From Reader’s Digest, July 1954, p. 90, based on an Associated Press story picked up from the Providence Bulletin. The AP story and its aftermath were also summarized in The Unicorn Book of 1954. This is an instance when the media were ahead of the folklorists in recognizing, collecting, and comparing versions of an urban legend. The push-starting legend actually pre-dated automatic transmission when it was applied to various car models of the late 1930s and early ’40s, which were equipped with “Hydromatic,” “Fluid Drive,” or “Dynaflow.” It was necessary to push a car so equipped fast enough to develop sufficient torque in the drive-shaft fan blades to rotate the motor set of blades and start the engine. The legend continues to be told, with updated damage figures, and nowadays invariably mentioning automatic transmission. The blame for the misunderstanding always goes to a woman driver. Readers still send me versions of this story purporting to be firsthand experiences. Another legend describing a different misunderstanding of automatic transmission describes a young man taking a stolen car out for a drag race on the highway. He starts out with the shift lever in “D for drag,” and when another car starts to pass he shifts into “R for race” and tears out the transmission.
“Cruise Control”
I heard this story about five years ago while I was living in Omaha, Nebraska, and I believe the source was supposed to be a Paul Harvey newscast.
From Billy and the Boingers Bootleg by Berke Breathed. Copyright © 1986
by The Washington Post. By permission of Little, Brown and Company
There was this wealthy student from the Middle East attending either the University of Kansas or Kansas State. He goes downtown and buys this fully equipped van; it has everything—fancy paint, sun roof, carpet, power everything, and a bar complete with a refrigerator. Picks up the whole works and pays cash. Hops in and drives off.
A little while later motorists on the Interstate see this van veer off the highway and go into the ditch where it overturns. They stop and rush over to see if the driver is hurt, and it turns out that he is only badly shaken up. Asked how he could lose control of his van on a flat stretch of Kansas Interstate, he replies, “Well, I put the van on cruise control, and went in back to fix myself a drink….”
Sent to me by Tom R. Roper of Waterloo, Iowa, in October 1982. I first heard this updated version of the latest-option car legend in 1977, and it has been popular ever since, often told about a foreign driver in the United States or Canada, usually one from a Middle Eastern country or from Pakistan. In the July 9, 1986, issue of the Wall Street Journal an article on strange insurance claims attributed the incident to a woman driving a new van on a highway near Washington, D.C., who left the wheel to tend to her crying baby in the back. When I queried the Allstate Insurance official mentioned in the news story, he said that he had heard about the case from a claims manager eight or nine years previously and had no other knowledge of it. Another Allstate spokesman swore that it “really happened,” but his attempts to track down a record of the case were unsuccessful. A reader who assured me in a 1987 letter that the incident had occurred in St. Louis in 1985 to an Arab student whose insurance claim was handled by the reader’s own sister never responded to my fervent plea for more information about the case. A “Bloom County” comic strip released on April 8, 1987, pictured all the members of the “Boingers World Tour” in the back of their van having a conference when somebody asked, “Who’s driving?!” The reply, from Opus the penguin, was, “Keep yer pants on. I pushed Cruise Control.”
“The Ice-Cream Car”
After the engine is shut off the underhood temperature begins to rise. When the engine has been shut off for 20 minutes, referred to as a “hot soak” period, the temperature will usually reach it’s peak. This condition will occur particularly in the summertime or when the car is stored in a heated or attached garage.
Fuel will frequently drip from the ends of the throttle shaft or can be observed dripping out of the main discharge nozzle or pump nozzle into the manifold…. Hard hot starting occurs if the driver attempts to start the car after it has stood for 20 minutes.
This condition is PERCOLATION, not flooding….
A classic example of percolation was recorded recently. A lady driver stopped frequently at an ice cream store to buy ice cream. When she bought a quart of Vanilla and returned to her car the car started instantly. When she purchased Butterpeacan and returned to her car it wouldn’t start.
An alert service Representative made two trips to the store with the driver. The first trip she bought Vanilla. It was pre-packed and she returned to the car in 5 minutes and the vehicle started perfectly. When she returned to buy the Butterpecan she waited 20 minutes for it to be hand packed and pay her bill. When she returned to the car she pumped the accelerator 2 or 3 times; adding additional fuel to the already over rich mixture in the manifold. The car wouldn’t start. It was necessary for the Representative to explain the correct procedure to start a hot engine.
