My fascination of dummies began during my misspent childhood. At our grandparents house, my two cousins and I constructed a life size dummy out of some old clothes we found in a shed. We left it in the still used outhouse, where it scared poor old granny half to death that night when she visited the outhouse in the dark. On reaching adulthood, I was employed at a plant that made office furniture. I worked in the warehouse on the night shift. The plant desperately needed more warehouse space, so they rented a few of the vacant buildings in town. One building was a three story structure with a freight elevator. One night another employee and I were hauling truckloads of stock to this building and stowing it away. As we finished, we explored the old building. in the boiler room, we found the makings of a splendid dummy. Old coveralls, several pairs of wore out rubber boots and other items. So, we built Sam, our dummy, and hung him under the freight elevator, leaving it up on the 3rd floor. The next morning, the day boss went to that building to check on the work we did the night before. He started the elevator to bring it to the ground floor. As it slowly came down, the feet and legs of "Sam" appeared, hanging under the elevator floor. That night, as my crew showed up for work, the day boss was there to greet us. He not so politely told us if we ever did something like that again, we were all fired. When I was working at the dry ice plant, Sam's brother was built. We called him "Pete". There was a man named Don on my crew. No one liked Don because he liked to rat on anyone for any real or imagined wrong. Don always parked his car at the far end of the lot, probably thinking no one would mess with it out there. We worked the 3rd shift, 11pm to 7am, and each of us took a 2 hour stint operating the ice presses, at the far end of the building. While Don was doing his turn on the presses, we assembled Pete and set him up behind the wheel of Don's car, which he couldn't lock. We told Don someone was here to see him and said he'd wait in Don's car, adding that he seemed mad. Don asked us to go out with him to see what the guy wanted. We all declined, saying we didn't want to get involved in something that may get us killed. Well, morning came, the plant managers both arrived, and we all left in our cars, except Don. He still couldn't see his car well enough to see who was in it, so he asked a manager if he would go out with him. That night Don wouldn't speak to us and when the managers arrived near the end of our shift, we were threatened with dismissal if we didn't stop picking on each other. That is my dummy story, up to now.
@Ike Willis , I bet when you were a youngster they called you a hand full. I got called that myself several times. Your story makes me wonder just what kind of messes all of us got ourselves into when we were young. I was a very curious and imaginative kid, and came up with a few bottom blistering escapes. Here in the South of Texas back in the fifties, many old wooden farm houses were built up on piers, because of the frequent floodings we experienced. Ours was up about three feet, and made a great place to play for small children. Back then we didn't have day care or baby sitters, so after school we just went home and did chores, homework, and just plan entertained ourselves, even in the summers. The time must have been July, because one day I found all the debris of the fire works display of the night before in the local park. Well I also found tuns of the old Black Cat fire crackers that didn't fire. So I collected every one I could find. Well I was remembering a cartoon where the coyote was making a bomb to catch the road runner. I got out some news papers and proceeded to empty everyone one of those misfired crackers into a pile in the center of the paper. I had about 1/2 of a cup of powder. I had Ben making candles for a couple of years, so the wick was no problem, and I rolled the two up like a burrito, and tied it with twine so that is was really tight. Then I lit the wick and ran for cover. It worked. Big boom and all. The problem came because I did it on the living room. Well the damage was pretty bad, and although I moved the couch over the area, my father figured it out. So of course I didn't sit easily for a couple of days.
Dummy Song I'll take the legs from some old table I'll take the arms from some old chair I'll take the neck from some old bottle And from a horse I'll take the hair I'll take the hands and face from some old clock And baby, when I'm through I'll get more loving from the dum, dum, dummy Than I ever got from you Get me some legs, get me a chair And a bottle, too Give me a horse, give me some time And baby, when I'm through I'll take the legs from some old table I'll take the arms from some old chair I'll take the neck from some old bottle And from a horse I'll take the hair I'll take the hands and face from some old clock And baby, when I'm through I'll get more loving from the dum, dum, dummy Than I ever got from you I get more loving From that dum, dum, dummy Than I've ever gotten from you Yeah, mama, get more loving From a dummy than I get from you SONGWRITERS LEW BROWN, BILLY ROSE, RAY HENDERSON
Those dummy stories are worth writing into an article maybe for kindle. What a mischievous guy you are, @Ike Willis and you went to the extent of involving the car of one of your crew. But if that Don was smart, and I don't think he is, he would have a hint of that dummy since it is in your character to do mischief. That dummy in the elevator is hilarious and your boss was just square. If I were him, I would probably appreciate the effort particularly if it was Halloween.
Thank you. Practical jokes sort of run in my family. My dad and granddad never let a chance to raise a ruckus go by. A lot of their penchant for fun must have rubbed off on me.
Loved your story, @Ike Willis ! I have a feeling that I'm going to be finding many more of these gems as I explore deeper into this forum I've already grown to love. My only dummy story isn't nearly as fun or exciting as yours. I was in charge of games for the family reunion about 35 years ago. Somewhere I got the idea in my head that I'd make a life-sized dummy for one of the games. I did... I named him Mortimer. He wore overalls and a blue plaid shirt. I sat him in a lawn chair and the game was for the ladies to throw a rolling pin at poor Mortimer. Had to solidly hit him to go to the next round. All was fine... until it came to my Auntie Gladys. She'd been having a problem with my uncle at the time and she said she was going to pretend poor Mortimer was my uncle. My dummy took a real beating that day... and Aunt Gladys won the prize for that game.
I told this story to my husband because he is also one guy who is fond of pranks like when he sees someone coming his way, he would hide and surprise the oncoming person with a loud boo. And it is common for him to create scary sounds when the night is still and quiet. You can imagine what he does for halloween, our housemaids surely got the scare of their lives every year. He created this halloween video as a re-enactment of his pranks.