Bill apparently always had an ability to annoy or provoke. I wasn’t around for his childhood, but the story I heard a few times was once when he was just a kid, he found his way to a roof where a crew was shingling. When he failed to show up for dinner, his father set out to find him. Bill was spread-eagled on the roof with nails through his shirt sleeves and pant cuffs, where the roofers left him when they left for their noon break. I don’t think they did that so he would be sure to be there when they got back.
His childhood is filled with such
stories. The only other one I can think
of was when he got tired of someone getting into his locker at school and
taking stuff out of it. Somehow, he smuggled
an automobile battery and horn (readily available at his Dad’s garage) into
school and into his locker. He wired it
so when the locker door was opened, a switch connected the battery and the
horn. He had some way of disarming the
alarm when he opened the door, but an unsuspecting burglar would not know how
to do that.
Sure enough, during class time, somebody
got excused from class and went into the
hall and opened Bill’s locker. The auto
horn blaring continuously in the hall would have been hard to ignore. Bill got into some trouble over that one.
There were other stories, such as
hoisting an outhouse to the top of a building in the center of town on
Halloween, or cutting kitties with his car on the ice of Lake Atwood, that I
don’t know enough about to tell. But I
am quite familiar with his shenanigans as a teacher at the high school. One I have already recounted: (https://50farm.blogspot.com/2020/01/flatulence.html)
Another one already recounted was the story
of installing his vent pipe in his remodeled utility room. http://50farm.blogspot.com/2017/02/bills-vent-pipe.html
One that I shared at the funeral involved
a weight-loss contest between Bill and another teacher. They both wanted to lose weight, so somehow
it evolved into a bet on who could lose the most in something like three
months.
They agreed to weigh in every so often to see
how they were doing. They would meet before school in
the wrestling room and use the official scale the wrestlers use to qualify in
their weight bracket. Bill always got
there first. Tom didn’t think much about
that until one day he arrived earlier than Bill was expecting him.
He caught Bill in the act of dropping bags
of shotgun pellets into his boot tops.
Why would he do that? Why would
he want to weigh more if the contest was to weigh less?
Bill always said “Never play the other guy’s
game. You can’t win at that.” He certainly had different rules for this contest. The idea was to give Tom a false sense of
security. Then, towards the end, Bill
could gradually make the contest look closer, until the last day when he could
jettison all the ballast and win hands down.
I think.
When Bill had to weigh with the lead
out, he was actually ahead. The contest
then kicked into high gear. Bill
eventually won.
The stakes in the bet were a dinner for
four, spouses included, paid for by the loser, which in this case was not the
biggest loser. Arrangements were made
and the four of them travelled together to a nice restaurant.
As the hostess led them to their table,
Tom slapped Bill on the back and said, “Congratulations, Bill. You won.”
What he really did was stick a piece of paper on Bill’s back. The waitstaff had been alerted to this whole
thing, so nobody said anything as they walked to and were seated at their
table.
As the meal came towards an end, a
waitress came up to Bill and said, “Sir, you have something stuck to the back
of your shirt. May I remove it?” Bill readily agreed. The waitress pulled the sign off his shirt
and handed it to Bill.
The paper said, “I Did It With an Enema.”