Verbatim, with a few deletions as indicated, from the Holley Carburetor Co. Service Guide #2, Part #36-71, p. 5. Frank W. King, national technical director of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America, who sent me a photocopy of this page in February 1990, did not know the date of the guide. But references on the page to “since 1968,” plus the part number, suggest 1971. Percolation and flooding are real enough mishaps, but the “classic example” cited is a legend. Several readers have written me to say that they remember the same finicky-car problem discussed in the “Model Garage” section of Popular Science sometime in the 1940s or ’50s. The June 1978 issue of Traffic Safety magazine repeated the story from Automotive Engineering, saying it was hand-packed pistachio ice cream that caused the problem, and that it occurred in Texas. A reader in Milwaukee wrote to say that she also heard the story about Texas, and that the problem was traced to “any flavor but vanilla.” The February 6, 1992, issue of Bits & Pieces magazine, “A monthly mixture of horse sense and common sense about working with people,” included a detailed account of “The Ice-Cream Car,” saying that it had happened to a Pontiac owner whose family voted each night after dinner which flavor of ice cream to have for dessert. Any time vanilla was chosen, the car would not start on the return trip. The problem was traced to the layout of the ice-cream store, which kept all the vanilla in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. According to this source, the story was “a favorite at General Motors.”
15
The Criminal Mind
What makes the urban legends about crime interesting is not so much the depictions of actual crimes themselves. The daily news gives you enough of that—muggings, assaults, thefts, burglary, murders, bombings, graft, scams, etc.—the whole gamut of criminal activity in rich detail. What the legends give us instead is some insight into the minds of the “perps,” as law-enforcement officers like to call crooks. We gain these insights from allegedly true reports of the ongoing battle of wits between criminals and their victims.
Take, for example, the story of a minor crime that Ann Landers published back in 1989 from a reader’s letter:
When I attended high school in Minneapolis, a student bought a piece of pie in the cafeteria and carried it to his table. He decided to go back for a carton of milk and wrote a note saying, “Don’t eat this pie. I spit on it.” When he returned someone had added, “So did I.”
Although that episode may have been true, it echoes a much older theme in rural legendry. Likely the pie-protection gambit-that-failed—whether actual or mere hearsay—was based on someone’s memory of a story like this:
A farmer was losing way too many watermelons due to nightly raids on his fields, so he posted a sign that said “Warning! There is a poisoned watermelon in this patch.” The day after he posted the sign he found not a single melon missing, but the sign had been altered to read, “There are TWO poisoned Watermelons in this patch.”
For an update on the theme of supposedly “foolproof” schemes to avoid theft see “The Unstealable C
ar” legend in this chapter.
Lists of tips to avoid theft often seem to echo legends. A New York Times article of May 19, 1992, had these examples, along with advice about home alarm systems, deadbolt locks, and the like:
From a distance, look under your car. Check the back seat up close….
Place large dirty dog dishes outside [your home], even if you’re pet-less.
The Times article opened with a capsule summary of “The Attempted Abduction” legend found below in this chapter, plus two other unverified “nightmare” scenarios, then added “Some of these stories may be true. It doesn’t really matter.” (The article did not mention another piece of anti-crime advice: “If you want to drive off a would-be mugger, just start picking your nose.” I do hope I’ll never have to try this one, though!)
Legends illustrating the workings of the criminal mind are usually based on the relatively minor bad guys. Notice in this chapter that except for one reference to an organized crime family the rest of the stories deal with people scheming to steal a few groceries, some car parts, a Christmas tree, luggage, or the like. Typically, too, in the legends the baddies are nearly always caught, often nabbed in the very act of stealing. These details, of course, are what make the legends believable as well as gratifying to the law-abiding folk who want justice to prevail.
Another theme in crime legends is that even the most innocent-seeming act by a trusted person may be an actual scam. Herrick Jeffers of Melbourne Village, Florida, sent me an example of this kind of story a few years ago:
A certain parishioner came to the back room of a church after Sunday services, seeking to cash a check, because, he explained, “all the banks were closed, and he was a little short of money.” He wanted to write a check for the amount of loose change in the collection plates—the bills and coins that were not in envelopes. The ushers accommodated him, and this happened several times. Since there are usually different ushers each week, it took a while before anyone realized that this same person was writing a check to the church each week for from $10 to $40. It finally dawned on them that he was establishing an iron-clad tax deduction without paying a cent for it.
You have to wonder why none of the ushers ever suggested that the man just stop at an ATM on the way home from church.
“Is nothing sacred to the scam artist?” I wondered when I read an article a few years ago in one of my hometown newspapers, the Salt Lake Tribune. The headline was “LDS Scriptures Are Hot Items for Shoplifters.” The term “LDS,” for you outsiders, refers to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the Mormons—and the scriptures alluded to are four volumes collectively referred to as “The Quads,” consisting of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, “all standard scriptures for Mormons—in a single uncondensed volume.”
According to the Tribune article, people were shoplifting these $100 leather-bound Quads, sometimes justifying their actions by saying that they were teaching religion courses and could not afford to purchase the set. Some thieves even had the nerve to return the book to a different LDS bookstore and ask to get it engraved for someone’s birthday. The article included this revealing passage:
Linda Brummett, manager of Brigham Young University’s campus bookstore for 19 years, recounts the story of a Mormon missionary at the Missionary Training Center in Provo caught stealing scriptures. The judge hearing the case gave the young man money to buy a set.
