(Editor’s note: It should be noted the use of electricity described below involved low-voltage electricity. However, readers should definitely not try to replicate these pranks, no matter what voltage they use.)
The Ruark family of Deltaville was one of the last families on the Chesapeake Bay to own and captain a Chesapeake Bay sailing schooner. The family owned the two-mast schooners Columbia F.C. and Maggie.
Talmadge Ruark, who captained and served as mate aboard the boats as a young man shared this story with me. “We had a lot of fun on the boats. One time we were drifting around one night waiting for the wind. It won’t no wind at all. I was up on deck lying around and daddy was down in the cabin with his mouth wide open, sound asleep.
“I said, ‘Damn if I ain’t going to get him.’
“So, I crawled over there and took a piece of wire and stretched it over to the spark plug on the Palmer engine in the yawl boat. I hooked the other end of the wire to the screen door handle on the cabin. I went to the steps and rolled (started) that old Palmer engine over and shoved the switch up.“I yelled down to Daddy, ‘Come up here a minute.’ He came up and when he put his hand on that screen door, I shot the juice to her. It lit his hand up like a noon light. ‘Oh, damn it,’ he yelled. ‘That’s all right, you’ll pay for this.’ And damn if he didn’t get me back. About a week or so later, he caught me asleep in the bunk in Baltimore. He took some copper wire and coiled it about five inches around my big toe.“I think he hooked two batteries and two coils to me, and when he put the juice to it, he just about electrocuted me in that bunk. I was screaming, trying to get the wires off my toe, but every time I touched the wires, it would circulate the current through the rest of my body. I damn near beat myself to death trying to get out of that bunk.”
It Happened Here in Rivah Country!
