The Bad Boy and His Pa in a Railroad Wreck--Pa Rescues the "Other
Freaks"--They Spend the Night on a Meadow--A Near-Sighted Claim
Agent Settles for Damages--Pa Plays Deaf and Dumb and Gets Ten
Thousand.
It has come at last.
Everybody about the show expects that the show has got to have a
railroad wreck every season, and all hands lay awake nights on the cars
to brace themselves for the shock. Sometimes it comes early in the
season, and again a show goes along until almost the end of the season
without a shake-up, and fellows think maybe there is not going to be any
wreck, but the engineers are only waiting till everybody has forgotten
about it, and then, biff, bang, and they have run into another train, or
been run into, and you have to be pulled out of a window by the heels,
and laid out in a marsh until the claim agents can settle with you.
I always thought in reading of railroad accidents, that the railroad
sent out a special trainload of doctors and nurses, to care for the
injured, but the special train never has a doctor until the lawyers give
first aid to the wounded in the way of financial poultices for the
cripples. People in our business are on the railroads, and we work them
for all there is in it; and the man that is hurt the least makes the
biggest howl, and gets the biggest slice of indemnity. Some circus
people spend all their salary as they go along, and live all winter on
the damages they get from the railroads when the wreck comes.
The night of the wreck our train was whooping along at about 90 miles an
hour, on a hippity-hop railroad in Pennsylvania, and the night was hot,
and the mosquitoes from across the line in New Jersey were singing their
solemn tunes, and pa, who attended a lodge meeting that night at the
town we showed in, was asleep and talking in his sleep about passwords
and grips, and the freaks and trapeze performers in our car had got
through kicking about how the show was running into the ground, when
suddenly there was a terrific smash-up ahead, an engine boiler exploded,
a freight car of dynamite on a side track exploded and there was a
grinding and bumping of cars. Then they rolled down a bank, over and
over, so the upper berth was the lower berth half the time, and finally
the whole business stopped in a hay marsh, and the bilge water in the
marsh leaked into the hold of our car; people screamed, and some one
yelled "fire!" and I pulled on pa till he woke up.
I thought pa's head was all caved in, because he talked nutty. The first
thing he said was: "Say I, pronounce your name, and repeat after me,"
and then he said: "I promise and swear that I will never reveal the
secrets of this degree," and then the conductor pulled pa's leg and
said: "Crawl out of the window, old man, 'cause the train is in the
ditch, the car is afire, and if you don't get out in about a minute with
the other freaks, you will be a burnt offering."
Pa said you couldn't fool him, 'cause he knew he was being initiated
into the 20-steenth degree of the Masons, and he guessed he could tell a
degree from a train wreck, 'cause the degree was a darn sight worse than
a wreck, but the conductor took one of those long glass fire
extinguishers and sprinkled the medicated water on the freaks in the
next berth, and then turned it on pa, and pa tasted it, and thought he
was at a banquet, and he said "that sauterne is not fit to drink."
Then when the bearded woman yelled that the fire had almost reached her
whiskers, and would nobody save her, pa began to get ready to move on,
'cause he concluded he hadn't been riding a goat after all, and he told
me to hand him his pants. Pa is a man that will never go out among
people, no matter how dark the night is, without his pants, and I admire
him for it. Some of the circus men didn't care for dress that night, but
got out just as they were, and the result was that when daylight came
they had to tie hay around their legs.
Our car was bottom-side up, but I found pa's pants and he got his legs
in, and I buttoned him in, but I felt all the time as though I had
buttoned them in the back, so the seat was in front, but the fire was
crackling and pa pushed me out of a transom, and then he crawled out,
and we sat down in the mud.
The bearded woman came next, with her whiskers done up in curl papers,
and then the fat woman got one foot through the transom, and she
couldn't get it back in, and the train hands got an ax and were going to
cut her leg off, and save one foot, at least, when pa got a move on him,
and took the ax and broke out the side of the car, and got her out.
Eight or nine men lifted her tenderly onto a stack of hay, and she
wrapped it around her, 'cause she left her clothes in her berth.
[Illustration: Pa Got an Ax and Cut the Fat Woman Out.]
Well, it was a sight when the people were got out of our car, and they
let it burn, to light up the scene, and pa and I and the boss canvasman
went along the ditched train, and helped people out. The giant was in
two upper berths, and he got one leg out of the transom over one berth,
and one leg out of the transom over the other berth, and we pulled his
legs, but he couldn't make it, so pa took an ax and made both berths
into one, and got him out.
The giant shook himself and started on a run across the marsh, but he
mired up to his neck, and a farmer who heard the noise came to order us
off his hay field for trespass, and yelled: "Here's a head of some of
your performers cut off away over here," and he was going to bring it
in, when the farmer found the head was alive, and he ran away from it.
