Month: May 2017

The Outhouse

When I was a small child, indoor plumbing was just beginning to appear in Randolph and outhouses were standard equipment at every dwelling. I remember one of my great aunts saying that living under the same roof with a crapper was a revolting thought and if someone brought one into the house she would move out. Later when I was a teenager almost everyone had indoor plumbing but there were many outhouses still standing, either as a backup in case that new-fangled indoor facility quit working or as a spare when relatives visited and the crowd became too big for one toilet. In those days it was unheard of to have more than one toilet in a house.

One of the most popular tricks for pranksters on Halloween was upsetting outhouses. They were tall and narrow and usually fairly easy to push over, one just had to be careful not to fall into the “goober” pit. If that happened a clean-up session at the creek would be needed because you would smell too bad to sneak into your own house.

Kenny and I did not usually partake in this pastime because it was too mundane, took no imagination, and anyone could do it – we needed more of a challenge. Fortunately we did not have long to wait for the golden opportunity to appear.

We were sitting in the local bar one evening when “Mr. Robert” walked in. After a few beers he started bragging in a strong German accent about his outhouse. It went something like this:

“By Godt, nobody vill be upsetten  MY shithouse zis year. Zose halloveeners tried for ze last 10 yearss at Halloveen und zey were chust not strong enough to do it”, he bragged on and on.

Well now that definitely got our attention. This was like waving a red flag in front of a bull!

We knew that Mr. Robert would be in the bar for awhile bragging about “his shithouse” so we went over to check this thing out. It was a fancy facility with curtains and plaster and wallpaper inside. What he had done to foil the tricksters was place 2 inch angle irons all the way up each outside corner of the outhouse and set each in a large block of concrete. This made the building very stable and I don’t think a truck could have pulled it over.

This called for extreme measures. We considered two options. Option number one was using a torch to cut the angle irons, but we rejected this idea because it called for heavy tanks of acetylene and oxygen, and we just might end up burning the outhouse down instead of upsetting it. So we decided on option number two – sawing the angle irons.

The next day I went up to Montigney’s Hardware in Ravenna and bought a dozen of the best hacksaw blades I could find and mounted them in frames. We knew Mr. Robert and his wife would attend the bingo game at St. Joe’s the following Saturday night so we planned our attack for then.

We talked two of our buddies into helping with the operation. We spotted Mr. Robert’s car at St. Joe’s, knocked on the door to make sure nobody was home, and started sawing – one person at each corner. After about an hour of labor and several broken saw blades we finally sawed through the angle irons. We then gave the outhouse a shove – and over she went!

Later that evening we stopped at the local gas station and the owner Jim Jones told us that Mr. Robert had driven in squealing his tires and fuming mad. He said that he was looking for the people who upset his shithouse and when he found them he was going to shoot off their kneecaps and other things that I won’t mention. Jim told us we had better go home and keep quiet about this if we wanted to live.

After this incident Mr. Robert appeared to be a changed man. He never did set the outhouse back up, no more bragging, and seemed to have lost his spirit. It looked as if this outhouse was the most important thing in his life. Seeing this made me feel somewhat remorseful and sorry for him.

But then you should never go into a bar and challenge young people that way. It just isn’t prudent!

The Teenage Brain

I firmly believe that many teenage brains are late in developing the part that controls judgement and promotes survival. In looking back at some of the shenanigans that my friends and I pulled as teenagers, I’m convinced that we had that kind of undeveloped brain. Here are some examples that I believe support this theory:

Unique Greeting

Kenny, Mahlon and I had an agreement that when we passed on the road driving in opposite directions, instead of greeting each other by waving, we would swap lanes and pass each other on the wrong side. This was our way of saying hello – also it would scare the bejesus out of any one riding with us. It worked quite well except for the following notable exceptions:

One day I saw Kenny’s car coming toward me and I pulled into the left lane as agreed. What I didn’t know was that it was Kenny’s mom driving his car to shop for groceries. She didn’t know about our secret greeting so she ended up in the ditch.

Another time I saw a big red dump truck in the wrong lane coming straight at me at a high rate of speed. In order to keep from hitting it head-on I took to the ditch. I learned later that it was Mahlon, who had just been hired by Herman Miller to drive a big red dump truck. I did not know about this, but that didn’t stop him from saying “hello” in the agreed manner.

Busted!

One evening Kenny and I were slowly cruising around downtown Akron. Kenny was driving and we were each slowly sipping on a bottle of beer. One of the city policemen spotted us and pulled us over. I set my beer on the floor beside my leg hoping the cop wouldn’t notice it, but Kenny just kept on drinking.

“GIMME THAT BEER”, the cop said to Kenny in a loud demanding voice.

Now I have to explain that Kenny had somewhat of a stuttering problem. When the cop asked for the beer, Kenny handed the bottle to him, looked him straight  in the eye, and said with a stutter:

“Doooooo you want a glass?”

