Subject: Bio (continued) Len Johnston
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 09:05:35 -0500

To those of a free spirit who call no man sir and the fools who asked
for more. Woofie's to blame for this one.

                      THE HARE AND THE ESCALATOR.

    We all piled into the van in high spirits in spite of the fact it was
five o'clock in the morning. I always enjoyed getting away from home for a
while and this shop-fitting contract called for a fortnight on site and a
week off.
    We would be staying in a happy little guesthouse that treated us
more like family than paying guests. This would be our third shift.
    Big Fred was driving so Jimmy the Bampot and I settled down for the
long haul to the north coast where we would be fitting out the partitioning
in the new driving licence centre for the provence.
    I had just started to doze when the van swerved violently and there
was a thump from somewhere underneath the vehicle. Fred braked to a stop,
cursing like a trooper.
    The thump was caused by a large hare who was dim-witted enough to
race a two ton van doing nearly eighty across the road. It had lost
the unequal contest and was now very dead indeed.
    Big Fred, being the hunting, shooting, fishing type announced that
jugged hare was exactly the sort of mouth-watering dish he liked so the
hare was thrown into the back of the van and we resumed our journey.
    We arrived at the guesthouse early thanks to quiet roads at that time
of day and found the other crew we were to relieve were still in bed.
The landlady offered to cook us a second breakfast while we waited
for the others to get up so we settled in happily enough as she put the
pan on the stove and began to crack eggs into it.
    Two minutes later I saw Jimmy the Bampot slipping into the house with
the hare under his arm. He put his finger to his lips and I rose to follow
him. Together we sneaked upstairs as silently as a couple of ghosts.
    Willy was snoring soundly as Jimmy lifted the covers and slipped the
hare into bed beside him. Tastefully, he arranged the bedclothes around
its little body and tucked it in. Willy's arm was gently lifted and
placed around the hare's shoulders then we slipped from the room as
silently as we came and waited for the scream when the alarm went off.
    But the scream never came. Instead as we got into the van to drive to
the building site the upstairs window opened and the hare flew out to
land with a thump on Big Fred's head. Since Jimmy the Bampot was standing
beside Fred the hurler of hares clearly knew who was responsible. That was
the trouble with our team. We knew each other too well.
    All our gags were getting stale. The newspaper with wet contact
cement spread thinly over it and then set on fire. The victim would attempt
to stamp it out only to find it stuck fast to his shoe, the ensuing wild
dance often hilarious. The toilet seat with invisible cling film stretched
tightly over the bowl and the bulb removed from the light. Many a wet pair
of trousers that caused and sometimes a colour change too would be evident
when the victim emerged.
     But to get back to the story in hand. When we eventually got to the
site we found it locked and bolted. It seemed the builder was in
receivership since early the previous day. We were all recalled back to
base and sent to Robinson and Cleaver's big shop in the Belfast
city centre where reconstruction work was in progress and more men
were needed.
     Needless to say the hare went with us. That hare travelled more miles
after it was dead than it ever did alive!
     As we entered the store the hare was stuffed under Jimmy's arm
beneath his coat. Our section was to build some partitioning at the head
of a new escalator.
     Jimmy couldn't resist it. He set the hare on the rubber hand-rail and
held its hand as he rose on the moving staircase to where we were to work.
The girls waved and Jimmy moved the hare's little arm up and down in salute.
It was a riot.
     Then it happened for the first time. Jimmy leaned over the handrail
to wave at a sales-girl and his trouser front brushed against the glass
sidewall of the escalator. A two inch blue spark of static electricity
crackled into his flies through the infamous brass rivet and the hare flew
from his hand like a live thing.
     Jimmy yelped like a terrier with his tail caught in a door and jerked
away from the glass panelling in a vain attempt to catch the hare. He
missed by an inch.
     The hare somersaulted down like a demented skydiver to land with a
resounding thud among a display of lipsticks that must have taken an hour
to set up. The lipsticks went in all directions to a four letter
oath from the startled sales-girl. Believe me, it was an oath ladies
weren't even supposed to know, never mind use. I certainly wouldn't repeat
it here.
     Now the salesgirl was Belfast born and bred and naturally assumed the
hare was hurled at her deliberately. No other possibility ever entered her
head. She recovered from the shock with surprising speed and lifting the
hare by its hind legs she hefted it to feel its weight as she glared up at
Jimmy.
     Satisfied it was heavy enough she headed determinedly for the escalator.
Jimmy watched this performance with mounting apprehension. So did we.
But we were sportsmen even if he wasn't. We all moved to block his escape as
the sales-girl mounted the staircase, swinging the hare like a pendulum. It
was only fair that we helped her after all. He was much bigger than she was.
     She caught up with him as he dodged and weaved trying to get through
our line. One meaty fist grabbed him by the coat collar and effortlessly
bounced him against the wall. His protests of innocence fell on deaf ears
as she swung the hare in a wild roundhouse swing.
     No knight of old ever swung his battleaxe with the force that hare
hit Jimmy. Its tiny skull connected with his just above his ear with a crack
that made even us wince.
     Jimmy's eyes glazed and he slid down the wall to take no further
