On a warm, rainy July afternoon in the village of Hordville, a farmer, banker and local mayor all walk into a bar. 

These friends and staples of the community gather over a round of beers at a large table near the center of the bar. Around them, the walls painted with maroons, greens and yellows provide a splash of color as hearty laughs bounce off lofted ceilings. Historic village photos adorn the bar with reminders of Hordville’s past.

Well ahead of the evening rush, the bar is milling with people, mostly area farmers who came in out of the rain. 

This scene is one that plays out in any number of small town watering holes. But this is no typical bar for Hordville – “Banana Rams” has quickly staked its place as an important gathering space for the town and restored some of its dwindling sense of identity.

“This town really needed this,” local farmer Tom Gustafson said. “It gets people to socialize.”

Since opening in 2018, Banana Rams has steadily grown in popularity.

Founder Justin Blase said he set out to open a place that would help put Hordville “back on the map” by offering a clean, friendly tavern with a wide selection of beer, wine and liquor. While Hordville hasn’t seen major growth in the years since, its population decline has stalled. And more than that, Blase said, people have a place to gather again.

“We’ve built a community,” he said. “That’s what gives me pride of keeping this going.”

A Slow Decline

About 30 miles east of Grand Island, the village of Hordville sits nestled among the cornfields and their farmsteads. The quiet town officially has 131 people, with a few dozen houses, bisected by a short boulevard that runs north to south and provides service to a post office, the First State Bank and a Baptist church. 

Established in 1906 as a stop for the Union Pacific Railroad, Hordville began with a Lutheran church and a small schoolhouse. In the following decades, it grew to over 200  people – enough to support a grocer, general store, barber, doctor and other services that all relied on the railroad for supplies. 

Traveling long distances was expensive and inconvenient, so many of Hordville’s residents worked, shopped and played in town. 

The village’s success took a turn in the 1980s, said Rod Blase, Justin’s dad who also is the chairman of the village council and de facto historian of Hordville.

“You start getting big-box stores opening like Walmart and things like that,” Rod Blase said. “And then people just drove.”

Hordville’s small businesses couldn’t compete with the low prices offered by chain retailers.

The butcher and grocer were some of the first to go. Then the barbers and doctors. The school system merged with neighboring villages to form the High Plains Community School District in 2001. Three years later, Hordville’s school was shuttered altogether. 

“People say that when you lose your school, you lose your town,” Rod Blase said. “I don’t know if I agree with that, but it does hurt.”

But the town held onto its bank, the post office and a small service station.

“There are not a lot of work opportunities in Hordville,” Justin Blase said. “So you can’t really even spend your time socially in Hordville, and you can’t make money in Hordville, so then what? What does it become?”

Growing up in Hordville in the 1990s, Justin Blase said, he spent a lot of time playing outside with friends. There wasn’t much else to do in town, and both of his parents worked 20 miles away in the city of Aurora. He and his friends filled their time playing basketball, riding bikes and building forts.

“You just have your little group of four to five friends, and you’re hanging out with them everyday,” he said. “I was essentially stuck in Hordville.”

When he turned 18, Justin moved to Lincoln for college, where he got a job at James Arthur Vineyards. There, he learned the ins and outs of the wine industry and decided he would one day go into business for himself.

In 2015, he got his opportunity. A historic storefront on Hordville’s Main Street that had sat abandoned for years went up for sale. At 26 years old, Justin decided it was time to return home. He bought the building for $10,000 with the intention of opening his own winery in hopes of getting Hordville back on the map.

“But then I’m like, even my best friends aren’t going to come support me at a winery,” he said. “Let’s not narrow ourselves.”

He and his family spent three years gutting and remodeling the building to open it as a bar. There wouldn’t be any food – just plenty of drinks and good company in a  friendly environment.

“I knew that if I have a clean building, then I’m different from like 90% of the businesses out there right now,” Justin said. “That’s one thing that we can accomplish.”

The bar’s unique name came from a term hunters use to refer to young bighorn sheep. Originally suggested by one of his friends as a joke, Justin decided to keep it. He painted the bar’s storefront a bright, banana-colored shade of yellow that stands out along Hordville’s historic Main Street.

‘Word Got Out’

Today, Banana Rams and Hordville are nearly synonymous with one another. People have a reason to stop in the small village again, even if just to say they have stopped by the bar with the strange name. 

“I would say most of the people that need to know about us do,” Justin said.

People from across Hamilton County regularly drive into town just for the bar. Tim Boling is the mayor of Central City, located about 10 miles from Hordville. He said he and his friends get together at Banana Rams twice a month.

“In the last seven or eight years, word got out,” Boling said over a bottle of Coors Light. “There’s people that come in here not as frequently as we do, but they stop in maybe once a month and just check it out.”

People come by for all sorts of reasons, Justin said. Most stop in to socialize with old friends. A few are there to make new friends. Some  just want a drink.

“I like to talk to people; it builds community,” Boling said. “And Justin, he’ll listen to everything, too. You know, somebody coming in here that’s had a bad day, he’ll listen to him. He’s just that kind of guy.”

Despite the bar’s success, Justin wonders about the future of Hordville. There’s excitement over talk that a family just bought a new home at the edge of town and will be moving in soon.

“I know my family’s put in a lot of effort into keeping Hordville going, and a lot of other families have, too,” Justin said. “But what about the next generation? What does that look like?”

Future questions aside, Justin said he’s proud of what he’s built. 

“The traditional Hordville community might be gone,” he said. “But then I really truly feel like we have a community here at least, and we’re open to anybody.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/small-town-bar-raises-a-glass-to-the-village-of-hordville/