I never met a man or a woman who spoke poorly of Mark Twain’s novels. Be it The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn the American style adventures are seeded in the grey matter of most every American boy.  Huck Finn and Tom are young boys with imagination and a thirst for adventure. Real or made up boys will be boys and boys like adventure. I looked forward to reading Boy's Life magazine and looked forward to the adventure or hero stories. Huck and Tom are twelve years old when they spend time conjuring up images of skipping school, riding a raft down the Missouri River and jumping on a train to ride the rail with the hobos. Here in Des Moines is a news story with a couple of boys who tried to live a part of Tom's train adventure. In reality for the 11-year-old boys in this story from Des Moines’ east side, it wasn't as much fun as it was in a Sam Clemens' story.

Three young boys tried like hobo’s, thought it might be fun to hop a train in Des Moines’ east side.  Unfortunately for them they learned a very costly, but a valuable lesson. That lesson is that trains are unforgiving.

Boy’s Foot Run Over By Train, KCCI by Tyler Kingkade.

An 11-year-old boy by the name of Earl Warren lost his grip and fell underneath the rail car allowing his foot to be run over. His cousins visiting from Minnesota tried to rescue him, but weren’t able to act fast enough and his toes took a beating from what appears to be the train wheels. Like the young lad at Eagle Point Park the boys were charged with criminal trespass by the rail owner, Union Pacific Railroad. You’ll remember the owner of the land adjacent to Eagle Point Park where the 13-year-old fell, is reported to have encourage them to be charged with criminal trespass. This is an old tactic by land owners and insurers that I’m seeing more of lately. In thirty years I haven’t seen young children who were seriously injured charged criminally for trespass. It was enough that they'd been seriously injured; the criminal charges just didn't materialize. It appears to be a growing trend to fend off liability of the landowners.

It’s probably not all that big a deal. The boys will likely be referred to juvenile court where they will be counseled about the laws of trespass and respecting other people’s property rights. Those rights includes the privilege of excluding those you don’t want on your property. Now let’s get back to that cliff incident at Eagle Point Park.

Boys can learn from this kind of an adventure; even when it turns for the worse. It’s all part of growing up and the parents should be concerned, but it’s the mistakes we make in life that build our character. Good character is molded from winning and also from losing. These boys will have quite the story to tell friends and acquaintances as they grow up; and think about all those family reunions as they get older. “Hey do you remember the day we tried to hop the train in Des Moines?”  This brings me to another story about growing up in Iowa and life’s lessons learned the hard way.

Remember the article a while back about the youngster that fell off the cliff in Eagle Point? I wrote, Why a 13-year-old boy might look over the edge of the cliff, and then I wrote and published two more stories about why and how they rescued him. We’ve never heard from the boy’s parents nor did we expect to but I did want to know how he’s doing. Nevertheless, here is the interesting part; in the news on the 4^th of July is a second accident of the same kind at Eagle Point Park. The story is written by Jeniece Smith for the Herald in Council Bluffs. This time we have a 12-year-old boy who fell 40 to 60 feet off the bluff. His injuries sound severe in that he may have suffered a spinal injury. What is drawing the attention or curiosity of these boys to the cliff? Are there adults in Eagle Point Park?

Boys will be boys and so long as they don’t kill themselves trying they can’t stop the hands of time. Sooner or later they have to grow up.  In a future post I’ll cover the law of trespass.

For additional stories read:

Why a 13-year-old boy might look over the edge of the cliff. ...while at Eagle Point Park near the Quad Cities was most seriously injured after falling 80 feet off a cliff. The news sources were sketchy on how he ended up falling 80' over this cliff or bluff so I'm at a loss to explain the details of how it happened. I've not read anything this week about his situation so other than those close to the family...from The Verdict Blawg - Jun 15, 2010 8:06 AM

Why did that boy look over the cliff? ...while at Eagle Point Park near the Quad Cities was most seriously injured after falling 80 feet off a cliff. The news sources were sketchy on how he ended up falling 80’ over this cliff or bluff so I’m at a loss to explain the details of how it happened. I’ve not read anything this week about his situation so other than those close to the family... from Mountain Madness Sucks - Jun 15, 2010 7:33 AM

How did they rescue the boy that fell 80’ over a rock ledge? ...With the Eagle Point victim I’m not sure he was able to assist.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaweXnjx1CYHere is another video with rocks. This commentator when he refers to the climbers in Peru is talking of course about the author of Touching the Void, Joe Simpson, and his fellow climber Simon. Here is the part of the video relevant to this po...from Mountain Madness Sucks - Jun 6, 2010 10:07 AM