BCMH Employee of the Month, Kylie McLay

 Bates County Memorial Hospital is pleased to announce Kylie McLay, RN, as the November Employee of the Month. Kylie has been a valued member of BCMH since April 2016, serving in the Med/Surg department.

Kylie was nominated by a fellow employee who shared: "She has a very positive attitude that lifts the spirits of others around her. Patients and their family members have very positive things to say about her care. She is willing to go that extra mile to help her co-workers out. She is very knowledgeable and uses that experience to help others that need it. Kylie always has a warm and pleasant smile and a friendly hello to those that she meets throughout her day, and she helps other departments when needed, which is absolutely and greatly appreciated." BCMH is proud to honor Kylie this month for the dedication and heart she brings to her work each day.

What’s Up by LeRoy Cook

 D.B. Cooper’s Pilot Passes

The up-and-down weather of the past week limited flying activity, as fall cold fronts draped across the map. Plans for flight activity had to be rescheduled as the forecasts didn’t always work out. It’s all part of late-fall meteorology. There’s even talk of a polar vortex dipping down from the arctic before the month’s end.

Some folks were wondering about the airplanes they heard flying during the foggy mornings last week. There were clear conditions in Kansas City that allowed instrument training flights to easily depart at Downtown or New Century airports, flying on top of the clouds to practice approaches at Butler without worrying about seeing the ground.

In the absence of trip-taking, many local plane owners resorted to working on their aircraft last week. Chris Hall is rebuilding his 1956 Cessna 182 “Maude”, Travis Briscoe had his Piper TriPacer opened up for inspection, and the Club Skyhawk underwent landing gear service. Jeremie Platt managed to get aloft in his Grumman Tiger at one point.

The week’s news of the national aviation scene included the death of William Rataczak, the pilot who was flying the Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 hijacked by D.B. Cooper in 1971, the infamous parachute robber who took over the flight and demanded $200,000 in exchange for the passengers’ lives. Cooper’s demands were met and after the airliner left the ground again, he jumped off the retractable boarding stairs over Oregon, never to be found. Capt. Rataczak was 86.

Over at the Dubai Air Show in the Middle East, the crowd observing the aerial demonstrations of military and civil aircraft being showed off for buyers watched in horror as a home-grown Indian Air Force jet crashed right after takeoff. Fortunately, no one was injured on the ground, but the pilot of the Hindustani Aviation Limited fighter plane didn’t survive.

Confirmation was received last week that Raytheon Aviation, corporate owner of Beech Aircraft, is ending production of Beechcraft light airplanes, concentrating only on turbine-powered business aircraft. The famous Bonanza design, first flown 80 years ago, of which only four were delivered last year, and its twin-engine Baron sibling, notching two 2024 sales, have become economically unviable. With sticker prices of over $1 million for a Bonanza G36 and $2 million for a Baron, nobody can afford them. 

Australia is the latest country to jump on the Sustainable Aviation Fuel greenie bandwagon. Environmentalists always point to those nasty old airliners as climate ruiners, so in an effort placate the protesters fuel companies try to make jet fuel out of most anything but petroleum. The Aussies are going to squeeze sugar beets to get something that’ll burn, which will probably work, if not financially successfully. Other stuff tried has been waste cooking oil, soybeans, and palm oil. None beat hydrocarbons. 

The weekly quiz wanted to know what company built the FG1-D Corsair WW-II fighter plane.  Some readers googled up Chance Vought Aircraft, creators of the bent-wing bird seen on the Baa Baa Black Sheep TV show, but that was the F4U. It was also license-built by Goodyear Aircraft, designated the FG1. For next time, tell us how long a Private Pilot’s medical certificate is good for. You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com. 

J. T. Tiedke Early Pecan Grower

This will be a story about Mr. Tiedke who came to the Papinville area to look for a good pecan that would produce a nice size pecan with a good flavor. With pecan season coming on I thought you might like a good pecan story. In Bates County there are so many pecan trees, because of all the rivers. Pecan trees survive with a lot of water, but floods can damage the tree if the water is on them for a long period of time. 

Mr. Tiedke was from Blooming, Illinois and came to Papinville area around 1909. He bought the land south of Papinville which is now known as the Osage Valley Pecan Orchard, which is owned by Ron and Marcelle Marquardt and sons. While in Illinois he worked in a nursery, because he knew a lot about grafting trees. He would come to Papinville for vacation at first and walked down to his property trying to clear out area.

In 1919 he moved to Papinville for about nine months and stayed with different people in the area. Some times he would be run off. He was a hard man to get along with and a hard person to please. He would come in the spring and cut graft wood, do the grafting, work in the grove and gather nuts in the fall. Around December he would ship a lot of pecans back to Illinois and then return to Illinois for about three months. 

People thought he was a little strange the way he would graft the trees. He would cut off all the limbs and some times had to climb a ladder tying on the graft wood. People thought the trees would never sprout again and they would die. The trees that he grafted today are big trees and produce a lot of pecans. The trees he planted, that he would graft to, where as big as a quarter. He brought graft wood back with him when came back to Papinville in the spring.

When he had time, he would go around the area to different people’s places and looked for a good variety of nut. He was interested in finding a pecan that was thin shelled, large, easy to crack, good tasting and produce well. He told Herman Steuck that he had the nut on his place and if it did as well as he thought it would he was going to name the variety “Steuck”, (Herman Steuck is my grandpa). Back then people were not too interested in pecans. They were just a pecan.

