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.