sand Hills, after an 18-year absence, and fell in love again.
The Sand Hills have never been more beautiful.
The average annual rainfall is only 14 inches. The hills have already gotten nearly that much, and everything is a breathtaking green, a rolling carpet of grass stretching to the horizon, dotted with pink wild roses and yellow sweet peas.
``Never been prettier,'' said my cousin, Wayne Speer, in his 60s now but still the best calf roper in these parts. He runs hundreds of cows on the home place, where our grandfather and his wife raised seven kids in a one-room sod house they carved out of the prairie.
Wayne's mom, Aunt Stella, is 86 and lives alone in a nearby house. She's feeling a bit poorly and had to quit bowling last winter when the 20-mile drive to town became too much. She carried a 165 average and had traveled the nation to bowling tournaments.
Stella came here in 1928 when the Sand Hills were parched and brown. But this spring, the often-dry lakes are full, and tiny creeks slice through the rolling hills to the Niobrara River, known as Running Water to Chief Crazy Horse and the Sioux that until the 1870s reigned uncontested over the land.
My wife and I spent a few nights along the Niobrara, with a childhood chum, Orval Weyers. He farms and the continual rains have delayed planting for weeks. He was in the fields at 5 a.m. and worked until 9 p.m., planting seed.
Up the river about a mile, Charley Letcher was driving a tractor sweeping hay into a stack. He will celebrate his 92nd birthday Thursday, a surprise to many of his friends because he had a heart attack in April. Helping put up hay and also on tractors were his son Gerald, 64, and his daughter Lorene, 51.
And like the watermen of the Outer Banks, Wayne Speer and Orval Weyers and the Letchers grumble about the financial return for the never-ending labor.
When crops are good and cattle prolific, prices plunge. When prices are good, hail and drought and disease take their toll.
Most young people leave, like I did, after high school. And we get back only rarely.
About 300 of us and our spouses were back last week for a reunion of Hay Springs High School graduates. The school was so small, reunions are held for years of classes. Our gathering included the classes of 1931 through 1963.
We wore name tags, and needed them. Three old gilrfriends hugged me - women with whom I once was madly in love, and I had to peek at the tag to find out who I was kissing.
My, everyone else has gotten old. But they're still frisky.
The reunion started with a Friday, June 16, dance, continued Saturday with a noon ``pitchfork fondue'' and a night get-together, and ended Sunday with a picnic in the park.
It was grand. Before it was over I could name dozens of people without looking at a name tag.
And there is something permanent between people who grew into adulthood together, as any native of the Outer Banks will tell you.
Old pranks recalled. First kisses. First broken hearts. First successes.
I started wondering what it would be like to return for good to the Sand Hills, the lush green hills and the re-awakened friendships tempting all of us who had left the land.
I asked a friend where I could find a lake to go sailing.
``Sailing?'' he asked, astonished.
I asked my wife if she would be happy on a beautiful, pristine hillside miles from neighbors and far from traffic and pollution and crime.
``Have you lost your mind?'' she asked, dead serious.
And I was reminded of the glorious beaches of the Outer Banks when we stopped for the ``World's Biggest Hamburger'' in the little town of Harrison and spotted a calendar over the counter.
On the cover was a photgraph of Bodie Island Lighthouse, just a few miles from our house on Roanoke Island.
Yep, the Sand Hills are beautiful and a great place to visit.
But I'm ready to go home. by CNB