My mom’s father, Elmer Cashes Blue, was born on December 28, 1886 in Tekamah, Nebraska. Sometime in the 1970s, he put down on paper many of the stories he had told us while we were young. His tales of growing up tell us just how different life was then:
“Just for the novelty of it, I am writing down some of the unusual experiences of my life. It seems that I have always been accident prone. For some reason I have always escaped without serious injury. I cannot account for the repeated times that I have been in danger of getting badly hurt, sometimes not so serious as others. I think that I am rather of the cautious calculating kind. But it seems to continue to happen. My mother always took comfort in her philosophy of my escapades. She would always say that the Lord had some important work that he wanted me to do.
“I, of course, have no recollection of my first accident, but can only repeat it as my mother told me. She had me tied in the highchair. She went into the pantry to get some flour for a neighbor. I evidently rocked the highchair and tipped it over onto the cook stove. Mother heard me scream, but thought that I was hollering because I was left alone. When she came, I was lying with my head on the stove. The knob of the stove was the place where I lighted. It burned a hole in my head clear to the skull, but did not break through. It was many, many years before it finally healed. As late as 20 years ago the scar has cracked open and bled. Of late years I have had no difficulty, except the hair has receded so I cannot keep the scar covered.
“My second episode, I think I can remember, but my parents say that I was too young to remember it. They say I was only about two years old. Father was putting straw on the strawberry plants to protect them for the winter. He had a wagon load of straw. I was pulling strings out of the straw from under the hayrack. He started the team and heard me squawk. He ran around the wagon, and I was lying on my back immediately behind the hind wheel. He knew the wheel had passed over me. He carried me to the house and told mother. She would not believe it could be possible until two years later.
“It was almost two years from that time that I was in the corn field, helping what I could in picking the corn. I had gotten tired and gotten up on the wagon on top of the full load of corn. Father was not so good at husking corn as mother, so we all went along to help husk the corn. I got up on the front of the load and lost my balance and fell off in front of the wagon wheel. It frightened the horses when I hit the doubletrees on the way down, and they started up fast. Father grabbed the lines to keep the hind wheel from passing over me, but he was too late and only backed the wagon back over me. Mother ran around the wagon and pulled me out. The wheels had passed over my stomach and pushed me down into the soft dirt so the wheel track was visible on each side of where I had lain. They took me to the house and put me to bed. It was 12 miles to town to a doctor, so they decided to wait till morning and see what developed. By morning I had forgotten all about it, and came out into the kitchen with my usual “whippee” as I jumped over the door sill. I have never felt any bad effects from either of these episodes.”
These stories about the hayrack must have been especially poignant as his own grandmother had died while riding on one when a board broke and she fell through and died.
Tuples and Attributes 