Show tad AM adventurers CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF F PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF 1 TR when clocks stopped by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter his ELLO everybody bryan carlock of bloomington ill 1 I is one man who knows exactly when his adventure started other folks may be a little vague about the exact hour and minute of their lifes biggest thrill when death is staring you in the face you dont stop to look a at t your watches and say ho hum if I 1 dont get out of this mess pretty quick IU ill be late for dinner neither did bryan for that matter but he knows the time he knows it because when the blow struck all the clocks and watches stopped it was the end of tune time the end of the world the end of everything the day was march 10 1933 and bryan had arrived in long beach calif just that morning to visit his sister who was married to an army officer chester linton she and bryan had gone down town in the afternoon and returned jome home at 5 the clocks and watches stopped at exactly it was just before pa H dinner when ain jan the meantime they were busy getting dinner ready chester L linton inton had bad come home sis was in the kitchen making salad and biscuits potatoes were boiling on the stove and the roast was in the oven the rest of the family was in the living room bryan was reading and the children a girl and three boys were playing on the floor sis came in and said are you all hungry dinner will be ready in a few minutes and then and then terror the words were hardly out of his sisters mouth when the building began to sway and rock there was a roar that sounded like thousands of firecrackers exploding all at once tables and floor lamps fell over plaster crashed down from the ceiling and the floor bulged upward and burst open says bryan 1 I thought the world was coming to an end the whole house was rocking like a boat I 1 get my voice for a moment and when I 1 did I 1 cried out what is it then I 1 heard chester say earth guakel get autv out As he said it the wall beside him crumbled and fell out into the street the more he struggled the worse his fix the apartment was on the second floor of a brick building at the corner of broadway and linden they started for the stairway and bryan says when he reached it it was moving like an escalator sis S 0 dr 5 the stairway was moving like an escalator and the kids were safely at the bottom the lieutenant was behind him bryan was halt half way down that tottering stairway when his foot went through a broken step and caught there he struggled to extricate himself but the harder he tried the tighter he seemed to be wedging himself in now the lieutenant was at his side trying to get him out plaster was still falling from the walls and ceiling at last the lieutenant got him loose and they ran out into the street on the other side of the street a neighbor was lying dead on the lawn a great chunk of cornice beside him he had run out of his home at the first shock of the quake just as the cornice fell and it killed him the whole neighborhood was in confusion some men were carrying a woman into the bungalow next door her leg torn tom and bleeding tidal wave threatens destruction and hunger and then another terrible cry was passed from mouth to mouth through the stricken area tidal wave coming we were only three blocks from the ocean says bryan and we took the kids and began running inland we had had nothing to eat the roast and potatoes and other food back home had been blown against the north wall of the kitchen when we run any more we walked we went on that way for two or three hours through streets filled with debris and ruin and desolation before long the city was under martial law about or we struck a place that suffered quite as badly as other sections of the he town they were serving soup sandwiches coffee etc so we stopped and had bad something to eat they were all exhausted by this time there was still no sign of a tidal wave and tidal wave or no tidal wave bryan going to go a step farther they held a council of war and decided to return to the neighborhood of home they wandered back toward the ocean and within a block of the Lin unions tons wrecked house they found an apartment building which was still in pretty good shape and managed to get shelter tor for the night for the first time then bryan noticed that his right foot was damp ile he pulled up his trouser leg and found the foot covered with blood there was a nail in the calf of his bis leg evidently it had been thrust there when he be got caught in the broken stairway house bouse he be and he dressed the there was a doctor in the says wound I 1 was walking like a drunken man and the doctor told me I 1 was earth shocked calls quakes effects worse than war the tremors continued all through the night they stayed in the apartment house but in the morning they had to move on for the cites mains had been broken and there was no gas or water they went to city hall park where relief work was getting under way and there they were put into a truck and sent to lennox about twelve miles from los angeles where a club had been turned into a dormitory they gave us medical attention there says bryan and a lot of us needed it A lot of the women were hysterical one of the nurses there had been in hospitals in france during the war and had been bombarded by the germans but she said it affe affect ct her nearly as badly as the quake did our little group got off easily my sister and her little girl had been hit by plaster and the three boys had their legs skinned the lieutenant had had the presence of mind to hold a chair over his head and he escaped without a scratch but the thing that saved us all from death was our delay in getting out of the bouse if we had gone out while the debris was still falling we would have met the same fate as our neighbor across the street c service |