In an hour we had everybody out, and made beds for them by spreading out
hay cocks, and nobody seemed to be hurt so very much. We heard a
locomotive whistle up the road, and some one said the relief train was
coming with doctors and nurses, but the show owner who was with us said:
"Relief doctors, nothing. That is a train-load of lawyers and claim
agents to settle with us. The doctors will not come till to-morrow. Now,
everybody pretend to be hurt awful bad, and strike the sharks for
$10,000 apiece, and come down to $100, if you can't do any better."
It was getting daylight, and the relief train stopped, and the good
Samaritans came wading into the hay marsh, bent on settling with us
cheap. The first lawyer asked the principal owner how many were killed,
'cause they could figure exactly how much they have to pay for a dead
one, but the live ones are the ones that make trouble for a railroad,
'cause they can kick and argue. The boss said nobody was dead, but the
giant, who was mired in out of sight. The giant heard what was said, and
he yelled that he was alive, and wouldn't settle for less than $20,000,
but the claim agent said the giant would be dead in 15 minutes in that
quicksand, so he would let him sink, and pay for him as a dead one.
The giant said if they would pull him out of the mud he would settle for
$100, and they pulled him out, and the rest of the injured were going to
mob him for settling so cheap.
One of the claim agents found the bearded woman sitting on a hay cock,
combing out her whiskers, and asked what it would take to settle, and
she said $10,000, and she got up and walked over to another hay cock
where the Circassian beauty was drying her hair, and the claim agent
looked at how spry the bearded woman walked, and he said to the boss: "I
won't give that fellow with the curly whiskers a single kopeck," and the
bearded woman came back and swatted the claim agent for calling her a
fellow. So they compromised on $200, and she went behind the haystack
and put it in her stocking, which convinced the claim agent that she
wasn't a man.
A near-sighted claim agent came to the haystack where the fat woman was,
and the boss told her now was her time to have a mess of hysterics, so
she set up a cry that scared the agent, who thought there were at least
six women on the haystack, and he said: "What will all of you people up
there on the haystack settle for in a lump, for I am in a hurry?"
The fat woman caught on at once, and said: "We will all settle for
$10,000." Then she yelled, and the agent thought her back was broke, and
he offered $7,500, and she cried and said: "Make it $10,000," and the
agent said: "I will go you," and he made out a check, and the fat woman
had some more hysterics.
I had watched the settling all around, and I told pa to be deaf and dumb
when they came to him, and just point to the seat of his pants in front
and buttoned up behind, and look as though he was suffering the tortures
of the inquisition, and let me do the talking, and I would make the old
railroad go into a receiver's hands.
So pa said: "You are the boss," and he looked so pitiful that I almost
cried.
When the near-sighted claim agent came to pa, I told him that pa's last
words were to beg to be shot, and the man looked at pa's pants, and then
at his face, and said: "What hit him? That's the worst case I ever saw
in a railroad wreck."
[Illustration: "What Hit Him? That's the Worst Case I Ever Saw!"]
I put my handkerchief to my eyes and said: "Well, when the shock came,
pa was all right, as handsome a man as you would often see. I think
there must have been a pile driver on the train that struck him, and
changed sides with him, knocking his stomach around on the back side of
him, and placing his spinal column around in front of him, where his
stomach was, and causing him to lose the sense of speech. Think of a
middle-aged man going through life mixed up in that manner, having to
sit down on his stomach, and having his backbone staring him in the
face. How does he know when he takes food in his mouth that it can
corkscrew around under his arm and eventually find his stomach? How a
man can be ground and twisted, and mauled, and stamped on by a reckless
locomotive with a crazy engineer and a drunken fireman, rolled over by
box cars, and walked on by elephants, and still live, is beyond me. As
he told me before he lost the power of speech, not to be too hard on the
railroad company, though some railroads would be glad to pay him
$20,000, and no questions asked, he begged me, as heir to his estate, to
let you off for a paltry $10,000."
Pa made up the darndest face, and groaned. The agent called another
agent, and they whispered together, and finally the first one came to me
and asked pa's full name, and then the two of them got out a fountain
pen, and they made out a check, and he said: "This is the first case in
the history of railroad wrecking that the agent has not had the heart to
try to beat the injured party down. This is certainly the most pitiful
case that has ever been known, and if your father ever comes to his
senses you can tell him he is welcome to the money."
The agents shook hands with pa and I, and went away to their train, and
pa winked at me, and a wrecking train came and we got on a special, and
got to Pittsburg before breakfast, and pa is going to buy me a dog out
of the money.
Gee, but there is all kinds of money in the circus business. Pa is going
to wear his pants hind side before until we get out of Pittsburg.