Orville liked to play practical jokes. It started at an early age.
He stopped attending kindergarten after the first day of class. His mother did not suspect the truth because he continued to leave the house each morning at the appointed time for school and return on time. All the while, he was playing with his friend Ed Stine.
This charade went on for several weeks until his mother, Susan Wright, stopped by the school to see how Orville was doing. She home schooled him after that until the second grade.
In the second grade he won the teachers approval to move on to the third reader by taking a test. The test the teacher gave was to select a passage at random out of the second reader for Orville to read. Orville not only rapidly read the passage, but also did it with the book held upside down.
On another occasion, he and some friends dumped a package of hot pepper in his classroom’s hot air register to force the dismissal of class. Nothing happened until several days later when the pepper got hot enough to send fumes into the classroom. Their plan backfired when their teacher, unfazed, apologized to the class, opened the windows and continued with lessons while the students sat sneezing and wiping their eyes
He was sent home from school in the sixth grade for some unreported mischief. His eighth-grade teacher sat him in the front row in order to keep a watchful eye on him.
As an adult, Orville continued his pranks. Nephews were often targets.
One of the nephews liked mashed potatoes. One Sunday Orville pasted a thread to the bottom of a nephew’s plate. At the appropriate time Orville commented that it seems funny how Bus’s plate always made for the mashed potatoes as Orville moved the plate towards the mashed potatoes he was serving.
He used the thread trick in other ways. One of the family was having lunch with Orville when a big cockroach ran from under his plate. It turned out to be a tin cockroach attached to a thread manipulated by Orville.
Dayton put on a grand celebration for the Wright Brothers in 1909. Orville and Wilbur rode in a carriage in the parade with Ed Sines, boyhood friend of Orville and Ed Ellis, friend of Wilbur. All along the route people reached out to the carriage to shake hands with the famous Wrights. As a practical joke Sines and Ellis did much of the handshaking as if they were the heroes.
One night an English writer friend of Orville’s was visiting at Hawthorn Hill. After dinner Brewer committed, “you know, I have often thought after you and your brother learned to fly, the problem that baffled men for centuries suddenly seemed most simple. You’d think anyone could have done it. There is a passage of poetry that expresses that very well. I have been trying to think of it for years. All I can remember is “…so easy it seemed once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible.” There is more to it about invention. I wish I could find the whole passage. Do you know it?”
“No, I think not,” answered Orville, “but I have an extensive collection of poetry in the library. Let’s look.”
The two men spent several hours hunting for the lines, but the passage eluded them.
The very next morning one of the coincidences so common in life happened. A letter asking for Orville’s autograph arrived and in the letter the writer included the very quotation Brewer had asked about and gave the information that it came from Paradise Lost, Book VI. Orville took down his Milton and began to search. Finally at line 499 he came to the passage, which began
Th’ invention all admired, and how he
To be th’ inventor missed;…
It concluded as Brewer had quoted.
Orville put the book back on the shelf, at the same time pulling the book directly above it out from the shelf a shade of an inch.
When dinner ended that night, Orville said, “I’d still like to find the passage of poetry we talked about last night. I have never told you before, but I am somewhat psychic.”
“I thought I might try to locate the passage by using my psychic powers. I’ll blindfold myself, run my fingers along the books and perhaps my psychic genius will guide them to the book.”
“Amazing,” said Brewer. “Let’s try it.”
After blindfolding himself, Orville ran his fingers along the shelves. At last his fingers stopped at one book and pulled out a volume. He took off the blindfold. “H’mmmm. Milton. Something tells me this is the book.”
Brewer looked at the book. “Milton? I don’t think so. It doesn’t sound like Milton to me.”
“There must be a reason why my fingers were led to this book.” Orville leafed through the pages long enough to make his act look good. Then he handed the volume to Brewer and pointed to the lines.
Brewer looked at Orville with astonishment showing on his face. Orville placed the book back on the shelf. He never did tell Brewer how his psychic powers worked.
References: Tom Crouch, Fred Kelley, and Rosamond Young