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During my radio broadcasting years in Johnson City, Tenn., one of my favorite interviews was with storyteller Donald Davis, who performs at the National Storytelling Festival every October in nearby Jonesborough.
Donald, before becoming a professional storyteller, was a Methodist minister and once pastored Andrews United Methodist Church. When Donald came on my show, we delighted in swapping stories about growing up in the western North Carolina mountains: he in Waynesville, me in Andrews.
To make a story more entertaining, a storyteller embellishes and exaggerates but fills the story with just enough truth to make it believable. However, the one I’m going to tell you is, as my Dad would say, “The absolute gospel truth.”
It was Halloween night 1958. We high school boys were too old for treats, but not tricks. We never did serious harm, but we skirted on the edge … like turning a squirrel loose in a furniture store. And there was the time an outhouse somehow turned up in the middle of the football field.
But it’s our 1958 prank that’s still talked about in Andrews today.
I don’t remember who came up with the idea of putting a farm wagon on top of the schoolhouse, but it wasn’t me. I was just recruited to assist with the chore. Honest.
Back then, a few farmers still owned horse-drawn wagons, including Cliff Slagle, who lived several blocks from the school grounds. The elementary building was new, the first flat-roofed school building in the area. Around midnight, six or eight of us boys snuck Mr. Slagle’s wagon out of his barn, then pushed and pulled it up the hill to the school.
With a ladder, some rope and a few tools, a couple of boys who excelled in shop class led us in taking the wagon apart until we could hoist it and the parts onto the school’s roof. We reassembled the wagon, then rolled it to the front of the building above the entrance for greatest visibility.
We had no idea our stunt would create so much curiosity. As word spread the next day, a Saturday, that a full-size wagon was perched on top of the school building, folks came from miles around to gawk and take pictures. It was fun to melt into the crowd and listen to speculations about how it got there.
First thing Monday morning, school Superintendent J.E. Rufty herded everyone into the school auditorium. He announced he was entertained by the prank, but Mr. Slagle was not. If he didn’t get his wagon back right away, undamaged, there would be serious consequences. Mr. Rufty said that after some investigation, he’d determined who did the deed, and they’d be called out of class shortly.
I sat nervously in class waiting for the call to the office. But it never came.
Then on Tuesday morning, the wagon was gone.
I couldn’t imagine what evidence led Mr. Rufty to single out the boys he did; they had nothing to do with the prank. Fortunately, one of their fathers owned an equipment business and provided a flatbed truck and some manpower to take the wagon down and return it undamaged to Mr. Slagle.
A couple years later, I was beginning my radio career, working in West Jefferson in Ashe County, and Mr. Rufty was the school superintendent in neighboring Alleghany County. I called him and he invited me for a visit. We had a wonderful time and as we said our goodbyes, I brought up the wagon incident, humbly explaining that the boys he’d accused back then had nothing to do with the prank.
“I knew that,” Mr. Rufty said to my surprise. “I had no idea who did it. But I was desperate. So I picked some boys from the football team and told them they couldn’t play in the big game against Murphy on Friday night unless they figured out how to get the wagon off the building. So they did.”
I left it at that, with me not brave enough to admit to him my part in the notorious prank. No, it wasn’t my idea – but now I kinda wish it had been.
Dave Hogan is a native of Andrews. His was one of the first voices heard on WKRK in 1958 before spending most of his career in Asheville and Johnson City, Tenn. He is retired and living in Lake Junaluska.