THE JOKERS ARE WILD: Dallas Pranksters Reveal Their Best Practical Jokes

In Still Life With Woodpecker, that hilarious novel by Tom Robbins, the Woodpecker is a bomber-a man who likes to toss sticks of dynamite here and there to liven up the day. Despite this odd habit, he’s not a bad guy. He’s not even angry at those he bombs; he does it to wake people up to the forgotten possibilities of life. His credo: “I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, surprise, disorder, unlawfulness, bad taste, fun and things that go boom in the night.”

So does the practical joker. The prankster knows that, left to ourselves, we tend to accept dullness as the natural state of things. Without those sudden explosions of laughter to break up the routine, we sink into everydayness, victims of tunnel vision. We begin taking the daily ritual of getting and spending seriously, as if it really mattered.

Dynamite is too strong a medicine for this disease-and besides, it’s expensive. That’s why we need practical jokes. We may wince for a while if we’re the butt of a joke, but we’re all indebted to the merry pranksters of the world. By popping the bubbles of our pomposity, they put things in perspective. And they help us remember the Woodpecker’s warning: “Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death.”

With jokers like these around, that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. So Happy April Fool’s Day. Here’s laughing at you, Dallas.



THE SCHEFFLERA CAPER

Buffalo George Toomer, artist/writer/actor/restaurateur, believes that the best practical jokes play off someone’s character flaws-his greed, excess macho or vanity. Case in point: Toomer once had an office across the hall from Rob, who thought himself an expert on plants and shrubs. One day, Rob lugged in a huge schefflera to adorn his office. Toomer, wanting to be helpful, warned of a schefflera blight sweeping the area (his own plant was dying) and offered advice about keeping the tree safe from disease. The proud owner cut Toomer off in mid-sentence, saying that he knew very well how to care for things in bloom.

Miffed, Toomer vowed a prankster’s revenge on his pompous neighbor. He began bringing to the office an envelope filled with his own dying tree’s leaves. When Rob left the office for coffee or lunch, Toomer would sneak across the hall and spread the dead leaves around the base of the schefflera. Rob grew worried and lavished more attention on the plant, but Toomer kept up the charade.

So far, so funny, but the prank achieved Hall of Fame status when Toomer solved a problem inherent in the joke: What to do about weekends, when the friend’s office was locked? If the plant was indeed on its last limbs, the dying fall would have to continue on weekends. So Toomer constructed a long, flat shovel out of cardboard and used it to ease the leaves under the door. The horrified owner arrived on Monday mornings to find more leaves than ever marking his tree’s decline. In a panic, he bombarded the tree with special chemicals and around-the-clock lighting. Ironically, the plant went into a swoon and died two weeks later.



PIGGING IN

Legend has it that another Toomer prank victimized an arrogant actor in a dinner theater, a womanizer who fancied himself God’s gift to the female gender. Each night of his performance, Toomer and an accomplice sent the actor a red rose to pique his curiosity. On the final night of the show, the rose came with a note and a key to a room in a local motel. The eager lover arrived, panting, to meet his mysterious admirer. Imagine his surprise when he flung open the door to find a squealing, grunting pig wearing a pink garter belt! And that wasn’t enough for Toomer: He had notified the front desk that some weirdo down the hall had what sounded like an animal in his room.



THE 8.0 STORY

On his birthday a few years ago, nightclub czar Shannon Wynne arrived to find his 8.0 Bar locked and darkened. Outside, looking confused and forlorn, were several of Wynne’s employees. They greeted him with a shocking story: The 8.0 had been closed down for liquor law violations. The club would remain closed indefinitely and might even lose its liquor license. History does not record Wynne’s first printable word, which might have been “oh,” but before he could gather his wits, a man claiming to be a Liquor Control Board agent rushed up to arrest him. Wynne was spread-eagled and frisked, then told he could make one phone call before heading to the slammer. Naturally, the call was to be made from the 8.0-where Wynne’s friends were waiting to surprise him with a party. The prank was the brainchild of Angus Wynne, Shannon’s brother, and Hank Coleman, his business partner.



