40 Nebraskaland • January-February 2021
ebraska's harshest winters have produced stories of
tragedy and heroism, but for most people, getting
through those long, cold months is more a matter of
patience and making do.
Before four-wheel drive and snowplows, a hard winter
meant isolation for farm families. Maxine Kessinger recalled
the brutal winter of 1936, when she was a 22-year-old farm
wife and mother of three, living 7 miles from Rosalie:
"Every road, even highways were drifted shut for weeks.
The scoop shovel was the only equipment to open the roads.
Some never opened until the spring thaws came and melted
the snow. The Kinning Store, a mile east of us, ran out of
supplies, as no trucks could get through. Sometimes, several
neighbors joined forces and with team and bobsled going
across fi elds, cutting fences to make it to town for needed
supplies such as groceries, cold or fl u remedies, maybe a little
coal to enhance the supply of green wood we were trying to
burn — and of course they would bring the mail. Sometimes
a two-week bundle had accumulated as the rural mail carrier
couldn't even get out of the city limits."
It wasn't so easy within city limits, either. The U.S. Postal
Service has long boasted that it is stopped by "neither snow
nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night." South of Marquette in
Aurora, Wayne Arthur Shaneyfelt worked as a mail carrier
from the 1930s into the 1970s. When he started, carriers on
city routes had no vehicles, so he walked their entire routes
twice a day — about 12 to 15 miles in all.
Writing for I Remember… Family Stories from Hamilton
County, Nebraska (1999), Shaneyfelt recalled that the
"roughest day" of his long career was during his fi rst winter on
the job. Aurora didn't require people to scoop their sidewalks,
and every house had a mailbox on the front porch. That
By David L. Bristow, History Nebraska
N
B D id L B i Hi N b k
The Long Winters
This early 1900s photo is a mystery. Marquette never had much more than 300 people at its peak in 1930. Such a quantity of
mailbags may not have been for local delivery. They might have been pulled from a stuck Burlington train after a heavy snow.
History Nebraska RG3828-5-1
