During my sophomore year of college, I thought I wanted to join a fraternity. Although I never officially became a member, I had some interesting experiences while pledging one (pledging is a training period). I attended a small college in West Virginia. The fraternity I was pledging had a counter part at a neighboring college that was an athletic rival of my college. The fraternity there and mine were frequently trying to outdo each other when it came to pranks. Both agreed that the police were not to be called when these practical jokes were pulled off. As a pledge you could be required to do things the regular members would hesitate to do. That’s my story. I was one of the four pledges picked to pull off the ultimate joke, “barrow” the rival fraternity’s Victory Bell they took to all of their football games. They always rang it too much, it was the loudest bell I ever heard, and everyone hated it.
We thought we had it all figured out. The small trailer it was mounted on was chained to a tree outside of their fraternity house. It was about 11:30 at night, another pledge and I were to ride in the trunk and hold on to the trailer once the driver and the other pledge cut the chain and brought it to us. Then we would take it back to our college and punish it. Things started to go wrong right after they cut the chain. They forgot to tie the clapper down and as they were dragging it to us, it started clanging. Lights came on and people started using bad language. We took off down the road. It was hard to hold on to the trailer because it kept wiggling as we went down the road and picked up speed. Just as we thought we had pulled it off, we saw a police car with lights blazing heading in our direction. When our driver saw the cop car lights he went faster making it even more difficult to hold on to the bell. The cop car was getting closer and closer. Then we hit a bump or ran over something and the trailer slipped from our grasp. As soon as we let go it straightened right up and was following us. The bell was nearly invisible in the dark. I could hear the siren approaching. The driver sped up when he saw the bell was loose. The last I saw of that bell was it heading right for the headlights of that cop car. At least, they never brought it to any more games.

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