I got to report last week on one of my favorite stories of this summer: the local production of an original play to re-enact Loup City’s 1934 riot. This is a chapter of rural Nebraska history that I doubt many in the area are terribly familiar with, particularly younger or newer residents. (I had never heard of it until I stumbled upon a historical marker while wandering around town’s courthouse square between appointments last year.)

By all accounts, the riot was short but fierce, with clubs, fists, crutches and socks with bars of soap inside being flung around with abandon. No one was killed, but one man, Burt Sell of Arcadia, suffered a fractured skull. The riot had two major causes: Over the long-term, the local Farm Holiday Movement advocated destroying farm products to help raise miserable commodities prices, something that rankled the town’s Main Street establishment. The arrival of 72-year-old New York activist Mother Bloor, a Communist and advocate of women’s rights, to push for better rights for chicken pluckers at the local creamery, lit a fire under that smoldering conflict, and the fight was on.

There are so many intriguing subplots to this conflict — What was Sheriff John Thrailkill’s role? Was the initial trial jury rigged, as the local People’s Standard newspaper claimed? Who yelled, “Hey, Rube!” and what did it mean? — but what fascinated me the most was modern-day Loup City’s profound ambivalence toward the event.

Those involved with the play said memories of the riot have always been passed down from generation to generation … but it hasn’t played a major role in shaping the town today. It’s still a sore subject with unhealed wounds for some … but the process of unearthing it for the community through the play has been benign, rather than painful.

It’s hard to determine what to make of this tension, but I think some of may have to do with the dramatic political shift that’s taken place in that area since then. A riot spurred in part by local socialists would be virtually unthinkable in Loup City or anywhere else in rural Central Nebraska today; this area has become one of the “reddest” Republican strongholds in the nation. To many locals, this may make the idea of a socialist riot seem like a bizarre (or possibly embarrassing) blip on the radar screen, without much impact on the town today.

On the other hand, Sherman County is a bit different, for whatever reason. In November’s election, Barack Obama got 43 percent of the vote in Sherman County — by far the highest in any of the 16 counties The Independent covers. (McCain still took the county, of course, but by comparison, neighboring Custer County gave Obama just 21 percent.)

Of course, we can’t draw a straight line between 1934′s riot and a presidential election 74 years later, but those numbers might be evidence that the same spirit that stirred that riot is alive in some form in Sherman County today.

Any theories about Sherman County’s (relative) blue streak?