As the hour hand on a North Platte railyard agent’s pocket watch ticked closer to midnight, 29-year-old Rosser “Ole” Herstedt waited in the sooty darkness. Prohibition was slowly coming to an end in Nebraska, beginning with beer. A state official broke the seal on a shipment that had arrived by rail. Ole muscled kegs of Budweiser onto a borrowed school truck. Years before, he’d been a star pitcher for his hometown of Paxton in western Nebraska. Now a new future would unfold. For the first time in his adult life, it was legal to sell beer in Paxton. Ole was going to have fun with it and take others along on the ride.

Ole served his first drinks in Paxton from the back of the truck that very August night in 1933. Soon after, he set up his bar in a building that his parents owned on North Oak Street. He outfitted it with a handsome walnut bar he’d won in a baseball game years back when organizers couldn’t come up with the $50 they owed him.

Cash sales from his bar, which he later named Ole’s Big Game Lounge, returned to him far more than the $50 baseball winnings might have. The walnut’s warm allure and Ole’s friendly banter made him the money to pursue his other great passion – big game hunting in Africa, India, South America and Siberia.

Today, Tim Holzfaster, the second and only other owner of the bar, serves burgers made with local beef and bison and regales customers with stories about the bar’s colorful founder. Holzfaster bought the place from Ole in 1988 and renamed it Ole’s Big Game Steakhouse and Lounge. He’s tweaked a few other things too, but the big game trophies Ole collected a half century ago fill the walls, glass cases and dark corners.

Ole died in 1996, and he left behind few written records of his adventures. Framed photographs of the big game he shot include only brief captions. What’s known about Ole’s history is what he told Tim and the few waitstaff who still serve there today.

Of all the animals at Ole’s, Tim makes special mention of the Siberian wolverine awash in the glow of blood-red light in the darkness behind the bar. Tim said Ole told him that the wolverine frightened him more than the much bigger polar bear encased in glass at the entrance.

A couple driving westbound had spotted Ole’s billboard miles before the Paxton exit off I-80. They exited, drove a mile north, parked in front, walked past the polar bear and chose a brighter table by the windows over a darker booth by the wolverine. Ole’s seems to them like a hunter’s museum, with Tim the trustworthy curator. Holzfaster pulls up a chair and leans into the first-timers’ table, which tilts slightly, and describes for them his childhood in the very place he’s sitting.

Paxton is in Keith County, which borders Colorado and runs on Mountain Time. Drivers arriving from North Platte on U.S. Highway 30 see piles of pipe produced by Titan Industries, an employer in town. It’s the town that Holzfaster, like Ole before him, loves best.

Like most kids who grew up in Paxton, Holzfaster hung out in a room next to Ole’s bar when it had two snooker tables, four eight-ball tables and adult supervision. It was one of the only places for young people to socialize, outside of school and church. Ole’s mother, Hattie, kept the children in check, yelling at them if they got too wild. She enforced the rules: No smoking, no drinking and no cussing.

Holzfaster would give Hattie a dime and get a cue ball and a brush. The billiard balls clacked. The kids groaned over their misfortunes and laughed at others, then brushed the tables when the last ball dropped into a pocket. The mood was lighter than it was next door at the bar, where men gathered to drink whisky and beer and smoke cigars and filterless cigarettes. The smoke hung thick in the air.

Ole and his childhood friend and fellow high school athlete Martin “Keg” McCaig held court at the walnut bar, striking up conversation with the hunters, fishers and ranchers who walked in. Ole started drinking Seagram’s V.O. Whisky and Coke at 8 or 9 a.m. and called it a night around 10 p.m.

When Holzfaster attended elementary school, Ole gifted him a Hamm’s Beer sign in 1970 that Holzfaster had admired. He kept it above his bed through high school. As Holzfaster grew into adulthood, he got to know Ole better than just about anyone else in Paxton and earned the man’s trust and affection. Both men were hunters with undying loyalty to their hometown.

A local hunter of ducks, geese and pheasants, Holzfaster has not added his own trophies to Ole’s wildlife collection.

Hunters make Ole’s an annual destination. Arden Krugerud of Denver makes a point of dining at Ole’s every year on his way to South Dakota for pheasant hunting. Rather than drive straight through in one day, he and his longtime friends leave Denver in the afternoon, dine on prime rib at Ole’s and spend the night in North Platte. They get a laugh every time over the moose Ole shot. The moose’s name is Henry, the same as a member of Krugerud’s group. And they can’t stop wondering how much Ole spent in current dollars on his international hunting trips. Tim tells Krugerud that Ole spent “every dime he made at the bar on his outdoor adventures.”

As a fellow hunter, Tim keeps in touch with the men. He has their contact info on his computer and phone. Love of hunting tales explains Ole’s display of a broken wooden airplane propeller. Ole’s dinner server Sue McConnell tells the story of the propeller, and so many others she’s heard since 1989, the year she began waiting on tables at Ole’s.

Hunters were aboard the prop-driven plane hunting for coyotes when one of them shot through the propeller. The plane lost altitude but landed safely near Lake McConaughy. There were no injuries except to the misfiring hunter’s ego. Ole was not on the plane.

Ole’s fame as a hunter and bar host grew, attracting celebrities from near and far. McConnell remembers serving a meal to actor Robert Duvall, whose autographed picture hangs in the dining area. The actor dined and played pool at Ole’s after the airing of the 1989 TV miniseries Lonesome Dove. Much of the novel on which the miniseries is based takes place in nearby Ogallala.

The bus of NFL Hall of Fame coach John Madden arrived one day, and the coach ordered out bone-in ribeye. Nebraska coach Tom Osborne paid a visit, as did Nebraska politician Bob Kerrey.

Of all the celebrity photos hanging in the restaurant, the one that seems most endearing shows a smiling Ole with the late actress Amanda Blake, who played Miss Kitty in the 1950s TV series Gunsmoke. Blake signed it: “To the best tavern operator this side of Long Branch,” the name of her character’s fictional bar. Most of Ole’s big game hunting expeditions occurred in the 1960s, but he entertained at the bar for decades longer. The wildlife lured people to his door, but Ole’s good cheer brought them back. No wonder Blake’s encouragement would strike a chord; a Hollywood actress had affirmed him.

Before Holzfaster bought the bar in 1988, his grandmother, Dorothy Meyer, made him promise two things: Emphasize food over booze and close the doors for Christmas. Holzfaster kept his promise to Grandma Dorothy. Ole’s is open 364 days, and 85 percent of Ole’s sales is food.

The only big game sizzling in the kitchen is the bison burger. That’s preferable to the idea of eating polar bear, and besides, the bison is local and flavorful, as is the restaurant’s popular special, chicken fried steak, the prime rib and the perennial favorite BLT. The first-timers order the bison and the BLT. The meals don’t need fancy names to impress.

After the meal, the first-timers visit Tim’s steak supplier for the past 40 years, third-generation butcher Mark Hehnke. Mark works in the back of the store his grandfather founded a century ago, up a block and across North Oak St. from Ole’s. He’s happy to talk to Ole’s customers. Hearing Mark describe how he prepares the chicken fried steak meat gives the first-timers an appetite for a repeat visit. Mark tells them he hand-cuts top-third choice or higher Nebraska corn-fed eye of round, tenderizes it and ages it at least 30 days.

Ole’s stories live on among those who rest their elbows on his walnut bar, admire the trophies, order a Seagram’s and Coke, and lift their glass to his memory. Tim’s legacy will be his success in squeezing a kitchen and dining tables among the animals, his staff serving meals from a menu that proves to be as big a draw as the big game. Just ask the hunters devouring prime rib at the table next to yours.