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Show PAINTER SWINGS FROM I BRIDGE LIKE PENDULUM WORKMAN ON SPAN ABOVE BLACKWELLS ISLAND. N.Y.. HAS UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE. New York. Patrick Grady, painter, swinging himself and his buckets along on a bos'n's chair among the trusses of the Queensboro bridge. 135 i feet above Blackwells Island, encoun- I tered a wire rope thai blocked his advance. ad-vance. He stood up and was trying to work his chair around the rope when he lost his balance and pitched overboard. As he fell he grabbed for the rope that had bothered him. He caught it, but his weight caused the end of the rope to slip off the end of a steel timber tim-ber to which it had been fastened, i and in a second Grady found himself As He Fell He Grabbed for the Rope. swinging from the bridge like a pendulum, pendu-lum, for the other end of the wire was attached to the minaret at the tip of the bridge tower, 335 feet above the painter's head. Luckily for Grady, the cloth-sheathed loop at the end of the rope was still there. He caught it with both hands and hung on while he swung out over the East river, back past the bridge tower to the island, and out over the river again. While the arc lessened five bridge workers scrambled up the tower and began pulling at the wire rope from above. They pulled Grady with it, and presently other workmen leaning from the-trusses were able tc catch him as he swung and pull him to the bridge. He was winded and scared, but not hurt. The foreman gave him the rest of the day off. In Long Island City he found his wife, whom somebody hac notified by telephone that her husband was dead. |