Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (35 page)

“The Roughneck’s Revenge”

I
heard this story several times while working in the East Texas oil fields in the early 1960s:

The crew of a drilling rig had just finished pulling several thousand feet of drill pipe from a drill hole, in preparation to replace the work-out drill bit. While working on the new drill bit, a roughneck [an oil-drilling crew member] accidentally dropped his wrench into the open hole. Drilling had to be halted, and several days and a great deal of money was expended to “fish” the tool out of the hole.

When the wrench was finally brought to the surface, the drilling superintendent grabbed it and pushed it at the offending roughneck. “You and this wrench cost us thousands of dollars, you dumb S.O.B,” he said. “Take it and get off the rig. You’re fired!”

“Well, if that’s the way you want to be about an accident,” the roughneck said, and he dropped the wrench back into the open hole, turned and walked away.

Sent to me in 1982 by Colin Neal of Salt Lake City. Mary C. Fields includes the same story in her article on offshore oilfield lore published in the winter 1974 issue of the journal
Mid-South Folklore.
Similar “revenge” actions are frequently described in connection with numerous other occupations, and probably such things do occur from time to time: “You’re fired!” “Oh yeah, then take
that.”
In the worst cases, disgruntled employees go beyond folk stories and pranks to committing serious crimes. Clearly, the safety valve of storytelling and prank-playing is better for all concerned.

“Fixing the Flue”

B
ert Willey, the painter, heard this story at his father’s knee: A mason builds a new fireplace for a wealthy man. When the mason finishes the job, he asks for his money, but the wealthy client says he can’t pay just now. He doesn’t have the right change. That’s all right, the mason says. But if he has to wait, then the client does, too. The wealthy man agrees. He won’t build a fire in his new chimney until he’s paid the mason. The mason goes home. Just an hour or so later, his wealthy client appears at the door. “My house is full of smoke, goddammit!”

“I told you not to use that chimney until you paid me,” says the mason. “When you pay me, I’ll fix it.”

So the client gets out his wallet, which is full of change after all, and the mason returns to the rich man’s house. The mason brings a brick with him. He carries the brick up a ladder to the roof and drops it down the chimney, smashing out the pane of glass he had mortared across the flue.

Bert says his father told that story as if it had actually happened, but others tell the same story. It must lie mainly among the wishful thoughts of the building trades, like the retort you think of only after the argument.

From Tracy Kidder’s 1985 book
House,
p. 319. I heard the same story in 1988 from a builder who called in to a radio talk show out of Youngstown, Ohio, on which I was a guest. Two other people have sent me the story, one from Alabama who had heard it “a long time ago,” and one from Massachusetts who thought he remembered reading it in
Popular Science
magazine in the late 1930s or early ’40s.

“The Locked-Out Pilot”

C
ivil air transport was not without its operational problems. For example, when the 737 was first used by what will be, for the purposes of this next true story, an unnamed airline, it endured an interesting initial experience. On the inaugural flight, the well-qualified crew was flying an FL 310 in the clear blue sky. The pilot and copilot were on schedule at altitude—all was right with the world.

The pilot, in accordance with company policy, told the copilot to take control while the pilot went aft to talk with the passengers. He left the cockpit area. The copilot diligently attended to his duties until he became aware that he needed to relieve himself. He waited for the pilot—and waited.

Finally, discretion being the better part of valor, he checked position, the surrounding sky for traffic—there was none and they were cruising at a hard altitude. The auto pilot was functioning perfectly—the airplane was performing beautifully. He took a last look and quickly got up from the right seat, ducked out of the cockpit area, and into the forward lavatory. Completing what he had set out to do, he hurriedly left the lavatory and placed his hand on the cockpit door. It was locked. He reached for his key only to remember that the key was in his jacket in the cockpit.

Not wanting to stand on ceremony he walked back into the cabin area where he saw the Captain talking earnestly with a passenger. He tapped the Captain on the shoulder and asked him for his cockpit key. Without looking up, the Captain said it was in his jacket pocket in the cockpit and, at the same time, came to full alert and gave the copilot an incredulous “What are you doing here” look. Both pilots ran forward.

One fire axe, one smashed door, and two bruised ego’s later, the airplane was under manned flight again. Needless to say, the airline changed procedures.

From
Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine,
May 1986, pp. 478–79. On December 30, 1987, Rick Anderson, a columnist for the
Seattle Times,
repeated a version of this story credited to “a Boeing representative, based on a first-hand account from one of Boeing’s Far East agents.” In February 1991, Mabel M. Shaw of Lillington, North Carolina, sent me a version of the story she had read in a guide book to China; it supposedly happened on a Chinese airline. The first person to tell me “The Locked-Out Pilot” legend was David L. Webster IV, a United Airlines pilot who had heard that it was a DC-9 flown by another airline that was said to have suffered the incident. Webster also explained that the crash axe is kept in the cockpit, not in the cabin, and that “a swift kick will open the door in any Boeing aircraft; the door is designed to open in either direction in case it gets jammed in a crash.”

