Hello.

It is great to see you again.

Now sit back, relax and enjoy another half hour of Hattebergs people.

And here's what's coming up.

It's always a little tough for me to sit here on the front porch because this was the last place that a lot of times the boys that were going off to war would be setting.

It was the end of an era and a chance for Larry Solomon to say goodbye to an important family and community institution.

You'll learn what made his little cafe so special and see what's become of it now.

Plus three days for films.

No matter how little or how much you get done, it's you.

You did something every day.

Jim Copeland of McPherson found a way to keep busy during his retirement by opening his own history museum.

See how these down home exhibits taught younger generations to appreciate the past as well as the present.

Also.

Science starts with what we can save.

Science shouldn't be all that difficult.

This retired teacher in Saint John's also opened his own museum.

James Hood's mission was to make a science understandable and fun.

You'll learn his story coming up.

And what Carl ever had as a Model T. I don't trust the car.

I can't drink gasoline.

Ever miss the good old days.

Then try living like John Cipher.

He lived like it was 1920.

Every day.

You'll see how it worked out for him.

Hello.

I'm Susan Peters and I'm Larry Hatteberg.

Those are just some of the stories we'll show you this week.

Let's get started.

These stories are like old friends.

Their lives radiate from the screen like prophets of the past.

They were teachers, but not in a classroom.

Instead, they taught about life to those around them who cared to listen.

And I was their student.

World War Two was one of the pivotal events in human history.

And no matter what they were doing during that period, people who lived through it were changed or influenced in some profound way.

Case in point, Larry Solomon, who was just a child at the time.

Dateline, Washington, D.C., September 1619.

Bombing, once they were proven fit.

The transformation to fighting recruit came in a big hurry.

When World War Two began, it was little places like this, enhanced in Kansas, where young men gathered to wait for the train that took them off to war.

Many times over the years.

This place has flooded back in my memory, and I don't cry.

I just enjoy it.

This old restaurant is full, full of memories for Larry Solomon.

This was my childhood area, and as I look around it, I had never really had a chance.

As things got faster and faster in the life that I left, I'd never really had a chance to go back and look at it and and to say goodbye to it.

He grew up around these walls.

His grandmother, Eppie Clifton, ran this restaurant in the thirties and forties.

And those are precious moments in our lives.

And to look at the old building as it was, without giving it a proper last goodbye was just not something I could do.

The restaurant closed in the forties and time took its toll.

This is what it looked like before Larry and Marilyn Solomons decided to restore it.

For 25 years.

This was an eyesore that I wish would go away.

I just started one day and taken one board off at a time and it looked like an insurmountable job.

Most of all, it left from.

Mayor, local media that quite remember the heyday of this cafe.

His name is even one of the few left on the back of an ancient booth put there in the throes.

Kids don't understand what that we were once kids.

I think that they need to realize that old people were once young.

But in World War Two, it was outside the old cafe where patriotism and reality became one.

It's always a little tough for me to sit here on the front porch because this was the last place that a lot of times and boys that were going off to war would be setting and we'd listen and the train would whistle.

And then my grandmother and I and whoever was going off to war would get up and we'd start down this road out here, and we'd walk down the road to the depot and we'd all be crying.

And she would be holding them and hugging and kissing them goodbye.

And it greatly impressed me.

Sometimes the tough things in life are the things when we learn the most.

Larry was a state senator at the time of that interview.

Now, he passed away in 2022 at age 84.

Here's what the old cafe looks like now, closed and seemingly abandoned.

You have no idea about the great history of this place by looking at it today and that is unfortunate.

It is unfortunate, but time passes everything by and every person dies.

I don't like that.

You have to expect it.

Don't say that anymore.

I do not like that.

I do not like that time passing by.

You want everything to stay the same?

Well, and Harrisburg's people not.

In at a speed, but it does.

Okay.

Remembering the past is one thing.

Living it is another.

John Sanford of Wichita took living in the past as seriously as anybody could.

In 1985, a visit to his house was a trip back in time.

The second keep ticking away in John Cyphers apartment.

But is it time going forward or backward?

It would be nice to go back to the Twin Cities.

I would certainly be the first person in line.

Almost everything in his apartment is from that period.

