Tipping over outhouses has long been a favorite Halloween prank. I don’t know how long it had been around, but when I was growing up in the 1950’s it was winding down. Not because kids were giving up the activity, but more because the use of outhouses was winding down.

I think this particular caper was our last, and we went out with a bang. This was our crowning glory. We didn’t think of it or plan it that way, that’s just how it happened.

We had a combination mom and pop store / gas station that was our favorite “loafing” place. I can recall many a lazy summer afternoon lounging out back telling stories and listening to the Cincinnati Reds baseball game on the radio. During lulls in the game, we would have “fly spitting contests.” The older men would chew tobacco and us younger kids would chew bubble gum. When a fly would land in the dirt, we would take turns demonstrating our spitting accuracy by trying to spit on the fly. (These were the good old days?) Some of the old guys were quite skilled at this and gave us something to aspire to. Anyway, I think I have wondered off the path of the original story.

The building itself was constructed in the New England “Saltbox” style. The front main part was a rectangle shape with a peaked roof running along the length . The rear section was covered with a sloping roof that tapered down to about five feet from the ground. This provided easy access to the roof.

One evening in late October we were engaged in our favorite activity, loafing, and were discussing Halloween plans. Naturally, the subject of tipping over an outhouse came up. We selected a target outhouse which was important because one too big required considerable effort and you ran the danger that during the last hard push to get it past the tipping angle someone might slip and end up……well you can imagine where.

We were doing our planning at our favorite loafing place, out behind the store. During the conversation someone looked up at the low slanted roof and commented about how easy it would be to get the outhouse up on the roof. All we needed was a couple of two by fours to use as a ramp, some rope and about six guys. Two could get up on the roof and pull with the rope and the other four push from below and we could slide it right up there.

From there we continued to refine our plans and came up with the idea of setting it upright on the peak of the building. We decided to accomplish this by nailing short two by fours to each corner of the outhouse and putting two on each side of the peak. They acted like legs to support the outhouse in an upright position on the peak of the roof. For icing on the cake, we attached a large sign that proclaimed “Mayor’s Office.”

The only thing we did wrong was to overestimate the difficulty in executing this plan.

On the selected night, our plans were finalized and the materials ready. The outhouse went over quite easily and with hardly a sound. The six of us picked it up and carried it off like pallbearers’ carrying a coffin. It only took a minute or two to attach the legs rope and sign. The two by fours were laid up to the roof and in another couple of minutes the outhouse was on the roof. From there we quickly moved it to the peak and stood it up. A few seconds later, we were off the roof and running to a place where we could set and bask in the glow our handiwork.

The next morning we congregated at our school bus stop, which happened to be in front of the store, and there it was in all it’s majesty in the early morning sunlight like a castle on the mountain top.

We went off to school as usual and when we returned that afternoon, it was still there. The only difference was a large sign in the store window that said “We know who done this, and if they come forward and removed the outhouse nothing would be said.” The outhouse and sign remained for about a week then one day we came home from school and the caper was over.

The outhouse and sign had been removed.

By John Slack, 2009

Syracuse during the Great Depression wasn’t the greatest place in the world, it was every man for himself and when the going gets tough, the tough gets going, or that’s the way it was with Topcoal, Stubby and the Rabbit.

Now the three men were great innovators, they were great motivators, they were great conservationists, they were great moonshiners.

Topcoal was the master moonshiner and after him came Stubby, who was running a close second. The Rabbit being several years younger inherited the job of keeping the fire going under the still.

Topcoal and Stubby loved to run trot line, a way of caching big fish, and the Ohio river was full of big fish, a tasty meal for three moonshiners setting around the still in the evening. Fish could also be traded for a lot of good veggies from time to time.

Now here is the scenario. In the spring they would load up Topcoal’s sixteen foot jon boat with fishing equipment and ever thing they need to make moonshine and head up river, say twenty or twenty five miles, where it nice and quiet.

Now in those days there weren’t any roads that ran up into that territory, so making shine wasn’t much of a risk. Now as the story unfolds we find Topcoal in the jon boat looking the line and after catching several big fish, he look down river and saw a motor boat coming toward him.

When it got closer to him he realized it was a game warden from Gallipolis, Ohio, who was at least four or five hours from his headquarters. The game warden came along the boat and asked to see Topcoal’s fishing license, and was told they were back in camp.

