OK, Fowler started this, and we can't let him forget it. We seem to have a theme here of rednecks and pyrotechnics, so I'll keep it going:

Stonewalrus and I worked with a guy some years ago who was young. strong, athletic, and lazy as could be. We were doing environmental field work then, and it was some pretty physical stuff, lugging sampling equipment over rough terrain and climbing in and out of difficult places to collect samples. Todd would have been useful for this, but he preferred to sit on his butt. Todd would "volunteer" to stay at the truck and do the paperwork while the rest of us collected samples. That would have been OK because we all hated the paperwork, but Todd would go to sleep while we were gone and the paperwork wouldn't get done. Then we had to finish it after we got back. The rest of the crew got pretty tired of this after a while.

One of the crew, Charlie Rush (now sadly passed too soon) was a laid-back old hippie who was also one of the funniest characters I ever met. Ever the practical joker, Charlie devised a plan. On one sampling expedition, he brought along a BIG string of firecrackers hidden in his rucksack. Charlie and I carefully moved all the flammable stuff out of the cargo bay of the sampling truck so we wouldn't touch off any conflagrations. When we got to the site, an old landfill, Charlie, Tom and I set off to collect samples, leaving Todd in his usual place sitting on a cooler in the back of the truck with his radio playing country music, a coke in one hand, and a stack of sample forms and tags beside him.

After humping all our gear into and out of a steep ravine and collecting water and leachate samples, we sent Tom back around the perimeter road with the samples and other stuff in the Dodge Ramcharger 4WD, while Charlie and I went the short way uphill and across the fill. We came quietly up in front of the truck, and through the windshield we could see Todd, head down on his chest, asleep on his cooler as usual. Charlie lit the string of firecrackers, leaned in through the passenger-side window, and tossed them back through the hatch into the cargo bay. They landed with a soft plop right behind the sleeping redneck on the cooler. Todd's head popped up and he started to turn to see what had awakened him. Just then the firecrackers began going off.

In the cartoons a character will run off a cliff and continue running until he realizes there is nothing beneath him. He looks down, goes UH-OH!, and starts his vertical plunge. What happened next was pretty much like that. Todd exited the back doors of the truck with his legs churning madly and made about fifteen feet before gravity and the realization that he was four feet in the air took hold and sent him sprawling on his face. Charlie and I doubled over laughing, and Tom almost wrecked the Ramcharger. He had to stop until he could get control of himself. Todd sat up and shook his head, then he heard the hysterical laughter and the last pops of the firecrackers going off. He jumped up and came after us, but Charlie ran one way and I ran the other, and Todd was so addled he couldn't decide which one of us to chase, so he just stood there and cussed. Todd didn't say much for the rest of the trip, but he didn't go to sleep on the cooler again, and did help us hump the gear on later missions.

Catoosa