Our wonderful fairgrounds

Drive through the Red Willow County Fairgrounds and note the variety of buildings. Big arenas, government office buildings, a 4-H building which doubles for a place for auctions, barns for livestock, church food stands, and a place for community meetings complete with a kitchen. Then count the buildings of galvanized tin construction: three in number, yes only three. That was the number of permanent buildings on the fairgrounds when Don Klein was “elected” to the fair board. Yes, Don had a hand in getting all the others built. And yes, Tom Kiplinger donated the money to build our two wonderful rodeo arenas, but it was Don who “influenced” Tom to donate the money to build the first and then another similar arena. Incidentally, Don also took responsibility for overseeing the construction of the original McCook Senior Center building and the more modern YMCA that is in the process of being further updated.

The reason that I bring up this bit of rather recent history is that there is a movement afoot by our County Board of Commissioners to try to get Don removed from the fair board. I haven’t attended the meeting recently, but that is what I read and hear. Somewhere, there is a State requirement that only two of the allowed five fair board members can reside in the local city limits, and our county at present has three of the five members living here in town. Never mind that Don was a longtime implement dealer and rather large rural landowner and thus has a pretty intimate understanding of the rural community. Picky picky!

When the City of McCook was originally platted, the County Fair Grounds was the large area extending from West 5th Street to Memorial Cemetery and then from J Street to Q Street. It was to remain County property and was not required to abide by city rules. Law enforcement was the County sheriff, not the City police. The western part of the fair grounds was used as a sod take off and landing area by aviation at the time. Ray Search wrote about when he owned an airplane and flew from there. Then, sometime before WWII, one of our esteemed city council members, a local jeweler, convinced the city to establish a much larger airport on land that he sold to them, which has become the Municipal Airport that we know today.

Then, following WWII, it became apparent that McCook was suffering a dire housing shortage due to returning veterans, their wives and their families. Dale Thompsen, a county commissioner at the time, did a little finagling and set aside the area that became known as Sterns Addition, and developers rapidly built a large number of very inexpensive houses to solve the housing crisis. Remember that the original rules setting aside the county fair grounds did not allow any of that area to be sold. I guess you do what you have to do. I am aware of the footwork because when I was County Commissioner, friend Dale came to me and explained what he had done and how he went about it even though it wasn’t exactly legal.

The chairman of our county board seems to be the one that is fussing about how the Fair Board is conducting their business. He is the one pushing the two-member maximum to live in the City Limits. He is also the one voicing concerns about the fair having large numbers of horses and other animals within what has become a residential area. I would like to point out that the fairgrounds came first and the residents long after.

I also remember one of our local loud-mouthed lawyers voicing complaints about water draining onto local streets from the fairgrounds. That water he pointed out contained floating horse turds and other unsanitary stinky crap.

All the fuss about our local fairgrounds being an unsatisfactory neighbor to our residential area reminds me of a continuing nationwide “problem” of airport complaints from residential areas. Normally, we build new airports a distance from residential areas for safety of operation. Then, over the years, residential areas tend to encroach upon the open area surrounding the growing airport. For instance, look at how the City of Denver moved in and surrounded the old Stapelton Airport, and also Lowry AFB nearby. Denver solved the complaints by building a new municipal airport a long way out on the plains to the east. Then, they were smart enough to zone the surrounding area to prevent the building of houses and residences nearby. It also happened here at our airport when a local business built a warehouse too close to Runway 03, and the runway length had to be effectively shortened by painting a “displaced threshold” on that runway.

Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, solved a similar problem, housing being built nearby and within the approach areas to their runways. A bit of a hullabaloo arose when an airplane in distress didn’t quite make it to the runway and crashed into several houses lined up to and close to the start of the runway. Casualties and a big lawsuit. The U.S. government then stepped in and condemned the whole housing area that lay on the approaches to that airbase and required the removal of all those buildings. Problem solved.

I heard an interesting observation concerning the bickering between our City Council and the local College about designing and building the new ballpark/athletic facility. My friend pointed out that not one of the council persons involved had any children that played ball or were coaches and therefore aren’t really in touch with the needs of our young athletes. Our college actually hires coaches and sponsors athletes that actually play the ballgames. Interesting!

That is how I saw it.