Safety tips from the past

[Scroggy]

Unearthed while researching something entirely different.

From the Mount Holly News of May 28, 1912:

After filling the tank of an automobile with gasoline, Uriah Bowker, chauffeur for M. Warner Hargrove, of Brown’s Mills, wiped off his trousers with a rag. Later on he lit his pipe, from which operation his clothing took fire. One of his legs was severely burned.

Mr. Bowker had reached the ripe old age of 19 at the time, but there may have been more in play regarding his casual attitude towards the flammable. The News of August 31, 1915 reported that:

Uriah Bowker, of Brown’s Mills, who is employed at the powder works at Pennsgrove, has been laid off for three weeks for carrying a box of matches in his pocket.

Uriah (known as "Roy" in later years) would go on to serve as a wagoner with the Headquarters Company of the 111th Machine Gun Battalion during the First World War; whether he was prone to smoking in ammunition dumps is not recorded. Anyway, he made it back to the Pines and lived until 1970.

 

[Teegate]

Nice info.

Warner Hargrove was the historian that traveled with Henry Beck on many of his early jaunts through the pines. His dog "Tip" is mentioned quite a bit with a few photos showing up in Beck's book. He was postmaster in Browns Mills for many years retiring in 1924 long before he met Beck. Even though Beck talked about him quite a bit Hargrove died in 1931 within two year of Beck meeting him.

Hargrove owned the general store next to the post office and a fire in 1927 at the store burned the Browns Mills post office to the ground. Kerosene explosions and injuries to the first responders didn't save the mail but cash and stamps were retrieved. I am not sure what Hargrove's health issues were but he spent at least 6 weeks at Underwood Hospital in Woodbury, and z little over 25 years later I was born there.

His only son, Lyden, passed away at the age of 24 the day after Christmas in 1921. Some sources say he died a in the War but by 1921 that most likely is not true. Maybe he died from injuries occurred during the war.

Miles Warner Hargrove is buried in the Baptist Cemetery in Pemberton. It is on my list of places to visit along with a few others in the area I will be stopping at in the next month or so with my brother. I will be posting about them in the "Pine Barren History Shorts" thread.

 

[Scroggy]

Nice info.

Warner Hargrove was the historian that traveled with Henry Beck on many of his early jaunts through the pines. His dog "Tip" is mentioned quite a bit with a few photos showing up in Beck's book. He was postmaster in Browns Mills for many years retiring in 1924 long before he met Beck. Even though Beck talked about him quite a bit Hargrove died in 1931 within two year of Beck meeting him.

Hargrove owned the general store next to the post office and a fire in 1927 at the store burned the Browns Mills post office to the ground. Kerosene explosions and injuries to the first responders didn't save the mail but cash and stamps were retrieved. I am not sure what Hargrove's health issues were but he spent at least 6 weeks at Underwood Hospital in Woodbury, and z little over 25 years later I was born there.

His only son, Lyden, passed away at the age of 24 the day after Christmas in 1921. Some sources say he died a in the War but by 1921 that most likely is not true. Maybe he died from injuries occurred during the war.

Miles Warner Hargrove is buried in the Baptist Cemetery in Pemberton. It is on my list of places to visit along with a few others in the area I will be stopping at in the next month or so with my brother. I will be posting about them in the "Pine Barren History Shorts" thread.

Yes, it was Warner's name that caught my eye in that paragraph. Lynden died of liver cancer, according to the church's burial record.

Oddly enough, a different Uriah Bowker features in Beck's "Slabtown and Copany" as a blind Civil War veteran turned mail carrier for Browns Mills. As is often the case, a few of the details aren't quite right; Beck says that "Martin Hargrove, a pension attorney for the Department of the Interior" secured him his back pension. As far as I can tell, Martin was Warner's father and predecessor as Browns Mills storekeeper. He was a Civil War veteran too, and probably helped Uriah navigate the red tape.

 

[Boyd]

NJPB Safety tips from today...

1. If you encounter an angry man with a gun in the woods, don't argue with him.
2. If you see an old refrigerator in the woods, don't open it.

( sorry...)

 

[RednekF350]

NJPB Safety tips from today...

1. If you encounter an angry man with a gun in the woods, don't argue with him.
2. If you see an old refrigerator in the woods, don't open it.

( sorry...)

3. If you have already opened said refrigerator, do not use one's cell phone to notify police. Borrow a friend's (or enemy's) phone, or use a pay phone. Here is a directory. Looks like he could have driven 20 miles to Wildwood and made a call.

