Gangsters

Fifty years ago

While I was at Stadium from 1950 to 1953 I did a number of comedy acts for the assemblies, Football Night and other events and the graduation 1953 Tahoma has me listed as the
"Class Cut Up".

A story some may remember is this. During 1951 and 1952 while the band met on the top floor, after band practice, I would hang over the blue pipe railing a floor or two down, then go down the railing on the outside (a 2 or 3 story drop) hand over hand till I got to the first floor or basement floor. If it was crowded on the stairway, it was faster. But it got a rise out of the kids.

One day during band when we were up on the top floor, we had a fire drill and the whole student body was filing outside into the street. As the band was filing out down the old fire escape from the fourth floor near the street, before I went down the stairs, I hung over the railing with one hand and hollered like I was going to fall and gave the kids down on the street a show. I guess I must have been either fearless then or crazy.

I was always doing practical jokes. One of my tricks was that I had a fake phone under the hood of my car and I had installed a door bell inside under the dash board. It was a 1938 dodge that looked like an old gangster car. I would get my buddies to wear big overcoats with the collar turned up and 5 or 6 of us would cruise by the school at times of large events, or put on this skit in front of the Rialto just as people were leaving the theater.

We would pull up to a crowded corner and screech on the brakes as the "phone" doorbell was ringing. I would hop out of the driver's seat and open the hood and pick up the phone and at that point someone inside would stop the door bell sound. I would yell into the phone:

"We can't talk now, Joe, the cops are after us. We’re bringing the stuff and we’ll be there in 10 minutes. Bye"”.

Then we would tear out of there with people’s mouths open (and of course, a number of folks would know it was a joke and enjoy the laugh). Well, one day after doing that skit a few times around town, someone had reported my license number to the cops, so they came up to the school and took my phone and door bell out of my car so it would not happen again.

We also had a skit with that car and other car’s I had. As we drove up to a crowded street corner at night, I would have a guy in the font seat pounding quickly on the inside metal of the car that would sound like an engine rod knocking (bang, bang, bang….!!!). I would hop out of the car with the rod knocking sound still going on and lean over and hit the top of the hood real hard and the banging would stop; then we would drive off, usually with the crowd cheering or being befuddled.

Jay Grimstead
Class of 1953

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