On this day in 1915, The Gackle Republican ran a front-page story titled “Flirting with the Angels.” Turns out Jack Strausser, of Havelock, had picked up fifty pounds of dynamite from C. C. Culver’s coal mine and was hauling it in his horse-drawn buggy. When turning a corner, one side of his buggy seat dropped, and Strausser was abruptly flipped over the side. He held on but lost one of the reins as the frightened team took off at a dead run. Fearing the dynamite would explode, Strausser somehow unhitched the team before the buggy tipped and threw the dynamite.

The story read, “The outfit wound up in a wire fence near the Oscar Strehlow place and strange as it may seem there was no explosion and but little damage resulted.”

Source: The Gackle Republican. Friday, October 8, 1915: p. 1.

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