The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1919-09-17

! the countryside. 1t is brick build
ing, 100 feet each way. with three
floors and great plate glass windows
dressed up like the windows Of store
on Main street in Kansas City. One
of those streets is one hundred, the
other eighty feet wide from curb to
curb: and no oity street anywhere is
paved better than they, with thick
base of solid concrete, an inch of sand
on that, vitrified brick set on the sand
and asphalt filling the cracks between
the bricks.
| ,~-.,... boiling Up the Town
I THAT. pavement will 'be there q
thousand years from now" said a bus
mess man proudly. ~. o.t'G %
They tell that Johnson put that
pavement there covering their two
main streets and reaching out to
where the wheat fields begin. That
doesn't mean that he paid for it, but
he kept hammering away in his store
paper and urging the people to Lift
Holdrege out of the mud" That was
his slogan for years: Lift Holdrege
out of the mud"
At last the pavement came. John.
son says about it: II don't deserve
more credit for that pavement than
others here. We all pitched in togeth.
err and did it, and helped with the
rest. You know, you take a colored
man, shine his shoes, give him clean
white collar, and he looks all dolled
up. Did you ever notice that? It's
the same way with little town; give
it clean paved streets and it always
looks spick and span.
''In nine-tenths of the prairie towns
Of this size the streets are seas OF
black, sticky mud seven months OF
the year. and deserts OF whirling sand
and dust the balance Of the time; and
yet the merchants in such towns sit
|around and wonder why SO many farm
cts go to other towns to trade, or send
away to mail order houses. ,t .r@
what right has merchant to in.
vite farmers to come to his town to
trade when the streets are knee deep
in mud? A farm wife has enough
mud and muck at home, goodness
knows. If she steps out to feed the
chickens or fetch some eggs from the
barn or slop, the hogs. she is apt to
be ankle deep in mud and then to
ask her to come to town and to wade
in it knee deep-thats what l call
rubbing it in. Why, you can't cross
the street in the average country
town in winter without wading.
"a merchant has nerve to ask a
family to drive through the mud to a
town where the streets are worse than
any country road" Mr.. Johnson ad-
ded Country folks like their town
to be Gifted. The old notion that
Anything is good enough for farmer
doesn't go any more. 1t never was
true. They like paved streets and
concrete sidewalks just as we'll as city
folks do. They like to walk dry-shod
in town. / figure that our clean paved
streets are the greatest asset this town
has, outside of our auditorium. I'm
not afraid of any town within a radi-
us of fifty miles of us taking my trade
from me so long as they have muddy
streets and we have our paved streets
and auditorium" @*
Johnson can not deny that the au-
ditorium was his enterprise. For
years he preached the need of it in
his monthly store paper and when ne
thought the time was ripe he turned
the store over to his son and the de.
partment heads and went out and up
and down the countryside. For six
months he solicited money with which
to build that auditorium. He and an
other merchant in town were the
largest contributors. The auditorium
cost thirty-five thousand dollars, and
Johnson saw to it that every dollar
went into the building. Many of the
farmers in the county are stockhold-
ers in it, In the state of Nebraska
there is only one other auditorium so
large as this one in Holdrege, and
none, is nearly so beautiful It's walls
are Of pressed brick, and it's arcied
roof Ia 80 architecturally nerfect that