The game warden told Topcoal to finish hooking the line and he would check his license when he got back to camp, which he did. After pulling in several big fish he dropped the line back into the water and the game warden took Topcoa and the jon boat in tow and headed toward camp

Upon tying off the boat, Topcoal hollered up to Stubby, who was tending the still, to bring down his fishing license and “put a shell in both barrels.” And with that the game warden let loose of Topcoals boat, shoved back from the dock, started his motor and returned downstream the way he came,  and that was the end of that.

1955 (or there abouts) in Syracuse, Ohio, a town located in Meigs County, Sutton Twp to be exact, an Ohio river town– just like a lot of other river towns at the same time period I will be referring to in this writing endeavor.

Not too many people punched time cards those days, most people found work where ever it could be found and a lot of people had no work to be found though a little moonshine or cold bottle of home brew, however, always seemed to be available.

Now there were a few men in town who were pretty good roof painters and could make a pretty good living during the summer, but occasionally one or two “wannabes” would manage to do one or two roofs every now and then, mostly for beer money, and this was the case with Cracker Belly and his friend.

Now as I write, I don’t make a habit of using real names, however I will say this other gentleman was a fair roof painter, a man of normal height and weight, but on the other hand, Cracker Belly was a tall, slim man with quite long legs and arms, with a small beer belly–my guess is if he was to turn sideways and stick out his tongue he would look like a zipper, and if he squatted down he resemble a big spider.

Now here is the scene.  The day started dry and hot right off in the morning, and if you know anything about painting roofs , this is exactly how you want it to be when doing this kind of work. Now this house being about a story and a half tall with a sharp pitch to the roof sort of leads me to believe this had something to do with these two second rate roof painters getting the job in the first place.

About four hours into the job Cracker Belly is standing up on the peak of the roof getting ready to paint another section down the roof when there is a loud scream ,and the other gentleman working there on the roof jerked his head around then he quickly brought his hat around just in time to see Cracker Belly sliding down the roof like a skier at the Olympics, sailing right out into thin air, violently flapping his arms, trying to fly, before hitting the ground.

Now when he hit the ground flat footed, his long legs acted like two long spring loaded stilts, and his knees came up to his chin and his butt hit the ground and he never moved, he set there in that possession just like he was planted there, and his buddy made his way down to the ground as quick as possible and started calling for help but as he raced to Cracker Belly’s aid fearing the worst , Cracker Belly slowly started stretching out one arm working his fingers and arm a little, the he done the other arm the same way, then he set back on his butt and slowly stretched flexing one leg and ankle, then he done the same to the other leg and after deciding ever thing was in place and working he slowly got up stretching everything out, making sure everything thing wase working right, leaving his equipment laying on the ground.

He never looked back, and to the best of my knowledge, his roof painting days were over.

Just two years earlier it had reached a milestone in its march into the modern world, its dirt and gravel streets had been “chipped and sealed.” Not much ever happened there. The most exciting event in years was when Mayor Harvey “Longbelly” Tunner caught his foreskin in his fly when taking a leak out behind the Baptist’s annual tent meeting.

Mary Himen was born there, and had not been more than fifty miles away in all of her thirty eight years. As a child, she was shy and introverted, but by adulthood had acquired a reputation as an individualist with a wackey tilt. Following the death of her parents, she became—to use the vernacular of one old timer—“as kooky as a left handed crank shaft.”

By late summer of 1953, Mary had taken to closing herself into her parents house and not emerging for days on end. No one knew what went on in there, however, after the “incident” was over it took several pickup truck loads to haul away the empty tin cans, wine bottles and her leftover stash of “Wackey Tabacky.” Marijuana made her horny as hell.

Marijuana was not well  known in that part of Ohio in 1953. However, in looking back I realize it not only grew there, it was extremely prolific. We simply did not recognize it. We call  it “pigweed” because it flourished in the wet muddy areas around pig sties. As a young kid who worked summers on the farm, I hated the stuff. It was a hot, dirty, never ending job to keep it cut down and burned. The smoke had a very distinct smell, years later, this forgotten smell would trigger a flood of memories rushing back into my consciousness. I was a young fireman in a drug recognition class. The instructor burned some marijuana acquaint us with the smell and I instantly recognized the smell of “pigweed.”

