Things That Go Bang

“Do you know what this is?” I asked, holding a five inch long, ¾” diameter cardboard tube into the face of my friend Rex. It had two 6″ long wires exiting one end.

“It looks like a stick of dynamite,” he said with wide eyes.

“Not quite as powerful, but twice as fun,” I said. “It’s an Auto Joker. I picked it up at the fireworks stand on the 4th of July.”

I was 18 years old and just started my own self-taught apprenticeship program in the art of pranking. The target of my prank was a girl I had been attempting to attract all school year.

This young lady was coaching gymnastics at the Catholic school gym which was across the street from my high school. It was an after-school job which ran from 5:00 to 7:30 pm.

(Important to know at this point, is that our high school was only a mile from her house and the school buses did not pick up or deliver kids that close to the school, so she would jog or walk to and from school each day.)

“You see how this works?” I said to Rex. “You get into the engine compartment of a car or truck, and you pull the cap off a spark plug. Then you wrap one of the wires around the head of the plug and put the cap back on. Take the other wire and wind it around a grounded bolt. When the engine is started, spark goes through the wire attached to the plug, arcs where it meets the grounded wire and ignites the powder inside the Auto Joker. You’re right, it is like dynamite, but instead of the Joker exploding, it lets out a long whistle and a bang and the driver of the car thinks their engine has blown up.”

“Here is my plan. You know I have been trying to get this girl’s attention. I understand that she will be driving her dad’s car to gymnastics tonight. We hide and wait until she parks in the Catholic school parking lot and goes into the gym. Then you and I will run over, open the car hood, place the Auto Joker on the engine, run back to the high school and hide in the bushes and wait. When she comes out after practice and starts the car, the Auto Joker will explode, and we will come running up to her aid. Then she’ll notice me.”

That afternoon at 4:45 pm we were at the high school watching. She drove into the Catholic school parking lot, parked, and went into the gym. Rex and I sprang to action. Running across the street, we popped open the hood and quickly attached the Auto Joker to the engine. Then we just had to wait. We left for a Coke but came back at 7:00 pm. Her car was still there.

Hiding in the shrubs next to the high school we had good visibility of her car. A woman walking a dachshund passed by on the sidewalk. She glanced over and saw the two heads staring at her from the bushes.

“Hi,” I said and gave a slight wave. She shook her head and continued on.

7:30 came.

“Ok. Any minute now. This is going to be good,” I whispered, but 7:45 and 8:00 also came and went and she failed to exit the building.

“What the heck!” I mumbled. “Maybe she is talking to the coach.”

Finally, at 8:15 Rex said to me, “I’ve got homework. Tell me tomorrow how it went.” And he went home.

8:30 and she still had not exited the gym. The lady and her dachshund, returning from their walk, again stopped and stared at me in the bushes.

“Hi,” I said, again giving her a slight wave.

Finally, at 8:45 another car entered the parking lot with two boys inside. One jumped out. It was her brother. He jumped into the parked car, started the engine, and the two cars drove off. The Auto Joker hadn’t exploded. As it turns out, she forgot she had driven to gymnastics practice, and she ran home. Nevertheless, my $5.00 Auto Joker was still on her car engine, and I wanted it back.

That night at 10:00 I snuck like a ninja to the vehicle parked in front of her house and I popped open the engine hood. Shining the flashlight onto the Joker, it appeared that all the wires had been attached correctly.

“Well, what the heck!” I muttered. Jerking the wire off the spark plug, I looked at it. It should have worked. I moved the wire to the battery and touched the positive terminal.

The resulting scream and bang from the Joker firing off adequately covered the sound of my tennis shoes running down the street. I did in fact get her attention two days later as she asked me why I had a bandage on my hand and bruise on the back of my head, (from the engine hood that dropped onto me as I was exiting the car.)

==============================

In my sophomore year of high school, the band and choir from our school went to Hawaii to play in the King Kamehameha Parade. My best friend, Chuck, and I were placed in the same hotel room with a graduated senior named Larry.

Larry was a big boy. His body was hairy, he had bushy sideburns, three weeks growth of beard, and long hair which looked like he had styled it with a knife. He worked for his dad who was a butcher. It was no problem for Larry to lift half a beef up onto a meat hook and he had biceps to show it. Though he was nice to us, it was the summer after his graduation, and he simply did not care about school rules anymore. So, Larry smoked in our hotel room.

It was during one of our shop browsing trips in Oahu that I came across a gag gift store. Immediately, what caught my eye was Exploding Cigarettes. It wasn’t the cigarette, but a small pellet explosive that was shoved into a cigarette. That night, Chuck and I entered the hotel room to find that Larry had not yet returned, but his pack of cigarettes lay on his nightstand. Pulling out a cigarette, I took one of the exploding pellets and poked it into the tobacco. I then returned it to the pack, letting it hang out further than the rest.

“You know, Larry has a hair-trigger temper,” Chuck said. “I don’t know if I want to be in the same room with Raging Bull when that thing explodes.”

