OCONTO — Welcome to Big Jim’s, a chat room from the 20th Century still thriving in the 21st.

Wedged in the middle of a block of old commercial buildings, the tavern survived a 2000 tornado that raked this community of 141 people north of Lexington.

Three round tables run through the narrow room, and Wednesday night, locals hold down every chair. Miller and Coors Light posters plaster the walls, the cork board announces a farm implement sale and the TV stacked atop a pop cooler broadcasts college basketball.

No one pecks away on a laptop, but plenty of blogging gets done between sips of beer and mixed drinks.

“We’ve solved more political problems in this bar than they even have in Lincoln,” says a smiling Dave Nelson, whose gray mustache extends past the corners of his mouth.

Tonight’s topic: the proposed statewide smoking ban the Nebraska Legislature will revisit this week.

A caucus of the roughly 20 customers produces just two votes for the ban. Both quickly find the exit as smoking ban opponents start chopping away at the idea.

“It’s stupid, I hate it,” says Mary Johnson. “It’s communist to me, somebody telling you what you can and can’t do with your life.”

The proposal is based on Lincoln’s ban, which extinguished cigarettes and cleared second-hand smoke from all indoor public places in the city. Most of the crowd at Big Jim’s agrees the decision to allow smoking should be left to business owners. And the decision to patronize smoking establishments should be left to customers.

“Let the economics decide it,” Rocky Dockweiler says shortly before he orders a round for the table.

Nods and affirmative grunts signal general agreement.

A lighter flicks and Roger Wackerla exhales smoke into the room. When he served in Vietnam, he says, a soldier’s ration included cigarettes. Now when he drives past the Veterans Administration hospital in Grand Island, he sees old smokers huddled beneath a tarp outside.

Jeff Underwood takes a seat and lights up. He says a smoking ban would undoubtedly cut tobacco sales, and the taxes they generate. He wants to know how lawmakers in favor of the ban propose to make up lost revenue.

“Property taxes,” someone says.

Underwood grins: “They think they’re screwing us and they’re going to end up screwing themselves.“

More laughter, grunts and nods.

Everyone else around the table has quit smoking, generally for health reasons.

They talk about how the ranks of smokers have shrunk over the years — without government intervention. Someone mentions how restaurants have downsized smoking sections, which prompts a saying Nelson got from an uncle: “He said, ‘Choosing the non-smoking section of a restaurant is like choosing the non-peeing section of a pool.’”

The argument that the ban would protect bar and restaurant employees from second-hand smoke carries no sway. Everyone around the table agrees that an employee needs only to search the help-wanteds if he or she wants a smoke-free workplace.

As the conversation continues, it becomes clear opposition to the ban at Big Jim’s has little to do with smoking or smoker’s rights. It’s about freedom and what they see as increasing control politicians have over their lives.

The controversial decision to close Class I schools still feels like an open wound in small communities like Oconto, and the proposed smoking ban smells like a spoonful of castor oil urban Nebraska wants rural Nebraska to swallow.

This particular collection of rural Nebraskans doesn’t want to hold its nose and take the medicine.

The people still matter, someone says. Another mutters something about how those living west of Lincoln still value their independence. For a second, it feels like they might gain critical mass, like they might even focus their opposition and take it to the Legislature.

Then Glen Bomberger looks into the future.

“It’s kind of like everything else they ram down your throats,” he says. “You don’t like it, but eventually you get used to it.”

Nothing kills a good buzz like a bullet of reality.

Kearney can lay claim to the proposed smoking ban. More accurately, Kearney elected Joel Johnson, a retired surgeon and one of the main sponsors of the bill. Of course, other Nebraska legislative districts have representatives who support the concept.

Scratch the surface of the central Nebraska city of 28,000 and opinions about the proposal fly. To smokers like Delmar Nelson Jr., the idea stinks worse than a stale ashtray.

“You’re infringing on my personal rights,” he says. “It’s my choice.”

