A recent story in/ the Council Grove Republican newspaper by Marcus Hernandez and Diane Wolfe reminded me of a nearly forgotten chapter in local history that involved the Ground Observer Corps. I suspect this area’s proximity to the Naval Ammunition Depot at Hastings, the SAC base near Omaha and Wichita’s aircraft manufacturing facilities all influenced the location of the Ground Observer Corps facility. It was here about the same time that a field hospital was stored in the city auditorium and local buildings were surveyed to determine which ones could be used as bomb shelters.
With enemy targets in the area, Hastings had a radar site. Superior had a manned observation platform.
The first ground observers were a product of World War II. With American leaders worried about the possibility of German or Japanese air attacks on the United States, the Ground Observer Corps was formed as a civil defense program. The observers were to search the skies for possible enemy aircraft and to report any suspicious or threatening craft.
As World War II ended and the United States and its allies entered into a Cold War with the Soviet Union, a new Ground Observer Corps was organized under the United States Air Force Civil Defense service. The corps had similar aims to its World War II counterpart, but instead of looking to the skies for German and Japanese aircraft, the new threat was possible air attack by Soviet planes. The Superior post was one of more than 16,000 across the country.
What looked to be long electric light poles were used to construct an observation platform between the Superior Airport office and the airport’s Quonset-type hanger. USAF personnel stood on the platform and scanned the skies. Some locations employed local residents to assist. I didn’t happen to know any of the local observers, but the Council Grove story included two residents of that community, Joan McNeal Taylor and the late Marty Layton Smith, both were in the eighth grade at the time. Taylor said they were issued binoculars and a chart detailing the different types of planes for which they were to report.
When I was in grade school the Superior program caught my attention and I often pretended to be a member of the Ground Observer Corps. I didn’t go to the airport but I took a position on the “Scrubber.”
I previously have told stories about climbing the windmill tower on Blauvelt’s Hill and using my father’s binoculars to survey the Republican River valley. The windmill tower wasn’t a suitable location for a ground observer for trees and structures obscured the view in some directions. Instead I would walk to a neighbor’s pasture, slide through pipe fence installed by the pipeline company and climb to the top of a natural gas filtering station my family called the “Scrubber.”
Once inside the fence, I made my way up a steel ladder attached to the side of the Scrubber to reach a maintenance platform from which I could see in all directions. I used the binoculars to scan the sky. It is doubtful I would have recognized a Russian plane if I had seen one. I was looking for a jet-powered bomber like a B-47 or B-52 with a red star on the tail section and red numbers. Perhaps, the entire plane would be painted red for the Russians were known as “Red Communists.”
Today the Scrubber is gone and so is the ground observer platform. Apparently, neither are needed today. The service at the Superior airport was short lived, It began in February of 1956 and shut down in January of 1959. I’m not sure when the observer’s platform was removed but I suspect it was there for 20 years or more. The Scrubber has a much longer history. Installed in the 1920s it was removed in the 1990s.
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At about the same time I was pretending to be a ground observer, I was also riding my bicycle and horse on Highway 14. It wasn’t always possible but when I had an opportunity to do so, I guided the horse to the grassed right-of-way. But the bicycle had to stay on the surfaced road for there were lots of stickers and glass at the side of the road that would have punctured a tire.
Today, I wonder why I wasn’t afraid of the passing vehicles. When I was a youngster,the legal speed limit on the Kansas section was 70 miles per hour. It was 65 in Nebraska.
When I operated a car wash at Third and Colorado, I regularly rode my bicycle between the car wash and the newspaper office.
I’ve wondered why I no longer like to ride on highway. Thought perhaps it was because of increased semi-truck traffic.
Last week I may have seen why.
Traffic was light on Highway 14 and I only wanted to go a couple blocks east. Instead of detouring to Fourth Street as I often do, I took, the most direct route along Third Street. The trip east went well and I was thinking I should be brave and take that route more often.
Preparing to return to the office, I was waiting to ride onto Third Street when I saw a pickup coming my way. The vehicle was more than block away but I decided to wait. As it approached, it was drifting toward the curb. As it passed, I saw why. The driver was talking on a cell phone. Had the driver continued to drift to the right and I had been on the street, I likely would have been run over.
Cell phones may indeed be the reason, I am more afraid of the highway than I once was.
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As this issue goes to press, I am quanked. I suspect some readers are not familiar with the word but it fits me perfectly for it means “overpowered by fatique.” The definition was listed in a Glossary of Words Used in the County of Wiltshire by Dartnell and Goodard and published in 1893.
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