The Prank Calls

I learned how to make prank phone calls when I was nine years old.  That was in 1969, way before "Call Return" and "Caller ID".  That was back when phones were attached by a wire to the wall of your house.

I was living in my step-aunt Bobbie Nell's house in Graysville, AL, and when all adults were out of the house, my sister Colleen and my step-cousin Jack (we called him Jackie), both aged 14, would start with the calls.  I was allowed to observe these masters of prank, but only if I refrained from making background noise.

They would take turns picking random numbers out of the phone book, dial them, and give the poor recipients their anonymous treat of the day.  Colleen and Jackie both altered their voices to sound adult and authentic.  I remember their spills.  He did the now stale "is your refrigerator running?", and then told the party on the other end that they'd better go catch it before it get's away.  He also did the cliché call (although it was new to me at the time) to the drugstore to ask if they have Prince Albert in a can.  "You'd better let him out before he smothers!"

"Ha ha ha ha", we all laughed with delight. 

Colleen had a particular prank call that she used regularly.  She even had the script for it written out on a piece of lined notebook paper.  It was a telephone commercial for a non-existent cologne named Nothing.  She would start the call by asking if the lady of the house was home.  That was an OK and fairly typical question to ask in the 1960s, even though the answering party always knew there was to be a sales pitch following that question.

Colleen would begin her "nothing" cologne spill, while Jackie and I sat anxiously but quietly listening; our eyes intently focused on the fake saleslady.  Her act went something like this:

"When you wear 'nothing', your husband will not be able to keep his hands off of you.  Every man will love you if you are wearing 'nothing'.  Wearing 'nothing' gives you confidence.  Be assured that if you wear 'nothing', you will be appreciated as a modern woman.  Every man will simply love you if you wear 'nothing' at parties", and so forth it went, depending on the other party's responses.

OR, if the woman of the house was absent or non-existent:

"When you give 'nothing' to your wife/girlfriend, she will always remember you.  When she wears 'nothing', you will fall in love with her all over again."  Colleen even turned "nothing" into a man's cologne one time when she dialed a man who had no "lady of the house". 

And so on it went--you get the idea.

Now, Colleen never did well being in the limelight.  Anytime she was ever placed as the center of attention, as she was at that moment with our eyes and ears upon her, she would get embarrassed and sometimes even tear up to the point of crying.  She also would tear up when she got to laughing too hard.  Well, this was the moment for both.  She stumbled halfway through her first sales pitch, and had to abruptly hang up so that she could be free to burst out laughing along with Jackie and me.

Okay, she dialed another one with a determined seriousness, and she went through the whole spill to a patient man on the other end of the line.  Jackie and I had to put pillows over our faces so Colleen wouldn't see the twinkles in our eyes or hear the giggles we had to stifle.  She finished that one like a pro!  And, hanging up the phone, she beamed at our applause and loud bursts of previously contained laughter.

Jackie and Colleen went another round, each taking a turn, and each congratulating one another after their calls.  I was being left out of their club of mutual admiration.   

I wanted MY turn.

Since they were being kind enough to even permit me, a nine-year-old, to stay in the room while they worked, they had to discuss letting me make a call.  After an agreement, they allowed me to do one, however I had to demonstrate to them that I could lower my voice enough to sound like a grown-up.  I chose to sound like a man, and I auditioned for them.  They "ok'd" it, and I dialed the phone.  A man answered.

"Do you need your house painted?" I asked in a manly voice.  The split-second of silence was enough to make me think he was actually considering it.  He said "no".  I said "alright then", and we hung up.

Nobody thought it was funny, not even me, and nobody was laughing.  I felt satisfied though, that I had been granted a screen test, or in this case, a "receiver" test.  Next thing I knew I was being screened out of the prank session, and I had a feeling I would be granted no more chances to actively participate.  I had my go at it, and bombed out.  Colleen and Jackie worked on a few more victims for a bit, and when the adults came home, the prank party was over.

I had learned plenty though, for later.

A year or so after, I was living in Twilleytown and hanging around with my friend Teresa.  During one of our lull days when we had the house to ourselves, the telephone came into play.  I told her about "nothing" cologne, and how we could "sell" it.  We got the phone, which had a very long cord on it, and dragged it to the middle of the living room floor.  That was our stage for opening day and phone prank days to follow.  We did the "nothing" commercial for potential "customers" on the other end of the line; thus beginning a long audio acting career.

As the next couple of years went by, we honed our skills by asking weird questions of people ("can I borrow a cup of flour?"), making strange statements to people ("we are holding your cat for ransom"), and sometimes screaming out horror scenarios to people who subsequently stressed over how they could get help to some girl "being strangled" in the general area.  We even serenaded some poor folks with the break out of song as soon as they picked up their phones.  We were scaring, distressing, worrying, lullabying, etc. many unseen strangers.

In time, we even became brazen enough to call people we knew, and with much success, in that they never recognized our voices.  We discovered that it was more fun to call people we were acquainted with because, knowing what they looked like, we could envision their expressions and reactions, and therefore more thoroughly enjoy the moment.  It was a special thrill when we could picture the victims' faces as they heard the nonsense we dished out to them.  We got Aunt Bobbie one time, and Teresa's Aunt Birdie another time.  We got neighbors, we got Jack's Hamburgers a time or two, and I think we even got one of our teachers' houses once--Mr. Gann, maybe.

