The Mother of All Y Pranks
The whole truth as told by Mike Maynard, EPC 1983

Mike Maynard and Tom Fisher, 1983

It happened in the summer of 1983. Gene Garris was the Resident Director of the Y. Marc Bohne was the Personnel Director. John Manna and Beth Herriot were Staff Counselors. A handful of staff including John and Beth had just returned from a late evening pizza run into Estes Park. The rest of the group included Tom Fischer, Todd Wilson and Judy Koehler. We were hanging outside the staff lounge sitting in the Adirondack chairs starring at the full moon when the conversation turned to some of the practical jokes that had taken place thus far that summer. John began admitting to being an instigator of a few of the pranks, and that got me thinking.

I piped up, “Hey, I have an idea for a great practical joke. Let’s move some of the trucks from the bone yard to the museum.” We all looked at each other and knew it would be hilarious. But how could we pull it off? There were some serious obstacles to overcome. First, we had to get by Gus the night security officer. Then we had to get the vehicles towed quietly pasted Lee Sanderson’s house (the second in command of Y Maintenance) then up to the museum. Todd spoke up and volunteered the use of his Jeep Wrangler to tow the trucks. But getting by Gus would be tricky since he patrolled that area of the grounds regularly.

Now, Gus was a semi-retired, serious, no nonsense night watchman and he didn’t like staff breaking the rules. I remember seeing him chase after Dan White, one of the kitchen staff, when he ran a stop sign by Sweet Memorial. Gus was going so fast I thought that boxy 1970 Ford Bronco was going to tip over. His sidekick Dwayne didn’t start his shift until 4 a.m. and he was even more of a stickler than Gus. The solution was to distract Gus and tow the trucks before 4 a.m.

It was around midnight and Gus always stopped by the kitchen to get a bite to eat. Beth and Judy volunteered to distract Gus in the kitchen. That would be pretty easy to do since Gus always liked to talk to the young ladies. Beth went into the kitchen and began packing a lunch for a supposed hike the next day. They must have packed a huge lunch, because they were in the kitchen a long time.

Mike-Maynard

While Beth was busy in the kitchen, Todd, John, Tom and I found some rope and coasted the Jeep down the hill starting at Fern and Odessa dorms past Sweet Memorial down into the pine grove where Lee’s house and the bone yard awaited. Rigging the tow rope took only a minute and John hopped in the first truck pushed in the clutch and gave the signal to Todd. The one-ton former garbage truck pulled out of the bone yard with relative ease, glided past Lee’s front door and within a few minutes was in front of the Dorsey Museum. After pushing the truck back into a parking spot directly next to the museum’s gate, Todd, John and Tom went back to retrieve another vehicle.

While they we gone, I pulled out of my pocket a tube a zinc oxide, which I used as sun block on hikes and wrote on the windshield in giant white letters “FOR SALE.” Before I knew it the guys were back with a Dodge van painted in “YMCA aqua green.” We pushed the van into the parking spot next to the truck. Todd and John took off for another vehicle while a few of us continued with our artwork on the windshields.

At some point, Gus left the kitchen and drove toward Sweet Memorial. One of us saw his headlights of his Bronco and we split, running full steam toward the bone yard to warn Todd and John. They had another vehicle in tow and we stopped them, leaving the old truck parked halfway between the bone yard and Lee’s house.

Tom Fischer and Family

With the lights off on his Jeep, Todd managed to avoid being seen Gus and made his way back up to the dorms. We caught up with Beth at the staff lounge, and we offered to show her our accomplishment. We sneaked down to Sweet Memorial but had to turn back, because by this time, Gus had discovered the prank and parked for the rest of the night in front of the museum. We went back to our Adirondack chairs, staying up till 4 a.m. laughing and carrying on.

The next morning Tom was in the Maintenance Shop and all the Maintenance staff were present drinking coffee and talking about the day. Dale strode out of his office. “Al, I want you to find out who on staff moved those trucks from the bone yard to the museum.” Big Al responded, “Trucks… what trucks?” Lee spoke in his own quiet, tight-lipped way and said “Somebody moved them trucks to the museum… and then they wrote on the windshields.” Wayne the plumber asked “Well what’d they write.” “One said ‘FOR SALE’ and ‘Cream Puff’ on the windshield. The other said ‘Lemon’ on its windshield.” Then someone else spoke up and said, “Yeah, and on the back of the van it said Just Married!” With that, Wayne and the others cracked up. Dale said in his nasal tone “Hey, it’s not funny, a steering column could’ve snapped on one of those trucks and killed someone. Al, after you haul those trucks back to the bone yard I want all those trucks disabled from rolling.” Al had been thinking about it awhile and said “Someone with a Jeep could have moved them..,” but that was all the further his investigation went.

Before any of the higher ups caught wind of the prank, Beth got up at the crack of dawn and hoofed it to the museum to take a photo. When the slide was shown in Marc Bohne’s staff slide show of those old trucks in front of the museum, the entire staff erupted in laughter.

Beth Herriot Enderle provided some additional information:

We did tell Gus that we were making lunch for a hike tomorrow, but it was really sandwiches and other goodies that were shared by all who participated, as we sat outside till 4:00 a.m. and laughed about it all.

The other details that Mike didn't know about was that while John and I were at breakfast, we were summoned by Gene Garris, and told to be in his office as soon as we were done eating. He was not happy. He sat us down in the two chairs across from him at his desk and proceeded to let us know that this was not a funny prank at all. Dale was very angry and that we were to try and find out which staff might have been involved with any of this, as this was NOT to happen again. It's funny, but we never did find any of the answers to Mr. Garris' questions, nor did we ever get back to him...