DOWN FOR THE COUNT

Shannon Wynne was also the prank victim of Tom Stephenson, owner of the Lake-wood Hunt and Polo Club. Two days before the grand opening of Wynne’s Tango, which featured the legendary Count Basie and his orchestra, Stephenson put on his best radio announcer’s voice and called a Tango staffer. His spiel went something like this:

“Hi, I’m Tim McDonald of station WGYD in Tampa Bay. I guess by now you’ve heard that Count Basie died this afternoon. Yes, that’s right. You didn’t know? Wait a minute-yes, now it’s on both wire services. Count Basie, dead of a heart attack.”

Stephenson went on to ask for the assistant’s thoughts about Basie, since he had been among the last to deal with the Basie organization. The flabbergasted staffer stammered out a touching eulogy for the Count while Stephenson fought to control his laughter.

Wynne, notified that the Count was down for the count, smelled a prank and called Stephenson, who swore that he had just heard the sad news on the radio and offered condolences. It was not until late in the day that the frantic Wynne reached Basie’s agent, who told him that the Count was alive and frolicking on a beach in the Bahamas.



THE HONEYMOONERS

Wynne hasn’t always been the loser in the prank wars that rage between several of Dallas’ club and restaurant owners. When restaurateur Gene Street (The Dixie Lake-wood, Black-eyed Pea, etc.) and his new bride honeymooned in Paris, Wynne and Tom Stephenson joined forces to turn the couple’s bliss into chaos with a series of ingenious (albeit expensive) pranks. The waiters in those posh French restaurants just couldn’t get things right: One garcon brought the Streets a flank steak that had been dipped in batter and fried; lacking cream gravy, it was smothered in cheese sauce. At another five-star restaurant, the unlucky couple was served a gallon can of black-eyed peas, which the waiter blithely opened at the table. The final blow came when two live frogs were delivered to the table by an Abe Lincoln look-alike. Behind it all were Wynne and Stephenson, who had hired a French private detective to tail the couple and turn their orders into disorder.



GOT YOUR NUMBER

KEGL’s morning madmen, Stevens and Pruett, are known for risqué quick takes, not elaborate practical jokes. But while working in Houston, the duo pulled off a prank overheard by thousands of listeners. It seems that a potential advertiser had refused to buy time on the Stevens and Pruett show, claiming repeatedly that “nobody listens to you guys.” Determined to prove him wrong, the deejays spun a lengthy traveling salesman story on the air, replete with juicy double-entendres and a particularly fetching fanner’s daughter. They built the joke to its climax, then told the drive-time audience that the punch line to the story could be heard by dialing a certain phone number- that of the reluctant advertiser. Deluged by hundreds of phone calls within hours, the advertiser saw the light and signed on with Stevens and Pruett.



THE DOUBLE STING

The late Frank Tolbert, chili impresario and longtime columnist for The Dallas Morning News, was one of Dallas’ premier practical jokers. Among Tolbert’s many fine pranks were several of the “double sting” variety, that rarity of the genre in which an accomplice helps to pull Prank A, which then turns out to be only a subplot of Prank B, of which the accomplice is the butt-we think. Anyway, as a young reporter for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Tolbert enlisted a fellow writer to help him with a prank. They would wire a cherry bomb to the starter of the night city editor’s car so that the old curmudgeon would get the shock of his life at quitting time that day. The accomplice had some misgivings, but Tolbert assured him that the explosive was too weak to harm the editor or to do serious damage to his car. However, unbeknownst to the accomplice, Tolbert had a second scam going with the editor. The morning after the bomb was planted, the editor hobbled into the office on crutches, his face swathed in bandages and a cast on one arm, moaning and cursing the vandals who had visited such carnage upon him. Tolbert’s helper rushed to his desk, his face ashen. Tolbert told him they had gone too far to turn back and that if they confessed, they would spend years in jail. He let the conscience-stricken accomplice stew for an entire day before the editor took off the bandages and the prank was revealed.



