Title: Cushman Cart Prank

General Information About this Item:

• Legend, workplace folklore
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Informant #3
• Date Collected: 2/20/2018

Informant Data:

• FO+M worker, started working for the college over 30 years ago. Has worked in multiple FO+M divisions. Originally from the Upper Valley, the child of a former FO+M employee who shared this story with him.

Contextual Data:

• The informant’s father worked at FO+M before and during part of the informant’s career and shared this story with him. One piece of equipment the informant’s father used was a Cushman, a type small car designed for use in the workplace (see here for examples).

Item:

• Students, upon seeing an unattended Cushman, would place it somewhere inaccessible, e.g. at the top of a flight of stairs. The informant’s father would then come out of the building to find his Cushman was missing, observed by the students. They would typically then help him move it somewhere it could be used again.

Transcript:

• “My father had what they call a little Cushman, it’s like a little teeny car… you don’t see them around here but a little Cushman type thing. And he was forever coming out of a building and finding it, like once he found it up on Baker steps, people picked it up. But they’d always be sitting off to the side to take it down for him. He found it on top of a dumpster one time.”

Collector’s Comments: 

This piece reminds me of descriptions I’ve heard of similar pranks. For example, a coach of mine in high school had his athletes move his car to a neighboring parking lot. This practical joke seems to typically be done in good spirit, with an emphasis on not destroying the vehicle.

Collector’s Name: Jacob Cruger

Tags/Keywords:

• Practical joke, practical jokes
• FO+M

Image Credit: Cushman Website