Jagguy: Two Paths to the Law Many Paths to Life

By Graten Beavers

This memoir will give you not only a sense of Graten Beaver's life, but also of life in his time. Rooted in a close entrepreneurial family in small-town Nebraska in the 1950s and 1960s, he learned early the importance of hard work, education, and service. He started out sweeping the sidewalk in front of his parent's grocery store, worked his way

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graten Beavers
• Release date: Aug 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088239988

Book preview

Chapter 1

Early Days

PEOPLE OFTEN ASK ME WHERE my first name, Graten, came from. As I understand it, my dad had a cousin whose name was Graden, and my mother just spelled it differently. It is unique; I’ve only found one other person with a first name Graten, a guy in Michigan. It is a last name for some. I really think that I’m the only person in the world with my first and last name, so I don’t often get confused with others.

My earliest recollection is when my brother Doug was brought home from the hospital and I was allowed to hold him. I was not quite three. It was exciting to have a new baby. We had a normal sibling relationship as small children, I would say, with nothing remarkable. Our older siblings, Max and Maxine, are twins nine years older than me.

We were all raised in central Nebraska small towns, including our parents who were both raised in Davenport, Nebraska, and graduated from high school there, my mom at age 16. My parents never attended college except for one year at the Hebron Academy for my mom, but they always encouraged education after high school.

The four of us were raised about 35 miles away in Fairmont, Nebraska, which had a population of about 860 when we were there. Our parents owned a grocery store that they expanded over time when they bought adjacent buildings and knocked out part of the walls until they had what was originally five buildings, two of which were grocery, one dry goods, clothes, shoes, and two a dime store with toys, knick-knacks, and such. It could have been considered an early day Walmart as it had all necessities and more. All of us grew up working in the store, mostly the grocery department.

My dad had four brothers and a sister. They were pretty close and seemed to get along well. My mother, Rosella Beth, had a sister Edyth and brothers Bill and Jerry. Mom was the oldest but survived all her siblings.

Mom, Aunt Edythe, Uncles Bill and Jerry in the 1930’s

Dad and siblings with Grandpa Beavers, mid-1960’s

My dad learned the retail business when he was young and worked for a store owner by the name of Portwood in his hometown of Davenport, Nebraska. I don’t know much about him, but Dad mentioned him every now and then when I was little. After World War II, Dad bought a grocery store in Fairmont with his younger brother, Gardie, Jr. Gardie was only there a short time and then moved to Carleton to farm on his father-in-law’s land. Through the years, Dad bought inventory and fixtures of other businesses in the area including a lumber yard in Ong and a store in Nelson and Exeter among others in Nebraska. He often held a sale in the town and then moved merchandise and fixtures to Fairmont or re-sold them. He was quite the entrepreneur on a small scale. Mom and Dad continued in the store in Fairmont until 1975.

Dad and Mom

My first job was sweeping the sidewalk at my parent’s store before I went to school, when I was nine. Later, we all stocked shelves, bagged groceries, carried them out to people’s cars, and sacked potatoes from 100-pound sacks into five- and ten-pound paper sacks, converting to plastic later on. My dad always paid us for work, so we always had spending money. They taught us to save for a rainy day.

Beavers Department Store, 1960’s

Until I was in the eighth grade, we lived in a two-story house in Fairmont that had two bedrooms upstairs, one for Maxine and the other for Max, Doug, and me until Max and Maxine went to college at Kearney State in 1958. Our house had one bathroom on the ground level, with only a tub, no shower, and just a curtain separated my parents’ bedroom from the living room, as I recall. And no air conditioning. We had a window fan in our room.

I grew up loving horses and rode whenever I could. When I was in the seventh grade, my dad bought me a horse. Not a large horse, but bigger than a Shetland pony. She was a beautiful gray and brown color. My mom named her Ginger, and we kept her on the edge of town at a place owned by my dad’s butcher, Howard Axtell. I once took Ginger to the county fair and raced in the horse races, getting third place. We sold her after a couple of years because I was involved with sports once I got into high school. When I was 15, a guy who lived on the edge of town had several horses including a thoroughbred that he did not race professionally but wanted exercised, so I was allowed to ride him. We took that horse to the county fair races also and ran two races on the same day. One race was pretty short, and he took time to get going, but we came in third. The second race was longer, and we won that one.

We lived across the street from the eighth-grade teacher, Mrs. Farrar, who was an older lady, probably at least in her sixties at that time, with a reputation for being very demanding and strict. I went into the eighth grade very apprehensive and even a bit afraid. Maybe because of this, I worked hard and often stayed after school to study, which helped me to learn and stay on her good side. Once she had everyone in the class write a story. I wrote about my horse, Ginger, and my black lab/shepherd mix, Susie. It caught Mrs. Farrar’s eye. She read it to the class and had it printed in the school paper. I’ve long given credit to Mrs. Farrar for inspiring me to get better grades and encouraging me to write.