Even the newspaper or he reads.

Now he's not a fanatic.

He just enjoys that decade in history.

They were just an interesting period.

They weren't any better than the eighties.

Any worse, really.

I think they were just a comfortable period for me.

John works at the Wichita Historical Museum, so his career and his own personal interest in history have merged.

His apartment is a museum in itself.

That.

Those are a reproduction.

1920 carbon filament zigzag.

They have allowed me to run my electric bill down to about $2.50 a month around.

Clock fossil.

Room for about.

A month.

I'm doing oh it's 1926 Atwater Kent Radio and I've managed to pick it up as far as Paris on a good day.

Of course, you have to run an aerial outside.

People my age can understand why I want to do it.

You know, where's your stereo, where's your TV?

All this such stuff.

I would have that stuff.

I don't.

I don't really miss it.

Most of the time, people just kind of give me a widely away, you know, don't get too close to it now.

You think that's 1924, which, you know, everybody knows it's, you know, 1925.

And what 1920 buff would be complete without a Model T, a crank and a finicky transmission.

Do you continue to do like I'll ever have in the Model T?

I don't trust the car.

I can't crank up the mood.

But I'm comfortable.

Being half crazy.

I guess 60 years out of date.

But I don't hurt anybody with it, so I'm not worried.

And in.

Fact, the most quote unquote.

John is now retired, but he says really not much else has changed.

He even still drives that Model T going into his apartment.

When I shot that story, everything in the apartment was from the twenties.

The radio, the lamps, the.

It was really a museum of living.

I love it.

It was great.

Can't you just feel all the anxiousness draining from your body when you went into his apartment?

Could he?

He lives life the right way.

That's right.

It was like you were living an entering into another world.

A simpler world.

A better world at that time.

At that time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, no doubt Kansans like the good old days.

And for the man in this next story, that meant doing things the hard way.

At least you'd think.

The modern farm machinery was of no interest to Howard Johnston.

Take a look.

I just figure I'd go through this life one time and I go as I see fit.

Some farmers plant corn, wheat or milo.

Howard Johnston is different.

Johnston sows memories, memories of a simpler time when horsepower was fed by oats and grass.

It was a little feeling towards horse farmers here a few years ago.

They thought they were kind of dumb.

But we're getting a good price for these horses and we're getting the job done and we're not running to the bank.

You got that worried look on her face all the time, like the tractor farmer.

So this changed the attitude of some people.

Johnston Farms 240 acres in northeast Kansas, using only the Belgian draft horses.

For him, it's a way of life, a throwback to a simpler time.

Last home.

Yeah, it's a good life.

Somebody asked me one time, What, do you have any problems with this way?

And I said, No, but it wouldn't do it.

Come on out here.

Come on, I'll come out here.

I might give you something.

I had a friend visit in here a couple of days ago, and we come out, stayed overnight.

We come out in the morning and I told him, I said if he had the choice, I said to rolling over in the morning and face and Farrah Fawcett or coming out here and greeting all these horses, I said, take the horses, I said.

His way of life masquerades the fact that he's a sharp businessman.

This is one Kansas farm that makes money.

Johnston sells many of his draft horses, some going for more than 20 $500.

And he saves money by buying horse drawn implements.

We gave $5 for that minor spreader.

Put it in there selling it.

This is what farming is all about for Howard Johnston.

The horses, the earth, the sky and the sounds of an earlier day emerged.

I'm just able to get along.

I just don't have the banker.

Kind of breathing down.

My neck all the time, and that's worth a lot.

Like I say, I don't make a lot of money, but I don't spend a lot of money.

Howard Johnston, a refreshing maverick among farmers.

I'm Larry Hatteberg.

Well, Howard died in 1997 at age 74, but he lived life the way he wanted to live it.

None of that mechanical machinery for him, tractors and all that stuff.

He just like working with the horses.

You know?

And he did that every day.

And you'd go by his farm and see him out there working, and you kind of want to see that again.

I would love to see it again.

Thank goodness you preserved.

That for him.

He is there for all time.

In Saint John, Kansas, James Hird could tell you more about science in 5 minutes than you've learned in five years.

