Dirty Trick #14 -- Tall Tales

In one of my jobs, members of the team used to gather around a table at lunch time and chat. A short time after joining, the topic turned to hiking and I mentioned that I had summited Long's Peak in 4 hours. The team lead then mentioned a former girlfriend who was a pathological liar who claimed to have summited Mt. Rainier.

It seemed a bit of a non-sequitur. One understands that Mt. Rainier is a technical climb -- often used as preliminary training for Mount Everest expeditions. Sure, anyone who claims to have gone up Mount Rainier deserves genuine admiration or genuine skepticism. In contrast, in late summer it is possible to just walk up to the top of any one of Colorado's 14,000 ft peaks -- assuming, of course, that you are in very good physical condition.

Shortly after that, when the talk turn to cars and driving, I claimed that the first car I ever drove was a Porsche 911-S. In response, the same girlfriend was mentioned again -- in which her supposedly equivalent exploit was having flown an F-18. 

At this point, I caught on to the fact that my veracity was being questioned. Without skipping a beat, I said that I had only ever flown an F-15, slyly omitting the fact that it was in a simulator. "It's really not that hard: It handles like a rocket with control surfaces." From that time on, I made a game of relating stories about myself that were 100% true, but leaving out certain details that might tend to make them more credible. The pathological liar girlfriend was a recurring theme: I pretended to be completely obtuse -- never connecting the mention of her to anything I had said.

I claimed to have cut down 100 trees in a single day. I claimed that while building a deck for a friend, I had driven 900 nails in 6 hours. I talked about how I had fixed any number of stalled vehicles using only a pocket knife, and how I had extinguished a car fire using two cans of beer (which I just happened to have handy) and my mighty breath.

On the subject of photography, I put in that I had once waded out into the middle of the Delaware River, to get the best view of John Roebling's suspension bridge at Lackawaxen PA. On the subject of canine misadventures, I claimed that I had pulled a tree out of the ground and used it to defeat two guard dogs. I was able to claim with a straight face, that I had overpowered and escaped from 5 guys who were trying to beat me up.

I particularly enjoyed relating my past athletic exploits, such as: Riding my bike to the top of Flagstaff Mountain in 23 minutes; riding from Longmont to Boulder (a distance of 17 miles) in 34 minutes; riding from Trentino Alto Adige in Italy to Munich, Germany (a distance of 480 km) in less than two days. I once ran from my apartment in Boulder to the IBM plant in Gunbarrel (a distance of 10 miles) in an hour and 20 minutes. And one fine evening, I ran from the Carolina Circle Mall to 1109 Pebble Drive (8 miles) in 59 minutes. 

Every one of these claims is quite true, but to feed skepticism I would sometimes correct myself on the numbers involved. "Wow! 17 miles in 34 minutes? That would be, um, 30mph. Maybe it was 43 minutes instead...."

The story of summiting Long's Peak in 4 hours is still an admirable feat, and I know someone who can corroborate the story. In September of 1976, Paul Beatty and I agreed to hike up Long's Peak together. He wanted a hiking companion and I felt equal to the challenge. We met at his house and he drove us to the Long's Peak Trailhead. We hit the trail just after 9 am, and had crossed the Boulder Field by noon. Just below the Keyhole, I stopped in the hiker's shelter to catch my breath while he went on ahead. Passing through the Keyhole, I found it was only a short hike to the summit. I came up a few minutes later, reaching the top close to 1pm.

The story of the Porsche is also quite true. I baby-sat for the Sansons before and after they had moved to the condos on Bear Mountain Drive. In December of 1974, when I was 15 1/2, the parents came back well after midnight from a party in Denver. It's hard to fathom the logic behind it (since he'd just driven 25 miles), but Fred considered himself too drunk to drive me the mile and a half home. So he gave me the keys to the Porsche and settled himself in the passenger seat.

Growing up, I had watched my dad intently as he drove our VW van, so I understood the basic theory of driving a stick shift. I started up the Porsche and we went jerkily out of the parking lot. The powerful engine made up for my lack of skill in working the clutch: I only stalled the engine once while crossing the opposing lane of Table Mesa Drive at Gillaspie Drive. I even managed to get up to 3rd gear while driving up Stanford Drive. I pulled in to the top of our driveway on Kohler Drive and left the engine running. Perhaps the adrenaline helped Fred drive himself home safely.

