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By Lloyd Albritton

Columnist

A few years ago, Ray L. Wallace died at the age of 84. In August of 1958, Ray and his brother, Wilbur, of Humboldt County, Calif., played a practical joke on the world.  They carved some big wooden feet, which fit onto their boots and made some tracks in the woods which were later spotted by a heavy equipment operator employed by Ray’s construction company who reported the tracks to the local newspaper.  The local story dubbed the mysterious creature Bigfoot, and compared it to another popular mythical creature of the Himalayas, The Abominable Snowman.  The national media picked up the story and it spread like wildfire.  Later, alleged sightings of the Bigfoot character added to the story’s intrigue.

Ray Wallace’s son says his father fed the myth by recording weird creature sounds and playing them for a video recording, and that his mother also participated in the joke by dressing up in a homemade Bigfoot costume for the photos that his father provided to the press.  In spite of Wallace’s subsequent confession, many alleged experts on the Bigfoot phenomenon still insist there really is a Bigfoot.

I love practical jokes.  I have played a few myself, though never one as successful as Ray Wallace’s Bigfoot joke. One particular practical joke that comes to my mind happened when I was a young boy in the early 1960s.  Several of my buddies and I rigged up a white sheet on a thread spool which we pulled across the road on a strand of thin wire to simulate a ghost floating across the road.  Our joke was intended to scare another pal of ours who always walked that particular dirt road late on Saturday nights on his way home from visiting his girlfriend.  We picked a spot just past a creek bridge where lots of spooky swamp sounds emanated, especially at night.   We scared lots of people that night with our prank and have laughed about it for many years since.  Unfortunately, the Atmore Advance missed the story.  Had we known it would work so well, we would have called in a news tip and perhaps thousands of tourists would be visiting Nokomis Road even today to see the infamous Brushy Creek Ghost.

My friend and notorious storyteller and prankster, Van Johnson, told me once about how he and his brothers fooled the local game warden into believing a huge bear was loose in the woods.  They attached a big claw to a long pole and made claw marks on a bunch of trees in the woods and fake bear tracks on the ground.  The poor game warden set bear traps for months trying to catch that phantom bear as the boys laughed at him the whole time. Van Johnson was also with us during the ghost sheet adventure.  In fact, I’m not so sure that Van wasn’t the mastermind of it.  His version of the story is certainly far more entertaining than mine.

My old friend, Tim Dortch, once wrapped himself in aluminum foil and put on a football helmet and walked down the side of the highway in the evening dusk near where he lived.  Sightings were later reported of space aliens in the Bratt community.  One local resident, who was known to imbibe Christmas spirits all year long, saw the strange alien and came by the Dortch home to warn the family to clear out.

Practical jokes range from harmless and hilariously funny to mean, cruel and totally devoid of good judgment.  I was taught as a child than an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.  Indeed there is nothing so devilishly creative as the mind of a bored country boy.  My late uncle, Winkle Caraway, was a prankster as a young farm boy and once tied his straw hat to the tail of my grandmother’s cat and set the hat afire. My grandmother, who would later become Uncle Winkle’s mother-in-law, was furious when she looked out the back door and saw her cat scampering across the field with Uncle Winkle’s fiery hat bouncing along behind.  Grandpa was not too happy about his field catching afire either.  And worst of all, Uncle Winkle had to work in the hot sun for the remainder of the day without his hat.  Very funny!

Practical jokes are common in every generation and at every age of life.  Still, when we play practical jokes on others, most of us laugh a lot harder than we do when a practical joke is played on us.  Practical jokes can also get out of hand and result in unpredictable and dangerous consequences.  One time I put a rubber snake in a buddy’s desk drawer, giving no consideration to his great fear of snakes or the fact that he was carrying a gun.  My friend got so upset that he had to be subdued and the gun taken away from him to keep him from shooting ME!  And then, there was the time I faked a phone call to my good friend, Charley Dyer, and told Charley that his beloved camper had been stolen and used in a bank holdup and was full of bullet holes.  As incredulous as the story was, Charley believed it and almost had a heart attack.

The point of most jokes is to cause the other person to laugh.  Practical jokes, on the other hand, must be taken seriously by the victim to create the desired effect.  Consequently, many people believe all practical jokes are mean and immature.  If they are right, perhaps we should not expect such clowning around in the heavenly kingdom should we be lucky enough to get there.  Sounds pretty boring, doesn’t it?

If Van Johnson makes it to heaven, I wouldn’t be surprised if God finds a tack in His chair before the first week is out.  But, of course, God probably already knows what Van is capable of and likes him as much as I do.