Show home front isn t so safe either here are oddest of 1944 s freak accidents and narrow escapes Es apes caprices capriles Ca prices of fate injure some leave others wholly unscathed 11 iby y PAUL JONI JONES E S As S you m may ny have begun to suspect PIC act wartime days are wacky days people stand patiently in line for for two hours to get a pack of cigarettes and then blow their tops if they miss one section of a revolving door on the way back to work guys who never could stand bananas now howl their heads oft off because they cant got them the laundry eventually sends back the right buttons but the shirts are arc missing maids who used to have one ni night out now allow the lady of the house to have one night in A customer is publicly commended for slugging a waitress who said don cha know theres a war on you would think then the that the annual crop of wacky ace accidents ent would have been even awacki wackier r in the wartime year of 1944 1044 and you would be right they were A roundup by the national safety council proves that an amazing number of people still patronize the whack market in accidents to wit As two year old margaret morton of groton conn lay sleeping in in her home one october night a navy plane plowed through her bedroom and whisked the blanket off her bed without touching her the plane e 9 L zoomed through the other wall of the house and eventually crashed into a schoolhouse W J mccarthy of 0 toledo ohio pilot of the fighter plane was injured only slightly the blanket undamaged was found in the wreckage of the plane As an enthusiastic jitter bugger fe ernest olivier of mccook P neb often had been sent by a hot tune burnever but never as literally as t lie evening he ie spun in in a super maneuver grabbed for his pretty jiving partners hand missed and plunged through the second stor story y window of the dance hall nine pet pel sons riding cozily in an auto automobile m obile driven by mrs adai adaline ipe clas clasby b y of winslow ariz anz were injured slightly when the car crashed into the rear of a bus that had stopped to discharge a pa passenger ss enger mrs clasby readily abla explained ned the accident 1 I failed to see the bus in time to stop sho she said because I 1 was nursing my baby shot by lawnmower Lawn mower when pac charles smith came home to claudell kan to recuperate cu from wounds received in three south pacific invasions he figured he would get some rest from dodging shrapnel but as he watched a power lawn lawnmower mower at work in his front yard the darn thing picked up an old spoon and hurled it with such power and accuracy that it penetrated the calf of private smiths leg and had to be removed by an operation its the same wherever you go private smith remarked glumly at the hospital pat harley paul colllns collins of kansas hansas kanas hanas as city kan knows exactly how private smith felt for private collins home on furlough was showing his bis wife how the boys make booby traps over there ile he hooked honked up a shell a board a nail and a piece of wire then lie fie tripped and the homemade contraption went off and shot him in the leg paul lewchick of coaldale coraldale Coal dale pa knows that prudent people lay in a supply of coal every year but he believes few of them do it as literally as he did ile he lay in and under 13 tons of it when he and his car were buried beneath the contents of a coal truck that upset in a near collision with Lew chicks car dug out after hard work lewchick nursed only minor cuts and bruises and refrained manfully from explaining pla ining that it was soft coal at 11 least three persons in the united states now take seriously the expression id break my neck to do that one is gregory 13 of chicago who put his football jersey on backwards in his haste to dress for a game tugged fiercely to get it off and broke his neck anne haldeman 10 of doylestown Doyles town pa snapped a vertebra in her neck while skipping rope and mrs pauline strother of indianapolis topped them both by dislocating a vertebra in her neck while vigorously brushing her teeth 1 all recovered closely akin to the neck breakers break ers was mrs james gallagher of west hazelton pa who arose so hurriedly to shut off of an insistent alarm clock that she dislocated her spine by remote control tle the woodrow andersons of the st louis andersons are careful folk so when mr anderson got back from a hunting trip he placed his rifle on a kitchen shelf out of reach of the anderson children E equally equall cautious mrs anderson took all the arrows away from eight year old donald before leaving the house to visit a neighbor but don still had the bow so he merely substituted a yardstick for an arrow and let lt it fly from the back porch toward the kitchen the yardstick went through a hole in the screen door and struck the trigger of the rifle the rifle went off and the bullet struck don dons S little sister darlene A good time was had bad by all but the driver when a grocery truck upset I 1 in bloomington calif setting up an informal but popular self service grocery in the middle of the street eager customers hurried from all sides to fill their needs their pockets and in some cases the trunks of their cars it was a boon for budgets and ration books then there was the strange case of the disappearing woman it happened in los angeles as mrs janiel deesse gossiped of this and of that with three neighbors in the middle of a sentence mrs deesse disappeared firemen came on the run extricated her from a forgotten excavation 12 feet deep mrs Re Rees esses sos fence side weight is is pounds if men bite dogs to make news why a horse smack an all auto to what two norwich kan kani horses figured one afternoon w when hen they were scared silly by a girt girl on roller skates they ran and ran