Adams has everything
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By CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star
ADAMS — In the park, beyond the horseshoe pit and the bingo tent, beyond the picnic tables where barbecued chicken will later be served, beyond the kids’ games and the little tuggers tractor pull, is the main attraction of Adams Community Days:
A mud volleyball tournament, promoted as the biggest in all of Southeast Nebraska.
It’s the type of event that draws recent Freeman High School grads to town each third Saturday of August, as well as students at Southeast Community College in Beatrice, and a number of people from Lincoln, too. It has attracted as many as 90 teams of six players, who bring boyfriends, girlfriends, college roommates and coolers of beer along with them.
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Under 1,000: Adams, Nebraska
Adam's Days: 489 people making one strong community. (Eva Barajas / JournalStar.com)...
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The first Sunday of each month, the Journal Star is featuring a Southeast Nebraska town with a population under 1,000. We have selected one town from each county for an extended conversation.
Adams
- County: Gage
- Year founded: 1873
- Named after: The town’s founder, John O. Adams. Adams, who was also the first settler in Gage County, claimed a parcel of land just east of town in March 1857. Adams later acquired the land where the town now sits and established a post office in 1872. A year later, the railroad came through town, and Adams, Neb., officially was established.
- Population: 489, according to the 2000 census. Estimated population in 2007 was 499.
- Highest population: 674 (1910)
- Government: Village Board
- Churches: 2
- Bars: 1
- Adams’ claim to fame: From the town’s incorporation in 1873 until 1996, Adams was a dry town. Adams community lore has it that the town’s founder declared that Adams would be alcohol-free for a century.
It was, and then some.
Then, more than 120 years after that declaration, the owners of the now-defunct Hornet’s Nest bar and grill applied for a liquor license (which upset some Adams residents, given the town’s history as an alcohol-free zone). The license was granted on Nov. 8, 1996, and 123 years of dry-town status came to an end. - Number of traffic lights: None here.
- If you’re 22 in Adams, you ... get a team together and play in at least one of the community’s extremely popular, twice-a-year mud volleyball tournaments.
- In summer, we ... turn out for Community Days, which is actually just one day, held on the third Saturday of August each year. Events include softball and golf tournaments, tractor pulls, chicken barbecue, bingo, kids’ games and the aforementioned mud volleyball.
“This is the best mud volleyball tournament in Nebraska,” said 22-year-old Cassie Krings, a graduate student who lives in Lincoln.
Krings, who is originally from Norfolk, plays a lot of mud volleyball. Two years ago, her team won the Adams tournament, but this year didn’t fare as well.
Even after her team was eliminated from the 2008 tourney, she said she planned to hang around with the dozens of other revelers, enjoying the nice Saturday.
Krings couldn’t quite pinpoint what made the Adams tournament different from the others throughout the state.
It just is, she said.
And it’s a reputation that community leaders are proud of, too.
“It’s the Sturgis of mud volleyball,” said Karl Gramann, vice president of Adams State Bank.
But the success of the mud volleyball tournament could be a metaphor for the town as a whole.
With a population of just under 499, Adams is home to a bank, grocery store, cafe, school system, two churches, a nursing home, a doctor, a dentist, a part-time orthodontist and an eye doctor.
It has a new ball diamond and, just outside of town, a new ethanol plant. A drive to raise money for a community building/fire hall is in the works.
Roy Behrens, one of several retirees who gather for pinochle every weekday noon at the cafe, said that’s what makes Adams different from other little towns.
“Adams has got everything,” he said.
Over at the post office, Postmaster Mike Pethoud greets a customer who’s dropped by to send a package to her niece.
Pethoud has spent the past 10 years in Adams, after transferring here from Elk Creek.
“This was just a busier office and it’s a great location,” he said.
Right away, he said, he set to getting involved in town — something he’s done every place he has lived.
He’s captain of the rescue squad, a school foundation board member, a member of the Sportsmen, and also the town Santa.
