Have you ever had a time in your life when you ran into the perfect person to lift you out of a slight funk? A time when you may be having, dare I say, a bit of a “pity party?” It seems that an accident I had some years ago — as in 1977 — has, after all this time, reared up and I’ll be getting a knee replaced this November. “It’s not really a big thing, you’ll do fine,” is what I hear from others. I do know lots of folks that have had replacements, my wife included. But this is me … not someone else. Whew!

So, while researching someone to write about for this article, I stumbled — remember, I have a bad knee — upon just that perfect example of a fellow Webster City resident. Let me tell you a bit about one of my neighbors.

In early July of 1873 an accident occurred east of town. A train accident. A 20-month-old boy was playing and followed his sister across the tracks next to his home. He was struck by a train, dragged under four cars before the train stopped, and was found with both arms mangled. His mother, hearing the train whistle blowing, had run out in time to see it happen … and fainted at the sight. Two train crewmen picked up both mom and son, put them on the train, and the engineer backed it into Webster City. Doctors were able to save the boy, having to amputate one arm at the elbow and the other at the shoulder. Had this happened a decade earlier, the boy would not have survived … but medicine had taken one of those amazing leaps in effectiveness during the Civil War, especially in amputations.

Eddie Snow grew up, attended school, graduated in 1892, becoming known as Ed, no longer Eddie and never Edward. He began teaching in Woolstock, married Alice Paine in 1909, and served as Hamilton County superintendent of schools for 23 years. Ed even learned to write and draw. One of his pen and inks is shown here. I really enjoyed reading about Ed Snow driving 4,000 miles to San Diego in 1934 (covered by the San Diego Union newspaper on January 10th of that year), only to learn he couldn’t have a driver’s license because he had no hands. He argued that Iowa didn’t seem to have a problem allowing him to drive, but to no avail. So, he packed up and moved back to Hamilton County. It seems that to him, no “trouble” later in life, brought on by an accident years earlier, could stand in his way. That’s the very spirit I need to lift me up and get me through a (relatively) simple knee replacement.

I am so amazed to read the stories about Ed Snow. My personal favorite is one he often recounted, traveling on a train from Iowa Falls to Des Moines. “The conductor looked quizzically at him for a moment and then announced that he was the same conductor who pulled him out from under the train in the accident which cost him the price of his arms and hands.”

Ed Snow died in June of 1944 and now resides in Our Neighborhood. Ed doesn’t seem to me as one that was overly pretentious, more of a “get ‘er done” kind of neighbor … I hope I can follow in his footsteps, even with a little “gimpiness” and, as we sailors put it, a “list to port.”

Glad to have you as a neighbor, Ed Snow!