Show A d 7 club the iron mouth by FLOYD FLOTD GIBBONS famous headline hunter OW heres a yarn that just goes to show what an age of N NOW progress we live in you know thousands of years a ago go forests the boys who when the cave men roamed the primeval made the adventure club were the ones that came running back to lo the family campfire and told ma Stone hatchet and the kids fads missed being gobbled by a dinosaur about how bow one of them just with a mouth big enough to take him au all in one bite well the dinosaurs died oil off and you dont see them any more exec except pt but can still have the adventure of being stuffed ones in museums you gobbled by a mouth as big as a prehistoric monsters monsters because nowadays we manufacture them m make ake them out of iron and put rows of sharp teeth in them attach them to great mechanical animals and send them out to bite people like david J hanlon of belmar N J dave had his run in with one ot of those steam powered man eaters at three on a cold october morning in the year 1927 dave was just out of high school then and working at his first real full time job it was the job ot of laborer on the state highway bridge over shark river between belmar and avon and dave was working on the night shift most dangerous job to the youngest dave says it was an adventure au all in itself to be staying up au all night working with a crew of grown men he was the youngest one in the crew and also the smallest As a result the foreman had given him the easiest job on the bridge that foreman might have thought he was doing dave a favor but it so happened it was the most dangerous job on the bridge as well the crew had run a temporary trestle out over the water and out on that trestle they had rolled a big crane with which they were excavating cava ting holes for the big concrete piers which were to form the bridges bridge s foundation the crane was equipped with a clamshell scoop two great jaws with sharp teeth set along the edges hinged at the upper end the crane dropped that scoop deep in the mud and silt of the excavation the jaws closed on a mouthful of the muck and the scoop was hauled up and dumped on the other side of the trestle there was a caisson of heavy planking built around the edge of the excavation to keep the sides from caving in and down near the bottom of the hole carpenters had built a wooden ledge edge that a man could stand on it was daves job to stand on that ledge wait for the cla clamshell nishell to come down and push it to a spot where it could get a good big bite of the mud they were dredging low ilow I the huge 9 scoop worked lt it took three men to work that job properly jerry operator of the crane would drop the big scoop down to within a few feet of the slimy mud and then stop it then to make sure it got a good mouthful D dave ave would push it to the desired spot when he got it there hed yeu yell oke that was a signal to sam smith the boss standing directly above him im f on the edge of the caisson sam would relay that signal to jerry with a motion of his hand and jerry would let the big scoop fau fall a and nd gobble its mouthful of mud time and again says dave jerry would drop those halfton half ton jaws and eat up more mud we soon attained a certain rhythm at it and all night long it was oke splash 1 oke splash 1 so steady and monotonous that we could have done it in our sleep and the whole trouble was that those three birds almost did do it in their sleep and a big iron monster is something a man ought not to fool with UNLESS HES WIDE AWAKE the planking dave was standing on was narrow and time and again he almost lost his balance and fell in and then somehow dave did slip and fall im not sure how it happened he says but all of a sudden I 1 was falling and the next minute I 1 was on my bac back k in the mud right under the gaping six foot jaws of that halfton half ton clamshell scoop it was probably only a couple of seconds that I 1 lay there try trying ing to get my wits together but I 1 remember thinking of what would happen if that scoop should fall and the teeth close on me steel jaws closing on him and then suddenly it began to look as it if dave was going to find out up above he heard beard sam give the signal oke it was purely mechanical on sams part lie he had been giving that signal at a certain interval for so long that now he was doing it without thinking then SPLASH down came the scoop right across daves body the jaws landed on oh either side of him and sank deep into the mud they hurt him because his body lay in the triangle up at the top where the two parts were hinged together but in another second or so those two parts would begin to co come me together there much use in trying to yell says dave for down there in in the muck under that great steel shell my voice would be smothered and drowned by the clatter of the mae machinery chinery and the noise of the pumps beside that there time I 1 could see to my horror that they were going to close over my head and my feet which stuck out at either side 0 Those T h ose Jaws jaws were almost on dave now he gritted gritter his teeth and ana shut his eyes in another moment it would be alt all over ile he drew in a deep breath and thought to himself that it would ably be his last and then and then len all u of 1011 a sudden the great jaws stopped aped closing up on the cai caisson sam smith had looked for dave and been a ble able to see him he knew something was wrong and gave a signal th that at stopped stop ped the closing of the scoop he did it calmly and easily dave says but ut ive often wondered what would have happened to me it if sam had been one of those excitable fellows if he had lost his head then ln e I 1 T 1 am pretty sure I 1 would have lost mine too 0 service |