One Christmas night about 11:00PM my home phone rang. It was a call from Ron Snowberger, our assistant principal. He told me that he had just received a call from the Ravenna Police Department. They told him that a lady who lived down the street from the high school had called in a state of panic and said that a strange thing was occurring at her house. She told them that a small, eerie-looking, bright red spot of light was coming in through her window and running up and down the walls of her bedroom. She further informed them that this spot of light appeared to be emanating from a third floor window on the street side of the high school. This was where the physics lab was located, so Ron decided to give me a call to see if I had any ideas about this before he returned a call to the police. I immediately figured out what was happening, and told Ron to have the police tell the lady that it was harmless, not to worry, she was not being visited by the Holy Ghost, ignore the light and go back to bed. Furthermore, I would take care of the problem when we returned to class after Christmas break.
One of the industries in town had obtained a new laser gun and had donated the old one to our physics department for us to use in the lab. This was shortly after the laser had been invented and had recently become available commercially. Most people had never seen nor heard of a laser and had no idea what it did. The students were quite excited about this laser and we had used it in several diffraction experiments. This unit was about 18 inches long.
Laser Gun
John, the son of the town plumber, was one of my extremely gifted students. He had a curiosity that knew no bounds, legal or otherwise. He was also extremely curious about our new laser. I knew that John had access to the keys for the school since his dad had keys to every lock in town. I was sure that he was in the lab on this Christmas night, trying to see how far the laser beam would travel in the dark, and that this ornery individual was running it up and down the street and shining it into people’s windows.
The following Monday I walked into the lab looking for the laser gun. There it was on the shelf with the cord neatly wound, looking as if it had never been moved.
Later that morning I met John in the hallway. I said to him, “John, do you have any idea what the penalty is for breaking into and entering a public building at night? It is a very serious offense and anyone who gets caught doing that could be sent so far up the river that he would become water-logged.”
John thought for a while, slowly rubbed his chin, grinned slightly, and replied,
“… Yeah…I think …I see what you mean”.
And that was the end of the Christmas laser incident.
The last I heard of John he was “Captain John”, flying the weather helicopter for a Cleveland TV station.