Raegan Hegarty works where the two owners and three employees all smoke. The idea that lawmakers would ban their ability to light a cigarette offends her.

“I think it’s absolutely too much Big Brother,” she says, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the bar in front of her.

At a downtown sports bar and restaurant called the Coop, owner Collin Nabity says the ban is coming.

“It scares the hell out of me,” he says.

He feels certain it will cut into the business he opened five years ago. And he expects to spend about $10,000 to add outdoor seating for smokers.

But he’s also read where bars and restaurants in West Coast cities saw their profits return several years after a ban. He just hopes he can make it to the rebound.

One other thing that gives him hope is what he hears from customers who attend the University of Nebraska at Kearney. They say they like going to Lincoln to party in smoke-free bars and clubs.

North of downtown, a yellow banner hanging near the entrance of  The Cellar declares the restaurant is proudly 100 percent smoke free. The owners made the switch last November to coincide with the Great American Smokeout, says Stacey Plautz, marketing director for the restaurant.

They lost some customers, she admits. And the switch required an adjustment for five of their 42 employees who smoke and can no longer light up in the break room. But they also got “marketing exposure” in area newspapers and TV channels, which helped bring in new nonsmoking customers.

Ironically, Plautz said she’s torn over whether she wants lawmakers to pass a statewide ban because current conditions add to the restaurant’s competitive edge.

For customers like Jane Mena-Werth, the change has actually increased the amount her family spends at The Cellar. They always liked the food before, but they ate there less frequently when smoking was allowed.

“I’m really hoping the whole state goes to nonsmoking,” she said. “I know people have a right to smoke, but we have the right to not be affected by second-hand smoke.”

Back when trains carried travelers to Broken Bow, a young Ray Brown carried their bags five blocks to the Arrow Hotel for spare change.

Now the retired nursing home builder spends a little time every day with his friends in the nearly 80-year-old hotel’s cigar room. They drink coffee. None still smokes, but all rankle at the proposed ban nonetheless.

Brown is among a group of investors who spent money to remodel the hotel’s ground floor a couple of years ago. They improved the lobby, restaurant and added a street-corner pub, all of which are smoke-free.

The investors also created a 420-square-foot cigar room. The room features fine woodwork, leather chairs and a state-of-the-art ventilation system, which filters the entire air volume through 90 pounds of charcoal every three minutes. The room is sealed off from the pub and negative pressure prevents smoke from passing into the lobby, said R.J. Thomas, another of the hotel’s owners.

They spent $35,000 on the room. Combined with smoking guest rooms (five out of 24) the hotel can accommodate both smoking and nonsmoking customers. So Thomas and the other owners strongly dislike the prospect of a smoking ban landing in their central Nebraska community of 3,500.

“My position is it’s a very slippery slope,” says Thomas, who is a smoker. “New York is banning trans fats. Caffeine doesn’t have any health benefits, should we ban it from coffee? I don’t know that cherry pie has any nutritional value.”

The debate will continue across greater Nebraska, in American Legions and VFWs, in sports bars, fire departments, factory break rooms and small-town cafes that are part restaurant, part community center.

The one place you wouldn’t expect to hear the debate is a hospital. But at the Boone County Health Center in Albion, a community of 1,800 people northwest of Columbus, they just settled it.

The hospital and its campus will soon be tobacco-free.

Patients or visitors couldn’t smoke inside the hospital before, but now neither they, nor smokeless tobacco users, can get nicotine fixes outside the back door.

If anything, the action was overdue, said Jeanne Temme, the hospital’s risk manager.

Temme is also a registered nurse who has witnessed the health effects of smoking and second-hand smoke — heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, asthma, emphysema and lung cancer.

No, she doesn’t smoke. No, she’s not comfortable telling people what to do.

But yes, she supports a statewide smoking ban.

“I’m fine with that.”

Reach Joe Duggan at 473-7239 or jduggan@journalstar.com.