Fight the Power!
by David Benzion · 07/11/2006 9:50 amA Krystal up in Denton has got its balloon back.
(DallasNews.com)The big hot-air balloon, complete with blower and tie-downs, disappeared from in front of the newly opened hamburger restaurant sometime between July 1 and 4. [Franchise owner David] Friedman filed a police report, but he also offered a no-questions-asked reward for its safe return. [snip]
Chelsie Hutto delivered the hot hot-air contraption to Mr. Friedman on Saturday night. She didn’t steal it, she said, but she knew who did. She held Friedman to his "no-questions-asked" promise, and he handed over the first installment of her reward – the first bag of 12 burgers of the 52 bags she earned.
"They were just stupid boys being boys," said Ms. Hutto, a student at the University of North Texas. "Just regular, goofy boys. I don’t really know what they are thinking, if they were thinking at all."
Ms. Hutto learned from a friend that the thieves, acquaintances of hers, had the now-famous purloined balloon.
"I didn’t give them an option. I said, ‘Hey, I’m taking the balloon back.’ They told me I’m giving it to ‘the man,’ and ‘the man’ wants the balloon back, and I said, no, my stomach wants the balloon back. I’m a college student, and free food for a year is too good to pass up."
There’s a honey-baked ham shop on FM 1960 near Champions Forest. I don’t know the exact name of the store; as you might expect, I’m not exactly a frequent customer.
Anyway, every Christmas/Easter they put up this big-ole-freaking pink balloon pig out front. It must be at least 20 feet high, and looks just like a big, fat inflatable piggy bank.
Many years ago I was driving past the store on a stormy Sunday morning, and the straps holding that pig down were getting a serious workout. The pig looked like a rodeo bull, whapping up and down and back and forth. I mean, this baby was just crying out to "FLY, FLY AWAY AND BE FREEEEEEE!!!!"
Just imagining what it would look like to see that sucker roll down FM 1960 towards Kuykendahl– like a scene out of some psychedelic Godzilla movie– is enough to make me chuckle still today. We can all be grateful I didn’t have a pair of gardening shears in my trunk at the time.
Remember, this was many years ago. I’ve matured since then. Or at least become more fearful of losing my money, liberty and "reputation," such as it is. Stay in school. Don’t unleash gigantic inflatable pigs down major thoroughfares on windy days. Hugs not drugs.
And since I’m still not certain what the statute of limitations is in Ohio, there will be no further comment as to how a 300 pound life-sized ceramic cow once made its way from Young’s Jersey Dairy to the cafeteria roof-top of Antioch College.
There’s not really a point to this post, other than to provide a platform for readers to anonymously reveal and share similar type juvenile (but not genuinely destructive) pranks they might have engaged in when they were young.
Because it’s important to remember to never let "The Man" get you down.
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To the rooftop of the college ?
Thats almost as bad as when we put the Lt.s renault upstairs in the briefing room
In the Summer of 1982 in Toledo, Ohio a 9th grade English teacher had her house peppered by a barrage of bottle rockets left over from 4th of July. I have no idea who would do such a thing.
If some unidentified party ever changes their mind about that, please have that unidentified party give me some advance notice so I can be there with the video camera.
:->
I and my intellectual equivilant are the reason that you curse when you get the shopping cart with the bunged up wheel. We used to, as underage deliquents, take a car to a grocery store parking lot at night and put a cart in front of our car, touching the bumper. We would then drive as fast as we could as long as we could and then slam on the breaks. The cart would keep travelling at high speed and hit whatever curb we were aiming for. I am not sure why but a cart hitting a curb and flying into the air was extremely hilarious.
Um, this is not exactly “anonymous”…
By the way, I know the pig in which you speak. For some reason a vision out of Ghostbusters came to me in your description instead of Godzilla.
After accidentally and somewhat propitiously finding out that my house key worked as a master key in my high school, the pranksters and I became good acquaintenances. I will not say, in writing, that I actively participated in any of the pranks, but I was definitely present for many of the results.
The best was probably Charlie Daniels (his real name, by the way). He would check out the government teacher’s locked file of past papers that she had kept. Charlie would buy a padlock identical to the padlock on the cabinet. He would then render the actual lock inoperative with the help of a pair of bolt cutters, and remove some papers for inclusion in his inventory for his side business, namely, “rent an ‘A’ paper.”
Anyway, he would then replace said inoperative padlock with an identical lock (except the key or combination was different, most likely). The teacher never found out how we kept breaking her locks.
Any rumors that her final exam was similarly purloined and mimeographed and made available are purely conjecture and slanderous, unless proof can be presented.
If I had seen that pig heading down 1960, my first reaction would be that it was some sort of Pink Floyd promo.
If anybody else used to watch Monty Python’s three decades ago, you’d have to remember the Pink Floyd commercial (for Animals) with that infatable pig floating over London that aired at least twice during each Python’s episode.
This is too funny. I got a great laugh from this, thanks David!
One night our H.S. rival, the Natalia Mustangs had someone let 10 horses who were evidently well fed loose on their football field. Evidently, these horses had been holding thing in prior to their release but soon let things that they had been holding in go. Mostly around midfield. Thankfully, we played at our stadium that year.
Then there was the time that Mr. Matthews ‘68 Chevy p/u got into the main hallway in front of the principal’s office.
I, of coarse, have no earthly idea how either of these two incidents occured.
#8 TXAggie87
Our cross-town rival was “Frank W. Cox High School.” Of course, we just called it “Cox High School.”
We’d go to the games, and get on their side of the stadium, cheering for their team. We couldn’t remember their mascot, so we called them the “Uckers.”
We happily cheer: “Go, Uckers, go! Go, Uckers, go! Go, Cox Uckers!”
For some reason, this never went down well with them.
My senior year someone stole our rivals schools big plastic bull, (it fit nicely in that barn with those cows) then someone contact cemented a toilet painted the school colors to thier front steps and welded a rebel flag to thier flag pole.
The next afternoon 75 greased up baby pigs were let loose in thier hallways.
Friggin school went and started locking the minor exit doors during school hours and posting a guard at the front entrance after that.
I still have photos of them chasing those baby pigs (taken through the windows)
Lets see here….
Fill 25 plastic water bottles with ten pieces of dry ice each and securely cap. Leave the bottles at all the houses in the neighborhood who let their dogs use your yard as their personal toilet. See the fun from 2AM to 3AM, or at least that is what I have been told.