It was a hot lazy summer day in early August. Roy “Rabbit” Swift (the nickname resulting from his sexual tendencies) had returned a few days earlier from a two year hitch in the army. Early that morning while looking for something to occupy himself, he chanced upon Mary and they promptly settled into her house for the day. They spent the morning “smoking and jokin” and passing the bottle, and by noontime Mary was hotter than a Mexican taco. The action became hot and heavy, but just two steps out of the starting blocks, Rabbit went down in flames. Mary flipped. Grabbing her father’s shotgun and quickly loading it, she directed a few blasts in Rabbit’s direction as he beat a hasty retreat out the back door. The shots did very little damage, however, they did prompt a call to the county sheriff’s office.

Sheriff Henry “Stubby” Miles and his Chief Deputy Matthew “Misery” Ducker were in the cell area playing poker with a couple of the prisoners. They immediately sprang into action. Grabbing the radio mike, Stubby dispatched his two Deputies, Bill “Bug Dust” Barellie and Dexter “Crackerbelly” Betz to the scene.

By the time they arrived, Mary had climbed about halfway up the hillside behind the house to a deserted chicken coop and had barricaded herself inside.

Syracuse is fondly described by the local residents as being “four miles long and just as far back as you can see.” which was two blocks. The town is perched snugly between the river bank and the steep slope of a high hill. It just two short blocks from the riverbank to State Route 124 which is carved into the hillside along the northern edge, and in the area of the Mary’s house a concrete wall about five feet high had been constructed hold back the hill. Her house is located on a sloping lot which begins at the top of the wall and extends back to about halfway up the side of the hill. The chicken coop is located at the back edge of the lot at an elevation of about three hundred feet above the highway.

When the deputies drove up, Mary blasted a round in their general direction. They dove out of the cruiser and took shelter behind the wall. Bug Dust, who had grown up with Mary decided to talk her down.

He stuck his head up over the top of the wall and appealed to her as a childhood friend to lay down her gun. Her reply was both immediate and to the point. The buckshot tore up the sod about six feet in front of Bug Dust’s face covering it with dirt and chewed up pieces of grass. With that, they decided that a call for reinforcements would be both proper and prudent.

Stubby and Misery arrived about twenty minutes later and joined the two deputies behind the wall. Stubby wasted no time, and after quickly accessing the situation, took decisive action. He called out the local Syracuse Volunteer Fire Department whose station was located a block away. Being the middle of the day, the alarm was answered by two retired farmers, the local minister and four housewives. They decided to remain in the station house and see what developed.

What developed was nothing much. Every now and then one of the deputies would peek up over the wall and this would immediately elicit a shotgun blast from Mary. It appeared to be a standoff. The sun was climbing higher in the sky and what little shade there was had since disappeared. The four law officers were sweating and cursing; the volunteer fire department was getting bored, a small crowd of onlookers were gathering and then the two prisoners showed up. Stubby and Misery had left in such a hurry they forgot to lock the cell door. The two prisoners, curious about what was happening, had decided to hitchhike the seven miles to the scene where they promptly joined the deputies behind the wall. At this point, Stubby once again sprang into action—he called for assistance from the two neighboring counties.

By the time additional help arrived, the local Ladies Aid Society, assisted by members of the Garden Club, were preparing sandwiches and cold drinks and had the two prisoners running them up to the wall. The situation was becoming desperate. Finally, a plan of action was agreed upon.

Heavy brush and rocks located just below and to the right of the chicken coop would provide good cover. Misery would crawl from behind the wall using a drainage ditch and make his way up and around an adjacent house. After going around the house he would then sneak into the heavy cover and creep undetected up to the front of the chicken coop. This was accomplished without incident, however, Misery then discovered that the coop was raised about two feet off the ground and that he could only see Mary’s legs. He couldn’t continue without being detected and retreat was out of the question as a hundred pair of eyes were focused upon him and with each passing minute he could feel the pressure mounting. He was sweating profusely, and struggling to control the panic welling up within him. He had to do something. Finally, frustration prevailed. He drew his service revolver, took aim and shot Mary in the left knee cap.

With this development, the local fire department sprang into action. They rolled both pumpers and their ambulance. What followed was a rescue operation of epic proportion. When it was over, Misery was a local hero, the fire department had generated a run report for the year and Mary had been safely deposited in the State Mental Hospital.

Misery went on to become to become a well known county sheriff’s deputy and Mary became a local legend  forever after known as “Marywana Himes.”

