Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1917 — AUTO DRIVER IN BAD WRECK [ARTICLE]

AUTO DRIVER IN BAD WRECK

Large Jeffery Car Ruined When It Hits Ditching Machine. W. T. Priebe, an automobile mechanic from the Nash Motor Car Co., and whose address is 468 Charles street, Kenosha, Wisconsin, while driving a Jeffery seven-pass-enger car from Indianapolis to the factory at Kenosha, ran into the Casto & Garvin tile ditching machine which had been left standing in the road a couple. of hundred rods north of H. R. Kurrie’s farm, one mile north of town, occupied by Nat Heuson f at about 1:40 o'clock Wednesday morning. The car was completely wrecked and how the driver escaped instant death is a miracle. The ditching machine, which is operated by a gasoline caterpillar tractor and is all combined, had been at work some place north and in driving it back south the engine broke down near the Kurrie farm and the machine had since been left there for a week or ten days awaiting repairs, a menace to the traveling public and an object of fright to. every horse that passed along this much-traveled road. The roadway at this point is perhaps twenty-five to thirty feet in width, with the main traveled track in the center. The ditching machine was standing on the west side of the center of the roadway and but a very few feet therefrom, it all being on that part covered by, ro -k. Mr. and Mrs. Heuson heard two cars go by their place, both traveling at a high rate of speed, oie

immediately behind the other. Only a Second or two later they heard the crash when the second car struck) the ditching machine. It is probable that the dust raised by the first car prevented Priebe from seeing the ditcher and, as the road is so wide at that point, h© had good reason to think there were no obstructions in the road. There had been no danger lanterns hung on the ditcher at any time since it has been lying there, and the west side of his car struck the east front wheel of the ditcher with such force as to break off about half of the two-inch oak plank covering the front wheel thereon and bending the wheel back to the north against the caterpillar drive on that side. The whole left side of the automobile was demolished. The fender, driver's seat and entire side of the car was torn away and every spoke broken out of the front wheel, top windshield broken, frame bent, and in fact it was the most completely wrecked automobile ever seen in Rensselaer. The car was not upset but was turned completely around in the road and was facing south when the “smoke cleared away.” The (driver was thrown out and was cut about the shoulders, both ears and knees. He was walking about in a dazed manner when Mr. Henson and Herbert Hammond—the latter with Misses Marjorie Vanatta and Fern Davisson was returning from having -taken James Babcock out to his home near Parr—-arrived on the scene a few moments after the accident. His hat was off and there was blood all about the collar of his coat. He kept asking what he had struck ahd if his car was damaged.

Herbert got the man into his car and brought him to the county hospital and a doctor Was immediately called. Herbert then went to the Rensselaer garage and aroused John Schultz, and together they returned to the scene and picked up the driver’s traveling bag, tool kit, etc., and brought them to town. The car was brought to town during the morning and was an object of curiosity to hundreds of people at the Rensselaer garage, who had never before seen so badly a wrecked car. It was'found that no bones were broken and after lying in a semiconscious condition until- Wednesday afternoon he begun to come around and realize what had pence]. Dr. I<rosier, the attending physician, telegraphed to the man’s employers and they in turn i-tti-'ed the Indianapolis agency, front which place, it seems, he had started out with the car to have some change’s or repairs made, and the Jeffery distributor from there with his wife and another lady drove here Thursday morning to look after the matter.

This gentleman stated to the writer that Preibe is a field man for the Jeffery company, stands very highly with them and is not a drinking man, as report had it here. He had been at the Indianapolis agency for two weeks and left there Tuesday afternoon with this car. The two Lafayette men who accompanied him as far as Rensselaer and who are said to be responsible for the story that he was pretty well “tanked up,’’ he had picked up on the road between here and Lafayette where they were having trouble with their car and sent it back to Lafayette. He has been with the Nash Motor company for several years and is one of their most trusted men. He is an expert driver and quite a fast one. There is no evidence of any intoxicants about the wrecked car nor did the doctor, or nurses at the hospital notice anything of this kind in the condition of the man when brought there. The car bore Indiana license number 52349 and the gilt initials on the right side “A. G. _S.” • It was owned fey an Indianapolis man.