Pethoud exudes community pride — he talks about the the grocery store down the street, which has a new owner, about the dentist, the doctor’s office and the eye doctor in town, about the local bank, which has a new addition.
People here seem to know that they have something special, he said. And they try to support it.
“For a town this size, we’re probably very lucky,” he said.
This is something that people say over and over in Adams.
They’re lucky to have all the services, lucky that Adams was selected as the site of a new ethanol plant a few years back. Lucky that when the schools in Adams and Filley merged in 1998, the new school — Daniel Freeman Public Schools — was built in Adams.
People also say they’re lucky to have the Gramann family in town.
Karl Gramann’s brother, Max, is the president of Adams State Bank, a business founded by the Gramanns’ grandfather in 1918.
The family has been in business here ever since, expanding into real estate, tax services and insurances sales over the years. Their children are in on the business, too.
Through the Gramann family’s ventures, Adams has supported them.
And in the early 1990s, when the community hit a rough patch, the Gramann family supported the community, too.
In 1996, the local Amoco burned down, then the grocery store and restaurant closed. Vacant buildings already lined the south side of Main Street.
The town’s future looked bleak.
So the Gramann brothers stepped in, investing in capital improvements to some buildings, and building others from the ground up — including the brick buildings on Main Street that now house the dentist, doctor and eye doctor.
The Gramann brothers don’t accept too much credit for stepping in.
“Adams has been very good to our family, and we’ve tried to do some things that are good for Adams,” Max Gramann said.
Still, their venture has worked well.
The presence of Gold Crest retirement center in town has resulted in a high demand for local medical services. The town’s school and proximity to Lincoln and Beatrice has attracted young families who want their kids to grow up in a small town, and, to them, having medical services right in town is a plus.
And even though Lincoln is less than 40 miles from Adams and Beatrice is just more than 20, Adams residents have still done a good job of patronizing local businesses.
“It’s nice to go up and down Main Street and not see a lot of closed businesses,” Karl Gramann said. “We’ve been lucky there.”
Back at the annual community days celebration, Marcy Marker runs the kids’ activities.
The kids’ games, new to community days this year, include a bounce house, water balloon toss and face painting, among other things.
Ticket sales are raising money for another addition to Adams — new playground equipment for the Freeman Elementary School.
Marker, the school’s kindergarten teacher, moved to Adams with her husband nearly 20 years ago.
Since then, she said, Adams has grown.
It’s a mix, she said, of people who grew up in Adams, went away to college and then moved back, and people with no ties to Adams who just wanted to live in a small town.
Marker fits into the latter group. She and her husband both grew up in small communities and wanted to live in one, too. Adams seemed like a nice quiet town, she said.
And then she echoed what might as well be the Adams community slogan.
“It’s got everything.”
In the years that Marker has been in town, a few subdivisions have popped up. Homes that come up for sale seem to be selling, she said, even with high gas prices and a sluggish economy.
“We’re still growing, a little bit at a time,” she said.
Karl Gramann said he would like to see a little bit more growth.
He thinks Adams needs some kind of small industry — a powder coating business, say, or a small manufacturer — to bring in perhaps 100 more people.
Of those 100, he figures, maybe 10 will get involved in the village board, school board, church boards, rescue squad and other civic organizations, giving the people who currently keep things in Adams running a bit of a breather.
“If you’re 500, you need to be 600,” he said.
Perhaps.
But Mike Brown of rural Princeton, who since June 23 has owned Super Foods, has been impressed with what Adams’ 500 residents have accomplished.
He’s hoping to grow his business, too, adding a meat counter, more storage space and an ice cream machine.
It’s true, he said, that few towns the size of Adams have been able to keep their grocery stores.
But he thinks that Super Foods in Adams has potential to thrive.
“You hear about all these struggling small towns,” he said, “and there are.
“But Adams is not one.”
Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.
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