When I worked at GE in Binghamton NY, they had an F-15 simulator set up in the lab two doors down. I was allowed to go in and use the simulator during my lunch hour. I got to get the feel of flying the aircraft with very little risk on both sides: I lost about half a dozen lives and as many aircraft before I could handle it well enough to stay airborne. (One queued up the next life by hitting the red reset button on the side of the cockpit.)

The twist in the claim of cutting down 100 trees in a day is that all of those trees were maple seedlings. I literally mowed them down (with a push mower). The number of trees thus dispatched was actually in the 1000s, but claiming to have felled 100 trees in a day seemed outrageous enough.

When I built a deck for George Keenan in Binghamton, I drove 900 decking nails in six hours with a regular 16oz claw hammer. But I guess I forgot to mention that I did this in two 3-hour stints on consecutive days.

I also tested credulity by claiming to have gotten numerous stalled vehicles back on the road using only a pocket knife. The part that I left out was that this invariably happened when the weather was cool and damp. The damp weather would cause corrosion to form on the inside of the distributor cap, but as long as the corrosion was damp it would conduct OK and the engine would run. After the engine warmed up, it would drive the water out, making the corrosion a better insulator. Then, the car would stall out. All I had to do was to scrape the corrosion off the inside of the distributor cap and the car would start right up. It helps the impression of fiction that few people these days have experience with anything but electronically fuel-injected engines. (They have no distributor cap.)

The story of extinguishing a car fire with my breath began at my cousin John's wedding in Washington D.C. My girlfriend, Carolyn, and I had driven up from Raleigh to attend. After the reception, there was an after-party at the newlywed's hotel suite. We stopped by for a short time (and a few more drinks). Before leaving, I helped myself to two 16oz cans of beer, putting one in each pocket of my suit coat. As we were driving back to our B&B, Carolyn asked to go by the National Cathedral to look at the call board and find out when services were to be held on Sunday morning, so we did that. 

As we were driving away, we came down a hill to a stop sign. There, directly across the intersection, there was a Karmann Ghia with flames coming up underneath it. I jumped out of the Horizon and ran across the intersection. The woman in the car saw me coming and got out. Her engine had stalled, so she already knew that something was wrong. My running toward her must have convinced her that something was really very wrong. 

I sat down in the driver's seat and put out the clutch so the car could roll back away from the flaming puddle of gasoline underneath. Then I got out and asked how to undo the latch for the engine compartment. She said you just raise it, so I did that. There were flames rising around the sides of the engine. What to do next? At that moment I recalled that I had a can of beer in each pocket, so I proceeded to open one and then the other, using them to douse the flames. At last there was a little flicker near the fan pulley, which I blew out with my breath. 

The young lady turned out to be a nurse who was just returning home after a late shift. We rolled her car back and parked it against the curb, and then gave her a ride to her apartment nearby. That story doesn't need any spinning to seem improbable.

The missing detail from the story about the Bridge at Lackawaxen is that the upper Delaware is quite shallow (especially since much of the water that used to flow there is diverted into the NYC water supply). On canoe trips in late summer, I would sometimes scrape bottom -- meaning that the mighty Delaware is less than 2" deep in some places. At the famous bridge, I had to pick my way carefully to cross the deep channel next to shore without going in over my head. Out in the middle where I took my shots, though, the river was no more than knee-deep.

The story of how I used a tree to cow two dogs began as I returned home from Paul's rental house on Marine Street late one Sunday evening. My usual route took me along the levy next to the Farmer's Ditch. A construction site had sprung up and was surrounded on 3 sides by chain-link fencing. But the side next to the ditch was open, so I just walked on through. Then, I heard barking and figured that guard dogs had been posted to protect the construction site. 

I looked around and saw the trunk of a pine sapling that had been uprooted by a bulldozer. It was about 10' tall with roots still attached, and seemed to me to be a pretty good weapon. I picked it up by the crown end, and laid it across my shoulder like a baseball bat. Then, I waited for the dogs to come up. 

When the dogs were about 20 feet away I made a roundhouse sweep with the tree trunk, roots hissing through the air in front of their faces. That display brought the dogs up short. They simply turned tail and trotted back to their kennels. Evidently, exposing themselves to injury was not part of their contract. 

My elaboration, of course, was to omit the detail that the tree had already been uprooted: I merely had to pull it out of the mud. Also, "tree" to most people suggests something bigger.

