Storm damage

Friday, July 29, 2016
Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

Rick Johnson and his grandson, 2-year-old Beckett, inspect the hackberry tree that fell from Beckett's front yard onto neighbor Connie Padgett's roof in Thursday afternoon's freaky storm. Beckett's dad, Spencer, said although he regrets the damage to Connie's house, the tree spared his own home, McCook's only "Lustron" house, at 1303 Norris, above. Lustron houses are prefabricated baked-on porcelain enameled steel houses developed in post-World War II era United States in response to the shortage of houses for returning GIs. Despite dreams of selling and building 45,000 of the seemingly indestructible metal homes, Lustron constructed 2,498 homes between 1948 and 1950 from its plant in Columbus, Ohio (the former Curtiss-Wright factory). Spencer and Beckett's house was built in 1948. The storm that rushed through McCook dumped up to an inch of rain and produced great gusts of wind that Rick thought could have been a tornado. Branches are down all over town, and several other great hackberrys bit the dust. A few blocks away, right, another tree was broken off a few feet above the ground.

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette
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