interest in the proceedings for the time being. The sales-girl threw the
hare onto his lap, dusted her hands off and marched back to her counter with
her head held high and the enemy routed.
     We held the inquest that lunch time. Nobody could understand how
Jimmy got shocked so badly. When we touched the escalator nothing happened.
     Strangely enough a clue to the answer was in a book I was reading. At
that time I was going through the classics for the first time. I had just
read Melville's Typee and was now reading Moby Dick. The talk soon went
round to the film of the same name and how Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab
quenched the St Elmo's fire with his bare hands.
     'How do you think they did that in the film?' Jimmy asked as he
shifted his legs with an audible wince.
     'Probably some sort of cartoon,' I told him. 'But there's a machine
that makes static electricity in the museum at Stranmillis. Maybe they used
something like that.'
     'I've seen it. Doesn't it rub a piece of fur against a glass tube?'
Willy asked. 'You turn a handle as quick as you can.'
     We looked at each other. And the light dawned in six pairs of eyes. It
was the fur! Suddenly we knew what had happened to Jimmy. The hare's legs
had rubbed against the escalator's glass sides and created a charge of
static that nearly blew his willy off when he leaned over the side!
     'What about nylon carpet? Would that do the same thing?' Jimmy the
Bampot asked with his interest in the world at large reviving rapidly.
     We looked around quickly. There were some scraps of the new nylon
carpet which was being fitted scattered around the floor. In no time we had
a six inch square each and the great experiment was on.
     Big Fred went down the staircase holding the scrap of nylon carpet
hard against the glass side as he went.
     It nearly took Willy's arm off when he gingerly touched the glass to
test the theory. We were ecstatic. And that was only a one pad shock. We
had six to play with!
     The first victim was to be Bothwell, our foreman. He was due to call
at the site sometime that afternoon to calculate our bonus.
     The time dragged as we waited for him to appear. At last he came
through the glass entrance doors and headed towards us.
     'One pad,' I suggested.'
     'Two,' Jimmy demanded.
     'Definitely no more than two!' Fred said firmly.
     So four of us went down the escalator with our bits of carpet pressed
hard against the sides.
     The plot was Bothwell would be called from the floor below and would
lean over as Jimmy had done. He would then be fried as all good foremen
should be.
     The glass sides were fairly crackling with static as we got to the
ground floor. The other lads picked up a length of wood each from the pile
stored at the bottom of the staircase and started back up. I stayed behind
as per the plan and pretended to count the wood.
     But to our chagrin Bothwell was a gentleman as well as a straight
arrow. When the manageress of the shop stopped him at the foot of the
staircase to ask how the work was going he politely ushered her
ahead of him onto the escalator to show her how the job was progressing.
    We held our breath as they ascended towards the first floor. Of
course the inevitable happened. She got it instead of him. She waved to
someone on the ground floor and there was a bang that blew her
expensive hair-do into something resembling a Dandylion gone to seed.
    I must say here and now her fruity language when she recovered her
wits shocked even us. There is something about a swearing woman that
disconcerts the male of the species.
    A red faced engineer arrived an hour later to check the escalator
over. Apparently the phone call he had received had been terse and to the
point.
    He spent two hours fruitlessly looking for the fault. Unable to find
anything wrong he packed his tools and went to report to the manageress.
    It was too good to miss. Four of us promptly went down the escalator
with our nylon pads as before. We watched in great glee as the engineer
brought the manageress to see the results of his labours.
    'It definitely won't shock?' she asked doubtfully.
    'Guaranteed!'
    The fool slapped the glass and the resulting bang that nearly blew
his cap off sent us into hysterics.
    Once again he went grimly to work. This time he made a thorough job
of it. That machine was stripped to the last nut and bolt. Of course there
was nothing wrong. The machine was perfect. When he had finished
re-assembling the pieces and gone to fetch the manageress we went down with
our carpet pieces once more.
    This was our undoing. This time the birds came home to roost.
    Big Fred was on the way back up with a long piece of wood and carefully
avoiding contact with the statically charged glass sides when she appeared
with the engineer.
    Confident in his assessment of the machine's safety this time the
engineer challenged her to touch the sides. Two seconds later the
manageress's hair-do went bang into hay-seed for the second time and the
engineer's name was mud.
    Fred shook so much as he laughed the wood he was carrying hit the
ceiling and promptly jolted back and jammed into one of the steps. The
escalator motors ground until smoke started to appear around the driving
belts and the piece of wood slowly began to bend inexorably into an ever
deepening bow.
    Fred tugged frantically to free it without having the slightest effect.
At last it could bend no more. There was a tremendous bang and the broken
pieces of four by two spun across the crowded shop to land, mercifully
without killing anyone, between two expensive glass counters. Not even a
pencil was broken.
     But that was it. We were banned from ever using the escalator again
and lucky to keep our jobs.
     Perhaps it was just as well. Jimmy the Bampot had a grand plan to use
much bigger pieces of carpet the next day.
     God knows, if we hadn't been stopped then we would probably have
ended up killing somebody.