The 5 guys that I "overpowered" were members of the provisional troop that I was placed in at Scout Camp. They had learned their social skills by observing (or participating in) gang behavior, and wanted to assert dominance over other members of the troop. They caught up with me as I was exploring the woods, and two guys ended up holding me by the arms. The gang leader stood facing me, and his henchman was positioned behind me. Their smallest member stood in front of the gang leader and was given the task of punching me, to "teach me a lesson".

Well, even in that situation I'd be damned if I let a scrawny pipsqueak beat me up. So I didn't. Using the guys on each arm as supports, I jumped back and brought my knees up to my chest. Then, I kicked the little guy in his chest. He fell back and knocked over the gang leader. The guys on my arms weren't prepared to hold me aloft, so they fell back and let go. The counterforce from my kick propelled me back into the henchman, who also fell over.

The moment of surprise gave me the head start that I needed. I sprinted off through the woods, and then circled back to camp to tell the troop leader what had happened. Interestingly, I had no further trouble with those five guys for the remainder of my stay at Scout Camp.

The incredible part of the story is that my attackers had arranged themselves precisely so that one kick was enough to knock them all over like tenpins. That's the way it was, believe it or not.

Dirty Trick #15 -- Petrodiesel

As a bicycle commuter, I get to sample the exhaust fumes of many vehicles. I can tell, for example, if the engine in the car that just passed me need a tune-up (lots of unburnt hydrocarbons), a ring job (engine oil) or a new head gasket (ethylene glycol). When a car burning biodiesel passes me it smells like french fries, and when a car burning petrodiesel passes me, it smells like dead dinosaurs (no kidding). At least, it smells how I imagine a dead dinosaur would smell, because there is the faintest whiff of rotting flesh under the many layers of soot and light hydrocarbon chains and sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen.

Being an avid cyclist, I also occasionally go on long rides. And so it was on the 28th of June 2015 that I found myself in Hartline, just off of Highway (U.S.) 2 in eastern Washington. I had ridden from Mercer Island up to Wenatchee the previous day and stayed in a motel. That morning, I had risen early and continued east through Waterville and Moses Coulee. I was already pretty hungry when I reached Coulee City, but there did not seem to be any diners open there, so I pressed on.

At Hartline, there was a sandwich board that advertised a cafe open in the Hartline School, so I rode the two blocks north and dismounted. The cafe was in what had been the cafeteria of the school. The kitchen was at the far end of the large room that occupied most of the ground floor of that wing of the building. So I walked toward the counter, my cleats clicking as I went: Clicka-tic, clicka-tac, clicka-tic, clicka-tac.

I had been planning to order french fries, one of my favorite fuels. But as I made my way across the polished linoleum, my nose picked up a strange smell. The smoke from the fryer was nothing like the light "come hither" potatoes-in-canola aroma that McDonald's so cunningly wafts across neighborhoods with its enormous exhaust fans. My olfaction was confused by a weird mixture of burnt toast and heating oil. This smelled like ... ah, there it is: petrodiesel!

The fat in the fryer had not been changed since the beginning of the Cenozoic -- or, to be fair -- any time in recent history. I had already decided before I reached the counter that I would not be ordering french fries cum Loch Ness Monster. I settled on the alternate plan of looking over the packaged snacks and selecting whatever seemed least likely to kill me. I had lost hope that anything there had an expiration date in the current millennium. But once again, I was smiled on by Providence and rescued from peril.

When she chose to recognize my presence, the lady behind the counter glared disapprovingly at my footwear and said, "We don't allow cleats in here."

"Oh, sorry," said I, facing about and heading toward the door with the optimum balance of composure and haste. Clicka-tic, clicka-tac, clicka-tic, clica-tac. The air outside was delicious.

Another half hour on the road put me outside of Almira. But the modern highway bypasses the center of town, so I was unsure whether it had any food to offer. I had already used up my two spare tubes and had a slow leak in my rear tire, so I was trying to avoid riding very far out of my way. I passed Almira and rode on.

No food in Wilbur or Creston, the mounting miles adding to my hunger. I was almost weak with exhaustion on the last stretch into Davenport. On the far side of town, I discovered a drive-in. I went right inside and asked for a large order of fries. They arrived promptly, and were the best french fries I have ever tasted.

Dirty Trick #13 -- Great Balls o' Fire

My first car was a Mazda RX-2.  It was overdesigned in every way -- which was probably an apology-in-advance for the fact that it never got more than 19.6mpg (though interestingly, seldom less).

