Dad's Electric Shock Prank

Back in the 1950's Dad was a Construction Superintendent for these two guys Joe Trackman and I can't remember the other guys name. They were homebuilders who hired Dad. They had daughter’s named Sharon and Elaine and called their development Sharlane Gardens. Dad had this jeep that was wired with this electric device that had a wire go under the seats in the from and back. There was a button on the floor that set off an electric shock. Dad was riding these guys around the construction site one day and decided to hit the button, of course everybody in the jeep except the driver got shocked. I imagine it was pretty funny. He did it several times before he confessed up. Oh yes he also tried it on us kids. Bob

MARGO AND DAVID

Margo was a real beauty, a pedigreed boxer with a loving and affectionate disposition and gentle enough to put up with the shenanigans of a houseful of kids even the one kid who was a little mixed up because he thought he should bite the dog instead of the other way around. Now this little kid did grow up to be a pretty intelligent person so that goes to show that you can't judge how a person is going to turn out if they bite dogs. But back to the heroine of this story Margo.......David was constantly biting Margo's legs. His little teeth were sharp and Margo would yelp and jump away but David was persistent and besides she must have been tasty. One day, Margo just had enough. We heard David crying his little heart out. We rushed to the living room and found Margo gently but firmly sitting on the side of his head. Yup, she was sitting on his head. That was the only way she could keep him from biting her legs. We all laughed so hard we almost cried. Now this dog was so fiercely devoted to us kids that she would do anything to protect us. Dad was rough housing with Vickie on the couch and turned him over his knee as if to spank him. He no sooner got his hand raised in the air than Margo had her jaws fastened over his face. She came up off the floor so fast that she was a blur. She held Dad for a split second until Mom yelled at her and then she got down. Mom wanted to discipline her but Dad wasn't having it. He actually praised her for protecting Vickie. While Mom was furious but Dad told Mom that was exactly what he would want her to do if any of his kids were threatened.

OOPS GRANDPOP VIC IS DRIVING AGAIN

Gene tells me that when in his eighties, Grandpop Vic was driving through Suburbia and decided that he wanted to get the ball game on the car radio and became so absorbed trying to find the station that he completely forgot he was driving and sideswiped two cars and with hardly a glance at the wreckage, drove home. The owners of those two cars called the police with his tag number. The police promptly arrived at Grandpop's house. Now Grandpop did not remember one thing about it and called Dad. Dad jumped in his car and went to see what was going on. When the police explained to Dad what Grandpop did, he went to the folks who owned the cars with Grandpop's insurance information. Needless to say, Dad took his father's car keys and the battery out of the car, the DMV took his license. That was the end of the Grandpops driving days not because he didn't have another set of keys, but because he always thought the battery was dead. As a matter of fact, he kept asking his Grandson Gene to put a new battery in the car and Gene told him there was something else wrong with the car that he couldn't fix. Grandpop didn't seem to have a problem with this because by the next day he forgot what Gene told him. Dad became a part time chauffeur but Grandpop and Grandmom had no problem and enough money to call a taxi whenever they wanted to.

The ZIP

Once again, the dangerous, dynamic duo decided it would be "neat" to build a zip gun. Gene is not going to tell anybody how to do it except to say that there was some similarity to the "Rocket" construction only on much smaller scale. One piece was fastened to the wood and loaded and when it went off it would shoot a pellet just the way a gun would shoot a bullet. Now this wasn't built for any other reason except the natural curiousity of young boys to see if they could actually do it. Gene doesn't remember how he and Bob found out how to do it and they had no particular plans for what to do with it when they finished. Unfortunately, it worked better than it should have. Gene and Bob were sitting in the back seat of Dad's 1940 Chevrolet. Bob was enthusiastically loading it when it when off and shot a hole through the back of the front seat of the car. Gene says with a smile "that the hole was so small that it was never discovered and they got away with it."

The Rocket

Gene is sitting here telling me this story, which is one among many of the escapades he and his brother Bob got into. So for all of you kids and grandkids out their who only see a couple of gray haired conservative and cautious senior citizens, don't ever judge a book by its cover.........Sometime between 1955 and 1957 Gene and Bob decided to build a rocket. They took a foot long, one inch diameter copper pipe and bent one end over and started to fill it up with match heads. Not the whole match, just the cut off heads. Now this took about two weeks or so to "find" enough matchbooks. They packed them all into the pipe nice and tight and set the pipe in the middle of the field by the garage in Millville. Then they poured a line of gas from the rocket to the garage which was about 30 feet away. They lit the gas and ran like hell into the garage and looked out the window waiting for the rocket to take off up into the sky. Unfortunately, it didn't take off, it just exploded like a stick of TNT and blew the glass out the window closest to it and cracked the glass in the others. Dad came running out of the house and was absolutely furious, not so much about the window but that they could have killed themselves. Gene and Bob were confined to their room but heard Dad laughing as he was telling Mom what happened.

