Upbeat music Coming up on Nebraska Stories, a runner's quest to get everyone moving.

Upbeat Music Nebraska's own Ellis Island Upbeat Music Fighting fire with fire in Western Nebraska, Upbeat Music and stopping horse thieves on the frontier.

Upbeat Music Upbeat Guitar Music Upbeat Guitar Music Upbeat Guitar Music (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (jogger running) [Ann] I'm usually up at like 4:30 and out the door to meet my friends to run a 5:00.

(birds chirping) Sometimes the mornings are almost reverent, really.

You know, quiet.

Not many cars, might see a person.

(jogger running) That just sets my day up perfectly.

It just does.

It's wonderful.

(birds chirping) [Narrator] Ann Ringlein feels cheated if she can't start her day with a run.

(ominous music) [Ann] The first few miles feel really good.

I mean, I still go very, very slowly.

(ominous music) I just take it really easy the first couple miles.

(runner heavy breathing) It really it's just getting my mind ready for the day.

I think more than anything.

(Runner heavy breathing) You just feel so good.

You're breathing, you know, you're working hard and by the time I finish I'm going faster than, you know, I probably planned on.

Which I love that too because I'm always like still like you have this little bit of pride.

It's like, yeah, I can still do it.

(jogger running) And then by the time you're done, it's light maybe and the sunrise.

(jogger running) Yeah, this is great.

Make sure they're long enough.

Your hand just goes in.

Yeah, just like that.

I mean, you almost not hold it.

[Runner] Yeah.

[Ann] Part of getting out and walking in nature is seeing other things.

[Runner] Yeah.

[Ann] Is seeing what's out there.

(city sounds) [Narrator] When Ann isn't on a run she's usually helping someone else get their miles in.

[Ann] Okay, pull your heel back.

Yep.

Then go ahead and stand up on that.

Yeah, I think you're up to an eight anyway.

[Narrator] As the manager of Lincoln Running Company in Downtown Lincoln for nearly four decades.

[Ann] Stay on.

[Narrator] Ann is a fixture on the running scene.

[Ann] And you've got a pretty high arch.

I might, you know, I might bring out a ghost that's on sale.

There's so much information that comes when they walk in the store and they're honestly probably watching their feet already.

All right.

Look at this.

Ready?

But I love it when they bring in the shoes that they're walking in because I tell them, it's like, yeah, I think we can make you feel better.

You know, we start asking them questions.

Do you hurt on the outside of your leg?

Do you hurt on the inside of your shins?

Does your back hurt?

And usually by what the wear pattern shows us, they'll say, kinda yeah, sometimes yeah.

And so then we can start determining what kind of shoe we wanna bring out for that.

Holy schmoly.

Good job, buddy.

You're gonna be good.

You stay with track for sure.

[Narrator] Now in her mid-sixties, the petite framed woman in perpetual motion speaks just as she runs, fast, energetically and with a contagious optimism.

[Ann] My mom said, I started kicking out of the womb running (laughing).

I can't even tell you how or why, but you definitely feel better about yourself once that you've done this and accomplished it.

It's amazing what a good workout will do.

You know, it kind of changes your whole attitude for the day.

[Narrator] With wins and top finishes and prestigious marathons and races through the years, Ann's speed landed her spots on competitive co-ed racing teams and she coached track and cross country at the college level.

[Ann] This girl actually gave me this picture because she thought it was so funny.

Her folks blew it up and said, look at how mean you are to me?

And it wasn't at all but Concordia had five women they went one, two, three, four, five, and she was a sixth woman.

And I can remember saying, get up there.

You can be break up that pack.

Break up that pack.

And this- [Narrator] For years and tried to get everyone running.

[Ann] I thought I could convince everybody they should run because it was so fun and I was able to do so many things through running, you know, it was great.

But then I soon realized, "no, this is not gonna happen."

(laughing) Hi, greetings.

[Narrator] Instead, for the last few decades Ann's focus is on getting everyone moving.

[Ann] You're gonna run for 30 minutes, walk a minute and then 15 minutes.

So it's 45 minutes total so- [Narrator] At her beginner's luck classes, walkers, runners, people of all ages and abilities come for eight weeks of advice, coaching.

[Barb] So a lot of that is just tension.

[Runner] Yeah.

[Narrator] And a carefully crafted training schedule designed to build endurance.

[Ann] All right.

How many of the intermediate 10K people do we have here?

Runners do we have here tonight?

You guys are doing awesome.

I'm so impressed with you guys.

[Narrator] Whether you're a seasoned marathoner or fresh off the couch each week speakers tackle issues like motivation, nutrition, or the inevitable aches and pains that come with jump-starting a new program.

[Barb] So I'm just gonna show you a few things you can do every day, twice a day, however often you want to do it.

Okay.

So stand up.