New Jersey ☎️ PayPhones

www.payphone-directory.org

 

[RJG]

4. Unless you’re wearing thick glasses, never make Moe angry!

 

[M1 Abrams]

There has been some advanced research on this particular safety tip:

 

[bobpbx]

Call me crazy, but I still laugh out loud at the Three Stooges.

 

[RJG]

I’ve probably seen every episode 200x. As a kid I laughed at the slapstick comedy aspect of their act, but as an adult the Stooges became even funnier when I understood how they were poking fun at politics and high society.

 

[Boyd]

Back in the 60's I used to hurry home from school to watch them every afternoon. They have a Three Stooges Channel now on Sling and other streaming services. Some the stuff there appears to be strange "fan shows" but there are a few other interesting things, like a 75th (?) Anniversary TV special from a number of years ago and the 2000 biographical Three Stooges TV Movie that's kind of fun. But there's only so much content available, so I don't watch it much anymore.

Sorry @Scroggy , we're making kind of a mess of your thread...

 

[GermanG]

When my boys were young I felt obliged to buy several Stooges VHS tapes to expose them to a finer cultural education than they were getting from mom. She was convinced they would start whacking each other with sledge hammers. I told her that was silly, they could never lift the sledge hammer. But they did learn the hand in front of the face defense against poked eyes. It worked well against each other, but their hands were a bit too small to work with the length of my fingers, so I showed them how to hold one hand in front of the other to protect against any evil adults they might encounter. I can still picture the grins on their faces as they'd quickly position their hands to block my fingers. Ah, the memories!

 

[ecampbell]

When I was a boy I joined their fan club, about 1960. We watch them every Saturday night at 6:00 PM on MeTV, 802. Good laughs and I since I saw them many times before I pay attention to the background, cars, furniture, sets.

 

[bobpbx]

When my boys were young I felt obliged to buy several Stooges VHS tapes to expose them to a finer cultural education than they were getting from mom. She was convinced they would start whacking each other with sledge hammers. I told her that was silly, they could never lift the sledge hammer. But they did learn the hand in front of the face defense against poked eyes. It worked well against each other, but their hands were a bit too small to work with the length of my fingers, so I showed them how to hold one hand in front of the other to protect against any evil adults they might encounter. I can still picture the grins on their faces as they'd quickly position their hands to block my fingers. Ah, the memories!

German, did you watch the last piece with Moe and Larry in that eye poke video above? I've never seen it before...hilarious.

 

[Leewardian]

3. If you have already opened said refrigerator, do not use one's cell phone to notify police. Borrow a friend's (or enemy's) phone, or use a pay phone. Here is a directory. Looks like he could have driven 20 miles to Wildwood and made a call.

New Jersey ☎️ PayPhones

www.payphone-directory.org

There's a cool novella sunk in the most recent Stephen King collection (You Like It Darker) where a guy dreams about finding a corpse half buried behind an abandoned gas station, and he can't leave it alone, so he tries and finds the gas station in his waking hours, the corpse is really there, he freaks, calls it in, and the rest of the novella is about a detective hellbent on pinning it on him, and his inability to shake the case off him. It was really good and what I thought of with the sad be-fridged individual found last week.

 

[Boyd]

In the end, it all comes down to that old saying, "No good deed goes unpunished".

 

[enormiss]

I'd be annoyed, but since there's nothing on my phone to be worried about I'd turn it over.
Have to wonder what's on his...
Also wonder if they have other reasons to focus on him or if it's just cause he's a felon.
Wouldn't normally expect a murderer to report the murder

 

[Scroggy]

There's a cool novella sunk in the most recent Stephen King collection (You Like It Darker) where a guy dreams about finding a corpse half buried behind an abandoned gas station, and he can't leave it alone, so he tries and finds the gas station in his waking hours, the corpse is really there, he freaks, calls it in, and the rest of the novella is about a detective hellbent on pinning it on him, and his inability to shake the case off him. It was really good and what I thought of with the sad be-fridged individual found last week.

4. Do not dig up dead bodies you have seen in dreams. Mysterious boxes are still OK, though. "People used to put gold coins in buckskin bags and bury them all over these woods."

5. Do not look for the Jersey Devil during a snowstorm. (Crossing threads a bit, here.)

 

[Boyd]

6. DO NOT reach inside the rattlesnake cage to feed him.
6a. Check insurance coverage before receiving experimental snake bite treatments.