| Show home front isn t so safe either here are oddest of 1944 s freak S accidents Aci dents and narrow caprices capriles Ca prices of fate injure sonic some 19 leave others other S unscathed by PAUL JONES As you may have begun to fo gus suspect wartime days are wacky days people stand patiently in line lind for two hours to get a a pack of cigarettes i gar ettes and then blow their t tops 0 Ps if the they y miss miss one set section tion of a re revolving irig door 0 or afi on the via way y b back ack to work guys who never could stand bananas now howl their heads off because they cant get gei them the laundry eventually sends back the right buttons but the shirts are missing maids who used to have one ni night f ht out now illow 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 that the annual crop of wacky accidents would have been even wackier in the wartime year of 1944 and you would be right they were A roundup by the national safety council proves that in an amazing number of people still pat patronize ionize the whack market in accidents to wit As two year old oid margaret morton of groton conn lay sleeping 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 V loomed through the other wall of the house and evin eventually tEall crashed into a i schoolhouse W J mccarthy of toledo ohio pilot of the fighter plane wa was injured only slightly the blanket undamaged was found in in the wreckage of the plane As an enthusiastic jitter bugger pac ernest olivier of mccook neb often riad had bien been sent by a hot tune time but never as lite literally r a i lly as s the evening hi he spun in a super maneuver grabbed foi or his bis pretty jiving partners hafid band missed and plunged through the second story window of the dance hall nine perso persons ns riding cozily in an automobile driven by mrs adaline clasby of winslow ariz were injured slightly when them the cai car crashed reis ed into thi the rear of a bus that had st stopped ed to discharge a passe passenger nger mrs rs clisby clasby readily explained thi the accident 1 I 1 tailed failed to see thi the bus iri in time to stop 11 she said bi because causi I 1 was nursing my ariy baby i shot by lawnmower Lawn mower when ri pac r charles smith came home to claudell claudell audell dl kan to recuperate re cu from wounds received in three south pacific invasions 1 he fig ared he would get some so me rest from dodging shrapnel but ai as he watched a power lawnmower lawn mower at work in his front yard the darn thing picked up an old spoon and hurled it with such power and ac curacy that it penetrated the calf of private smiths leg and had to be demov removed id by ah an operation its the same wherever you go private smith remarked at the hos has pital pat harley barley paul collins of kansas as city kan knows exactly how private smith felt for private collins home on furlough was showing his wife how the boys make booby traps over there he hooked up a shell a board a nail and a a piece ot of wire then he tripped and the honie homemade made contraption went off and shot him in the leg paul lewchick of C coraldale coaldale Coal 0 abdale dale pa f knows that prudent people I 1 lay in a sup supply pl of coal every year nut but ha he i be believes eve S few of them do it as icier literally as he did he lay in and under 13 tons of it when he and his car were burled buried beneath the contents of I 1 a coal truck that upset in a near f A collision with Lew chicks car DU dug 9 i out after hard work lew lewchick chick r nursed only minor cuts and bruises and lid refrained manfully from ex Pla ining that it w was as soft coal 1 at least three persons in the united U niad states state now take t ke sei seriously the e expression espre aslon id d break my neck to b i do that ane ane is gregory gr 13 of chicago chi ca go who put pu t his football jer I 1 I 1 41 16 IV I V sey on backwards in his hii haste hasie to dress for a game tugged fiercely to get it off and brake broke his neck anne haldeman 10 of doylestown Doyles town pa snapped a vertebra in her neck while hile skipping rope and mrs pauline strother of indianapolis topped them both by dislocating a vertebra in her neck while vigorously brushing her teeth t all r recovered closely akin to the neck breakers was mrs james gallagher galagher of west hazelton pa who arose so hurriedly to shut off an insistent alarm clock that she dislocated her spine by remote control the woodrow Ander andersons soni of the st louis andersons ara are careful folk so when mr anderson got back from foni a hunting trip he placed his rifle an on a kit kitchen cheri sheu shelf out ot of reach of the anderson chil children dien equally cautious i mrs anderson took all the arrows away from eight year old donald before leavi leaving fig the house to visit a neigh neighbor but don still had the bow so he merely substituted a yardstick tor for a an alrod arrow and let it fly from the back porch toward the kitchen the yardstick went through i a hole hold in in the screen een door r arid d struck the trigger of the rifle the rifle went off arid th the bullet struck dons dona little sister Dar lerie A good time was hid d by i ill au bat the driver when i a grocery tr truck uck fp upset in bloomington calif callot setting up an informal but popular seu self service grocery grocery