Alfredisms

The Polk Progress was a Nebraska treasure that ceased publication in late 1989 after 82 years as a weekly newspaper. From 1955 until its last issue, the editor and publisher was the late Norris Alfred. In its last few months, the Progress had 900 subscribers in 45 states. Alfred was a remarkable Nebraskan with an uncanny eye for connecting the present with the future. Prairie Fire has collaborated with the Alfred family, the University of Nebraska School of Journalism and the Nebraska State Historical Society to locate and archive many of Norris's writings. We are capitalizing on our good fortune to present many of the Norris Alfred writings to our readership. We believe that his observations are as fresh and relevant to today's world as they were when originally written.

“Polking Around”
August 18, 1977

Another store front on Main Street is being remodeled. MacDonald’s GW is gaining the permanent awning look of the buildings north and south of it. Homer MacDonald, the store’s slimming proprietor (he’s on a diet. He is not the male member of the TOPS club.) was taking down the IGA signs when one chunk crashed through a big plate glass window. This accident caused the timing of the remodeling and covering the remaining expanse of plate glass with a solid front.

Main Street is losing its plate glass look. When the buildings were built about 70 years ago, electric service was in its infancy and the glass fronts served as a light source besides being used for displaying the merchant’s wares. Plate glass fronts caused problems on Polk’s north-south Main Street because the morning sun would shine through the glass of the store fronts on the west side, and the afternoon sun would beam likewise into the buildings on the east side.

The solution to the sunshine problem was canvas awnings which rolled down or up by a crank that turned a gear box mechanism controlling the turns of canvas on the wood roller covering the width of the store front. Old pictures of Polk’s Main Street show these awnings. It was possible to determine the time of day in the pictures by which side of Main Street had the awnings rolled down.

The plate glass fronts had or have (there are a few remaining) another problem—keeping the glass clean. In some cases, such as the Progress office, this is necessary more for insiders to look out than for outsiders to look in. Keeping the plate glass fronts clean reminds us of A.C. Quillen, barber. This story we may have told before.

A.C. Quillen was a quiet fellow. He had his barber shop in one of the buildings on the east side of Main Street and in the north block. He lived, with his wife and daughter, in the house owned and occupied by Nick and Lelah McNaught. Most of his barbering was done during the early days of Polk before Main Street was paved.

Quillen had just finished cleaning the plate glass windows of his shop and was clipping the hair of a customer seated in the chair nearest the just-cleaned windows, when a car parked parallel to the sidewalk in front of the barber shop started pulling away from the sidewalk out into the street. Main Street was muddy from a morning thunderstorm and the car slithered sideways, rear wheels spinning, and plastered Quillen’s clean windows with flying mud.

Quiet Quillen put down his clippers, excused himself to his customer, walked out to the car, still spinning its wheels, picked up a handful of mud and plastered it on the windshield of the car (this was in the days before windshield wipers). Then he walked back into his shop, cleaned his hands and resumed trimming his customer’s hair. All of this without saying a word.

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