until they encountered a parked car then they got their signals mixed horse no I 1 went on one side of the car horse no 2 on the other that left only one place for the wagon tongue to go right through the car nobody was hurt auto picks up boy the driver of an auto in chicago wondered why people were pointing and yelling at him one day last august lie ile stopped the car and I 1 0 found of all things a bewildered four year old boy timothy by name on the front bumper the car had struck timmy and carried him two full blocks tim got a bump on the head a few bruises and a flattering amount of attention el ed cloud and earl thomas of knoxville tenn know for or a minute whether they were coming or going the day that a train hit their truck the engine tossed the truck onto the pilot of another locomotive going the other way A scratch on clouds head was the only casualty in chicago mrs rita hatfield ran to answer the phone stumbled over the dog fell through a glass topped coffee table suffered bad cuts on her arms and legs doggedly ani an I the phone mrs hatfield found the call was from an accident insurance company making a survey vc y was she they wanted to know covered against accidents accidee ts in her home she w C C hardy stepped out of his truck in sidney texas was struck by a passing car and tossed hi high gh into the air just before his head struck the concrete pavement his pocket caught on the high truck door handle and held him suspended in the air on the way home from the bronx zoo in new york henry carr u umit mit Is 13 sought to imitate the monkeys he had seen ile he leaped up and down on the he subway seat scratching and grimacing on an especially high jump an electric fan nipped his scalp no more monkey business for henry in washington court house ohio hot words must have been exchanged over the phone one day in any event superintendent fred rost host of the phone company reported that too much talking had overloaded eight eig lit switches and set the phone exchange on fire louis boardman halted his automobile in cleveland to watch the huge gas plant fire there last october he stepped out for a better view and fell through an open manhole the cover of which had been blown off by the gas blast clarence brown jr of st louis knows just how a baseball fan feels when he is really bur burned ned up watching a sandlot genie game this summer clarence was struck by a line drive and promptly burst into flames the batter had scored a bullseye bulls eye on a pocketful of stick matches both the blaze blase and the batter were soon put out travelling Tra velling buzz saws As henry butler ate breakfast in jacksonville fla fia a buzz saw ripped through the kitchen wall sliced the breakfast table neatly in two and whirled out the other side of the house it had broken loose from a 8 saw mill nearby not so spectacular but just as surprising was the feat of another buzz saw that went A W 0 L this one broke loose in florence S C sailed through the air for a mile R e ati and ripped through the roof of a parked car whose owner had just alighted six year old robert julian of chicago was shooting a dart gun at a target on the wall the dart had a rubber suction cup on the end to hold when it struck a hat flat murfa surface C e often it hit and cling so robert fastened a needle in the suction cup so that the point would stick into the wall an elder brother frank 19 e entered r the room just as robert shot sho t the dart struck frank in the che chest s t he felt a slight pain but thought nothing of it at the time later he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital surgeons discovered after considerable sid erable hunting around that there was a needle imbedded bedded im near franks heart little robert had forgotten about that sharp point on the end of his dart but it was there all the same and it came near killing his brother As it was a skillful operation removed the needle and frank was as well as ever after a few days top honors in the freak fall department part ment for 1944 go to four year old raymond davis jr of chicago who fell three stories from a back porch and suffered only a bru bruise 1 se on the head A neighbors clothes I 1 line ine caught him as he fell bounced hirn him gently a couple of times and then let him fall the few remaining feet to the ground and in hollywood strip teaser betty rowland put so much heart into her work that she bumped one of her swivel hips against a wall and took off for the hospital suffering from partial paralysis childish pranks bring tragedy to thousands of homes annually thousands of children we sue su e killed or injured every year while playing ignorance of dangerous things and places heedlessness and foolhardiness bring tragic consequences it seems unlikely that the time will ever come when little boys and girls have sense enough not to jump off aff barns or leap from one floating ice cake to another or play in railroad yards or any of a hundred other perilous stunts here are a 2 few of cases A nine year old boy in long beach calif crawled into the tool too compartment of an abandoned trailer A companion with a grudge gruda e thought it would be a neat trick t to 0 slam the door the lock snapped and the boy remained inside the box for 38 36 hours before being rescued by a passerby another boy who lived in chicago was not so fortunate he hid in the icebox while playing with his dog the little animal leaned against the door shutting it and clicking the latch the boy suffocated before his mother and sister returned william was trying to amuse himself on an the back porch because he could not play in the yard he tos tossed S ed a rope over the clo clothesline ne SO somehow he got tangled up A loop coiled about his neck when he tripped the loop tightened and he was choked to death |