The Prankster

At one point, I had a photo to accompany this “story,” but I somehow managed to misplace it.  I’ll send it if and when I find it.  It’s a photo of Bill and Butch and my dad at, I think, Letchworth State Park, probably taken when the boys were about the age they are in this story.  That’s why I wanted to use it.  

It occurs to me as I’ve sifted through hundreds of old photos, that I’m not coming across many of my father with Bill and Butch.  I’m thinking that could be because my father was the primary photographer in our family.  Also, this is the first time that the photo didn’t inspire the story; it’s the other way around.  The story inspired my search for a photo, and the story is more about my father than about my brothers.

You should know in advance that my father loved to tell jokes, laugh, drink beer, and play practical jokes on people. One summer day after dinner, he led Bill and Butch out to the sidewalk in front of our house and challenged them to race him around the block.  (I think the guys were around 11 to 12 years old at the time.) I could tell that they were very excited about the idea of racing my dad, and it was clear that they scoffed a little at the notion that he thought he could win. 

My father laid down some rules before the race began. He explained that all three of them would start out running at the same time, but he would run toward Hopkins Street and they would run toward South Park Avenue, in other words in opposite directions from the start. The idea was that their paths would cross somewhere on Folger Street and then they'd race back to our house on Pries. 

So Bill and Butch took off running in one direction, and my dad ran the opposite way. After he had jogged just a short distance, my father looked over his shoulder and saw the boys racing like mad and almost to the corner of Pries and South Park… at which point he turned around and walked back to the house. 

He sat with me on the porch and waited for Bill and Butch. Before too long, they arrived all sweaty and disgruntled. By the time they had run almost all the way around the block, they must have realized that my father, who was sitting on the porch laughing his brains out, was playing a joke on them. After a while, they started laughing, too. This was my father's idea of fun. You can imagine that we all felt very much on guard around him as a result.  Always a prankster.

~ Maryellen Thirolf, July 2023