Firefighters say goodbye to old truck

Beaver Valley/Lebanon Fire Chief Jerry Walters (from left) and Beaver Valley Fire District charter members Melvin Nicholson and Merwin Grafton stand beside the 1953 GMC truck loaned to the fire district by the Forestry Service in 1972. The truck was returned to the Forestry Service Thursday, July 20; it will be auctioned off in a surplus sale Aug. 31. In spite of its age, the truck has only 41,082 miles on it. "It's not the miles that matter," to a fire department, Walters said. "We just need 'em to run." Nicholson said the tuck "was never very fast, just steady." A valve assembly on the truck's dash is incised with the instructions for fording a stream.
(Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Daily Gazette)

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The old truck, a 1953 GMC 6x6 with a winch, was an Army or National Guard surplus truck that the Nebraska Forestry Service loaned to the Beaver Valley fire department. It was the 1,000th such loaner-truck, and turning it over in January 1972 created a special presentation and newspaper picture-taking opportunity in Lincoln when Beaver Valley/Lebanon firefighters picked up the keys from University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension fire control specialist Joe Range and Dr. John L. Adams, director of Cooperative Extension and associate dean of the NU College of Agriculture.

The program through which many rural fire districts obtained surplus government vehicles was the Clarke-McNary Act of 1924, which enabled the U.S. secretary of agriculture to work cooperatively with state officials for better forest protection, chiefly in fire control and water resources.

Beaver Valley firefighters Merwin Grafton, Melvin Nicholson and Don Haag, all of Lebanon, picked up their new truck in Lincoln and received a small plaque recognizing it as the 1,000th such loaner vehicle.

"We've misplaced the plaque," Grafton said the morning of July 20, when Forestry Service personnel were to come to Lebanon and retrieve their old truck, which the fire district has replaced with a much-newer orange 1987 International truck that was once owned by the State of Nebraska.

After receiving the Forestry Service truck in 1972, Beaver City/Lebanon firefighters replaced the original truck box with a water tank purchased from Phillips Construction Co. in McCook. The firefighters also had to put in a new motor at one time. "The truck was always owned by the Forestry Service, but it was our responsibility to maintain it," Merwin said.

The truck's original cloth top -- definitely not very practical on a fire scene -- had to be replaced with a fabricated metal cab. What was the purpose of the cloth top anyway? Merwin laughed. "Well, see, you folded the seat up, threw back the cloth top and you could rest your machine gun on the top of the windshield," he chuckled.

Originally, the truck came with just single wheels on the back. "But that was too tippy," with the weight of the water, Merwin said. "So we got duals put on."

Another odd extra on the truck is the bright-red cap on the dash that reads: "BEFORE FORDING, PLACE CAP ON AIR CLEANER OPENING UNDER HOOD."

"It was built to go underwater up to the air cleaner," Merwin said. Merlin mused, "We never tried it out. We really should have before we gave it back."

At one time, Merwin said, the fire district also had an old Army surplus ambulance that wanted to use to haul equipment. "But we couldn't keep it running," he added.

"We got a lot of good use out of the old truck," Merwin said.

Melvin chuckled, "It wasn't fast going to a fire, but it made it there. If it left the same time as the other trucks, they were out of water and needing to be refilled by the time the tanker truck got there."