Hazard A Guess: Week of April 8, 2004

Hello from Hazard!

Reader George Timko unleashed an avalanche of reader responses to Item No. 706, which Timko shared with Hazard.

Interestingly, half the responses were wrong (sorry), but the incorrect responses were all suggesting the same thing, so there must be a similar-looking item.

Item No. 706 is a “come-along,” or as Wendell Cole of Lisbon puts it, a sort of a “one-handed handcuff.”

Used by law enforcement officers, it was clamped around an offender’s wrist and the officer held the “T” handle.

If the suspect tried to get away, all the officer had to do was give the handle a little twist.

“Large men would fall to their knees screaming and sometimes crying in pain, completely subdued,” writes Alex Mabin of Parma, Ohio.

“The problem was a little too much twist and the suspect’s wrist would break,” adds Mabin, who has a collection.

He said they were used the late 19th century up through the 1960s.

In addition to Cole and Mabin, quick to correctly identify the item was Jay Gardner of Boardman, Ohio; Roy Yauman of Petersburg, Ohio; Les Howell of Beach City, Ohio; Milton Lorens of Amherst, Ohio; and Gary Hanlin of East Springfield.

Now, the other folks who also answered said the gadget looks like a tool used in a bull’s nose to be able to lead the beast. We’ll give you partial credit.

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Jerry Davis of Homeworth, Ohio, had to use a shovel to uncover this week’s item. He found it buried under a machine shed.

It has local interest because the company inscribed on the tool is from Salem, Ohio. We won’t reveal the name, but if you’ve got good eyes and the printing is of good enough quality, you might be able to decipher it on your own this week.

What do you think it is? Send your answers to: Hazard a Guess, P.O. Box 38, Salem, OH 44460; or via e-mail to: editorial@farmanddairy.com. If you’re writing by e-mail, please remember to include your name and hometown!