Nebraska News
HOOPER, Neb. — A few years ago, the Nebraska Department of Roads rolled out a highway bypass to hasten the already-hurried everyday pace. Motorists rushing north to Norfolk, or south to Omaha, no longer had to slow to 40 miles an hour through a blink-and-miss-it place called Hooper.
No longer did travelers have to pass the Hooper ice cream parlor, or the Hooper grain elevator, or the ancient railroad cars sitting on discontinued tracks, or the decades-old neon marquee, long past glowing, that welcomed travelers to a downtown from the late 19th century.
The people of Hooper — population 827, more or less — knew what this meant. The small green sign planted beside the new highway barely whispered their town’s name. And in the flat terrain of rural Nebraska, the eye can see far into the distance, yet miss so much. They feared being missed. Bypassed.
Another community might have resigned itself to this subtle humiliation, enduring the slight on behalf of rural America as just one more nudge toward oblivion. But Hooper was determined to raise its collective hand somehow, and say to the busy world:
We are still here...... Continue reading
No longer did travelers have to pass the Hooper ice cream parlor, or the Hooper grain elevator, or the ancient railroad cars sitting on discontinued tracks, or the decades-old neon marquee, long past glowing, that welcomed travelers to a downtown from the late 19th century.
The people of Hooper — population 827, more or less — knew what this meant. The small green sign planted beside the new highway barely whispered their town’s name. And in the flat terrain of rural Nebraska, the eye can see far into the distance, yet miss so much. They feared being missed. Bypassed.
Another community might have resigned itself to this subtle humiliation, enduring the slight on behalf of rural America as just one more nudge toward oblivion. But Hooper was determined to raise its collective hand somehow, and say to the busy world:
We are still here...... Continue reading
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