Barry's guide to guys

   Excerpt from Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys, © Dave Barry, Fawcett Books 1996:
 
   This is why I believe that Nobel Peace Prize Handing Out Committee
  should consider giving a large cash award to the guys belonging to the
  Chicagoland Corvair Enthusiasts club, for their pioneering efforts in
  the area of making vacuum cleaners explode.
 
   I am not making up these efforts: I have personally viewed them on a
  wonderful videotape that was sent to me by Larry Claypool and Kirk
  Parro, who are members of the Chicagoland Corvair Enthusiasts.
 
   (Perhaps you are thinking that people who are enthusiastic, in an
  organized way, about Corvairs are perhaps - to use a psychological
  term - several drawers shy of a file cabinet.  Let me assure you that
  you are correct.)
 
   Here's the background: One day Claypool and Parro were reading a
  publication called Corsa Communique, which is the official magazine of
  the Corvair Society of America, and they came across an article
  headlined:
 
   VACUUM CLEANERS AND SIPHONS DON'T MIX
 
    The article was written by a person named Chess Earman, who
  recounted what happened once when he was trying to siphon the gasoline
  out of one of his four Corvairs.  He didn't want to get gasoline in
  his mouth, so he decided to get the suction going by holding the end
  of the siphon hose up against a vacuum cleaner hose.  What this meant,
  of course, is that he was sucking gas fumes directly into an electric
  motor, which as you know operates by having sparks fly around inside
  it.  So the next thing Chess Earman knew, there was an explosion
  inside the vacuum cleaner, and fire was coming out of the back of it
  "like a jet engine."
 
   Fortunately Earman was able to unplug the vacuum cleaner before
  anything really bad happened.  But this was indeed a chilling
  cautionary story about the extreme danger of messing around with
  gasoline and vacuum cleaners, and when Larry Claypool and Kirk Parro
  read it their natural reaction, as guys, was : Hey, cool.
 
   "Such a challange must not go unmet." is how they put it in a letter
  to me.
 
   And thus it came to pass that, for a number of years during the
  1980s, the big attraction at the annual Fourth of July picnic of the
  Chicagoland Corvair Enthusiasts was the Flaming Vacuum Cleaner
  competition.  I wish you could see the videotape, because it is
  difficult for me, using mere words, to convey the full flavor of the
  event.  But I will try.
 
   Each year, contestants brought vacuum cleaners, which were grouped
  into teams under signs denoting their brands (TEAM HOOVER, TEAM
  ELECTROLUX, etc.).  One by one, these vacuum cleaners were brought out
  into the competition arena where they were introduced by an announcer
  over the public-address system.  The vacuum cleaner nozzle would be
  placed in a shallow pan of gasoline.  Then everybody would retreat to
  a safe distance, and the vacuum cleaner would be plugged in to a power
  source, causing the motor to start so the gasoline was being sucked in
  through the nozzle.
 
   Usually nothing happened for a few seconds: then there'd usually be a
  BANG and the vacuum cleaner would jump a few inches into the air. This
  always got a cheer from the crowd.  Various things would happen next,
  depending on the vacuum cleaner,.  Some models would emit a cloud of
  black smoke and stop running, causing the crowd to boo.  But other
  models would send out a jet flame shooting several feet out the back
  for several seconds.  A few hardy models kept running for several
  minutes: the longer they'd run the more the crowd would cheer,
  encouraged by the announcer.  Sometimes the flames would stop and
  inevitably you'd hear somebody - it always sounded like the same guy,
  a guy who has been drinking a lot of beer - shout "MORE GAS!" Certain
  canister models - these were the most popular with the crowd, getting
  wild cheers of approval - would explode violently apart with the tops
  flying up and out of the camera's range of view.
 
   "The canister tops often exceeded altitudes of thirty feet." report
  Claypool and Parro.
 
   After each contestant was finished, it would be dragged off and
  dumped onto a growing, smoking mound of charred and mangled machinery,
  and the announcer would say something nice about it, such as, "Not
  bad, Electrolux Number Two!" or "Let's hear it for the Eureka!"
 
   On tape, between contestants, you occasionally see women walk past in
  front of the camera, on their way to get some more potato salad or
  something: they sometimes look at the guys, who are working
  industriously away the way guys do when they're on a Mission, getting
  another vacuum cleaner ready for action, and the women shake their
  heads in such a way as to clearly indicate that, yes, they knew guys
  could be idiots, but they had never realized that guys could be idiots
  of this magnitude.
 
   Again, these women did not understand that the Flaming Vacuum Cleaner
  competition was, in fact, a relatively positive activity for guys to
  engage in - that if the guys didn't have this outlet, they could
  easily become involved in something with far more serious
  consequences.  I am sure that none of us wants to pick up our morning
  newspaper and read the headline that says CHICAGO FEARED VAPORIZED IN
  MISHAP INVOLVING EXPERIMENTAL NUCLEAR-POWERED CORVAIR.
 
   No, the Flaming Vacuum Cleaner competition was probably a good thing.
  I want to stress, however, that it was also a very dangerous thing,
  not to be attempted by amateurs.  Remember that the guys who did it
  were not ordinary, untrained civilians: They were Corvair enthusiasts.
  And they took certain critical safety precautions, such as rigging up
  a public address system.  You must remember that gasoline and vacuum
  cleaners do not mix, and under no circumstances should you attempt to
  do anything like this yourself.  And if you do, please let me know
  where you are.