A good man appointed and a good man not selected. The mayor had a tough choice in picking a new member to sit on the McCook City Council. Jack Rogers was selected, old news, and will do a good job of helping to steer the city. Finishing second was community spirited Duane Tappe a good man with experience serving on the Wakefield, Nebraska City Council. Duane commented that more people, there should have been a crowd of willing candidates, stepping forward to do their civic duty and serve. He is to be complimented for trying.

It has been interesting watching the current council in action. The atmosphere at the meetings is congenial but never lax. Gone is the acrimony hanging heavy that prevailed when I served.  Possibly the good spirit is a result of none of the members having graduated from Law 101 which evidently teaches that there is no right or wrong and the biggest bully wins. The council interacts well with city staff, all visitors are heard and treated with courtesy and yet the work of the city gets done in an exemplary manner. The whole bunch is to be applauded in my opinion.

The following fits under the category of "war story." I know parts are true but it has been a few years since it happened and I am relating from memory what "he said."

Anyway while in the Merced area last month, Jimmy and I looked up almond farmer Thurber Hoyt. Thurb grew up in the Stone Church Community south of Culbertson. I know that he attended and played football for McCook Junior College along with his buddy, Kenny Spencer.  Those two, probably both 16 years old, also drove gravel trucks hauling materials for building the runways at the McCook Army Airbase. 

Late in the war Thurber went off to pilot training. I've seen pictures of him standing by his P-47 but I don't think he got overseas before the war ended. He must have been in Gen. Curtis Lemay's post-war Strategic Air Command. I remember him landing his B-25 at the closed McCook Airbase when he and Colonel (General?) Eisenhart came home to visit family. We called such trips "boondoggles" and I can't even imagine such being authorized in the present Air Force. Possibly it wasn't legal then or more likely they simply didn't ask permission.

The story that I wanted to draw out of Thurb was when he had to bail out of a B-45 over Arkansas.  The B-45 was built by North American and was SAC's first jet-powered bomber. It had a crew of two pilots and a navigator. It was a straight-wing aircraft and had four early J-47 engines embedded in the wing. Designed to be a nuclear bomber it had a huge bomb bay. At one time, a pod was installed in the bomb bay that carried four EW's (Electronic Warfare Officers).  Flying out of England they flew reconnaissance missions over Russia in the pre-U-2 days. I had a friend, Hank Viehman, who sat in those pods and admitted flying those missions but of course the official line was that it never happened.

I remember sometime in the early 1950s the Hoyt clan being excited because word came that Thurber, my mother's first cousin, had to bail out of a burning B-45 bomber. I asked Thurb about it. He told us that they had just completed aerial refueling and that a fuel manifold, the pipe that went through the cockpit and connected the air refueling receptacle to the main fuel tanks, had leaked and caught fire. It was the days before ejection seats so the crew had to jettison the crew entry door and physically crawl out.

Thurber said that he came down in the parachute OK but was hung up in a tree and had to shinny on down to the ground. During that process an excited "Arkie" came by in a pickup, stopped and urged him to go see the "big wreck" that was burning close by. The guy took off but soon another came by on the muddy road and took him to the scene of the burning aircraft. Next an ambulance showed up after being stuck on the muddy road leading to the scene. Thurber and the rest of the crew, who were all suffering from burns, loaded into the ambulance and headed for the hospital. Before reaching the main road, though, the ambulance ran out of gas so the crew completed their trip to the hospital riding in local pickups.

I suspect that SAC was rather pleased to be rid of a B-45 as the push was on at the time to build a fleet of the much better B-47, six-engine jet bombers.  Thurber went to the B-47 and later into the B-52 and to a final assignment at Castle AFB where he served as an instructor in the "Buff," eventually retiring after serving as deputy chief of maintenance. 

In retirement he didn't go far, only about five miles west of the base, where he purchased a large but dying peach orchard, planted almond trees and obviously has prospered in that endeavor. A strapping large-boned man, now nearly 80, he stands impressively straight and tall as I always remembered him. He would be the pride and joy of his grandmother Priscilla, who with her Civil War Veteran husband, James, homesteaded on the bank of the Driftwood just where Thurber grew up. 

His wife Betty died nine years ago, but he since married a pleasant neighboring almond farming widow.  They are active in their church and the farming is all done by his son Doug. Some relation a guy can be proud of and I know the story has to be true because the teller is related to me.

That is the way I see it.