A key part of the Dairy was a plant where milk, buttermilk, sour cream, and cream were processed, pasteurized, bottled, and sold along with bread, soda, cookies, cottage cheese, butter, ice cream (also made on-site), potato chips, and various other food items. The Dairy functioned in the surrounding neighborhood as a medium-sized but specialized grocery store. Bob J. and my brother, Jack, worked as clerks in the “Dairy store” and I as a clerk in the adjoining “Ice Cream store.” The Ice Cream store was much like a small Dairy Queen, featuring soft-serve ice milk products. I liked working there much better than in the Dairy store because through mid-Fall, Winter, and into early Spring you could study nearly all afternoon and night and not be bothered by too many customers. Naturally, the rest of the year was balls to the wall busy but the longer slow season more than made up for it, at least in my eyes.
Stuart was another Dairy clerk we used to go drinking with after work. He was a little older, maybe by five years, and distinctly blue-collar in social status and prospects. But a fun guy. He was short and wry, with thin brown hair and a sharp, ferret face. And a tough as nails ex-Navy guy, or so was the image he projected. He loved to play practical jokes on his co-workers. On more than one occasion he zinged me good and proper.
To understand the best practical joke Stuart played on me you have to realize that the two facilities, the Ice Cream store and the Dairy proper, were separate buildings joined by a common wall. But no doors connected the buildings. To go from one to the other you had to exit through the front door of one store, go outside to the sidewalk on Jefferson Avenue
However, one small window in the wall of the Dairy store overlooked the back of the Ice Cream store. Because of a five or six foot drop in elevation between the two buildings, the window, which was only about two by three feet in size, was high over the area where Bob H., another Dairy employee, made gallons of ice cream in the Ice Cream store. The ice cream was measured into one-gallon plastic bags and then inserted into clean gallon cans were made of reusable metal, frozen, and sold over the counter. A deposit of $.25 insured the return of most of the cans. The returned cans were then steam cleaned and piled in circular stacks about six feet high under the small, previously mentioned window. Well, that’s a long way to go but finally we’re at the point where the Reader will understand the practical joke Stuart played on me.
I was working hard in the Ice Cream Store, not paying much attention to anything except serving customers, with my back to the rear of the store and the aforementioned window, which, because of a large product sign hanging over the ice-cream machines, could not be seen by a clerk standing at the counter waiting on customers. That was when Stuart, standing in the Dairy store and leaning through the aforementioned window, lit a cherry bomb and dropped it into the rear of the Ice Cream store into lower part of a stack of clean gallon ice cream cans. The resulting explosion, incredibly loud in an enclosed space, blew dozens of cans and lids across the back room and concrete floor, making an absolutely awful din.
When the cherry bomb exploded, without a backward glance to see what the hell had happened, I dove straight out the service window right at the feet of several startled customers, scaring the crap out of them. They immediately turned and hustled out of the glassed-in enclosure, not wanting any part of whatever disaster had occurred inside. Naturally, a few minutes later Stuart came running over, laughing hysterically and clapping his hands as I tried without success to pick myself up off the concrete with what little dignity as could be mustered, which wasn’t much.
I laughed, more than a little ruefully, promising him that a pay-back was due and would be forthcoming shortly. Yeah, it sounded weak but what else could I do? Stuart could hardly contain his glee at zinging me good and proper and gloated about it all through the long day. When my brother, Jack, came to work that afternoon, I pulled him aside and told him what happened and explained the nature of my planned revenge. Without hesitation he was in.
He went next door to clock in and listened as Stuart crowed about how he made me look like a fool in front of customers. Jack played his part to the hilt, solemnly warning Stuart that I had a really bad temper if I was embarrassed in public and that he shouldn’t fuck with me if he knew what was good for him. Jack told him that I had almost killed a guy who played a similar joke on me a couple years ago. That settled Stuart down somewhat but not much as he thought Jack was simply standing up for me, like the good and faithful older brother he thought he was.
Later that afternoon I told Mike C., a teenager who lived less than a block away, that I needed to borrow his track starter pistol. He said that he would let me use it if he got anything he wanted at the Ice Cream store for a whole week. Since it wasn’t my store or my money that was an easy deal.
He delivered the fully loaded pistol shortly before the store closed at 10:00 PM. In the dark it looked realistic but was constructed so that it could only fire blank and not live cartridges. At 9:58 I closed up, locked the store, and went next door, gritting my teeth and scowling fiercely in an effort to look as mean and crazed with rage as I could. Stuart was behind his register closing it out as Jack turned off the main store lights and went to lock the front door.
In the half-light, Stuart looked up as I advanced across the floor and started to laugh sarcastically at my expense. But he stopped gloating as soon as he saw the gun in my hand. His eyes opened so wide they nearly popped out of his head.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he cried in genuine fear, both hands up in the air as if trying to hold me back. “Put the gun down. I, I didn’t mean anything. Swear to God. It, it was only a joke, I swear.”
“Fuck you, Stuart,” I snarled as gripped by uncontrollable rage. “Nobody makes a fool out of me in front of people. Nobody fucks me. Do you hear? Nobody! Say your prayers, cocksucker. You’re dead meat.” I raised the gun and pointed it at his chest.
He backed up slowly, screaming, “Oh Jesus! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! No! NO!”
As he pleaded in vain for mercy I pulled the trigger, again, and again. The starter gun fired, sounding for all the world like the real thing. The small explosions of smoke and fire shooting out of the muzzle could easily be seen in the darkened store. Stuart, screaming in terror, fell to the floor, his hands outstretched in a vain effort to intercept the bullets.
I stood over him snarling like an enraged beast, pulling the trigger until all six shots were fired and the pistol was empty. With each shot his body jerked from the imagined impact. When it was empty I stepped back, held the pistol to my lips, and theatrically blew the smoke from the barrel. In the background I could hear my brother laughing in total hysteria.
“Get up, you stupid son of a bitch,” I said, standing over poor Stuart, as he lay supposedly mortally wounded on the floor. “It’s a track starter pistol. The damned thing only fires blanks.”
Of course, once it was all over we laughed ourselves silly. Both Jack and I laughed so hard we thought we were going to piss our pants. I laughed until tears poured down my cheeks. My throat and sides hurt so bad I nearly passed out. Although it took Stuart more than a few minutes to recover and determine he had suffered no damage, even he thought it was funny. But he made me promise never again to use a gun in any of my practical jokes. I promised but several years later that promise would be broken.
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