in iii thi the middle of the street eiger eager customers hurried from all sides to td fill their needs their pockets arid in some cases the trunks of their cari cars it wis was a boon for foi bu budgets deets and ration books then there was the strange case of the disappearing woman it happened in los angeles as mrs janiel deesse gossl gossiped ped of f this and of that with three neighbors in the th e middle of a sentence whoosh mrs disappeared firemen cani came on the run extricated her from a f forgotten or gotten excavation 12 teet deep mrs Re esses fence sided side weight is pounds if men bite dogs t to a make news why a horse smack an auto 7 what two norwich kan horses figured oni one aftem afternoon oon when then they were scared si silly y by a girl on on roller skates they ran and ran until they encountered i a parked c car a r then they got their signals mixed horse haiie no I 1 went on one side I 1 of the car horse no 2 on on the other that left only one place for the wagon wagon tongue to g go aa 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 he stopped the car and all 41 I 1 found of all things a bewildered four year earold ear old boy timothy by name on the front bumper thi the car had struck timmy and carried him t two td d full blocks tim got a bump few bruises and a on trie head a battering nattering natt ering amount of attention of ed cloud and earl thomas thomai for a i know knoxville osville tenn coming coining whether they were minute the day that a train hit bit or going the tossed their truck track the engine truck 0 onto nta the pilot of another loco motive going the other way wai A scratch h oj on clouds head was thi the only casualty in chicago mrs rita H hatfield afield ran rac to answer t the h e phone stumbled dawer over the dog fe fell 1 1 I 1 through a g glass ass topped coff coffee ee tole table su suffered bad cut cuts s on her her arms and legs doggedly answering the phone mrs hatfield found the call was fro from tan an accident insurance arlu rance company malting making a survey was she they wanted anted to know cove covered iid against st accidents in her home she C C hardy stepped i out of hla his truck in sidney texas was wai struck by a 8 pissing passing car an arid d tossed high into the air just before his head struck the concrete conc concrete pave pavement meni his hia pocket caught on the high truck door handle and held him suspended in th the a air on the way home from the bronx zoo in ii new york henry C Carr arr umit 13 sought to imitate the monkeys he had seen ile he leaped up and down on an the subway seat scratching and grimacing on an especially high jump an electric tan 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 of the phone company reported that too much talking had overloaded eight 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 bea he stepped out for a better view view and tell fell through an open man manhole holi the tha caver cover of which had been blown off by the gas blast clarence clarenc brown jr of st louis knows just howa how a baseball fan feels when he is really burned up watching ing a sandlot game this summer clarence was struck b by i a i line drive and promptly burst lauist into flames fla me them the batter had scored a brills eye on a pocketful of stick matches both the the blazi blaze and thi the batter baiter were soon put out travelling Tra velling iiii buzz saws As henry en ry butler ate break breakfast fist i in jacksonville fla a buzz saw ripped through the kitchen wall sliced the breakfast it ta table ble neatly in two and whirled out the other side of the tha house it had broken broken loose from a saw mill nearby not so spectacular but just a as s surprising was vas the feat of another buzz sak saw that went A W 0 L this oni one broke loose in florence S C sailed through the ali air for a mili mile ind and ripped ahr through 1 ough thi the root roof afi of a parked car whose owner had just alighted 0 1 pix six year old ro robert ert julian of chicago chiago c was shooting a adart dart gun at a tar target tarleton geton on th the ewall wall the dart had a rubber suction cup on the end to hold when it struck a flat surface often it hit and cling so robert fastened a needle lri in the suction cup so that thi the point bowd stick in into the wall an elder brother frank 19 entered ter edthe the room just as robert shot thi the dart struck frank in the chest he felt a slight pain but thought nothing of it at the time later he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital surgeons Surge oni discovered after cona considerable sid erable hunting around that there was 6 a needle imbedded embedded im bedded near franks heart little robirt robert had forgot forgotten tiri about that s sharp harp point on the end of his dart but it wis was there all the same same and it cane came near ear 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 irea freak fall department part ment tor for 1944 go to four year old ra raymond mond davis jr of chicago who fell th three ree stories from a back par porch h and suffered only a bruise on the head A neighbors clothes line caught him as he fell bounced d him gently a couple of times and ther then ilet let him fall aall the fe few w remaining feet to td 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 |