When I went missing in New Jersey

It was a spring day in 1958 when I went missing, well, for a few hours anyway. Of course I knew exactly where I was, the problem was that Mom and Dad had no idea where I was. The story goes like this. There was this girl in my 7th grade class, her name was Judith Bebe (I think) she invited me to her birthday party. I came home that day and told mom I was not coming home from school and was going to a birthday part. The only problem was the party was at least a month or two away. The day of the party I went to school not saying anything. The school day was just a typical boring day of teachers trying to teach me something. The only thing I had on my mind was going to this birthday party with Judy. The school bell rang; Judy and I went directly from school to her house. As I remember she lived in a big rancher on a farm with a barn and a few horses. There was also an Artisan Well wheel in the back yard. I can't remember much about what we did, rode horses, played games etc. Mean while back at the Klein house, pandemonium set in. I can't imagine what must have been going on. Mom and Dad never really expressed what they felt during the time I was partying it up at the Bebe house. Around 9 o'clock at night the party came to and end and Judy's parents were taking me home. As the car turned off of Cumberland road on the short dirt road where we lived there was an array of flashing red lights. Police cars were everywhere. I had no idea what was going on until the car stopped and I got out. Somebody yelled there he his, mom came running over, now I am sure she was glad to see me, but boy was she mad. Where in the hell have you been, she said. I explained the best I could where I was but nobody seemed to care, except for the police. They wanted to know where the party was, who were there, etc. The next day everything got back to normal, or at least that is the way I remember it. Bob Klein

Dad and the razor blade factory and more

Way back when we were young (before Vic and Dave and maybe even Bob) Dad worked in a razor blade factory. During the time he worked there he was incorrectly diagnosed with an aneurism(sp?) involving his heart or maybe the aorta. He was told he couldn't continue to work and was out of a job. It was a devestating situation - no money, no jobs and a wife and children to support. Mom told me this but I can't remember her finishing the story. If anyone remembers more about this, please comment. It could maybe be around the time when we lived in Delaware and Mom sent Bob off to live with Nauni and Poppa. I know we were pretty poor around that time. I remember Mom making oatmeal for breakfast with water because there was no milk. On the other hand I have the feeling that the razor blade factory story happened much earlier. When they were first married I know that Dad drove a bus in either Bayonne or Jersey City. Poppa Principe was a bus driver then and I'm sure he helped get Dad that job. When we lived in Milliville I remember Dad worked for Wheaton Glass Company as a glass blower. For practice he would heat the glass pipettes over a flame and make the most beautiful ashtrays and candy dishes and other things in the basement of Nauni and Poppa's house. I remember one other thing he did in that basement and it was a surprise for me. He made little teacups, saucers and a teapot out of pennies. I really wish I still had them but somewhere along the line they disappeared. Dad was a carpenter, later a builder of houses and commercial buildings. For fun he made furniture, wooden toys, and stained glass. While he had the talent to paint and draw (he really liked to doodle cartoons) , he only did one piece that I know of and it is in my living room. Three paintings on glass of oriental figures. He developed a real love of photography. He took my wedding pictures and hundreds of family photos. He had a darkroom in the house where he developed his prints and stored his negatives. He was a member of the Baltimore Camera Club and won awards for his work. For years and years, you could never catch Dad without a camera. Some of his kids groaned and frowned every time he asked them to pose. Everyone has to be glad now that he thought it was so important to take family pictures and save family pictures. They bring back a lot of memories. .

VIOLETS AND LILACS

There's a funny thing about memories. Sometimes they come whole and detailed and other times they are like little slices of events that happened a long time ago. They can be resurrected by sights, sounds, smells, objects, photos, and sometimes by nothing at all. In this case it was a plant. When Mom died, Vic received a plant from his co-workers. You know the kind, I think it's called a dish garden. One by one the plants died off except one small but healthy looking violet. I didn't remember anything about violets at the time I plucked it out and transplanted it in another pot. I just thought it was too healthy looking not to save. I watered it and put it next to a window for light. It didn't seem to require much care and in fact, began to grow larger and healthier. Soon, I had to transplant it again and it grew to be more than a foot across. About a month ago, or maybe more, I noticed that it had flower buds. Two weeks ago, the first violet bloomed. It's pink and the petals have a sheen of iridescence. As soon as it bloomed, I remembered Dad and his violets. In my mind, I saw him tending several plants and recalled just how much he fussed over them as if he was willing them to bloom. And they did. I remember thinking that for such a "tough" guy he treated them so tenderly. I wasn't surprised by that because there was a tender streak in Dad. One he didn't acknowledge but was easy to see if there was a baby in the room, or a puppy. You may think that is a funny duo, but maybe it was easier for Dad to show his soft side with little humans and little dogs. This memory brought back another one. A very long time ago, when I was a little child, we went to visit a couple who may have been family but could have just been friends of Mom and Dad. I don't even remember where it was. All I remember, it that we drove up a driveway that was lined on both sides with lilac trees or maybe they were just big bushes. It was spring, and the scent of those lilacs was beautiful. We visited there more than once. I wish I could remember just when and how I learned that Dad loved lilacs, but love them he did. He never planted lilacs or any other flowers but he loved growing a garden of vegetables and nurturing houseplants. Somewhere I have a photo of a 5 lb. tomato from his garden and a funny looking carrot. He would fuss over houseplants and more than once he would bring me cuttings and in one case a giant aloe plant. Part of that plant died off naturally, but all the "baby" aloes are growing happily in a new pot next to a window in my home.