This is from a real-life article written in the Austin American Statesman on October 14, 1948. It is titled:
Babe born, Drunks Dunked, Cars Crash. by Fred Williams
ENJOY!!! Written by Jeanine Plumer
Everything happens in Austin at one time or another. But it all happened here Wednesday afternoon, within 30 minutes
In the wackiest half hour of Austin’s history, two drunks fell from the same spot on a bridge within 20 minutes, two ambulances collided with other cars, a driverless car rolled down Colorado, and an Austin woman started having a baby while shopping on Congress Avenue.
Everything was quiet, a hot Wednesday after the lunch lull. Then the roof fell in. At 1:20 PM, an emergency call flashed into the police headquarters. A man had fallen off the bridge at 4th and Sabine and probably was seriously injured.
A police car, lights flashing, siren going, was dispatched. Then added to the din came the siren of a funeral home ambulance, sent to the scene of the “tragedy”. But at the corner of 7th and Congress, the ambulance piloted by Edward E Palmer, collided in the intersection with a 1947 Ford coach driven by Bernard James Larvin of Route Six.
That, of course, called for more police and more sirens to the rescue.
A crowd gathered. But about that time, someone rushed up shouting that a car was rolling down Colorado Street, a block away, with no one in it. Part of the crowd went to watch that. A new 1948 Cadillac dub coupe belonging to Otis GOEDECKE of Hallettsville had been parked in the 700 block of Colorado. The car suddenly rolled driverless across the street, hit the curb and headed south. The car finally stopped after colliding with a parked car belonging to Arthur T Little of Austin. The result: banged up fenders on both cars.
But to get back to the crowd at the 7th in Congress. Already torn between two attractions within a stone’s throw of each other, a crowd, then really got a thrill.
Someone rushed up, yelling “a women is on the floor of McClellan’s store and she is having her baby right there”.
As this site was only a few doors away, a large segment of the crowd moved on to this newest attraction. An ambulance, responding to a call about the baby, Speed to the store, and rushed away with the mother N
The driver got so excited he smacked into the rear of a parked car. Leaving his card, the driver, then speed on, sirens, going full blast, of course, to Breckenridge Hospital, where the woman arrived in time to have her baby under a doctor’s care.
Congress Avenue, around the 700 block was a scene of wild confusion by this time.
The story doesn’t end here. About that time, Cook’s Funeral Home ambulance came rearing down the avenue, sirens going full blast. They had been dispatched from the police headquarters to see about the man who had fallen off the bridge, but who had been about forgotten about by the crowds by this time.
The ambulance made the trip OK, only to find when they reached the bridge that a police car had already picked up the man.
The man who had started all the commotion turned out to be only a drunk whose unsteady steps had caused him to fall off the bridge and down the embankment. He was all right and was placed in the city jail to sleep it off. But the story doesn’t even end here.
Police at headquarters were mopping their brows over all the calls and emergencies when another one came in. A citizen wanted to report that a man had fallen off the bridge at 4th and Sabine. Officers thanked the caller but told him they had just answered the call and the man wasn’t hurt.
The informant insisted, however, making a good point out of the fact that he was looking through his window, down at the gully at the man who was lying there. Police, still skeptical, nevertheless answered the call. And they found another man lying at the bottom of the gully, at exactly the same place the drunk had been picked up 20 minutes before.
This second victim had fallen off the same way and was just as drunk, if not a little more so, than the first one. He, too, was uninjured. The second victim was carried to the city jail and locked up alongside the first one.
Quietness finally returned to Austin.
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