have a cigar!
or a cigarette
or a pipe
or some chewing tobacco
The late 1800s and early 1900s saw a tobacco craze. The cafes and restaurants advertised cigars and men even posed with them in portraits.
1874
An article about southeast Nebraska that appeared in the October 15, 1874 edition of the Omaha Daily Beef talked about Table Rock. It was headed, "Nebraska Sketches: Valley of of the Nemaha" and subheaded, "Table Rock, Pawnee Co., Neb., October 10th 1874" gives a lovely description of the town from a business point of view, saying, "The business men are enterprising, and soem day there will be a nice little city here, for the situation is beajtiful....Time is all that is wanted...In regard to business houoses, we have igtemized the following." it then proceeds to describe a varierthy of businesses, icluding the Norris merchandise store, three blacksmith shops, a stone mason, a livery stable, a lumber dealer, harness business, grocery store, a furniture store (with "furniture, coffins, etc."), hotels, and a drug and book store. About that last, the article says:
Cummins & Birne have a first-class drug and book store and sell choice cigars. We are judges of the weed, and having tried their fragrant Havanas, we know they are good.
table rock had a cigar factory????!!!!
Table Rock Argus, October 13, 1910:
stop in for a hair cut, candy, ice cream, oysters...and a cigar.
fashion central
Emil Goodenkauf, Otto Vondrasek, Frank Goodenkauf, Pete Goodenkauf, and Frank Werner show how it's done...
cigarettes, too
Miss Edna Tackley of Table Rock received this picture postcard from her fiance Ora Booth of Sunrise, Wyoming. Kristina Quevedo, sho shared this picture, said with it, in responding to the sharing of this webpage:
Love the stories. Here is one of Ora...I think they are smoking cigarettes...not cigars. |
but george purcell sticks with his pipe
George Purcell sticks with his old-fashioned pipe. Thanks to life time member Terry Purcell for this great family picture!
Memories about George by his niece Margaret Hunt, mother of lifetime Historical Society member Terry Hunt Korell.
beloved rudy senft -- who doesn't remember his pipe smoke?
bob sitzman's dad enjoyed cherry tobacco
and others favored chewing tobacco
john kent dow
John's Uncle Jay Dow chewed tobacco. In 2019, John responded to some Facebook posts about it:
Some of the comments talked about his chewing tobacco habit. My uncle was an avid chewer of Beech nut tobacco leaves and would spit into a tin can. I remember visiting him and he was spitting into an old Libby's peaches can. The farmers preferred chewing tobacco in the fields as it would not start a fire like cigarettes.
sharla sitzman
My Dad's grandma chewed tobacco. Bull Durham, he said. She was a rough-talking tough lady adored by her grandsons. Dad said they had secret conversations about important matters, like how did you meet Roe? That was Roe Bennett, her second husband. She told them, "I found him in a toilet hole. I hauled him up, and I've kep' him ever since." And she sang raunchy songs for them -- in private, because her daughter, Dad's mom, was quite prissy. When Dad was in his 70s, he helped me find her grave at a big impersonal cemetery in St. Joe. He stood there above that nondescript flat name stone and started singing like at a school recital. It was quite a...raunchy...song. Then he came to himself, looked at me, and raised his shoulders to shrug it off, as if to say, it wasn't my fault. "Grandma taught us that," he said, and smiled. She died of cancer when she was 40 and he was 10. Memories can live a long time. And she chewed tobacco, kept a little cloth bag of it around her neck.
sandy sitzman cerra
Dad smoked when I was little. Mom got so she didn't like it but he kept at it. When the twins were born in 1963 she put her foot down. That made 7 kids, and he was absolutely had to stop smoking around them. So he took up chewing tobacco, a life long habit. She wasn't pleased with that, either. He lived to see 83.