Out of the Past March 28, 1981 - 40 yrs ago

After 15 years of diligent labor, an 89 year old Anselmo woman is a “published” author.

Elizabeth Babcock, who has been accumulating material for a family history since 1965, will be seeing her narrative in print in the Rural Electric NEBRASKAN magazine for the next few months. The March 1981 issue carried the first of her series of articles about the Mathews family homesteading in Nebraska.

The published article ended two years of publisher’s rejections and a year long wait from NEBRASKAN magazine for Mrs. Babcock.

Mrs. Babcock said about half a dozen publishing houses turned down her articles because they were “too long.” Among those refusing her 400 page manuscript was McMillan Publishing in Boston. But not one to get discouraged, Mrs. Babcock went to Anselmo Postmaster Wauneta Axtell who helped her “trim” the material into 50 concisely worded pages.

The lightened document was submitted to NEBRASKAN editor Art Grimm around Christmas, 1979. Mrs. Babcock heard nothing from the 63,000 circulation Rural Electric monthly until January this year when she was told the narrative would appear in a series over several months. In March her dreams were realized.

Mrs. Babcock says she has always wanted to write and related two precious experiences in which she had articles published.

Her first journalistic success came in 1930 when three stories she wrote for the Young Crusader Sunday School paper were printed.

At that time she was paid “top” money of one cent per word. Reflecting on her first writing venture she said, “I really thought I was somebody when I had those stories printed. And the money, I really felt rich!”

In 1940, Listen Magazine in Washington D.C. paid her $15 for a story she wrote about a young man at a halfway house who was convinced not to drink as a minor any longer when a sly bar tender rigged a plastic spider which would fall from the ceiling at the “appropriate” time. She chuckled when she recalled the episode and said, “that boy never stepped into the bar again!”

The only thing puzzling Mrs. Babcock about her Listen article was her receiving the money but never seeing the article in print. “It could have been printed but I never saw it,” she remarked.

Mrs. Babcock recalls that a University of Nebraska-Lincoln librarian got her interested in writing in the late 1920’s. It all started when the librarian showed her an article printed about the Mathews family in the Plattsmouth paper in 1886. Her father was a lawyer in Plattsmouth.

At 89, Mrs. Babcock’s eyesight has handicapped her typing ability but her writing tradition has been passed on to her oldest son Robert T. Babcock, now of Deweese, Nebraska. The retired USDA employee has had a book entitled “A Long Time Cowboy” published by Word Services of Lincoln.

Someday Mrs. Babcock would like to see her material in book form. But that takes money she says and “I’m too old to start working again to do something like that,” she concluded.