POETIC JUSTICE

Of course, turnabout is fair play. Tolbert often found himself on the receiving end of pranks such as the one involving the exaggerated death of Imogene Twitty. Tolbert created Mrs. Twitty, the “Poet Laureate of Nacogdoches,” as a convenient foil and all-purpose mouthpiece in his popular column, “Tolbert’s Texas.” When Tolbert wanted to float an outrageous rumor or needed a source for some dubious bit of wisdom, Im-ogene Twitty was always handy. For 15 years, the chatty poetess was a fixture in Tolbert columns, until Dallas lawyer Tom Tierney and an editor of the Denton Record-Chronicle decided to kill her off. The Denton paper ran a front-page story mourning the death of Mrs. Twitty, who reportedly had died in a car wreck outside Denton when she swerved to miss an armadillo in the road. Things snowballed when one of the wire services picked up the story. Tolbert fumed at the pranksters, then struck back with unerring logic: He had created her, by God, so he could resurrect her, couldn’t he? Two weeks later, Tolbert gladdened readers’ hearts when he reported that Imogene Twit-ty was alive and rhyming still. The story of her death was denounced as “sloppy journalism from an amateurish cub reporter in Denton.” In reality, Mrs. Twitty had merely loaned her car to an unfortunate friend, as anyone who bothered to call her at home in Nacogdoches would have known.



WINE AND POSEURS

While he was program director at KZEW, Dallas radio talent Ira Lipson hired a deejay named Charlie Kendall, a young man with high regard for the accoutrements of the good life-the more expensive, the better. Lipson invited this conspicuous consumer and a lady friend to dinner, mentioning that Kendall could bring some wine if he wanted to. True to form, Kendall arrived with a bottle of 1976 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild.

As he was putting the finishing touches on the meal, Lipson was visited by the prankster’s muse. “Charlie,” he called, “I don’t know much about these fancy wines. Maybe we better let it breathe a while.” Lip-son then opened the pricey wine and a bottle of Spanada and switched the wines. Bringing the bogus Lafite-Rothschild to the table, Lipson played the naif, asking for instruction in the proper appreciation of the noble vintage. The pouring ritual ensued, with Kendall lecturing on the wine’s viscosity, its subtle, unassuming coloration, the way its “legs” betrayed its heritage. All nodded wisely and took reverent sips of the $1.99 vino.

To top off the prank, Lipson brought the “cheap” wine (actually the Lafite) to the table. Kendall took a sip, and, in his best Danny Thomas fashion, spewed the liquid all over the table. He refused to touch another drop of the $40 wine.



THE HOT SEAT

Everyone knows that the Salesmanship Club does wonderful things for disadvan-taged boys and girls, but few know that the organization has long been a hotbed of great practical jokes. For example: When the late Ed “Moose” Miller wanted out of a particularly onerous committee assignment with the YMCA, he decided to prank his way out. Miller knew that nobody would volunteer for the job, so he and a friend conspired to hook electric wires to an unsuspecting member’s chair. When the call came for the volunteers to stand up, they would hit the switch, and the victim would leap skyward. But when the call came, the prank turned into a double sting: The wires had been switched at the last minute. Moose got the juice and the committee assignment for another year.



THE RINGER

Lawrence R. Herkimer, another Salesmanship Club prankster, was sick of the bragging of a Houston cattle baron who played golf at Preston Trail Golf Club. The Houston man sported an “ego-2” handicap (he didn’t play that well consistently, but loved to post the impressive number). For his come-uppance, Herkimer and some golfing buddies arranged a match between the Houston hotshot and a “ringer’-professional golfer Ray Floyd, who showed up at Preston Trails in frayed jeans and boots, looking as if he just rode in on a load of 5-irons. The cattle baron looked Floyd up and down and asked his handicap. “I don’t have a handicap established at this club,” Floyd replied truthfully. “I guess I’ll have to play it even.” With a chuckle, the Houston man said he’d do the same.

Eighteen holes later, the humiliated braggart owed Floyd $1,200. As they left the links, Floyd couldn’t resist one more twist of the knife. The Houston man wanted to send him a check from his business account to better conceal his loss. Floyd nodded sympathetically, then said, “Sure, son. You know, anyone who plays golf as bad as you do should never play for money.”