The policeman looked at Kenny in disbelief. Suddenly he burst out laughing, handed the bottle back to Kenny and said, “Get out of here and don’t come back”.

So we did – and didn’t.

Scamming The System

Another thing our teenage brains told us to do was always try to scam the system. Here are two examples:

In every gas station and bar there was a peanut dispensing machine. Each machine had a glass bowl about the size of a soccer ball full of salted peanuts. Beneath the bowl was a lever along with a coin slot and dispenser chute. To get a handful of peanuts you put a penny in the slot and moved lever to the right. Then put your hand below the chute, moved the handle to the left and the peanuts would fall into your hand. We found  that we could take a piece of stiff wire, bend one end into a circle the size of a penny, and place it in the slot while holding onto the wire. We then put a paper sack under the chute and moved the lever back and forth until the sack was full or the machine was empty.

Another thing every restaurant and bar had was a juke box with small kiosks at the bar for selecting songs. These were hooked to the main machine by 3 wires. We learned that we could take a straight pin, puncture the insulation of two of these wires, and when we moved the pin rapidly in and out, a series of clicks could be heard over at the main machine. A little practice with this setup would allow us to play every song on the jukebox – for no money! When the man came to empty the money bucket on the jukebox, he would look around suspiciously at the customers because the money box would be almost empty, even though the counter showed that hundreds of songs had been played.

We didn’t particularly like peanuts, nor did we care to listen to the music on the jukebox, but we had beaten the system and impressed our friends.  That made our undeveloped teenage brains happy.

In today’s world these shenanigans would probably also make us convicts!

Paul Lang

My uncle Paul Lang was legendary in Randolph for his mechanical abilities as well as his constant search for an opportunity to laugh. He could find humor in small things that most people overlooked. Following are a few examples:

During the 30’s the local paper would publish a sample ballot prior to an election. Today the symbol for the Democratic party is a donkey and for the Republicans an elephant, but in those days the Democratic symbol was a rooster and the Republican symbol was an eagle. At that time the state of Ohio permitted voting a straight ticket. At the top of each ballot was a rooster and an eagle. Underneath each was a place to indicate your vote. You could vote for every Democrat on the ballot simply by putting an “X” under the rooster. An “X” under the eagle would vote for all of the Republicans. Paul would cut the ballots from the paper and pin them on the kitchen wall so I could practice voting. He told me, “Always put an X under the rooster”.

When company came to visit the family, Paul wanted to demonstrate my political abilities, so he would say to me, “Gene, go up there and vote”. Of course I would go up to the ballot and put an “X” under the rooster as any good 3-year-old would. He would then look at the impressed visitors and start cracking up.

I once had a small wooden pushcart with a long handle and wooden rabbits on each side. One day I visited Paul at Jenior’s garage where he worked as a mechanic. He took my cart, drilled a hole in the back, and installed an electric switch. Being 3 years old at the time I was very proud of that switch and used it often even though it wasn’t hooked up to anything. He just laughed hysterically about that switch even though it didn’t do anything – or maybe because it didn’t do anything – or maybe because he just enjoyed kids.

There was an old buckeye tree behind Lang’s gas station and during autumn there were hundreds of buckeyes lying on the ground beneath this tree. Paul taught me that I could punch a hole in each of two buckeyes with a nail, fasten them together with about 3 feet of string, then swing them like a slingshot and heave them up over the power lines. After I did this for several days the power lines in front of the gas station were festooned with buckeyes hanging from strings.  Needless to say, the linemen from Ohio Edison were not amused when they had to climb up there and remove the tangled mess. I was really terrified when I heard them talking to Grandma Lang and threatening the dastardly villains who threw those things up there  with prison and broken kneecaps. That put a stop to the buckeye tossing.

My dad told me this one:

The local Methodist church planned to have a chicken dinner as a fund raiser. Paul was a good friend of the preacher and he offered to provide chickens for the dinner at no cost.

It appears that Paul decided to furnish the chickens by stealing them from the preacher’s own hen house. The night before the dinner he sneaked in with a burlap sack and started to gather up some nice fat hens. As fate would have it the preacher decided  to feed his chickens at this same time. Paul heard him coming and hid behind some feed sacks. This would have worked out well but as the feeding progressed Paul got so tickled that he couldn’t suppress his laughter and was thus discovered. When the preacher found Paul with the sack half full of hens he also began to laugh. He told Paul that since he was that far along with the heist he might as well finish the job, so the hens were procured and the dinner was successfully held.

Paul was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was 24 years old. Even though I was only five  when he died I remember well this happy fun-loving man.

The lesson I learned from living with Uncle Paul was that It is worthwhile to sometimes lighten up, take time to laugh and enjoy life, but stay off of motorcycles.

Paul Lang on left