“No problem,” I assured him. “I have a plan.”

About an hour later, Larry entered the room. He was agitated because he had an altercation with his girlfriend back on the mainland. He stripped down to his boxers and tank top and flopped onto his back on the bed. Picking up the telephone receiver, he dialed her number. He then placed the cigarette in his lips and lit it.

She answered the call at the same moment the tip of the burning cigarette began to spark. Larry’s eyes crossed as he stared at the odd sparks popping like miniature fireworks beyond his nose. Suddenly – BANG! Larry’s cigarette disintegrated.

Larry did indeed jump up on the bed as a raging bull. All 250 pounds of muscle expanded like the Hulk, and I believe it was the first time I had seen a human head spin 360 degrees on a neck before.

“Who put that in my smoke?” he bellowed.

Chuck looked to me for my “plan” before we were both tossed off the 4th floor balcony.

“I saw Harvey up on the 8th floor messing with your cigs,” I fired off.

Larry ran from the room to the stairway, and he could be heard running the three floors to the 8th. It probably never occurred to him that he was only in his boxers. Twenty minutes later, our room phone rang. It was Larry. He said he never found Harvey or anyone who knew him and please would we bring his pants up to room 806.

=============================

My 20s were my mischievous years. Starting at age 21 and extending beyond year 30. People would either say, “You are extremely creative with your stunts,” or “Why don’t you grow up you daft excrement.” A case in point was a friend we tormented named Don. 40 years now after the fact, I ask myself, “Why would you pull these stunts, moron?” As I watch the boys in our church college group, I am convinced that most 20-something males have major parts of their brains which are not fully developed.

Don was married and had three children. His home was newly built in a cul-de-sac with other homes in various stages of framing. Like most families who move into a new home, the garage was filled with household goods which would someday find a place inside the house and at that time allowed no room for the car.

We arrived in his neighborhood at 10:00 pm. Only one light in the living room was on. Toys were scattered around the front yard so the first thing we did was to pass all the toys up and place them on the house roof. Next, we removed the garage door opener from the visor of the car which was parked in front of the garage and ran to the house under construction next door. Safely hidden in the house, and peering out a window frame, we pushed the button of the door opener and the garage door opened completely.

Don, hearing the garage door, opened the man-door from the kitchen and peered into the garage. He gave the area a quick inspection and pushed the opener button on the wall which lowered the door. He went back into the house. The door was almost down when we pushed the remote button again and sent it back up. Don came out into the garage and stared at the opener. He walked over to the door button on the wall, pushed it, and watched the door lower. Again, as the door touched the ground, we pushed the remote button and sent it back up. This time we were surprised to see him riding it up and trying to force it down with his body weight. When the door reached the fully open position he dropped to the floor, walked to the door opener motor, and pulled the plug. He then pulled the pin on the lifting chain and manually closed the door.

After sneaking back to Don’s car, we replaced the remote on the visor and should have considered the prank a success, and yet we could do more. We decided we would come back the next morning and “quack” him.

We arrived at his house the next morning at 6:00 am. The roof of the house was covered with toys which looked much more impressive in the daylight. We quietly removed the cover to his foundation crawl space.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” I whispered. “We crawl under the house until we get under the kitchen table. When we hear them sit down for breakfast, we will all start quacking like ducks.”

It doesn’t make sense now as to why that would be funny. It also makes no sense as to why the kids with me would get out of bed at 5:30 to follow me under the house. Nevertheless, we all slid in the crawl space which is normally home to mice and spiders and found approximately where we would be under the breakfast table. Then we waited for the family to sit down for breakfast.

Perhaps Don had received a call from a neighbor that all his kid’s toys were up on the roof. Perhaps he was now understanding clearly why his garage door opener had acted like it did the night before. Perhaps he had remembered me telling him the tales of the Auto Joker and the Exploding Cigarettes. When he heard the ducks quacking under his kitchen table he had had enough, and I had forgotten a very important fact about him. Don was a duck hunter.

We heard him run from the kitchen to his bedroom and then out the front door. Then for about five hours we heard nothing else because Don stuck his double barreled 12-gauge shotgun into the entrance of the crawl space and fired both shells into the dirt . . . BANG! BANG!

Fortunately, he let my little crew of quackers out from under the house before he reloaded. When his wife came outside to ask us if we’d like to join them for breakfast, I believe we all responded by asking, “What did you say? Sorry, I can’t hear anything.”

One of my earlier stories was entitled, “Why Boys Blow Things Up.” The answer at the end was because it’s cool. On the other hand, I think we can ask, “Why do boys do anything?” Well, I want to know two things: First- how did we survive long enough to be seniors with all our fingers, both eyes, and our hearing. Second- How do I attach an Auto Joker to my wife’s Tesla which has no spark plugs?

Faith Family Life Getting Older Growing Up Misadventures Music Patriotism Pets or Pests? Snips Tributes