Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
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It was sometime in the early ‘40s, when a carnival came to town and set up in the Union County Fairgrounds. I went to that carnival with a friend of mine named Bill Porter. We went on a few rides, threw some darts and pitched a few pennies. Then we spotted a small tent that seemed to be pretty busy, so we went inside.
It was full of gag gifts and things like that. For example, they had water glasses that looked just like the ones at Butler’s restaurant, but they had tiny holes near the rim so when you drank out of them they dribbled water all over your shirt. I thought they were great and I almost bought one.
But then I spotted something better. They were packages of exploding cigarette loads. I had seen them used in a “Three Stooges” movie at the Avalon Theater. Moe lit a cigarette and the end exploded right in his face.
That would be the perfect trick to play on my dad, so I bought a package of them. That night, in the privacy of my room, I opened the package. Inside were small granules that resembled grains of rice. The instructions told how to load them in the ends of cigarettes.
It didn’t take long, however, for me to realize that my dad wouldn’t think that was very funny. So I decided not to use them. Instead, I just put them in a little box on the top of my dresser where they remained for a couple of years or so.
Then when World War II ended, my brother in law, Jack Griffith, came back from the Army Air Corps. He and my sister, Maryann, moved into an apartment. Sometime during their first summer in that apartment, they decided to throw a party. They invited a bunch of their friends. Many were other veterans who had returned from the war and their wives.
The day of their party I stopped in to talk with my sister. She was getting everything ready to entertain, and I noticed a small china dish full of cigarettes on an end table. Wow, wouldn’t that be a great place to use my cigarette loads! So while my sister went to several stores to purchase things for her party, I went home and got my cigarette loads. I took them to their apartment and loaded several of those cigarettes.
I thought to myself, this has got to be the greatest practical joke I had ever played on anyone. Wouldn’t it be funny if several people lit some of those cigarettes at the same time – pow! … pow! … pow! What a great trick to play on Jack.
So in the morning following the party, I went to their apartment. When I entered, I saw Jack lying on their sofa, and there was a sizable gauze bandage covering his right eye. I asked, “What happened to you?”
He explained that one of his guests had apparently put a cigarette load in a cigarette, and it exploded when he lit it. When it exploded, bits of tobacco shot into his eye and damaged his eyeball. There was no hospital in Marysville then, but one of their guests was a nurse and she bandaged his eye. He didn’t know if the damage would be permanent, but he had an appointment with Dr. Paul Zaugg in about an hour.
Oh, man, I was crushed. What a stupid thing I had done. If there was one person in the world I wouldn’t want to hurt, it would be Jack. He was like a brother to me. If only I had bought that dribble glass instead of those cigarette loads.
I told him that it was not one of his guests who put the load in the cigarette. I was the one who did it. Then I told him how sorry I was. I told him that I had just wanted to play a trick on him.
Jack was never the kind of guy to get angry. So I was not surprised when he simply said, “Well, if you have learned a lesson from this, I guess it is all worthwhile.”
I assured him that I had, indeed, learned a lesson, “That’s good”, he said. Then he stood up, ripped off the bandage and said, “Now let’s go to the swimming pool.” The whole “bandage” thing had been a hoax. It was my prank, but Jack got the last laugh. I didn’t mind at all. I was just glad that his eye was okay.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at williamboyd514@gmail.com