A few decades ago a group of local farmers, young bucks full of vim and vigor, spent a winter pranking each other. They often gathered for coffee at one of their farm shops, started pulling tricks on each other, and the pranks escalated.
It all started innocently, with one guy turning on all the knobs and switches in the cab of his friend’s 1980s-era pickup. When the prankee started his truck, his windshield wipers flopped back and forth and his radio was blaring at full volume, tuned to a rap station.
That lead to a month or two of escalating paybacks. When one guy went to open his truck’s door latch, someone had filled the backside of the latch handle with heavy-duty grease. Another guy found a distraught chicken on his seat when he opened the door of his truck. Which led to a billy goat spending the night in the cab of another pranksters’ truck.
As any older, more mature farmer could have predicted, things eventually got out of hand. Tempers flared. Friendships were strained. Eventually a truce was declared, and the Great Pranking Wars of 1987 came to an end. Those guys now joke about their escapades, but tacitly understand that no good comes from a prank war.
Apparently such wisdom is not automatically transferred between generations. A couple weeks ago two local young guys were laughing while waiting at the front parts counter, talking about how they had “greased” one of their friend’s truck door latch.
Last week one of that group of friends casually asked me where he could buy a goat.