One day my parents brought home a crate of baby chicks.  There were, it seemed, about a hundred 3-day-old biddies (that's what we called them) in that box.  I can't say "a hundred" with absolute certainty, but there were a bunch of them.  My parents left the house again to go get chicken-raising supplies or something, and left me (and Teresa) in charge of biddie-watching.  Our stage, the living room floor, was set.  The cast?  A hundred funny, fuzzy, chirping biddies.

Not that the biddies didn't hold their own on entertainment value; they did, with their cute and comical appearance prompting us to laugh, to swoon, and to fondle them.  But we just had to carry it a step farther via telephone.  We made several anonymous phone calls to people to let them hear the melodious sound of a hundred chicks "peep peep peeping" into the receiver, while we held our breaths, silently listening to the people's responses.  Our rolling hysteria after the phone "slam" was our reward. 
 
We did the same with a small box--maybe a dozen in number--of ducklings about a month later.

It went like that off and on for a few years.  Then, at some point, I began to do the prank calls on my own.

I'd dial.  "Hello"
Me:  "Is Henry there?"
Them:  "You've got the wrong number."
Me:  "Well could I just leave him a message?"
Them:  Could develop into anything from a stern but patient "you've got the wrong number--there is no 'Henry' here" to an intense "YOU HAVE THE WRONG #@!x:%!! NUMBER!!" to a "slam" of their receiver.

Dial.  "Hello"
Me:  "This is the operator with your requested party. I have your long distance call on hold for you to Singapore" (or Cairo, or Tahiti, depending on my mood). "One moment please, while I make the connection."
Them:  "Whaaaa...?"  he fades as I scrape cardboard over the receiver's sound holes a few times to simulate transmission sounds.  I joyfully hold my breath and listen to him quizzing his wife and/or kids about "who have ya'll been calling??"

Dial.  "Hello"
Me:  (in a gum-chewing-smacking teen voice) "Where's Angie at?"
Them:  (tersely) "There is no 'Angie' here.  You have the wrong number."
Me:  (smacking gum) "How do I get 'hold of 'er?"
Them:  (not laughing) Slams down the receiver.

Dial.  "Hello"
Me:  Violently coughing and 'trying' to speak. A broken "s'cuse me" inserted a couple of times.
Them:  "Hello??"
Me:  "Just a minute" hack/cough ''s'cuse me"; clear my throat really really hard, ''alright then"....."who'd you need to talk to?"
Them:  "Do what?!" and/or "Who's this?!"
Me:  "Who's this?"  "You called me!"
Them:  SLAM

I knew how to entertain myself.

I got a part-time job when I was 16 and I had access to many names and numbers of people around Walker County, mostly on the east end.  I was left alone to "man the store" several times.  There was one customer of the place where I worked, and his name was Ollie.  I had never heard of a real person named Ollie before. I had heard of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, but never an actual Ollie person.  One day, I called this Ollie's house, and quickly inquired "Hey Ollie, where's Kukla and Fran?"  After hanging up really fast, not waiting for him to answer, I burst out in a rewarding hysterical laughter session that lasted me about five minutes.    

That unethical act would definitely be a firing offense in this day and age.  Would have been then too, but I got away with it.   

I grew up (allegedly), being in my 30s, but continued on with the tradition.  I had a Motorola Bag Phone by now and carried it around in my truck.  Still no "Caller ID", not in my circles anyway.  I bought a Frankenstein doll in the middle of a workday from Walmart's Halloween aisle, and the doll would moan and groan when you flipped on his switch.  From my Bag Phone I called Colleen first, my prank-call guru, and anonymously let Frankenstein moan into the phone at her while I held my breath.  She hung up without a word.  "Of all the nerve!", I thought.  My mentor hanging up on me, not appreciating how much her 1969 student had progressed.  She didn't even allow herself a moment to savor a well-done prank call; just unemotionally hung up on me.  Me; the reigning master of prank!

I immediately called her back, laughing despite her snub, and told her it had been me.  "It sounded like a cow" she said.  Okay, she was right once I had thought about it.  But, where was her prank call spirit of the old days??

I then dialed my mom.  She listened silently for a while to the moaning and groaning of the animated Frankenstein.  I couldn't believe she listened into her receiver as long as she did.  I finally burst out laughing, thus identifying myself, and asked her what she thought.  She said she thought it sounded like a cow, too.

That was about the last prank phone call I made.  Not because I had so matured, but because of the kill-joy prevalence of "Caller ID", "Call Return", and other likewise "FBI" phone boxes that took away any anonymous phone fun you could have.  Then cell phones came around, totally displacing house phones, or land lines, and almost eliminating the classic "pay phones".  You can't even find a pay phone anymore to do anonymous prank calls.

If I could get away with it now, I would.  If I could find just one lone phone booth, I would have a field day of laughter.  I'd carry a bag lunch, and I'd spend the whole day calling, at least until my change ran out.  I don't even know how much it cost to make a pay phone call anymore, should a pay phone booth still exist.

All you people who think you're getting harassing phone calls now--with the "800-unknown caller/ad callers/scam callers/etc. callers"--you either don't remember or you are too young to even know about true prank calls.  The good old fashioned traditional prank telephone call.  It was a real art, and I was a deviant artist.

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