Gus McDonald

Although I could only have been about six when Gus McDonald left for the Army in the months after Pearl Harbor, I seem to recall his coming to our house perhaps the morning he left.  He would later lose one of his legs as a result of injuries received in that great war.  As kids we talked about his "wooden leg," another first phenomenon in our list of new youthful discoveries.

Here he is in his earlier more reckless youth hanging from the framing of the Prange water tower, so long the distant symbol of the Bluff that could be seen from miles around above the tree line across  the prairie.  It is taken from David Prange's Crockett's Bluff as I Remember It from which excerpts can be found in other posts on this site.  In one of my last conversations with David before he died last year he told me to use on my site any of his memories in any way I saw fit.  He admitted he didn't take to "computers and such," so  I doubt he ever saw the excerpts I've posted on this site.  His work, however, is filled with interesting -- even if not always absolutely accurate -- information about the Bluff in those years when the Adolf Prange Store was a major institution there.  He emphasized, he insisted, the "as I Remember It" part of its title.