Without any effort, I want you to bend over and see how far you can go.

Okay.

So now I want you to go back and sit down and I want you to take your tennis ball and I want you to roll the bottoms of your feet.

[Ann] Our bodies want to move.

They really do.

They want to run, they want to walk, they want to move.

And so if we just take the cues, I think that's okay, but you just have to start so carefully.

[Narrator] A cadre of volunteers pair up with participants.

Others shout words of encouragement along the way.

[Runner] Looking good.

[Ann] I always say, "you don't have to run as far as you think you should.

You don't have to run as fast as you think you should, but you should run more days than you think you should a week."

(jogger running) [Ted] For me, what it's showing me is I can do it.

And even tonight, I was actually looking forward to getting out here tonight and that's not like me.

So I felt like I feel motivated to do it.

[Ann] I think there's power in numbers too and there's a lot of people out there, they feel a little better about themselves than just being one person out there, right, and being judged.

I'm trying to get people to not be afraid of running, to realize that they can do it and just to bring so much really fun into their life.

I mean, I don't want it to be miserable.

One of the quotes I have on it is "Running is about defeating death, not inflicting it."

So I want them to really understand that this is gonna help them.

[Runner] Good job.

(crowd cheering and applauding) (piano music) [Narrator] Even Ann has days she'd rather skip the 5:00 AM run.

For her mood follows action.

[Ann] You can't wait to be in the mood to run or you can't wait until the time is right.

So you have to do it.

You have to give yourself the chance to feel good.

Go run and give yourself that chance to feel good about it.

They just have to stay on the path and it goes around and then back.

[Narrator] By the end of the eight weeks the class meets one last time for a 3K run.

[Ann] Do the best you can do today.

That's all we ask.

(crowd cheering and applauding) [Narrator] A big first for many [Ann] Runners to your mark.

Go.

(crowd cheering and applauding) Good job, Jamie.

Go touch it.

Good job, guys.

Go have fun , enjoy, enjoy.

It's so fun to see the transformation and know that, you know, all of a sudden they feel better.

I like this.

I like the way I feel when I'm doing a little bit of running.

[Ted] She really is such a motivator, is just out there clapping, cheering people on.

So, you know, you come here, you feel good.

[Jessica] The positivity that radiates from every single person.

[Runner] Yeah.

[Jessica] I mean, it does.

It fills your cup for the rest of the week almost.

(bell ringing) [Ann] Good job.

Good job.

[Katherine] I want other people to do this.

I want people to experience this.

(bell ringing) Good job.

Good job.

[Katherine] Nobody should feel like they can't.

There's a running community and that means that's a community.

You do like what you do in a family.

You support them, you encourage them.

How are you?

[Ann] I know, you're always smiling, though.

That's awesome.

[Katherine] That's what Ann has done.

She's created this, our community.

It's really super.

[Ann] I want them to know that they can do more than they think they can do.

So many times they think they don't think they can be a runner, but anybody can.

Nice job, Gavin.

Nice job.

Awesome, awesome.

Some people it changes their lives.

I mean, it really does.

Yeah.

(gentle music and clapping) (gentle piano music) (gentle piano music) (gentle piano music) It seems like a lot of Omaha's history involves city leaders trying to convince the rest of the nation that Omaha isn't a cow town.

Even though for much of its history it's been the ultimate cow town.

(wistful bluegrass music) (wistful bluegrass music) [Narrator] The cattle industry began planting its roots in Nebraska as early as the 1860s.

Texas ranchers were bringing their Longhorns to Omaha's Union Pacific Railroad to get them to Eastern markets.

As more livestock made their way through the state, locals figured out there was money to be made.

And in 1882 the process to create the South Omaha Stockyards began.

(wistful bluegrass music) [Gary] It started by Alexander Hamilton Swan.

it was his idea.

He was a cattle baron from Wyoming and all his main purpose was to bring cattle in there to feed.

[David] There wasn't really a lot of money to be made doing that.

And so it didn't take very long before the investors in the stock yards started trying to draw meat packing companies to South Omaha, and they started with smaller operations.

And by the 1890s they had major meat packing plants, and four of the biggest companies were operating at the stockyards.

[Narrator] The rapid growth of the industry in South Omaha meant the population was growing too.

[David] So you go from, in 1884, South Omaha doesn't exist.

By the time they incorporated the city, it was its own city.

At first, they had about 1,500 people.

By 1890, there were 8,000 people living in South Omaha.

[Gary] More and more people came here.

And so you had the Polish, the Irish who really built South Omaha.

You had the Bohemians, the Croatians the Serbians, the Hungarians, the Russians the African Americans, the Mexican Americans.

What people don't realize is it's just not the stockyards.

It's just not the packing house.