While Mr. Tiedke was working on his grove, he also did some research and sent information to the Missouri University. During the depression people were trying to find a way to make a little bit of extra money, so people started to pick pecans to sell. Mr. Tiedke had told a man by the name of Hirsche about this special nut he had found. Mr. Hirsche got some graft wood from Mr. Tiedke and started doing some studies on it and later decided to patent it under  his name. The pecan that was to be known as the “Steuck Pecan” is now known as the  “Hirsche”. Grandpa didn’t think it was important to patent a pecan. It was just a small nut.

Mr. Hirsche came back this way and wanted to see the tree where Mr.Tiedke had found the pecan. Herman Steuck had sold the land (west of the Papinville bridge) and the person that bought the property had cut the tree down. Fred Marquardt, my father who had bought the land from Mr. Tiedke, took him down to the Osage Valley Pecan Orchard that M r.Tiedke had developed, to show him some of the pecan trees that Tiedke had planted and grafted of the tree they found that became the Hirsche Pecan. This is when we found out that he had patented  the tree using the name “Hirsche”. So if you are looking in at a garden catalog and see a pecan tree by the name of “Hirsche” you will know that variety came from Papinville area. 

Today the trees are still producing pecans. We have several trees in our yard that are nice big trees and produce a nice nut. In Ron Marquardt’s grove there are a lot of the trees Tiedke grafted of different varieties that he brought back with him from Illinois.

Both of our families are still harvesting pecans and our children are now helping with the harvest. Our family has been in the pecan business since 1947 when our dad bought the property from Mr. Tiedke. By 1929 Tiedke did not come back to Papinville. He had worn out his welcome in the area. He passed away in 1943 in Illnois. The property grew up in a lot of brush with him not coming back to Papinville. It was a big job to clear all the brush. The trees are still producing a lot of nuts . Thanks to Mr. Tiedke for his interest in pecans. Hope you have enjoyed the story.

                                                                                           Submitted by Phyllis Stewart

Keeping it real in our modern world

Editorial comment

THERE WAS A TIME when I was very concerned that the internet (and social media) was going to destroy newspapers and other bonafide news outlets however, after seeing the progress of it all over the last 20 years I've changed my mind.

Sure, getting news on the internet has become a 'thing' as people scramble to get the latest updates. The sad part is that now anyone can be reporter thanks to the advent of social media and to compound matters, so called 'legitimate' news sources seemed to have sold out to a political party or their biggest supporters- which has spoiled the idea of getting any balanced news, you know, the Walter Cronkite "that's the way it is" without bias.

Most folks haven't noticed how bad internet/social media based news has become. It seems that everyone has gotten used to just seeing a picture of a high school athletic team accompanied with "Great job team!" For us old timers, we quickly notice the absence of player's names and a well written photo caption with pertinent and interesting details.

But it gets worse. The so called independent reporters typically can't spell (although spell checker is built into just about everything) and have issues with grammar that goes mostly unnoticed by readers as bad reporting has become the standard. Worst of all? Young readers perceive it to be normal and it likely will never improve with time.

I'll stop here and admit that we are not perfect here at Mid America Live and the news-Review. More often than not, despite multiple proofreads, I'll crack open an old edition of our paper and find errors.

However, it only fuels our desire to improve our product- in other words, strive to not let it happen again. In contrast, internet/social media 'news' continues to put out the same poorly written mumbo jumbo in an effort to be the first to report it regardless of how poorly it is presented.

We get an "atta boy" every now and then regarding the news-Review which admittedly inflates our egos a tad, but mostly it tells us that  readers appreciate our attention to detail. The same type of detail you'll find only with news sources that not only try very hard to present it well, but also spent countless hours behind the scenes to attend council meetings, special events and much more unlike the internet keyboard warriors that simply want to make a 'viral' splash. 

I'll end by saying that we love what we do here and hopefully it shows. Just know that anytime we are told that our efforts are appreciated, we have to say we appreciate you, our loyal readers, just as much. We will always strive to tell both sides of the story as well as provide important details with a splash of humor now and then.

I don't mean to openly bash the internet, but come on man, there are alternatives!   -Doug Mager

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No serious injuries in head on collision

On Friday around 6:20 pm, the Missouri Highway Patrol reports that a head-on collision occurred on 215th street just east of Holmes Road, leaving one driver, a 23 year old male from Louisburg KS with moderate injuries; the driver of the other vehicle, a 25 year male from Belton, Mo. was uninjured. 

Both vehicles received extensive damage and were towed from the scene.

The highway patrol no longer provides names or personal information in publicly available accident reports.

St. Louis woman slightly injured in rural Bates county accident

According to the Missouri Highway Patrol, a 26 year old woman from St. Louis sustained minor injuries on Thursday when the 2007 Saturn she was driving left the roadway to avoid collision with a skid steer on 52 highway near county road 6285.

According to the report, the driver of the skid steer elected to leave the scene of the accident before authorities arrived. The highway patrol was assisted on scene by the Bates County Sheriff's Office.

The MSHP no longer provides names of victims in publicly available accident reports.

Much cooler temps by the end of the week

 Colder temps are indeed on the way

Fortunately, they look sporadic with some breaks. But the downward turn will begin Wednesday night / Thursday morning. Cold, but not super-cold yet anyway.

Ensemble forecasts agree the next cold blast will greet us Thanksgiving morning [image 1], with another one to start the first week of December.

-Greg@660weather