In fact, the barrel was so long that I had to buy two hunting licenses because when I swung it around to shoot, the barrel extended clear into the next county. I saved on ammunition, though, because many times I didn’t need to shoot. I could just reach out with the gun and club them to death. Once when hunting pheasant with several friends, we flushed up a large bird and everyone took a turn shooting at it. They all missed.

By the time it was my turn, the pheasant was two counties away. It was not a problem, I took deliberate aim and fired. The pheasant dropped immediately. I was very pleased until I discovered it took me two days to hike over to pick it up. Also wore out my best hunting boots. After I acquired my gun, I went looking for a good dog. An old guy down the street offered me one of the puppies from a new litter his dog just had.

Well, I took the puppy home and thought I had a fine hunting dog. It turned out to be a wired haired terrier. I was rather dismayed until I discovered that this terrier had a real talent and persistence in running rabbits. It would run a rabbit for days, if you weren’t able to shoot it, it would run that rabbit until it eventually dropped dead from exhaustion.

This terrier developed a reputation that was soon known by rabbits for miles around. They knew that if this terrier got on their trail, they just bought the farm. After I had gotten my gun, and my dog trained I arranged a hunting trip with my best friend. However, the night before the trip, we had the worst storm that part of the country had ever seen. The wind blew so hard that it stretched the telephone line so far that the next morning when I tried to call my friend next door I had to pay for a long distance call. It was so cold that morning that when I went out and tried to whistle for my dog nothing came out. I started to go back in, and I noticed these blue marbles lying in the snow. I was curious, so I picked them up and took them in and lay them on the table. After they warmed up, they suddenly vanished with a quick flash and a loud whistle.

Well, we went out hunting, and in just a few minutes my dog was on the trail of a rabbit. Now this rabbit, knowing my dog’s reputation, decided it had to take desperate measures. After they had run around in about a 20 mile circle, the rabbit spotted the sawmill that was busy sawing logs. The rabbit, figuring that it could jump higher that the dog, lined itself up with the blade and without skipping a beat, leaped right over the blade. The dog didn’t jump high enough and the blade sliced him right in half. I hated to see the rabbit get away with that, so I ran over and grabbed the two halves and slapped them back together and the dog took off after the rabbit again. the only problem was that in my haste, I got two legs up and two down.

This worked out for the best though. That dog would run rabbits on two legs until he got tired, then he would flip over and run on the other two.

I had been having a good time asking friends to smell it and watching their reactions.  That didn’t last long as everyone got wise fast, so I had to find another angle. We were going to the town dump to get a little “batting practice,” where we would take turns pitching and hitting empty tin cans. I happened upon this really ornate perfume bottle that after cleaning it up it looked like it once held some very expensive perfume. When it came to this kind of stuff, I had a mind like a steel trap. I immediately recognized the usefulness of what one could do with this bottle and some “rotten egg” water.

That night I filled the perfume bottle with this rotten egg water. (it was a nice yellow color)  and the next morning it went off to school with me. During the first recess, I was rerunning the “smelling” with my friends. They all thought it was funny as they expected a sweet smelling perfume.

At lunch time I continued with this fun. I hadn’t really gotten started yet when up walks the most popular girl in the school. Without thinking, I asked her if she would like to check out this perfume I had. She said “sure” so I gave her the bottle. Instead of smelling it, she poured some into her hand and started to rub it onto her face and neck. I’m not sure what came out of her mouth but I think it was a combination of a curse word and a gag. She threw the bottle down, made a few choice comments to me and headed for the girls restroom, which, by the way was in a separate building out back of the school.

Well, I made an effort to avoid her the rest of the day and the incident seemed to have been forgotten. The next morning it was school as usual. When this girl arrived, she had a box of chocolate fudge she had made the previous night and offered some to all the boys.

By mid morning, there was a major run on the facilities located out back of the school. During the day, the boys made repeated runs  the house out back.

Turns out, she didn’t get mad–she just quietly got even. That home made fudge was heavily laced with ex-lax.

Mrs. McCoy became widowed in the fall of 1955, and by late summer of 1956 Lige decided to court her. Age-wise, they were in their mid to late sixties. Physically, both were slowing down a lot and Lige had become very hard of hearing.

When Lige started courting, he went at it full bore and showed up every night. He lived about five miles away in Racine, Ohio. He drove an old car; I think it was about a 1936 Plymouth or Chevrolet. He would arrive about 6 PM and leave about 11 PM.

