Hart or Capone: A Reinvented Life

by Dan Nieman

In the Old West, pop culture imitated a version of real life.  Dime store novels wrote romantic accounts of the wild west.  Later Buffalo Bill, who made his livelihood hunting buffalo for the railroads, gathered many of the characters he knew to make a second life as wild west performers.  Years later, Josephine Earp told her and her husband’s stories to the early Hollywood movie producers, who kept the stories of the old west alive in popular western movies.  These are not necessarily true depictions, but they created a story that people wanted to hear.  Vincenzo Capone managed to do the exact opposite.  He remade himself from an Italian immigrant to a real life western hero.


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Marvin Miller on Living and Working in Dakota County in the 1940s & 50s

In this article Marvin Miller shares several remembrances of his early work life in Dakota County in the 1940s and 1950s.  They are shared to show how times have changed.
Blyburg
Blyburg is by the hills of Homer, past the O’Connor house.  My maternal family, O’Dell, were from there.  About 1944 when I was in high school, my uncles Walt and Hank Laird got me a job working for a rich and large land owner named Boyle.  The son’s name was Tiny Boyle.  Indians were hired to how corn, and my job was to watch them and keep them working.  It was rather scary, as they would talk Indian language.  I got to sleep and eat in the house.  The indians ate outside and slept in the barn.

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The 1932 Nebraska All Stars

-By Dan Nieman

Baseball is a perfect game for the plains of Nebraska.  All it takes is a ball, a bat, a big field, and nine  people to play.  No wonder it was America’s pastime.  It was the pastime for many in Dakota City, Nebraska, as well.

In the summer of 1932 the people of America in general and Dakota City in particular needed a diversion from the world’s problems.  ‘32 was the height of the Great Depression.  Times were hard and because of prohibition one could not even get a legal beer to unwind.  The people of Dakota City were eager for a new season.

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