I got this photo from my Great Aunt Ollie for helping her pack and organize for moving from Carleton, Nebraska to California. I don't remember her comments about it. I took it straightaway to my Grandfather (Floyd) and to his brothers Press and Jim. They participated in this big effort to move the grain to Bruning (five or six miles from G. W. Bailey's home). They told me the government had "called in" the grain to be sure to have it on hand for use during World War I. The elevator had a train loading facility on the Burlington line.
Floyd, Press and Jim tried to identify the members of the party. They were all in agreement that the man in the foreground was not G.W. Bailey, but that he was Mr. Miles, the owner of the elevator. They all thought their dad, G. W. Bailey, was standing on the loading dock on the near side of the elevator, but that he was not the man in the white jacket. They squinted and held the photo up to the light of the window, they borrowed my grandmother's reading glasses, they made several guesses about who folks were in the photo. They even tried to remember who was driving what horses and then identify them by their horses. But in the end they all agreed that too much time had passed, and the resolution of the photo was not good, and they just couldn't say with any certainty which person was which family member.
I later heard from a non-family member that G. W. Bailey sponsored an open bar in Bruning for everybody who helped. I don't remember whether I tried to verify this story with any of the three brothers mentioned above.
I don't know whether the grain elevator is still standing. But it was standing when I was a child and the area around it had many trees by that time.
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