The story told in Deadly Secrets at Hodgson's Mill rattled around my brain for the first two years after I relocated to the Missouri Ozarks. Upon the encouragement of my brother Walt Harrington, former editor and feature writer at the Washington Post and currently head of the Department of Journalism at the University of Illinois, I finally set about telling my tale. Walt's advice: "You'd better get it written; you ain't getting any younger." I am currently seeking a publisher for this novel.
My
facination with the explosion that killed 39 people and injured scores
more at the Bond hall in West Plains, Missouri, in 1928, grew from the
research I did to write an article about the tragedy for The Ozark Mountaineer magazine. I am currently writing the victims' story, The Friday the Thirteenth Inferno -- Hell on Main Street.
 Hodgson's Water Mill in Sycamore, Misouri |
DEADLY SECRETS AT HODGSON'S MILL
A recently widowed elementary school teacher, Caroline loves history and genealogy and is always unwittingly saying exactly the wrong thing to her neighbors who simultaneously despise, fear and ridicule "outsiders" like her. Caroline bumbles along trying to fit in, decorates her new home in the woods, chats with her little dog Kelly over dinner, volunteers all over town, and befriends another newcomer, Hodgson's Mill owner Terry Scrementi. When the two women discover a cache of historial documents long forgotten in an antique safe in the mill's attic, a flurry of local excitement over this discovery culminates in the arrival of a prominent anthropologist to the rural community. His presence and Caroline's dogged pursuit of the past unleashes long hidden prejudices and buried secrets that result in murder -- transforming Caroline from retired matron to detective. |
 Memorial to the unidentified victims of the 1928 Bond hall explosion in Oak Lawn Cemetery in West Plains, Missouri |
FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH INFERNO HELL ON MAIN STREET A
hellish Friday the Thirteenth in April of 1928 blasted West Plains,
Missouri, onto the front pages of virtually every newspaper in the
United States. On that rainy spring evening, the Bond hall on East Main
Street, just one block off the courthouse square, exploded into an
inferno.
As dancers sashayed to the mellow sounds of jazz classic "At Sundown," a tremendous explosion blasted couples, still clinging to one another, upward through the roof into the springtime sky. People and debris tumbled back down into a blazing inferno of twisted bodies, metal girders, bricks, and rubble. Thirty-eight died and the bodies and psyches of 21 others were forever scarred. After 80 years, the still unexplained explosion remains a tantalizing mystery. The event and the era communicate only through yellowed newspaper clippings and grainy photos from dusty archives and family albums. Nineteen bodies were burned beyond recognition -- their names determined by the survivor's recollections of those who were there that night and by grieving family whose relatives failed to return home. Dozens of theories were advanced to explain the explosion. One popular theory was that the blast was set off by religious fanatics opposed to dancing. Local gossip whispered that the jilted lover of one of the victims had been observed running from the scene. Blame was heaped on the head of J. M. Wiser, who owned and operated an auto dealership on the floor below the hall. Explosive experts on all sides of the controversy weighed in with testimony at the public hearing into the explosion. Three quarters of a century later, the source of the catastrophe at the Bond hall on that rainy Friday the Thirteenth still remains unknown. The mystery of the explosion and the lives it touched are part of the lore of southwest mystery. |