“Language Boners: The Folklore of Paperwork”

E
very office where letters and applications from the general public are processed has its own “funny file” of mistakes in language that were supposedly written by semiliterate patrons or non-native speakers of English. Other mistakes allegedly come from the professionals themselves who commit unwitting slips of the tongue or pen. Lists of these boners are often duplicated and passed around, posted on bulletin boards, or published in company newsletters. Some of the examples undoubtedly come from actual written material submitted to the same office, but most of them are reprints of similar lists that have been circulating for decades. Evidence for the traditional nature of boner lists is that certain phrases and sentences appear again and again through the years, no matter where or when the lists are said to have originated. While these language boners are not, strictly speaking,
legends
—lacking a narrative element—they do exhibit the anonymity, variation, and typical functions of modern folklore. Here are just a few examples from some of the most common categories of boners, a complete set of which would require a book in itself. All are quoted from anonymous photocopied sheets collected from office workers, teachers, nurses, and others.

From “The Welfare Letter”

Unless I get my husband’s money soon, I will be forced to live an immortal life.

My husband got his project cut off two weeks ago, and I haven’t had any relief yet.

I want my money as quick as I can get it. I have been in bed with the doctor for two weeks and he doesn’t do me any good.

In accordance to your instructions, I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope.

Please send my wife’s form to fill out.

From “Drivers Say the Darnedest Things” [accident reports]

An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished.

The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.

In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.

From “Actual Letters Received by the Army, Draft Boards, etc.”

I have already wrote to the President, and if I don’t hear from you I will write Uncle Sam and tell him about you both.

I am glad to say that my husband who was reported missing is now dead.

I am a poor widow and all I have is at the front.

Please send me a letter and tell me if my husband made application for a wife and baby.

Unless I get my husband’s money soon, I will be forced to lead an immoral life.

From “Excuses for Students from Parents”

My son is under the doctor’s care and should not take P.E. Please execute him.

Please excuse Dianna from being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.

Please excuse Gloria. She has been sick and under the doctor.

Dear School: Please ectuse John for been absent January 28, 29, 30, 32, and 33.

From “That’s What You Dictated, Doctor!”

The patient has no past history of suicides.

The patient has been depressed ever since she began seeing me in 1983.

Between you and me, we ought to be able to get this lady pregnant.

She is numb from her toes down.

The patient refused an autopsy.

From “Lawyer’s Questions from Actual Court Records”

Was it you or your brother that was killed in the war?

Was that the same nose you broke as a child?

So you were gone until you returned?

Have you lived in this town all your life? [The reply, “Not yet,” surely marks this as folklore!]

How long have you been a French Canadian?

From “Signs Posted in Foreign Hotels, Restaurants, etc.”

Tokyo: Is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not a person to do such thing is please not to read notis.

Leipzig: Do not enter the lift backwards, and only when lit up.

Yugoslavia: The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.

Austria: Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension [i.e., while wearing ski boots].

Switzerland: Special today—no ice cream.

From “Authentic Announcements from Various Church Bulletins”

This afternoon there will be meetings in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends.

This being Easter Sunday we will ask Mrs. Brown to come forward and lay an egg on the Altar.

The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind and they can be seen in the church basement on Friday afternoon.

From “Actual Excerpts from Student Exams”

History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place too long.

The Greeks had three types of columns—Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic.

Magellan circumcised the globe with a giant clipper.

Bach practiced on an old spinster in the attic.

The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects.

Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes, and caterpillers.

Egyptians lived in the desert and traveled by Camelot.

Many actual errors in language are so obvious that they may well have occurred repeatedly and independently; I am thinking here of mistakes like “pubic” for “public,” or “prostrate” for “prostate,” or “cavalry” for “calvary.” But the series of more complex errors above are surely invented and have become traditional. “The Welfare Letter” seems to be the oldest of these lists; published examples come from the 1930s and ’40s, and I have one such list made by a woman who copied them down when she worked for the “Bureau of War Risk” in 1919–20. Among the published collections of language blunders are a 1931 book called simply
Boners,
with illustrations by Dr. Seuss, and chapters in Richard Lederer’s popular books
Anguished English
(1987) and
Crazy English
(1989). Many teachers have saved examples of language slipups made by their own students; my own personal examples gleaned from 35 years of college teaching include “conspicuous conception” (for Thorstein Veblen’s socio-economic theory of “conspicuous consumption”); the misnomer “Fringed Genital” for William Cullen Bryant’s poetic subject, “The Fringed Gentian” and a reference to “The Pullet Surprise” for the annual award “The Pulitzer Prize.” Topping these, though, is advice columnist Abigail Van Buren’s report of a letter typed from dictation in which a new secretary wrote, “These figures were calculated with a sly drool,” that is “a slide rule.” When collecting and studying boners, it is well to remember, as mentioned in
Boners,
that “an antidote is a funny story that you have heard before.”