I Ain't Hurtin' Nobody

Above is a picture of my great grandfather Dewey, wife Bernice and their four children. My grandfather is the older boy standing between Dewey and Bernice. Sometime shortly before this picture was taken, their fifth child, a girl by the name of Elizabeth Rose died at only 2 weeks and 5 days old.

Awhile back I mentioned about a local newspaper now being available online and searchable. I have started in on the long process of seeking articles on nearly 1/3 of my family tree who lived in the area of the published newspaper. I started with myself, finding a letter to the editor I wrote at the age of 12, an announcement of my birth and various other tidbits and moved on through my parents and grandparents. My grandparents and great grandparents had hundreds of articles on each of them as per customary at the time, the newspaper was a gossip conduit of who went where, saw whom, etc. With that many articles, it is tedious work and I try to skip some to speed up the process.

But one article caught my eye in the search results so I clicked on it to read the full article. In it, I learned that my great grandfather Dewey lost his right hand in an auger accident on his farm. Instantly the John Prine song "Ain't Hurtin' Nobody" came to mind, specifically the verse below:

There's roosters laying chickens and chickens layin' eggs

Farm machinery eating people's arms and legs

I ain't hurtin' nobody, I ain't hurtin' no one

It doesn't say how the accident occurred, only that it was a grain elevator and his right hand was amputated three inches above the wrist. As fate would have it, he didn't have to live long with this infirmity. Dewey died suddenly16 months later at age 73 one evening at home. Again the newspaper doesn't get into specifics as to why but I'm guessing either massive stroke or heart attack. The picture below was taken two years before his death and one year before the loss of his right hand and celebrates his 50th wedding anniversary. 

In the above picture, the older girl on the left, Mary and my grandfather, would be named executors of the estate after my great grandmother Bernice died eight years later. For some reason, dividing up the estate caused them to have a falling out and Mary would have little to do with the rest of her siblings during the rest of her life. I have fond memories of going to visit Mary in California that I think I've shared in the past and might again but that will be another post on another day.

Of note, I was born eight months after the death of Dewey.