Show d ta club t the iro iron n mouth by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter NOW N OW heres a yarn that just goes to show what an age of progress we live in you know thousands of years ago when the cave men roamed the primeval forests the boys who made the adventure club were the ones that came running back to the family campfire and told ma Stone hatchet and the kids about how one of them just missed being gobbled by a dinosaur with a mouth big enough to take him all in one bite well the dinosaurs died off and you dont see them any more except stuffed ones in museums but you can still have the adventure of being gobbled by a mouth as big as a prehistoric monsters because nowadays we manufacture them make them out of iron and put rows of sharp teeth in them attach them to great grea t mechanical animals and send them out to bite people like david J hanlon of belmar N J dave had his run in with one 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 of laborer on the state highway bridge over shark river between belmar and avon and dave was working on the night shift most dan z to the youngest dave says it was an adventure all in itself to be staying up 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 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 brid gea 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 ot 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 that a man maia could stand on it was daves job to stand on that ledge wait for the clamshell to come down and push it to a spot where it could get a good big bite of the mud they were dredging how the huge scoop worked 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 dave would push it to the desired spot when he got it there hed yell oke that was a signal to sam smith the boss standing directly above him 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 fall fail and 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 splashy oke splashy 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 w with it jat 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 back in the mud right under the gaping six foot jaws of that halfton half ton clar clamshell i scoop it was probably only a couple of seconds that I 1 lay there trying to get my wits together but I 1 remember thinking of what would happen if that scoop should fau 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 sam give the signal oke it was purely mechanical on sams part ile he had bad been giving that signal at a certain interval for so long that now be was doing it without thinking then SPLASH down came the scoop right across daves body the jaws landed on either side of him and sank deep into the mud they hurt him because his body lay in the triangle up at the I 1 top where the two parts were hinged together but in another second or so those two parts would begin to come together tog etherl 1 there much use in trying to yell says dave for down there in the muck under that great steel shell my voice would be smothered and drowned by the clatter of the machinery 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 I 1 those jaws were almost on dave now he gritted gritter his teeth and shut his bis eyes in another moment it would be an all over he drew in a deep breath and thought to himself that it would probably be his last and then and then all of a sudden the great jaws stopped closing up on the caisson sam smith had looked for dave and been able to see him he knew something was wrong and gave a signal that stopped the closing of the scoop lie he did it calmly and easily dave says but ive often wondered what would have happened to me if sam had been one of those excitable fellows it if he had lost his head then I 1 am pretty sure I 1 would have lost mine too 0 service arvice |