A good vacation

Your old columnist will be departing for a short vacation even before you read this. I sure hope it turns out better than fellow “Mike at Night” reported on his recent trek. Poor Mike reminds me of Joe Btfspik the woeful character in the comic strip “Li’l Abner” who always had a dark cloud over his him dropping rain down on him.

I’ll be off to Wisconsin. We will join pilots and all lovers of aircraft attending the annual Fly In at Oshkosh. It is about like the faithful making a trip to Mecca. Airplanes on display from the smallest of homebuilts to the newest airliners will be among the 10,000 or so that come. The military brings their latest. Guys and gals, last year one of the airlines sent an all-female crew and with the passenger compartment all filled with lady employees. Good food — brats and BBQ not exactly healthful but pilot preferred.

The grounds are spotless, aircraft lovers don’t leave trash. Airshows all day and even at night. Workshops for every desire.

Bargain merchandise from all who wish to sell to pilots. Oh, it will be a glorious three days.

Grannie Annie will get a vacation also — she will be staying home. Several years ago Grannie did travel with me to Oshkosh and evidently, her love of all thing aviation hasn’t compelled her to want to go back. Funny how that works.

It is County Fair Time and somehow they always seem to schedule for the hottest days of the year. Seems to be no matter as the attendance has been good especially in the cooler evening hours. Awesome quilt display in the open class building. Our seamstress ladies really are talented!

Speaking of hot and your browning lawn. If you enjoy the water restrictions you might give Phil Lyons, Daylene Bennett or John Bingham a call.

There was a better solution to McCook’s water supply than new wells in the radio-nuclide calcium-laden Republican aquifer necessitating the expensive reverse osmosis and new large storage tank that we built for many millions of dollars. We on the City Council had a better option; that of drilling into the Ogallala aquifer north of town. Ogallala water meets all purity standards and doesn’t even need to be infused with chlorine as we have now. Then, too. pumping to the surface north of town allows gravity to move the water even into our tallest water towers, no need for booster pumping stations as we have now. It was a great plan put together by Claude Cappel and Engineer Greg Wolford but, alas, the three individuals mentioned above torpedoed it in favor of a more expensive installation, higher cost of upkeep and the enjoyable water restrictions we have now.

Incidentally our neighboring communities of Culbertson, Cambridge and probably more, prudently went north, drilled new wells into the Ogallala Aquifer and piped it to their existing municipal infrastructures.

They reportedly are very satisfied with their new systems. Oh that I had been better at politics when I sat on the City Council those few years ago!

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail