It's out of everybody's way ...

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Allan Bishop's high school ride sits on top of unused oilfield storage tanks on Highway 6 near Hamlet. Bishop said that his grandfather, Orville Bishop of California, bought the Oldsmobile brand new in 1947. In the 1950s, he gave it to Allan's folks, and Allan drove it to high school in McCook. "It has an automatic transmission, which was rare back them," Allan said. In the late '50s, a tree fell on the car, and it sat in weeds then in the Bishop farmyard next door to Orscheln's Farm and Home store on the northwest edge of McCook. It could probably be restored, Allan mused, "but we couldn't ever find a fluid drive transmission." When the family cleaned up the yard and tore down the barn in McCook, Allan moved to the car to his silage and feed location near Hamlet and hoisted it with an excavator on top of discarded oilfield storage tanks that he uses as a windbreak for silage, hay and feed. "I don't have to mow around it ... it's out of everybody's way up there," Allan said, with a deep chuckle. Allan has given the car to his 11-year-old grandson, Alex, who lives in Arkansas. "He can do with it whatever he wants," Allan said.

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