Unlucky

***This post was transferred from the Finding Horace blog.***

Originally published on Finding Horace 10 Mar. 2023. 

Several posts on this blog mention that Heather and I have an inordinate amount of relatives who lost limbs in railroad accidents.  Horace, the initial inspiration for my other blog, was quite unlucky to lose both of his legs when he was only a boy.  Here's the story of a man who lost the same leg twice!

Nils/Nels Magnus Wedberg was my great grandma Lena's brother.  Like Horace, Nils found himself on the wrong side of a train - that would be the underside - when he was quite young.  I don't have the details of the accident, but needless to say, he was lucky to survive being run over by a train - especially in the early 1900s!  Unlike Horace, Nils lost only one leg.  Also unlike Horace, who lost both legs at the hips, Nils was able to get a prosthetic that allowed him a normal range of mobility. In spite of what had to be a terrifying experience, Nils did not avoid the railroad - quite the opposite.

In 1912, Nils was in his late teens and working as a crane operator at the Standard Steel Car Works in Hammond, Indiana.  On the morning of December 7th, as he was stepping into his crane, another crane - passing too closely - snagged his artificial leg.  Yanked from his crane, Nils narrowly escaped being crushed; his artificial leg was not so lucky. That evening, Munster's The Times ran the following story:

Man escapes death but loses leg.  Man escapes death but loses replacement of the initially lost leg.  I'm not sure you can get much luckier than that.