Sayre wanted to build a brick store. Gardner took the soil from near the corner where Stever Lowley now resides and went into the manufacture of brick. The two story Stayre store, the old Commercial hotel, and the Soder saloon building were built from the product and all are doing service after thirty years and the quality of the brick seems to have been excellent. The Soder building was moved to Scottsbluff and is now "Sweetland" and owned by Theo. Lewis.

Gardner put on his "darbys" and went to work in the yard like any other laborer.

Joe Kinnamon was there at the time but he was in other lines of work. He hauled home made lumber from the Kiowa mill that was used in the Sayre building, and also stringers for the old Gering bridge.

Charles Dooley manufactured some very good quality brick at the foot of the bad lands for a number of years. W. B. Cole undertook it in a small way. A. Sorenson has put a great many fair quality brick upon the market which have been manufactured at Gering.

One of the difficulties encountered in an attempt to make brick in this part of Nebraska is

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

to find clay that is free from lime. The fine particles of lime-stone that is so universally scattered throughout our soil is excellent from the point of richness of the land, but it has no virtue in brick-making. The burning of the brick also burns the lime which makes it "alive" and when water from rains or the moisture of the mortar enters the brick the lime "slacks" and bursts the brick or makes "pop holes" in them.