Legacy

Hello out there, my name is Jim Stinson, I’m a Senior in High School, a farm boy, and 4H Club member.  Last summer at the peak of the growing season myself and seven other Seniors who are also farm boys and 4h Club members  were sitting around discussing various aspects of farm life and other ways to entertain ourselves.

We laughed as we all noted how our fathers seemed to be having a contest over who could make the scariest scarecrow.  There were some pretty spooky scarecrows out there. But only partially effective since they didn’t move.  Crows after awhile note that and more or less ignore the scarecrows.

Nevertheless scarecrows were still popular, maybe as yard art if nothing else.  To say the least they were an institution unto themselves. Tim Benson mentioned it would be nice if we could animate scarecrows so they moved.

That produced a couple of minutes of silence and I could almost see their brains thinking about that. There were some hmmms, some umms, and finally an aha! from Jack Turgelton.  Jack said I’ve got one of those Billy Bass plaques at home in my room, you know the kind that sings, moves its mouth and flops its tail.  Its battery operated.  So lets meet this weekend at the 4h Clubhouse and dissect it to see how it works.

We did just that and it was a relatively simple mechanism; easy to see how one could expand the idea to almost any motion desired.  We would need to build them on a larger scale because to make a scarecrow raise its arm would require more powerful electric battery operated motor and longer stiffer motion wire.

We were able to find the raw materials we needed between the hardware store and local hobby shop.  That weekend back at the 4H Club House we got busy.  There was of course trial and error, but we finally got the devices just right and ready to install.

Everyone went back to their farm to discriminately without being seen, install the devices.  We had also rigged a receiver into the units to we could operate them remote control.

The next morning as my father was heading out towards the fields I raised the scarecrows arms.  He took one look and froze in his tracks, then turned around and headed pell mell back to the house.  Meanwhile I dropped the scarecrows arm back down.

My father got my mother and said come look, she went out to see what he was fussing about and he said look at the scarecrow.  She did, and said “what about it?  Looks fine to me”.  My father got a dumb look on his face and my mother suggested he come back in and have a second cup of coffee as he surely wasn’t awake yet.  I had to bite my lip to keep from cackling out loud.

Back at the 4h Club House we all shared information and noted our fathers all had peculiar reaction.  Tim added his father had did a real double take as he had ramped things up a bit by also moving his fathers scarecrow twenty feet to the left.  We just about split our sides over all the fun we were having.  We decided we should just let things be normal for a week and then do it again.

Meanwhile when we gathered with our fathers in town at the local Mc Donalds for our weekly father son share hour and so forth; the subject was a hot item among our fathers.  Indeed they were a bit spooked.  But after talking about it for awhile they decided it was just the weather or freak atmospheric conditions causing illusions.  They then just laughed it off and forgot about it, going on to the usual subjects of discussion.  We of course just set there sober and innocent looking.

Back at the 4H Clubhouse we reveled at our success and decided to ramp it up a bit.  We went back to the hobby shop and got tape recorders pocket size of course.  We recorded good morning over and over; we then added them to the other mechanisms.

Next morning  as my father was heading out to the fields having forgot his previous experience, I hit the button and the scarecrow raised its arm and said good morning.  Again my father froze in his tracks, he was still staring when I hit the button again and stopped the recording and dropped the scarecrows arm.  He come a running back into the house shouting, spooks, goblins, poltergeist and ran into the closet hollering mama don’t let them get me.

Boy was it getting good. Later that week while we all gathered at Mc Donald’s again it was a hot subject again.  Somebody’s father suggested a Priest or exorcist or Ghost Buster be contacted as the scarecrows were obviously possessed by demons. Someone’s father said he’d check the yellow pages to see if one could be found and the report back next week.

Back at the 4H Clubhouse we talked about it and agreed that it might be getting out of hand.  However we couldn’t resist the idea of doing it one more time.  And if anyone could, ramp it up a bit.  Tim said he’d put his stuffed crow on the scarecrows other shoulder and change the recording to go caw, caw instead of good morning.  We also decided to all move the scarecrows twenty feet.

Well, everything was a howling success, but short lived.  Tim’   father had gotten a belly full and the crow bit was just too much.  He grabbed his shotgun and blew that crow to bits, along with the scarecrows head and part of the upper torso.  Apparently Tim’s father was jubilant and jumped up and down hollering, “I got that sucker, and I got him good.”  Well Okay for that, but when Tim’s father went to inspect the kill, he found what remained of the mechanism and recorder hanging out of what was left of the scarecrow.

Not good, cat was out of the bag. Seven fathers got together and they were madder than a hornet over what they said was being made fools of.

I have yet to find out the fates of my six cohorts; but mine was a trip to the woodshed, and even though I protested I was too old for that, I got it anyway.  Then I got it again for laughing all the way through the first licking.

Was it worth it? Yes and no. Yes because our clever design had gotten us a 4H Club award, a patent right, and enough money when we sold the patent right to put us all through college. Which saved our fathers a lot of money.  So one might say there was a happy ending after all.