Yeah, he was a teacher of the year and inducted into the Teachers Hall of Fame, but his students and the town will remember him for what he's taught and the lasting legacy he left behind.

Now Hutchison has its cosmos there.

Wichita has its Exploratorium.

St John's got its little Saint John Science Museum.

That little museum is in Saint John, Kansas, right across from the town square.

You'll see it where the workmen are doing a street improvement.

It's called Hoods Haven.

Because I love this kind of stuff.

This was my hobby.

This is the fact is, you might say my hobby is doing making something demonstrations out of a piece of discarded equipment.

Hood is a retired science teacher who just can't stop.

Now, science starts with what we can see.

Science shouldn't be all that difficult.

He's taken this building, filled it with hands on scientific demonstrations, given the town a place to get coffee and given him a reason to go on.

And as it moves past that wire.

Notice how it influences the flow of that plate current.

Sometimes he jokingly refers to himself as the mad scientist of Saint John.

He's built all these experiments.

In my.

Love to show them.

Later they modify this into your microwave.

This is what cooks your food.

While he gives tours town folks watch, drink, coffee and discuss the latest events.

They've all had the tour before.

Now, especially a lot of the elderly.

You know, can come in and drink coffee and socialize without having to spend a lot of money.

On the wall.

Pictures of war heroes from Saint John.

Hood was a world War Two flight engineer on a B-24 bomber.

That experience, he says, taught him how science was part of everyday life and that materials discarded by one person could be important to another.

All his experiments are made from discarded junk.

Like these students today, I was in my height in my glory, showing them how this worked.

I just love that kind of stuff, I suppose.

Maybe I'm a born teacher.

I don't know.

Hood has hundreds of former students, all who believe this man set the standard for teaching science.

This keeps me active mentally.

That's one reason I will do it.

It's possible these teens may not yet understand the passion of.

Learning this test.

A guy discovered a motor that would run without brushes using alternating current.

James Hood has it.

This is one we didn't build.

And we're all fortunate.

He shares.

It.

This is the original telegraph.

This is a Marconi thing.

Now, before becoming a teacher, James was the only survivor of a B-24 bomber that was shot down over the North Sea in World War Two.

Now, he passed away in 2020 at age 98, but the St John Science Museum he founded remains a centerpiece of that city's downtown.

You never really know about people until you look into their history about his service in World War Two.

But he continued that service to the community and to the people there.

I just I just love.

He didn't brag about his service and that he was a hero in World War Two.

He just wanted to contribute to the community and his legacy lives on in that museum.

Like so many, he was a quiet hero.

Absolutely.

Well, this next story is also about a World War Two veteran who also opens his own museum.

Yeah, his name is Jean Copeland.

And during his lifetime, he collected all sorts of interesting things.

Come on in here, Jake.

Your picture taken.

Very cold heroin in a brand new building just off MacPherson's downtown.

Jean Copeland is exactly where he plans to be.

Develop this whole area here as a museum.

Come in, drop a cup of.

Just made a new.

Patch among friends.

Where they know every day.

And surrounded by thousands of items he's collected over his years as a MacPherson businessman.

People bring stuff and give it to me and I clean it up and put it on display that side of my bowl off of a tractor of about the 1920s.

But this was in the toolbox.

He began collecting in 64 and through the years.

Never stopped.

I start to lose my pants.

Now, in his retirement, he's created a second museum in McPherson.

There's a Dr. Robert Solberg play delivered for my children.

So now he has an early day doctor's office.

At age four film.

No matter how little or how much you get done, it's you.

You did something every day, seven days a week.

It's just fun.

It's just fun to see all the old stuff thrown away.

And the kids don't even know what it used for just old rusty iron and scrub on it, brush on it, and called it a little WD 40 and put it on display for people to look at like a seven function wrench.

I think it's seven functions.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

It is exactly that.

This is one of those places that is just perfect for Jean Copeland.

It's certainly not boring.

Outside, he's working on more displays in some old buildings.

And inside are his friends.

We have a peanut warmer over there and we warm the peanuts and green coffee art here.

Retired from Halliburton Johns retired from certainty.

And talk about that a little bit and old times codgers our age would be sitting around whittling, but none of us will.

Jean doesn't because he's just too busy cataloging stuff.

