Limburger Cheese - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Limberger Cheese

Last week’s blog about rival schools discrediting the Indian statue in front of our high school got me thinking about other pranks back then. While at the deli at Kroger’s waiting for my cold-cut order, I noticed Limburger cheese in the display counter, which brought back immediate memories of a prank during high school. A chunk of Limburger would be squished between the crevices on an engine manifold, then when the vehicle was started and the manifold began to heat up, the obnoxious stench of the Limberger would permeate the car and the driver immediately knew he was “pranked”. It would eventually burn off, but not for a couple days!

That was just one of the many innocent pranks people pulled in school to mostly relieve boredom. I guess it spurred our creativity to outdo each other with pranks. If I recall, it all started in the 5th or 6th grade more with teasing than pranking, once the girl’s hormones began to kick in and the boys started noticing. We did stupid stuff like putting a thumb tack on the seat of a girl in front of you. Way back when, the boy would dig the end of the girls pigtail in the ink well on each desk. We had desks with the hole for the ink well, but by that time, ball point pens were prevalent and fountain pens were no longer used in school.

Another common trick was to tape a small sign to the back of a fellow student’s back that says “Kick Me” or some such nonsense. I can recall several incidents involving soaping the mirror in the girls restroom with some smart aleck comments, or plugging a toilet so it would overflow when flushed. Bathroom humor was commonplace at that age.

As we grew older, the pranks became more interesting. For example, I can recall when the contents of the lockers in the boys locker room were switched with those in the girls locker room, jock straps and all! And my wife recalls a similar incident after gym class when she discovered her clothes were gone from her locker. She had to wear her bulky gym suit to Russia basketball coach Elijah Chatman’s class and when she told him what happened, he immediately led her into the girl's locker room and found the missing clothes in the bottom of the trash can. Read more about Elijah in this past blog.

Another common prank was unhooking a spark plug on the engine of any student who drove a car to school, typically done by those who didn’t have a car. Back then hoods could be opened from the outside.The car would stall and stumble until the hood was popped and it became obvious that a plug had been disconnected. Putting a skunk under the back seat of a car was also a trick played one time on a Minster guy. This previous blogpost describes that hilarious incident and other rivalry pranks over the years. These were typical of the pranks at the time; no real damage was done, usually funny and no one typically got caught, but it was always a wonderful diversion and conversation piece between classes.

And the senior class trip to Washington was always a prime time for pranks. I remember dropping a mattress from our hotel room window down to the alley below. And this innocent prank is involved me placing my hand in front of a fellow classmate during our class photo at the Capital to appear he had three hands.

My time in high school unfortunately preceded the streaker frenzy in the early 70’s. but not for my younger brother, who probably actually streaked given his usual shenanigans back then.

When someone did get caught, the punishment was usually to rectify the situation created by the prank, study hall detention or in rare occasions, suspended from school. Some of the more derelict pranksters actually looked forward to that punishment.

Our son also engaged in a prank during high school that involved letting some sheep loose in the school, resulting in quite a bit of damage. He did not get caught but a neighbor kid did. Since the police were called, the neighbor kid and and a few other perpetrators got into some trouble. His father was able to convince the local cops to expunge the record, but in exchange he had to compensate the school for the damages. Ouch!

In college, needless to say, the pranks got even better. For example, here’s a photo of old tires hung over a flagpole. Ironically, the college used a cherry picker to get off the tires rather than simply cutting them off. The maintenance crew was not that creative! Also, this past blog documents a prank at college involving a large electrical spool dumped in the river.

But the most popular prank back then was messing with the wedding car. I can recall several weddings where literally the four tires from the groom's car were rolled into the wedding hall as a joke, with the car out front on blocks all decorated with signs, streamers and tin cans strung behind. To prevent my car from being trashed on our wedding night, I arranged through my father-in-law to store my vehicle in the old Russia junk yard where the post office now stands. It was only a block or so from St. Remy’s hall and easy to retrieve; thankfully no one found it so we got off to our honeymoon without incident.

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