Growing up, my best friend was John Nichols who lived just up the street from me. We did everything together when we were little and even into high school. When we were little, we would eat cherries and mulberries from trees in his parents’ yard. John was the first person to give me a golf club because his parents golfed. When we were about ten, he gave me a putter and said, You can’t hit it very far with that. I took my best driver swing, and the ball came up about six feet off the ground into the neighbor Viola Lutz’s yard and shattered a flowerpot.

Another time around the Fourth of July we found a pop bottle rocket downtown, and from behind the post office we were fighting to see who got to light it. Luckily I lost that battle, because when he lit it, it went directly across Main Street just as a guy came driving along with his car window open, and the rocket went through the window and burned his pants. Word got out that it was us, and John’s dad had to pay for the pants.

John was the oldest in our class, having been born on October 30, and I was next to youngest with my birthday being the following September. John served in the air force, and even though he didn’t go to college we stayed in touch. He ended up living in Las Vegas. My son Jeff and I stayed there over New Year’s Eve in 2001 on our way to the Rose Bowl. John bought us tickets on the Big Shot which blasted you up in the air 100 feet or so when you were already on top of the Stratosphere Hotel, over 1000 feet high. Scared me to death, but he had bought the tickets, so we had to do it. I occasionally saw John as he lived in Las Vegas until his death in 2009. I still miss talking with him.

My dad hunted pheasants when I was young, and Max, Doug, and I grew up with an interest in hunting. Dad borrowed a 410-gauge shotgun from our brother-in-law, Jerry Smith, when I was nine and took me hunting a few times. I shot my first rabbit with that gun when I was nine. When I was in seventh grade, he bought me a single shot 20-gauge shotgun. At that time I was allowed to go hunting by myself walking outside of town, but not with anyone else until the following year. I remember shooting a quail the first time I went out and couldn’t wait to go home and call Dad to tell him. That same year, we were hunting with a friend of my dad, Jack Bockus, when a flock of pheasants flew up the first day of the season. My dad shot one, and I aimed at another one and fired. To my surprise it fell. I quickly asked Jack if he had shot at it, but seeing how happy I was, he said no. To this day I don’t know but suspect that Jack shot at the same time I did and didn’t want to spoil a young guy’s thrill at bagging his first pheasant.

Harvested game never went to waste. When I was in high school and college, I hunted with friends and often hunted ducks. My mother didn’t want any ducks, but I found several older women in town who loved to get them and would clean them as well, so it was a good combination that served everyone well. Hunting ducks out of a blind and calling them in to decoys was a favorite thing to do. Later I moved up to rifles and big game hunting of deer in Nebraska and elk in Colorado with my brothers.

My dad was athletic in high school, playing football and running track including sprints and the pole vault. He placed third in the state track meet in the pole vault in 1936--I checked the records. He was extremely ambitious and always seemed on the move. He started our Little League baseball team in Fairmont when I was about six.

Dad passed away in 2007 at 87 1/2. He had smoked up to two packs of cigarettes a day until he was about 45, when he quit cold turkey. I think quitting lengthened his life. I was 15 at the time, and they had just come out with the surgeon general’s warning on packs of cigarettes. I think the warning and his quitting helped keep me away from cigarettes. I’ve never smoked except a little with a pipe when I was younger and an occasional cigar, but not often.

Our grandparents lived within an hour’s drive of our home in Fairmont. My dad’s mother, Maude, died when I was about six, so I don’t have much of a memory about her. My Grandpa Beavers, Gardie, lived in Davenport where my parents went to school. He owned and ran a livestock sale barn which I went to periodically. He also owned, trained, and raced horses as did a couple of my dad’s brothers, Loyal and Virgil. My Grandpa Beavers had a saddle horse called Tony, aka Tony the Pony, that he used with the thoroughbred racehorses, to escort them on and off the racetrack. Tony was a pinto and I got to ride him from time to time. Until I was deep into my 40’s, I never went to a horse race without seeing a relative. Dad loved going to the races and went several times every year.

When I was about nine, I had a BB gun, and some sparrows were dumping on Grandpa Beavers’ car in his garage. He had me come and shoot the pests one night. I must have killed 25 sparrows, the first 15 or so without missing a shot, before finishing the job. About that time, I found an old Civil War gun that was a family heirloom in a storage shed, and he let me take it to show and tell and ultimately let me keep it. It’s in my gun case to this day.

Another time, when I was about 12, Grandpa Beavers picked me up in Fairmont in his 1961 Ford and drove to Omaha on two-lane Highway 6. I remember there being a paper bag between us that he opened, revealing a six-pack of beer, and asked me to take one out for him. As I handed a beer to him, he looked at me and said, I need this for my ulcer. I knew better, of course, but it was funny.