Us boys (and sometimes a few girls) would congregate somewhere and spend the evening bored as hell. We were always looking for something exciting to do, which tended to precipitate our little capers. Quite often we would all end up on one friend’s back porch which had a good view of Mrs. McCoy’s back yard where Lige would pull up and park in the grass which prompted about an hour of teenage jokes regarding old folks and sex…

I don’t remember how this one started but about 10 PM we got the idea of jacking up Lige’s car and putting it up on blocks. This was pretty exciting stuff and we didn’t want to be messing around there very long so we did a little brain storming about how we might pull this off. We found a 10 foot 2”x 6” and some cement blocks and decided we could use the 2”x 6” board and a cement block with the board run under the back bumper and over a cement block stood on end. We got the contraption set up on the right rear and four or five boys on the end of the board we found we could easily lift the car up about six inches, which was plenty high enough.

One of the guys got a block and when we lifted the car he slid the cement block under the axel. With the block stood on end, the height was just perfect to keep the tire about one quarter of an inch off of the ground. The grass was about one inch high and you couldn’t tell that the tire was not still on the ground. Since this operation took less than two minutes, we decided to do the other side as well.

With the operation complete, we retired to our friend’s back porch to await Lige’s departure.

About twenty till eleven it started to rain; not hard, but just a steady drizzle which was enough to have the ground good and wet when Lige came out to leave. He gets into his car and starts it up as usual. He puts it into reverse and lets out the clutch. All that happened was the engine races but the car didn’t move. He then tried first gear with the same result. He then tried alternating forward and reverse, but nothing happened. We were about 200 feet away and having a hell of a time not snickering loud enough to be heard. One kid was having such a hard time of not laughing that he accidentally passed gas so loud we thought it could have been heard five blocks away.  Lige, being so hard of hearing never heard a sound.

Well, after a couple on minutes, Lige gets out of the car with a flashlight and goes around the car looking at the wheels. The grass made everything look normal, so he gets back into the car and goes through the same routine for another couple of minutes, sometimes racing the engine so fast we thought he was going to throw a piston rod.

Finally, he gets out again and goes around the car with his flashlight. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, but this time he got down and looked under the car. Low and behold, here it was, setting up nicely on blocks. I believe this was the only time we ever heard Lige swear and once he got started he did a super job of it.

He goes back in the house and comes out again in a few minutes with a small hand spade and crawls under the car and starts digging out from under the blocks to take the car’s weight off of them. Apparently he didn’t have a jack. Watching him lay there in the rain digging with his little spade we started feeling really bad that we had done this to this old man. Finally, a couple of the braver kids just “happened” to be going by and noticed his predicament and volunteered to help him dig out. It was very difficult for these “innocent” kids to keep a serious face as he went on at great length about the terrible brigands that would do something like this. They got him dug out and gratefully on his way in a few minutes.

Lige continued to court Mrs. McCoy for about another six months when they finally got married and he moved in with her where they lived happily for several years.

On their wedding night, the whole town turned out for the traditional “belling,” but that will be a subject for another installment.

The way we hunted was to split up so we wouldn’t be competing with each other.  Dave stayed up near the top of the hill; John went to the right and about halfway down the hill. I went to the left and also about half way down. We settled in to the routine of “still” hunting and had been there about a half hour when we heard Dave fire off about three fast shots.  I thought “Well, Dave got something and settled down again.”

All of a sudden we hear something coming crashing through the brush and Dave yelled and screamed to high heaven. Suddenly we saw Dave running full bore out into the open. He flipped his shotgun up into the air and it comes down barrel first and sticks in the ground like a spear.  He’s on a dead run, waving his arms about his head. He doesn’t slow down, but keeps on trucking all the way out of the woods, and apparently all the way home.

We picked up his gun and the barrel was plugged half the length with mud. Later as we were going home we stopped by his house to find out what happened. His head was swelled up and covered with red bumps.

After he settled down, Dave said that he had noticed a dead tree with a hole in which there was a lot of bee activity. He decided that, since he hadn’t found anything else to shoot at, he would shoot some bees. He stuck the barrel into the hole and gave them three quick blasts. Immediately a whole lot of severely pissed off bees came flying out set on revenge. This precipitated Dave’s rather hasty exit from the area.

His final comment on the event was, “I’m not going to shoot any more bees.”