It's also transportation where they had their own train the communication, you know, banks; all the banks were Packers National Bank Livestock National Bank; the truck washes, the hide sellers, the rendering plants.

I mean, it's a giant industry.

(piano music) [Narrator] The Omaha Stockyards were the third largest of its kind by the year 1900.

(piano music) It only continued to get bigger and by the time the 1950s came around, it was the biggest in the country.

The size of the operation was unlike anything else.

[Gary] In the 1950s, in its heyday when it became the world's largest, it was at times pulling in $1.7 million a day from all the activity that was going on.

(jazz music) Sunday nights was when the cattle would start and sheep and hogs would start coming on the trucks and they would line up all the way, maybe to 84th Street to 72nd Street, and they'd be hauling their cattle in.

So it was almost like every Sunday we would have this mass integration of these people in, and that's where the money came too because all these people were coming in, you know putting their cattle in the stock yards and having the commission firm sell them for them.

[David] You had an enormous number of stock pens and that continued to grow into the 1950s.

It just became absolutely vast.

(jazz music) You had raised walkways that went over the pens and so you would see a network of these walkways.

And of course, they're moving the cattle in and out and not just cattle, but also hogs and sheep.

Among the stockyards were, of course, the meat packing plants that processed the meat.

There was the Livestock Exchange Building, which did banking, had restaurants, had other associated businesses, and the city of South Omaha where the workers lived grew up all around this.

And so without the stockyards, there's no South Omaha.

[Narrator] The stockyards really built the town of South Omaha.

However, the comradery made it a town like no other.

(old western music) [Gary] At one time South Omaha was in the Guinness Book of World Records; more taverns per capita than any place in the world.

As a young man with a father who was a bartender, which made him royalty in South Omaha.

And I remember I would bring him supper at night after he would work all day, make more money at the bars.

And you'd see guys with no fingers and those were people who were butchers.

And then you'd see people with all this arthritis who were in the cold storage, where you could only be in there 20 minutes and you had to come out, get warm, get back in, and haul that stuff.

(old western music) You saw the people with blood up to here.

They'd be on the kill floor.

You can imagine being on the top floor of the Swift packing house, which was 13 floors high in 101 degrees up there, standing in that, cutting these cattle open as they're going one after another after another; very dangerous jobs.

And then we became connoisseurs of poop.

By that I mean is that you knew when they walked into that bar, if they were a hog man, a sheep man, or a cattleman by the smell.

And we all knew that the hogs were the worst.

So it became kind of an interesting dark humor.

But the fascinating part was, that it was very segregated in the neighborhoods.

You know, you had your Polish area, your Bohemian area your African area, your Mexican area, your Croatian area you know, had all these different groups but around the packing houses where the bars were and everything else, no one was denied a drink because of the work.

You know, people became kind of like, we're in this together.

[Narrator] As the late 1960s came around the livestock industry was starting to change.

South Omaha followed.

(soft guitar music) [David] A company, Iowa Beef Packers, IBP, as they were later known, decided that it would be more cost effective to build smaller plants closer to where the cattle were being raised.

And they also figured out that it was really inefficient to ship whole sides of beef which don't fit very conveniently into rail cars but to cut it up on site and box it and, and ship it.

(soft guitar music) By the late sixties, a lot of people are being laid off at the plants in South Omaha.

At the same time that new plants are being opened in smaller towns around the Midwest.

(soft guitar music) [Narrator] The stockyards and meat packing plants may have left the town of South Omaha (piano music) but the diversity it brought into the community remains.

[David] The lasting impact; one is ethnicity.

With Polish last names, Irish names, Czech names, et cetera, in Nebraska trace their family's history through South Omaha.

That's also true of many Latino people today.

(piano music) [Gary] When the packing houses closed in the sixties and the seventies and people started moving out, it became a ghost town.

All these restaurants and stores and clothing stores and all that were closing and it became a ghost town.

(piano music) Thank God that we had these new entrepreneur people coming in from the south and from Africa and all that.

They were creating and reestablishing these stores and these venues and everything else.

(soft music) I really believe that it set South Omaha up as our Ellis Island.

(soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (upbeat rock music) (rotors whirring) (suspenseful music) (fire crackling) (suspenseful music continues) (music intensifies) (music calms) - [Chief Nathan] We've learned in the past 10 years, that fire's not always bad.

We have understood that we can control fire with fire, and it has a huge impact on the regrowth, and the forest of our areas.

I'm the Fire Chief for the Gering Fire Department.

We are in Cedar Canyon Wildlife Management Area, which is about seven miles southwest of Gering, Nebraska.

You know, Wildcat Hills is a gorgeous area, unlike anywhere else in Nebraska.

(sharp orchestral music) It's a span of hills and different bluffs, and buttes that start somewhere in Wyoming-Nebraska border, and go closer to Bridgeport.

