General Notes

The McLain boys were a wild and mischievous lot, known far and wide for the pranks, which ranged from the Innocent to the dangerous, including putting at least once snake onto their victim's bed. Many wondered if they would ever amount to anything at all. While Grover lived up to community expectations, eventually leaving his wife, Roxie, young Gray, found employment in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, on the new dam being built there, and eventually as an employee of the Carnation Milk Company. The best of Gray seemed to come out after marring Sallie Porter. His young sister-in-law, Nita Porter used to like to come over the Gray's and Sallie's place to play with Melba and Amy. One day Gray complained half-heartedly that all the neighbor kids in the house were eating him out of house and home. Young Nita heard this and from that moment forward was afraid to be around Gray. When Sallie related this to Gray, he was sadly disappointed and vowed that he would never again do anything to make any child afraid of him.

Eventually Gray was employed as a mechanic on milk processing equipment, a job which took him at least as far from home as Schulenburg, Texas. It was while lubricating some of the large equipment on the inside of a sterilizing machine at the new Carnation Milk Company Processing Plant that Gray was accidentally killed when his supervisor, who had emotional problems due to the loss of his wife, turned on the equipment. The Carnation Milk Company eventually settled with Sallie Bell, who used the money to purchase a new home up on the hill in Tupelo. She and the girls were living there when the great Tupelo tornado of 1936 struck, destroying the house and carrying Amy away and leaving Sallie under the roof.

The first ten days of February, 1930, cotton prices were down, the Carnation Milk Company had filed suit to recover $1500 embezzled by a former employee, Sioux survivors of Little Big Horn testified that Custer deliberately provoked them in a suit for $600,000 for lost land, Communists attempted to stage a demonstration before the textile mills in New Bedford, Massachusetts, The Pontotoc Progress was running a serialized version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and The Tupelo Journal was running Gunman's Bluff. Although the stock market had crashed three months earlier, the newspapers were both reporting reason for optimism and looking for signs of a recovering economy. On the front page of both papers, however [Pontotoc Progress February 13, 1930 and Tupelo Journal, February 11, 1930], was news that made all the other reports pale for the young McLain family. The Tupelo Journal, which almost assuredly got most of its information from the Carnation Milk manager, is the more complete; it reads:

MAN CRUSHED
TO DEATH IN
LOCAL PLANT

Sterilizer Reel Catches
A. G. McLain, Car-
nation Employee

  Funeral services were held today
at Pontotoc for A. G. McLain, thirty-
two, Willis Heights, who was fatal-
ly crushed when caught in the reel
of a sterilizing tank at the Carna-
tion Milk Products Company plant
early yesterday afternoon.
  The services were held at the
Methodist Church in Pontotoc and
interment followed immediately in
that city.
  The accident came when Carl
Radke, plant engineer, and Mr. Mc-
Lain, a plant employe, were prepar-
ing the sterilizer for operation. Un-
known to the engineer. Mr. McLain
leaned into the sterilizer to oil some
parts. The motor was started and
the machinery, on a partial turn,
caught Mr. McLain.
  The motor stopped almost instant-
ly and at the same time the engi-
neer heard Mr. McLain cry out.
Hurt as badly as he was, he was able
to push himself out of the sterilizer.
He collapsed on the floor.
  Mr. Radke and other workmen
went to his assistance, and Watson
Powell, local dairyman, rushed him
to Tupelo Hospital in an automobile.
       Dies in Short Time
  He died less than a half hour aft-
er his arrival, and before physicians
could render him any material aid.
  He was conscious until three min-
utes before death occurred, and turn-
ed to Dr. R. D. Kirk and murmured:
"I can't make it."
  Dr, Kirk said the man's chest was
thoroughly crushed on both sides,
that practically every bone of the
chest wall was broken, that at least
his right lung, and probably his left,
was punctured and that other organs
might have been ruptured.
  In a statement to the Tupelo
Journal, E.A. Newman, manager of
the Carnation plant, said that Mr.
Radke and Mr. McLain were assign-
ed to the work of oiling the steril-
izer, that McLain was sent after a
can of oil to oil the rollers, that
Radke then went to the opposite
end of the sterilizer to regulate the
movement of the interior machinery
so that McLain could oil the parts
without exposing himself to danger.
        Accident Described.
  McLain, Newman said, had
leaned into the sterilizer without
Radke knowing anything about it
and Radke started the machinery
on a partial turn to make the rollers
accessible. When the reel caught
McLain, Mr. Newman said, the ma-
chinery stopped almost instantly,
but not before he was crushed.
  Mr. Newman said the sterilizer is
a large iron tank, in which are iron
cages on a reel. Milk is placed in
cans in these cages and the reel is
set to whirling, while steam is in-
jected into the tank to complete the
process of sterilization.
  "The accident was not Radle's
fault," Mr. Newman said.
  Mr. McLain was a native of Pon-
totoc. He is survived by his wife
and two little girls.
  The body was taken to Pontotoc
this afternoon by John Reed Pegues.

According to Edna Dolland, Gray died in the arms of his sister-in-law, Lillian Porter, who was a nurse in the Tupelo Hospital where Gray was taken.

Gray left no will. The settlement with the Carnation Milk Products Company put all of the money into a trust for Amy and Melba and Sallie was made their Guardian and Administrator of the trust. [See facts on Sallie Porter regarding the authorizations for spending, loaning and repaying the estate.]