Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Nettie Hawn, a cowgirl, gave the Walla Walla Frontier Days crowd a serious scare during a bucking-horse contest.

The horse, named Blue Dick, bucked her off sideways, and she got entangled. She was hanging upside down “her head and arms buffeted alternately by his hoofs and the ground.” Her husband, “Happy Jack,” and a half-dozen cowboys raced across the arena. They drove the horse into a corner and pulled her from beneath the horse.

“Then the pluck born of the plains life conquered her dizzy brain, and she waved her right arm weakly as she said, ‘I am all right, boys, I am all right. I always said I would rather go to the ground than pull leather (grab the saddle horn), but today I took all there was of it.’ ”

Then she mounted her own horse and rode to the grandstand. 

However, she was later taken to the hospital tent with head wounds and injuries to her arms and foot. The wounds were “ugly” but were not considered serious.

From the juvenile beat: Judge E.H. Sullivan said the state legislature went overboard in passing anti-juvenile delinquency laws. The laws prohibited boys from possessing tobacco, jumping on and off trains, swearing and refusing to obey their parents.

“I believe it would be hard to find a boy anywhere who does not do some of these things,” said the judge.