We've seen fire behavior that we haven't seen in the past.

About two or three years ago, we had the idea, that maybe we can create a fire exercise and bring people in from around the area, to help put some type of team, and firefighters that are truly qualified to manage this fire.

We're getting our firefighters out here to recognize the terrain.

They're getting in the ability to see what they're up against in the event that we do have a large fire that comes through here.

We have 27 engines from Pueblo, Colorado; Colorado Springs, Cheyenne, and Laramie.

Imperial, Madrid, Keystone, Lemoyne, Ogallala, Bayard.

And then we have Nebraska state overhead, from emergency management, and Nebraska National Guard, State Fire Marshal's Office, and Nebraska Forest Service.

(orchestral music continues) We really found a need that we need to have some aerial resources in Nebraska.

- [Operator] The aero-applicator should be coming in already.

- [Chief Nathan] So, can I pick them up direct, or do you want me to come to you?

- [Operator] No, you can pick those up direct.

- [Chief Nathan] Communication is always the biggest issue we run into.

Statistically, you've seen a lot of firefighter fatalities and injuries result from communication issues.

So, we're trying to really beef up our understanding, and our training, and communication with aircraft.

- [Operator] Release Flowers 23.

- [Pilot] Go ahead Flowers.

- [Chief Nathan] Hey, I just gotta ahold of ops.

They gave me permission to take this applicator, start pre-treating this canyon by us.

- [Pilot] Copy that.

(bright violin music) (water rushing) (engine roaring) (bright violin music continues) (water flowing) (music continues) - [Chief Nathan] When you see growth, and overgrowth of fuels, and when we're talking fuels, shrubs, grasses, trees - the minute that they become more dense in drier seasons, if there is a fire that's affected the area, let's say it's caused by lightning - you're gonna have that fire move into those fuels at a much faster rate, at a much hotter environment, that it's gonna decimate the whole forest.

So, when you're able to produce a low intensity fire, thin the forest out, and put fire on the ground.

Ponderosas react in a way that is gonna release its seeds.

It's gonna drop on the ground, and regenerate a lot healthier.

The grasses are going to come back greener, for the elk, for the sheep, for the deer that are in this area.

The shrubs are going to be decreased, so that way we don't have that really hot fire behavior move through the land.

You know, and the fire service is a family.

Every single firefighter that's on the ground, 98% of them are volunteers in every community in Nebraska.

You belong on a fire department, you're a firefighter.

(upbeat instrumental music) (upbeat music) (twangy country music) (horse hooves galloping) NARRATOR: Kearney was a wild town in the late 1870's.

Cattle drive cowboys hitting the bars first thing in the morning and riding up and down the streets, shooting their guns into the air at night.

(gunshot) Towns folk had reason to be concerned.

(horse neighing) Especially when it came to protecting their horses.

In a time before everyone had cars and tractors, horses served both roles.

So, folks from Kearney Center Township, on the east side of town, got together and formed.

MARDI ANDERSON: It's officially called the Anti-Horse Thief Society.

NARRATOR: Mardi Anderson volunteers at the Buffalo County Historical Society.

That's where she came across this story and the well-worn official journal of the Anti-Horse Thief Society.

A rather lengthy constitution sets dues at a dollar a year for what was part posse, part insurance consortium.

It also required members to chase down stolen horses.

ANDERSON: If it took more than an a day to search for this horse then they were paid $2 a day for being away from home and doing this.

If the horse could not be found then the owner was paid.

Some three neutral members of the society who were acquainted with the horse.

Now I don't know how often we get acquainted with horses, but they had to be acquainted with the horse or mule then they could establish a value up to $150, and they would pay the owner then for the loss of his horse.

I did notice in their bylaws that if a horse thief were captured he was to be brought back and turned over to the authorities.

So, they were clarifying that officially they weren't lynching any horse thieves.

NARRATOR: Officially.

Actually it appears there wasn't much action at all although society members were paid expenses for pursuing a horse thief in 1882.

Most of their time was spent holding meetings, setting dates for more meetings, making rules about meetings and dues, and debating things farmers still debate today like which crops are more profitable.

(soft music) By 1885 they appeared to be all meetinged out and the Anti-Horse Thief Society died a quiet death.

ANDERSON: I think the danger of thievery was pretty much past.

And so they stopped paying dues, they just didn't.

You know it just kind of dried up.

NARRATOR: Now the Anti-Horse Thief Society is a small footnote of Nebraska history.

This interesting to Anderson because of what it predated.

ANDERSON: We thought we had new ideas with insurance companies, I don't think so.

(horses galloping and neighing) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Watch more "Nebraska Stories" on our website, Facebook and YouTube.

(upbeat music) "Nebraska Stories" is funded in part by the Margaret and Martha Thomas Foundation, and Humanities Nebraska, and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

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