You Tricked Me

I cannot remember the first time someone pulled a trick on me.  I’m pretty sure it was my dad.  Tricks are part of the learning process of life.  I come from a family of tricksters.  My extended families: Hopper’s, Chapman’s, Crumpton’s, Dutton’s, Waldrop’s, Smith’s, Barnett’s, and Clark’s are well schooled in the art of trickery.

One memorable time was on a visit to my Dutton cousins.  They were poor as we were and found entertainment with simple things.  They told me that they wanted to show me something in the woods behind their house.  Following cousins Floyd, Wayne, Larry, and Danny in the woods was fun and exciting.  They were more like older brothers than cousins.

As we trekked up the trail, I paid more attention to my surroundings than I did where I was going.  Suddenly I stepped and I disappeared into a gigantic hole.  I found myself looking up at four laughing cousins peering down.  I felt like a trapped animal about to be speared to death.  They retried me from the hole and showed me how they built the trap.

The hole was formed by stump of a large tree that either had rotted or had been removed for the resin it possessed.  They had placed rotten pine sticks over the hole and then covered the sticks with pine straw.  They showed me how they stepped around the hole allowing me to step into hole. I couldn’t wait to get home and build one for some unsuspecting soul.

School was another place where tricks were fun.  My senior year there was a mump epidemic.  I had already had them.  One of my favorite teachers, Ms. Harvey, was an old maid that had never had the mumps.  I had her for advanced math.

The principal and biology teacher enlisted Tony, my friend and future brother-in-law, to pull a prank on Ms. Harvey.  They gave us some bubble gum, which was prohibited in class, and instructed us to hold the bubble gum in our jaws resembling the mumps.

We went to advanced math and did as directed.  I held my face on my desk and got my face hot and red as did Tony.  Ms. Harvey summoned Tony and me to her desk where she felt our faces to check for fever.  With classmates in cahoots with us, when Ms. Harvey asked if I was okay, classmates told Ms. Harvey that my brothers had the mumps.  They were really home with them!

Ms. Harvey ordered us out.  She was terrified she would catch the mumps.  A couple of our friends pretended they were sick, and she told them to go to the office.  Back then there was no school nurse.

When Tony and I arrived at the office and informed the principal and the biology teacher, they laughed and applauded our diabolical deed.  They told us to return to class and tell Ms. Harvey. 

Ms. Harvey did not appreciate out Academy Award acting debut and became livid.  We told about the scheme orchestrated by the principle and biology teacher.  She said they would never do such an evil thing and expelled us from class.

When we told the principle and biology teacher, they realized their blunder and accused us of taking the trick too far.  Tony and I got demerits.  The joke was on us as the principal and biology teacher put the blame on us.

The cement plant was a perfect place for tricks.  When I operated the cement kilns my oiler and I made a deal about losing weight.  We decided that the first one to lose twenty pounds would be treated to a steak supper and all the fixings by the loser.

I told him to bring a set of scales to the burner floor, and we would weigh and record our weight at the end of our work week and the first shift to the new week.  We worked seven midnight shifts from Wednesday through the following Tuesday and were off two days.  Then we worked seven evening shifts from Friday through the following Thursday and were off Friday.  Day shift started Saturday and went to Friday, and we were off to Wednesday midnight.

My oiler got the scales, and we stated our weight loss competition.  What he did not know was that the scales were used to weigh raw materials.  The scales design was conducive for me to put my little finger on a rod that connected the counterbalance weights and slide that determined our weight.  When we weighed before being off, I made him weigh less.  When we returned, I made him weigh more.  His weight was fluctuating twenty pounds, and it was driving him crazy.

He accused me of cheating that is why I had my hands were where he could see them.  He never realized that my little finger was on the rod that controlled the counterweights.  I carried on the deception for several months.  Our coworkers told me I should be ashamed.

Finally, I showed Allen, my oiler, how I controlled him.  He laughed after giving me a big cussing and threatened to kill me.  

Last year, thirty years later, I had the privilege to baptize him.  Thanks, Allen, for your friendship.

 

The Bible has plenty of tricksters. Here is one from the Book of Joshua 9:3-8 KJV

 

And when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done unto Jericho and to Ai,

They did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles, old, and rent, and bound up;

And old shoes and clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them; and all the bread of their provision was dry and mouldy.

And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto him, and to the men of Israel, We be come from a far country: now therefore make ye a league with us.

And the men of Israel said unto the Hivites, Peradventure ye dwell among us; and how shall we make a league with you?

