|
Roy Collette and his
brother-in-law have been exchanging the same pair of pants as a
Christmas present for 11 years - and each time the package gets harder
to open. This year the pants came wrapped in a car mashed into a
3-foot cube.
The trousers are in the glove
compartment of a 1974 Gremlin. Now Collette's plotting his revenge--if
he can get them out.
It all started when Collette
received a pair of moleskin trousers from his brother-in-law, Larry
Kunkel of Bensenville, Ill. Kunkel's mother had given her son the
britches when he was a college student.
He wore them a few times, but
they froze stiff in cold weather and he didn't like them. So he gave
them to Collette.
Collette, who called the
moleskins "miserable", wore them three times, then wrapped
them up and gave them back to Kunkel for Christmas the next year.
The friendly exchange continued
routinely until Collette twisted the pants tightly, stuffed them into
a 3-foot-long, 1-inch wide tube and gave them back to Kunkel.
The next Christmas, Kunkel
compressed the pants into a 7-inch square, wrapped them with wire and
gave the "bale" to Collette.
Not to be outdone, the next
year Collette put the pants into a 2-foot-square crate filled with
stones, nailed it shut, banded it with steel and gave the trusty
trousers back to Kunkel.
The brothers agreed to end the
caper if the trousers were damaged. But they were as careful as they
were clever.
Kunkel had the pants mounted
inside an insulated window that had a 20-year guarantee and shipped
them off to Collette.
Collette broke the glass,
recovered the trousers, stuffed them into a 5-inch coffee can and
soldered it shut. The can was put in a 5-gallon container filled with
concrete and reinforcing rods and given to Kunkel the following
Christmas.
Two years ago, Kunkel installed
the pants in a 225-pound homemade steel ashtray made from 8-inch steel
casings and etched Collette's name on the side. Collette had trouble
retrieving the treasured trousers, but succeeded without burning them
with a cutting torch.
Last Christmas, Collette found
a 600-pound safe and hauled it to Viracon Inc. in Owatonna, where the
shipping department decorated it with red and green stripes, put the
pants inside and welded the safe shut. The safe was then shipped to
Kunkel, who is the plant manager for Viracon's outlet in Bensenville.
Last week, the pants were
trucked to Owatonna, 55 miles south of Minneapolis, in a drab green,
3-foot cube that once was a car with 95,000 miles on it. A note
attached to the 2,000-pound scrunched car advised Collette that the
pants were inside the glove compartment.
"This will take some
planning," Collette said. "I will definitely get them out.
I'm confident." But he's waiting until January to think about how
to recover the bothersome britches.
"Wait until next
year," he warned. "I'm on the offensive again."
|
