A poor understanding of physics

It seemed like a good idea at the time. My junior high derelict buddies John, Willie, and I used to hang around by the ravine where the train came through. In those days, the middle of the 1970s, there were no fences, and if someone got themselves hurt or killed that was their problem.

The spool of cable was just sitting there at the edge of the construction site and we were all pretty sure they were done with it. A lot of our neighbors had made picnic tables out of the giant wooden spools left behind like that, it was understood that they were ok to take.

“There’s still some cable wrapped around this one,” John noted as we picked out the one we wanted to take to the ravine.

We took turns rolling the spool down the road while someone else wheeled that person's bike alongside their own. The spool rolled itself quite efficiently down the hill to the ravine.

“Hey, we could try an experiment” Willie chimed in after we arrived.

"What did you have in mind Edison?" John asked, well aware of what can happen when Willie gets an idea. "Tell me it doesn't involve a baggie of gasoline this time."

"Let's see if we can cut the cable by having the train run over it," Willie said with excitement over the idea.

"Ok. That sounds like something" John replied.

Willie, always full of ideas, noticed the storm drain alongside the tracks had a grating made of rebar and would make a good sturdy spot to tie off one end. What we thought was a telephone pole seemed tailor-made for the other end. It was a bit tricky to tie a steel cable in a knot but that Boy Scout training was paying off. We chose knots meant to get tighter with tension.

When the train came through, around dusk, it would run right over the cable draped across the tracks and neatly cut it in two pieces we incorrectly reasoned.

“The train is due any minute. Let's hang around back here and watch” John suggested.

The reality was quite different than our expectations. The cable didn’t go under the train so much as across the front which gave the whole shebang plenty of tugging force. With a loud snap, the wooden pole lost the tug of war and came crashing down taking the wires along with it. Lo and behold they were not telephone wires but power lines. Somehow we had not learned the difference in school or Scouts. For what its worth, the knots performed well.

We got the hell outta there as quickly as possible and I relied on my old trick of humming the theme music to “The Six Million Dollar Man” to make my bike go faster. I was pretty sure it worked.

“What are you doing?” Willie asked incredulously.

“I can pedal faster when I do that,” I said and knew the second the words left my mouth that I sounded like a kid in grade school.

“Lame!” John shouted. Fair enough.

“Yeah, well how about not calling too much attention to ourselves?” Willie angrily suggested. He had a point.

We headed to the local convenience store to get to work on an alibi. The funny (ok maybe not haha funny) thing was the lights in the store were out and Bob, the owner, was in the parking lot having a smoke. 

“What happened?” Willy asked, believing he was establishing our innocence.

“I dunno”, Bob said, “all of a sudden the lights went out. Should be back on pretty soon.” Bob was always an optimist.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I thought to myself and wondered if the power company knew the location of the break. I considered going back and watching them fix it but I knew better than to return to the scene of a crime. Unfortunately, I didn't know better than to commit the crime in the first place.

“Is the telephone working?” Willy asked while fumbling for change in his pocket.

“Probably not” Bob replied, “since I expect it needs electricity as well.” Bob had a gift of common sense that my friends and I did not.

“That makes sense,” I said as we hopped on our bikes and started heading back to our homes.

“If that had been a telephone pole it would just be the phones not working now,” I said to Wilie and John once out of earshot of Bob.

“What’s your point?” Willie asked and I just shrugged while riding my bike no-handed.

“We gotta stick to the same story. If anyone asks we were riding our bikes across town and first heard about the power when we talked to Bob” John explained.

“Yep. We were nowhere near the ravine today” Willie added. A brilliant plan that can’t miss.

When I got home the house was completely dark. Mom and Dad were sitting on the porch swing with a flashlight looking at sections of the newspaper. I sat on a tree stump we sometimes used as a chair and told them about Bob saying the power was off.

“It happens,” my Dad said, “this freak fall weather when everyone’s got the air conditioning on full blast.” I wisely decided not to tell him that there isn't a fuse for the whole town. My best decision that day. 

I got a little jumpy when a police car slowly passed the house. I figured they were on the lookout for burglars and not kids who looked guilty of a poor understanding of physics.

Later that evening a policeman named Pete stopped by our house.

“Did you see anyone rolling a wood spool toward the ravine?” Pete asked.

“Nope,” I said, probably trying too hard to sound casual. I justified in my mind that technically I could not see myself while I was doing it.

“Somebody thought it was a cute idea to use the train to rip down a power pole,” Pete said somewhat disgusted. “The mind reels that somebody cooked that up!”

The power was restored the next day. We got a lecture in school about vandalism and pranks along with a thinly disguised warning that the police were still on the case. I chuckled to myself picturing a guy in a Sherlock Holmes getup examining the cable with a magnifying glass and a Dr. Watson guy smoking a pipe while asking questions.

“The hooligans that pulled this little stunt will be found” promised our principal. “And these kinds of hijinks will stop!”

None of us were ever caught but we did lose access to the ravine when the fence went up. It was on the news and everything.