And they said unto Joshua, We are thy servants. And Joshua said unto them, Who are ye? and from whence come ye? 

“The Truth Sets You Free”

It was a beautiful Saturday morning with birds singing and sounds of the morning playing throughout God wonderful creation.  Arriving at the cement plant for the start of seven-day dayshift, the beautiful melody of creation drowned in the sea of man-made noise.  As kilns roared, fans screamed, gears squeaked, and metal balls clanged it was the start of a new day.

AD, MC, and I were the cement kilns crew.  Gathered in the control with the shift we were relieving, we discussed what we needed to do.  My role of the three amigos was starting and testing the auxiliary diesel engine at the lake where all the return water from cooling machinery settled.

As I reached for the exit door, AD said, “Take all the food out of the refrigerator, and throw it away.”  The four crews that operated the cement kilns used the fridge to preserve and share.  Anything left in it was fair game to be eaten.  Saturday morning was the designated day to clean the fridge.

I collected the sandwiches and a lone apple.  On the way to the recycling lake, I saw a group/flock of magpies.  I grew up poor and we went without food on an occasion or two while dad was on layoff or without work, so throwing away food was a “SIN” for me.  I finished eating the apple to the core and tossed it to the magpies.  I unwrapped one sandwich from wax paper and took a second out of a plastic bag.  I tore the sandwiches apart to disperse them among the magpies.  There was no truck available, so I had to “hoof it” the half mile out to the lake and back.

When I rounded the corner of the ball mill building, I saw MC gathering up the remnant of food that those no good for nuthin’, ungrateful magpies refused to eat.  MC was tossing the last pieces in a dumpster when I saw “KILLER,” the most feared man in the plant. 

The Killer was Joe Killingsworth, the production manager of the plant. He was more powerful than the plant manager was.  I witnessed men in the plant running to hide and trembling in fear when the Killer was walking in the plant, which he did at all times.  Lookouts tried around the clock to spot Killer sneaking into the plant to catch some weary soul not doing his job and give the guilty worker a royal chewing. My shift foreman would visibly be shaken, as Killer would chew him out.

Killer stood before me with arms crossed and his face blood red like some Saturday morning cartoon character.  MC worked like a slave threatened by a cruel master.

I could not imagine what frightened MC.  MC did not fear much.

Killer looked me in the eye and asked, “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO THREW THAT FOOD ON THE GROUND?”

I remember rocking from the balls of my feet, to the heels, then forward as to step on my tiptoes saying, “I did.”

Killer was notorious for throwing his hardhat across the floor and cussing so bad that would make a Corinthian sailor blush.  I knew that he loved to embarrass and humiliate people, especially his shift foreman.  I saw him reaching for his hardhat and thought here it comes.

He picked his hardhat from his head, almost tossed it, but slowly lowered it to his head and the blood began to seep from his face.  He said, “Do you have any earthly idea how much we spend in the plant to kill rats.” 

I knew it was not the time to respond with a Hopper wisecrack, but I did think to myself that whatever the price that they were wasting money.  The rats were so large that they could carry metal lunch boxes in their mouths as witnessed by several of my co-workers.  They looked like muskrats or opossums with file like tails.

I was smart enough to reply, “No sir.”  He said, “We spend $2,200 each month to kill rats and you’re feeding them. Why did you do such a stupid thing?”

I said, “I grew up poor and there were times when there was no food in the house.  For me it is a sin to throw food away.”

Thinking I was to be fired I waited for “YOU’RE FIRED, GET OUT OF HERE.”

I looked at him and said, “What do you want me to do?”

He calmly said, “Go to work and quit feeding the rats.  I said, “Yes sir.”

MC, still nervous and watching the despicable debacle take place, walked over and said, “He was going to fire you.  He asked me who done it.  I told him that I didn’t know, but that I would get it up and throw it away.”

Killer liked AD.  When AD asked Killer what he did to me, he said nothing except tell me to stop feeding the rats.  Killer said, “I had every intention to fire him but Hopper looked me in the eye and told me the truth.  I couldn’t fire a man who was truthful to me.”

Killer took a personal liking to me and trained me to be a kiln burner.  He recruited me to be one of his shift supervisors.  When I surrendered into the ministry, he encouraged me.

Before Killer died a couple of years ago, I saw him twice, both times at funerals.

I walked up to him and said, “If you wasn’t such an old man, I would roll you all over this parking lot.”  I can’t write in this article what he said, but when I told him who I was he said, “Good to see you boy.  You still preaching?”



And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32 KJV)