"The Suds Adventure"

Another WW Memory

 

It was the most brilliant of plans. As the grizzled, old men hung the free soap tablet samples on the doors, we would follow right behind and snatch them from the knobs. I was working the south side of the street and my friend Ken, the north side. It was the saturation advertisement campaign that launched Salvo soap tablets onto the market. My friends and I had other ideas for their launching however. A sample packet of two of the Salvo tablets was being hung on every door in northwest Oklahoma City. The product pamphlet proclaimed the new soap tablets as revolutionary! Just pop two tablets into the washing machine with the grimiest of dirty clothes and they would miraculously render the clothes spotless. Fifty or so of Northwest thirtieth streets housewives would have to take the manufacturer's word for it however, as Ken and I had relieved them of the samples left there by scruffy winos, hired by the day, to hang the miracle detergent tabs on these suburban doorknobs. As soon as the wino had cleared the porch, we swiped the packet, and stealth fully moved to the next house taking them before the housewives knew they had ever been left.

After an hour or so, Ken and I met in his garage and counted the ill-gotten samples. One hundred soap tablets, that should be just about right, we figured, for the newly completed fountains of both the city of Bethany and the First Christian Church. It was Friday and we had plans to launch the tablets that very night. With our third partner in crime, and old buddy, Murphy...

Murphy was two years older than were Ken and I and had two things that Ken and I did not possess, but craved dearly, a drivers license and a car. In order for a kid of fifteen to have any type of social life in the early sixties he had to know someone who possessed a drivers license and a car. Murphy, and his jet black 50 Chevy, were my social life at that point in time for me. He represented the difference between cruising the streets on Friday nights and sitting at home and watching "Sing Along With Mitch" with my parents.

That evening, Murphy came by and Ken and I loaded our ill gotten laundry products into the trunk of his vintage Chevy and set out for an evening of cruising all the local teen hangouts. We discussed our plan for bombarding the city's two newest fountains. Murph would drive by as Ken and I hung out the windows and tossed the tablets in. Simple enough. "Just don't do it until there are no cars behind us". Murph insisted, "I don't want the cops stopping us." Ken and I quickly agreed. Of course neither of us wanted to be seen tossing soap tablets in the fountains by the local authorities, but we both wanted to be seen doing this dastardly deed by our high school peers so that we would be perceived as cool, "hell raisers," a tag nearly every 15 year old boy I knew, wanted.

About 9 PM, we took the liberated soap tablets out of the trunk and Ken took his 50 to the shotgun seat and I took mine to the back. Murph drove slowly up NW.39th Expressway, we scoured the area for police cars, and none seen, as we came close to the new, City of Bethany Fountain, Ken and I began chunking the sudsers into the pool of bubbling water. After three or four trips around the block, we had twenty-five of the tablets resting in the bottom of the fountain. We sped across town to NW. 36th and Walker where we chunked the remaining twenty-five into the beautiful new fountain in front of the First Christian Church. For the next three hours, we drove back and forth between the two fountains waiting for the results, but nothing happened. We finally went home dejected and defeated by what we were sure was superior new "anti-suds" technology added by "kill joy" city officials to insure that such pranks would not succeed.

Around 10 AM, Saturday morning, Murphy picked me up (Ken was a Capitalist even then, and had a Saturday job working in a bank). It had stormed during the wee hours of the morning. "You gotta see this!" Murp told me excitedly as we sped to 36th and Walker. Two blocks before we got to the church, soap suds could be seen, running down the street. When we reached the church, a mountain of soap suds, some twenty feet high, rose from the fountain. Local media representatives were filming the mountain of suds for a live television news "cut in." I am somewhat embarrassed to admit this in my now advanced age, but, I laughed so hard I cried. We drove west towards Bethany and I had almost stopped laughing and had just about composed myself when we reached 39th and MacArthur and realized that 39th street had been closed west of this intersection while the Bethany Fire Department hosed the mountains of soap suds off the streets and center median. We were, the first to "soap" these fountains because it was the inaugural weekend for both. However, our deed was so copied in the months to come, that both fountains were eventually converted to waterless attractions.

Although I am not proud of my part in these vandalous acts of nearly forty years ago, these things seem pretty tame by today's standards. At least we sent no one to a trauma unit with gunshot wounds, nor did we endanger anyone's life (to my knowledge). But damn, I sure remember how hilarious I thought that mountain of suds looked.....