The Dinner Bell
Chris Hetzel ’58
He will deny it — say the whole story is a fabrication, he wasn’t there, and so on, but Peter Beard ’56 carried out the most creative, dare-devilish prank I ever witnessed at Pomfret.
The demolition of the old, wooden Main House was to begin the next day. Mr. Twichell had invited us to prank the dining room the night before, which we did with red paint. A large, commercial-grade derrick and clamshell rig had been readied for the demolition job, and stood at full stature close to the building; the boom tip must have reached 50 to 60 feet above the ground.
That night, under a bright moon, Peter and a few co-pranksters went to work. Earlier, Beard had snitched the bronze dinner bell from the Main House; the instrument, an ex-School House bell, had great meaning for hungry boys — it rang, we ate. Now, as we all watched with hearts pounding, Peter tied a rope around the bell’s handle and promptly began his climb up the 100-foot boom. No safety harness! No prior training! Up he went to the very tip of the boom, where he lashed the bell to the derrick’s rigging. As I look back on that climb I can only say, “Oh, the folly of youth.”
The next morning, in full view of the entire student body as it marched to breakfast, was the dinner bell in all its triumphant impertinence. “Oh, how did it get up there?” “Who did thaaaat?” “How do we get it down?” The school had noticed and applauded; the prank was successful. Alas, the device operator, not to be outdone by our violation of his machine, chose to unloose the bell. Eventually, he broke the rope, causing the bell to fall to the ground, where it smashed. I still treasure a fragment of the bell as a reminder of that Tom Sawyer–like night.