He spends so much time here.

He's even got a place to sleep.

And the kitchen.

This is where I fixed my lunch every day.

Jean's world may be the past, but he's living in the present to preserve it.

It's just like a second home to me.

I just spend daylight hours down here fooling around with it.

Now, Jean has since closed down his museum and auctioned everything off.

The auction attracted collectors from all across the country, and he recently celebrated his 96th birthday at the retirement community where he now lives, his daughter Beth.

Still twice a week, he visits his old homestead where he lived and operated the museum.

The museum was something that he wanted to do.

Perhaps not all his life, but he wanted to do for the community.

And he did it.

And he accomplished everything.

And then when it was time to go.

It was time to go, and he sold it.

So it's probably still sitting as points of attention in people's homes or in other museums?

Yes, probably.

Yes.

It's all going and having a nice home somewhere else.

Well, the beauty of planet Earth is often imitated in art of all kinds.

But there's nothing like experiencing the real thing.

You know, being surrounded by the vast expanse of the Kansas Flint hills has been compared to a spiritual experience.

That was certainly the case for Milt and Laura hitting back, as you'll see in this story from way back in 1984.

You know, it's days like this that most of us are glad that we have a job, that we can work inside, maybe in an office or in a plant.

But, you know, there are some ranchers who have to work outside in this all the time, and it's no big deal for them.

Some of them live in the Flint hills and despite the fog and the rain, there is still some beauty left.

Well, I think it's the best place in the world to be.

It means a lot to just be out here and there's no noise or anything anyway.

It's just that be free and be out in the fresh air and.

Milton Laura hit back of Cedar Point.

Don't mind the changing seasons when the Flint hills go from green to brown, they are constant spectators to the beauty of an ever changing prairie.

Even on days like these, when the clouds hang low and the fog hugs the rolling landscape, they ride in the loneliness and yet the stark beauty that few understand.

Yeah, I like it.

I would never train for anything else.

Milton Bock is well known in Chase County in the thirties and forties.

He was a trick roper and rider and a leading draft horse breeder.

Now he's a rancher.

He's best known for breaking horses.

He and his wife, Laura, share a love not only for each other, but for the land they call the park.

I think this is what God's country is all about, the hills and nature and this kind of stuff.

This is one of my favorite places to look around, because from this particular point, on a good, clear day, you can see the Florence elevator.

That's about ten miles.

Some people look at a day like this and only see clouds and a chill.

The hidden bucks are different.

They can watch as the sun caresses the prairie with a kiss.

So before you ride off a gloomy day like this one, try to see it as the people of the Flint hills do.

It is not a day to be forgotten, but a gift to be remembered.

From Cedar Point, Kansas, this is Lori, head of her.

Well, that was almost 40 years ago.

Milt and Laura are obviously no longer with us, but their legacy of what they enjoyed and what they believed in is not so different than a lot of other Kansans.

I love going out in the Flint Hills.

And when you went out with them and when I went out with them, they taught you about the beauty of the hills and why it was important to them.

Well, that must have lasted a long time with you, because I know you go to the Flint colleges and take the most amazing pictures.

You're very you're very kind.

And it's a great place.

It's a it's one of Kansas treasures.

It really is.

That even Kansans aren't aware of.

Right.

You know.

Okay.

And where can we see those pictures?

You can see those pictures in my home.

But don't you have a website.

Lined up on the front porch?

I'll go in.

It'll be.

It'll be great.

Oh, trust me.

They're beautiful, ladies and gentlemen.

And they take you to the Flint Hills and they take you to nature.

And the people who taught me about the Flint Hills were the two people you just saw.

Okay.

All right.

Well, that's all the stories we have for this week.

And if you have a question or comment, please drop us a line at hattebergspeople@kpts.org.

Always fun to hear from you.

And Larry, it's always fun for all of us to see all these old stories.

We go back in time and we just it's a time for us to just relax and go from there.

Treasured pieces of Kansas history that would otherwise be lost and forgotten in most cases.

And now they're not.

Well, you get an education from these people.

You learn about life and what's really important.

Exactly.

All right.

Well, we appreciate everyone who watches and we look forward to seeing you all again very soon.

Take care, everybody.