One of its features was a 4-barrel Holley carburetor. Four barrels for two rotors is ... well, go figure.  Anyway, I had discovered that right around 60mph, I could make the car backfire.  This was achieved by accelerating and decelerating right at the point that doing so caused the secondary throttles to open and shut.  Opening and closing the secondary throttles would send a pulse of rich exhaust down the pipe.  When that hit the open air at the other end, Blammo!  It is possible that I could have achieved the same effect using the manual choke (yes, it had one), but I already had one method, and that was good enough.

So there I was.  On one of my samurai driving stints between my apartment in Boulder CO and my parent's house in Greensboro NC, I happened to be driving through downtown Knoxville just at dusk in the middle of rush hour.  And there had to be some guy in a big hurry, filling up my rear-view mirror with his Cadillac -- as if that would somehow make the people going 60 in front of me move faster.  So I let him have it.

I did the trick with the gas pedal, and a great big, blue ball of flame rolled out of my tailpipe.  (I saw the reflection in his grille.)  It was magical! Thy guy in the Caddy slowed way down, and I traversed the rest of Knoxville, still at 60, but with plenty of space behind me.

Dirty Trick #12 -- Speech Synthesis

Shortly after I started working for the Office of Telecommunications, my manager set up a demo that involved a minicomputer linked to a Votrax voice synthesizer.  He had programmed it to say, "Hello! This is the computer talking ... ."

The temptation was too great.  After he had left for the day, I studied the phoneme vocabulary for the Votrax, and replaced his program with one that started out: "Howdy, y'all!"

Dave was not too happy when I showed up the next day, and only slightly mollified when I showed him the backup copy I had made of his program.  Practical jokes need to be carefully calibrated, I guess.

Dirty Trick #11 -- Master Key

The combination locks that were checked out to students in my junior high and high school were outfitted with a cylinder that would accept a master key.  This was undoubtedly a great convenience for the custodian, in case access had to be gained without the student's participation.  It immediately occurred to me that I would have great power over my fellow students if I possessed a copy of that master key.

I had no thought of "borrowing" the master key from the custodian, but I did consider making one.  Before I started high school, somehow one of the high school locks was added to my collection.  I used an assortment of my father's tools to destroy enough of the lock to remove the cylinder.  And during the same time, I obtained a blank of the right dimensions from the local K-Mart.  It only remained to measure the tumblers and shape the key so that it moved the tumblers into the right alignment..

That is where I lost confidence.  I had only one blank, so I didn't dare make an error.  I had the cylinder out of the lock, but I didn't want to take the tumblers out of the cylinder, for fear that I would not be able to reassemble the precious cylinder and test my creation.  If I had had 10 blanks and 2 cylinders, the outcome might have been different.  As it was, I abandoned the project after taking one small nick out of the blank with a file.

No matter.  It turned out that the idea of a master key was just as good as the real article.

The spring of my sophomore year, I was standing near Kathy Humphries' locker and chatting with her before fourth period.  One of a group of bullies standing nearby reached into Kathy's locker, took out a package of Twinkies, put it in his own locker and slammed the door before we could protest.  We both demanded the Twinkies back, but the boys laughed and went off to class. 

I vowed revenge.  I had noticed that the boy had a baseball glove in his locker, and I imagined there were other valuable items in there as well.  I returned before 7th period and tried to get the baseball glove in order to force a swap.  But the bully saw me coming and guessed my intent.  The locker door was closed before I could reach inside.

It happened that that day was a Friday.  I returned to the school on the next day and used my usual trick to pop the latch on the cafeteria doors at the west side of the building.  Soon enough I gained access to the math wing, and went to the right locker.  With a swift kick, my hiking boot knocked the entire handle off the front of the locker. 

I had observed another locker whose handle had been broken off by accident, so I assumed it would be easy enough to repair.  I examined the locker handle, and found that it had been held in place by two small machine screws.  My blow had caused both to shear off near the head, but neither the locker nor the handle was damaged.  All I needed was two replacement screws, and the locker would be good as new.  I backed out the shafts of the headless screws and picked up the heads. I put all these in my pocket for later comparison.

It was then easy enough to help myself to the locker's contents.  But I didn't want to be found with stolen property in my locker.  That would never do.  I needed a safe place to store the loot that was not incriminating.  I immediately got the idea of putting the stuff in the lost-and-found.  I took the glove and a cap and a few smaller items, and went down to the principal's office.  I used my latch pick to open up the main door and then went into the closet that held the lost and found.  I burrowed down in the pile of forgotten clothing and nested the goods near the bottom of the cardboard box.