“But this could well be an urban legend,” she said. “I’ve heard this one many times in the last 18 years, and the story often changes.”
Indeed! The way I heard it, the girlfriend of an LDS missionary had shoplifted the Quad as a consolation gift to accompany her “Dear John” letter to the absent lad. (Note to my friends at BYU: I know this is only a legend, except for the part about “Dear John” letters, which are a well-known fact of missionary life. At least so I’ve been told….)
* * *
“Police Secrets”
(From the Vancouver [BC] Sun, May 13, 1995)
At a journalism conference in California last year, a reporter told a story about how he had been net surfing in the state on-line system and found a police map with certain addresses highlighted.
He thought it was a map of murder scenes, so he started visiting the places pinpointed on the map. Guess what? It was a map of all the donut shops in the county!
* * *
“The Colander Copier Caper”
We don’t know if this qualifies to be included in our dumb crook series, but you would think by now that anyone over 12 would know the difference between a Xerox machine and a lie detector.
This is the scenario as it unfolded recently in the courtroom of Bucks County Court Judge Isaac Garb.
A small police department in the county took a man into custody on suspicion of a crime, and police asked the suspect if he was willing to take a lie detector test. The suspect agreed, and the police led him to a Xerox machine in which the police had already inserted a typewritten card that read, “He’s lying.” After seating the man next to the machine, the police placed a metal colander on his head and attached some wires to it. Then he was interrogated. Whenever the suspect gave an answer the police didn’t like, they pushed the copy button on the Xerox and (cunkaching) out would come the message, “He’s lying.”
Finally, the police got a full confession from the suspect, who obviously believed that he couldn’t beat the machine.
Judge Garb, of course, suppressed the confession because of the manner in which it was obtained, but he did get a good laugh out of it. “It’s the sort of comic relief you need around here once in awhile,” he says.
That police department will no doubt abandon its practice of using a Xerox machine to extract confessions. However, there’s always the Mr. Coffee machine.
May 10, 1993
Dear Mr. Brunvand: I am pleased to report that I am alive and extant in continuing to strive to be a legend in my own time.
I can confirm the veracity of the colander polygraph (lie detector). It occurred in Warminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the police had arrested an individual suspected of a crime. When he denied his culpability, he was offered the opportunity of a polygraph examination. He accepted, but they did not have a lie detector machine. Not lacking in ingenuity, they then caused the legend “you lied” on a piece of Xerox paper and put it into the Xerox machine, unbeknownst to the accused. They then placed a colander on his head and attached it to the Xerox machine by cable and alligator clamps. They then asked him an incriminating question to which he responded in such a way as to exculpate himself. They then activated the machine and the paper came out with the legend “you lied.” When confronted with that, the accused confessed all.
The matter came before me in court on a motion to suppress the confession.
I hope the foregoing satisfies your curiosity and quiets the skeptics among us.
Very truly yours,
Isaac S. Garb
First is the earliest published account of this incident that I have found; it comes from a column by Clark DeLeon of the Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 1977. Judge Garb’s letter was sent from the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County, Seventh Judicial District, Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Well might the good judge feel like a legend in his own time, since this is one of the most-often-repeated stories from the world of law enforcement. In my 1993 book The Baby Train, I quote or summarize versions of “The Colander Copier Caper” from four individuals and from seven published sources dated from 1977 to 1992. Most accounts do not name Judge Garb specifically, and many of them claim that the incident happened in the town of Radnor in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The Chief of Police in Radnor Township denied the incident in a 1990 letter quoted in my earlier book. I regard this “caper” as a prank, well known to American policemen, which has made its way to a court of law at least once. For those wishing to pursue the story, here are five further references I hav
e found to it: Chic magazine, June 1978; “A cop’s-eye view of ‘Barney Miller,’” TV Guide, March 21, 1981; Glimpse: A brief look at things for members of the International Society for General Semantics, no. 38 (1986); Paul Levine, Night Vision, 1992; and Michigan Law Review, March 1995, p. 857, n. 59. In his 1983 book Sez Who? Sez Me, Mike Royko reprinted a column of 1978 in which he described a “bowl-like gadget they had taken off a lamp” used by police in Chicago as part of a faked electrocution of a disorderly prisoner. I have also heard of police wrapping the spiral cord of the squad car microphone around a suspect’s arm while questioning him; then they randomly key in the microphone, causing a red light to blink on the console, telling the suspect that these flashes indicate when he is lying. Most of the police officers who sent me these stories insisted that some of the people they have had to arrest were actually dumb enough to fall for such tricks; none of the writers claimed that they themselves had ever used them.
“A Friend of the Family”
An upwardly-mobile couple moved into an expensive suburb of a big eastern city next door to a quiet family who were rumored to have ties to the Mafia. One Sunday night, returning from a weekend away from home, the couple were shocked to find that their home had been burglarized. After assessing the damage, the couple told their neighbors what had happened, asking if they had observed anything suspicious over the weekend.
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 30