Reported by Glenn Miller.
It was tradition for the new people on the flights to be “initiated.” We got a length of cable from the maintenance shop and pulled the wire from its protective outer sheath. This gave us a 25-foot tube. In the wee hours, someone would crawl behind the equipment racks with the tube and insert it in the space between two pieces of equipment, pushing the tube to the front of the rack on which one of the new guys was sitting. Then, once the new guy was absorbed in his work, another of us would slowly blow cigarette smoke through the tube so that it would curl up the face of the equipment, making it look like the equipment was on fire. I well remember Roger Bartlett seeing the smoke and, using his badge as an insulator, throwing the switches on every piece of equipment on his rack. He was not amused at our little joke, but then, again, he never could take a joke. We also got Neil Harder one night by snaking the tube into his manual typewriter and having it smoke while he was transcribing.
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