Then I went down to McGuckin's Hardware, and found a match for the broken screws in thread size and length.  I even had the good fortune to find ones with hexagonal heads, just like the ones I'd broken.  I went back to the high school, repaired the locker handle and left.  So far, so good.
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On Monday, I was met at my locker by a very angry bully-boy.  Angry, but respectful, lest he should make me decide to return his property never.  He demanded to know if I was responsible for the disappearance of his baseball glove, and wanted to know how I had done it.  I told him I had made a master key that fit all the locks in the building, and he wasn't going to get his glove back until he returned the Twinkies.  He said he didn't have the Twinkies any more (presumably having eaten them).  Too bad.  (Conversations were short, because the halls cleared out in a hurry when the second bell rang.)

A short time later, I received a note that summoned me to Millie Beavers' office the following period.  Millie was the head of the math department, and also was responsible for managing the lockers in the math wing.  When I showed up in her office, she put out her hand and said, "Okay, where is it?"  (I was taking independent study math which she supervised, and her tone was normally much more cordial.)  I was forced to explain that there wasn't any master key, and how I had obtained access to the locker by breaking off its handle.  When asked about the loot, I said I didn't really take it -- I had just put it in the lost-and-found.

That was the end of it: I received no punishment; the boy reclaimed his stuff, and Kathy never did get her Twinkies back.  In retrospect, I suppose Millie was smart enough to let the master key story stand. Revealing that a locker handle could be sent flying by a sincere glancing blow would have precipitated general mayhem.  So that was our little secret. 

From the bullies' perspective, however, the idea that I had made one master key certainly meant that I could make another.  Bully-boy and his chums treated me and Kathy with proper respect for the rest of our time at Boulder High.

Dirty Trick #10 -- Applied Physics

By the time I was in high school, I was already a feminist.  My mom -- being then the president of the Boulder chapter of NOW -- had made sure of that.  But she had also moved beyond believing (as some feminists did) that common courtesies -- such as holding doors and allowing ladies to enter first -- were symbols of sexism. Rather, she treated them as a mark of respect that was her due.

Two of the young ladies in my physics class, Kathy and Alison, had decided at this time that they were feminists, but they were still on the previous page.  I would often arrive at the dual doors to the math/science wing a few moments ahead of them, and began holding the door open for them.  Whereupon, they would make an elaborate show of opening the other door for themselves and passing through.

After the second or third occurrence, I decided to take advantage of their predictability -- and I knew just how to do it:  Some time before, I had noticed that the left-hand door was hard to open, and took a long time to close.  An  examination of the door-closer mechanism revealed a set screw. Using my pocket knife, I loosened the set screw and tried the door.  It opened easily, and closed more rapidly.  "Ah, hah!" I said to myself, "this must be an air bleed, intended to control the speed at which the door closes."  But it could also make the door hard to open. [cue ominous music]  I had thought that door-closers contained a one-way valve that would always allow the door to open easily: the air bleed would only control the speed at which the door closed.  But this one either lacked such a valve, or that valve had long since failed closed.

The next day, I made an extra effort to arrive early, took out my pocket knife and twisted the air-bleed screw on the left-hand door-closer firmly into its seat.  No air bleed.  I tried the door and it swung open a few inches.  It would have taken a team of oxen to open it any wider.  Perfect.  People were starting to arrive, so I held the right-hand door open for them.  Those exiting the wing were obliged to duck around the mullion. 

Right on cue, Kathy arrived.  Following the standard script, she went over to the left hand side and tried the door.  No dice.  She gave me a look that would melt steel as she swept through the right-hand door.  Mission accomplished.  I put the set screw back to its previous position, and joined the physics class.  Kathy avoided the left-hand door for weeks....

Dirty Trick #9 -- Office Space

One year on the 31st of March, I took care to put a 6mm hex wrench in my pocket before setting out for work.  After most people had gone home for the day, I went to the multi-purpose room and helped myself to a spare piece of cubicle wall.  I carried it up to my boss's cube and installed it in place of the gap that formed the entrance.

The next morning, Mikel strode down the hall, cut a quick dogleg to the left and ran smack into the newly-installed barrier.  I wasn't there to witness it, but he related the story to me later with a chuckle.