Remembering Captain Allen

McCook lost a friend recently. Wayne Allen was a descendent of early settlers in Southwest Nebraska and was one of McCook's most colorful characters -- a true entrepreneur.

Wayne was proud of his ancestors. His paternal grandparents, Joe and Effie Allen, settled on a homestead, north of Red Willow. They were adventurous, making long trips to their ranch in Northern Nebraska, and also to do custom harvest work each summer in Northern South Dakota -- in a covered wagon, pulled by horses.

Wayne's maternal grandparents were Matt and Mattie Stewart. The Stewart family came to Nebraska in 1885, homesteading in Frontier County, but later buying a farm four miles north of the tiny settlement of Red Willow.

Matt Stewart was a Red Willow County Commissioner for 12 years, from 1914 until 1926, when the present courthouse was being built. At that time the park, called City Park, was going through a difficult time, not unlike the crisis that faces McCook in 2008, as regard the trees in the park.

A number of the trees in the park needed to be replaced. Some in authority voted to plant Elm trees, for the more immediate shade they would provide. But Matt Stewart held out for Hackberry trees, as a hardier species, which would be longer-lasting.

In light of the Dutch elm disease, which decimated elms all over McCook in the 1970s, it was a wise decision. Furthermore, Mr. Stewart was able to provide the sapling Hackberry trees from his farm on Willow Creek. Mr. Stewart lived to see his trees mature and beautify our park and provide shade for countless picnics before his death in 1944.

Wayne grew up on the farm north of Red Willow and graduated from the Red Willow High School in 1936. He worked for a time on the family farm, but was persuaded to attend McCook Junior College, with the offer of a basketball scholarship. He spent the rest of his life learning.

In 1942, Wayne went into the Army Air Force, and as an Army Officer, became an Armament and Bombsight specialist with the 8th Army Air Force in England. Wayne's unit, the 445th Bomber Group was one of some 60 Bomber Groups stationed in Northeast England.

It was also the Group that suffered the Air Force's worst tragedy of World War II, when 32 of the Group's 36 planes were shot down during an attack on the munitions factories at Kassel Germany. That event has been remembered by airmen, German Luftwaffe, as well as American Airmen (including Wayne), in annual pilgrimages to England and to the Kassel War Memorial in Germany since 1948.

After World War II Wayne returned to McCook to engage in farming, and ag related businesses in a big way. Eventually he farmed, developed irrigated land and livestock operations in Red Willow, Hayes, Chase, and Hitchcock counties.

As a grain operator he innovated the practice of rewarding farmers for high- quality, high-protein wheat. As a fertilizer operator he had plants and satellite plants at Perry, Stratton, Wilsonville, Indianola, and Lamar in Chase County.

Wayne was an active member of the Nebraska Wheat Growers Association and helped wheat farmers to develop markets in the Orient, convincing Japanese women of the merit of using wheat products, instead of/or along with, their traditional rice. One time he came into the bakery and said he needed to know how to make bread and rolls -- he was going to a trade show and would be handing out samples of wheat to Japanese women and wanted to be able to tell those ladies how to use it.

When the Japanese Secretary of Agriculture made a visit to the US, Wayne was his guide. Though skeptical, he was on the cutting edge in exploring the possibility of using grain to make gasohol, and made many trips to Washington as a representative of the Wheatgrowers.

I got acquainted with Wayne when he was involved with activities of the Masonic Lodge and the Shriners. From time to time he ordered items from the bakery, and meat to be cooked for meals that were to be served at the Masonic Temple. He liked to visit and I always found our conversations very interesting. Over the years he began to stop in for lunch, or a cup of coffee in the late afternoons, and we got to be friends.

Over the years Wayne learned a great deal about a lot of subjects, especially if they were related to agriculture. He was not shy about sharing his opinions. Wayne was proud of his farms, and liked to invite people to accompany him on a visit to his farm.

One time he had come across a mountain lion near his farm in Hayes County. The fellows he had lunch with often joshed Wayne about the facts he presented (and his opinions). This day they disputed his seeing a mountain lion so far east in Nebraska.

The next time Wayne was in he was loaded with facts about mountain lions, how big they were, what they hunted, and at what locations they had been seen (all over) in Nebraska.

Wayne was knowledgeable about local geography, and who lived where, dating to the very beginnings of settlement in this part of the state. Once Wayne took me (in his pick-up) on a sight- seeing trip south and west of McCook, telling me in detail who lived at every farm, the present resident and on back to the original homestead -- the names of the people who have been so closely identified with the development of Southwest Nebraska.

On that trip, Wayne got to talking about irrigation, which led to the water problems that McCook was having at the time. Wayne was critical of the steps that McCook had taken in buying the old Army Air Base, and explained in detail why the lowering of the water table at Red Willow Lake had negatively impacted the water table at the Air Base. Of course he had a solution to the water problem -- one that would have been quite cheap to fix. He seemed to be very sad when I asked if he had presented his solution to the city fathers. "It's too bad", he said. "They just don't want to hear."

The irrigation ditch from the Trenton Lake runs through the part of Southwest Nebraska we were driving through. Wayne began to tell me about the construction of that canal -- how the engineers had to gauge the drop in elevation to just a few inches per mile, through some pretty good sized hills.

He decided that it was worth seeing so we veered off the main road and took the "ditch inspector's road." That was a little used "trail" that paralleled the irrigation canal, and as he said, went through some good-sized hills -- natural hills made larger by the cut made for the irrigation canal. The road was narrow and in some places we were very high above the bottom of the canal.

We had gone a few miles on the ditch inspector's road, which got narrower as we went along, the bank of the hill high on one side and the irrigation canal steep on the other. Wayne bounced along quite fast -- faster than I would have preferred, (in light of the fact that Wayne had lost one eye in an accident and I was not entirely sure of his depth perception).

All the time carried on a non-stop monologue about irrigation, construction of the irrigation ditch, and the ongoing problems facing agriculture.

At last, Wayne decided that we had better head back to town. I was agreeable about going back to town, but could not see how we were going to get turned around. I thought there was scarcely room for one way travel, between the ditch and the hill, but I was wrong.

A few rounds of backing out almost over the canal going one way, and brushing the side of the hill going the other, we got turned around. Wayne barely stopped talking. I was relieved.

But I should not have been worried. As I said, Wayne had learned a lot about a lot of things. He had the situation well under control.