By Danny Crownover [The Vagabond]
The heaviest dynamite explosion inside the city limits of Gadsden occurred at the Hammond Iron Ore Mines at the point of Shinbone Ridge on Tuscaloosa Avenue, near the T.A.& G. Railroad, one night in 1908.
It was caused by a fire in the machinery room at the mouth of the mine, the explosion coming just before the arrival of the firemen. A few minutes later it killed two firemen.
It was said at the time, the company kept its main stock of dynamite half a mile away in Owl Hollow. Each day just enough for the day’s operation was brought to the mine.
The blast completely destroyed the machine shop and almost shattered the commissary building just across the street. The watchman was killed and several others in the neighborhood were hurt.
A peculiar feature was the effect the blast had up town. Every second story window on Broad Street from Fourth to Fifth streets was shattered, and the glass fell outward to the sidewalks. One could not walk anywhere on either side without stepping on pieces of glass.
In the 1890s, a new steel cell block was installed in the old county jail on Chestnut Street between Second and Third streets.
On an order from the county commissioners, the builders added a narrow steel cage where a man could not sit down or lie down. It provided a form of punishment that was extremely cruel. Six officers put the first prisoner into the cell, which was a difficult task since the offender was a large husky and obstreperous youth.
He had been jailed for stabbing his wife and for a battle with other men during a neighborhood row.
After a sharp struggle he was finally caged, and that night he was like an enraged animal.
After two days and nights of torture, he quieted down and promised to behave as long as he remained in jail. He kept that promise and, peculiarly enough, started to reform.
He said that his one ambition was to become a bartender and that wish was finally realized once he left prison. After that, he became a policeman and ended his career as a petty bootlegger.
At that same time in, a different area of town, , a one-legged man named George Blake kept a knife rack on the vacant lot on Chestnut Street for many years and eked out a living at it.
He got the idea from the First Street carnival to appear here. Day and night, in all sorts of weather, George ran that old knife rack. His chief customers were boys who spent much of their spare cash in trying to throw wooden rings around the cheap knives stuck into the board.
Another one-legged man who made a precarious living on that lot was Ben. That was the name he went by the time he was in business. He operated what would now be called a sandwich shop, and his specialty was tripe sandwiches.
