Shamus and the Hot Air Balloon

Shamus O'Tool was watching one of them explorer channels on TV and happened to see a whole bunch of hot air balloons out of California or some such pace, floating so calmly through the sky. It flung a fire into Shamus and burning with the flames of desire, he set out to purchase a hot air balloon for himself. A week and $30,000 worth of long distance calls later, he found that to quench this fire would cost him somewhere in the vicinity of $23,000 US. "By Jaysus" he says to himself, "I don't have to spend that kind of money. I'll just build 'er meself".

Over the next month, people all over St. John's started missing articles of clothing, awnings off buildings, car covers, just about anything made of cloth. Even the schooner, Pride of The Maritimes, was missing a set of sails. As none of the purloined goods were ever fenced, the police were absolutely stumped as to what was happening with them. Shamus borrowed his wife, Martha's, foot peddle Singer Sewing Machine and over the next few weeks was busy cutting, basting and sewing in his basement. This morning he phoned his good friend, Mick O'Brian and some of the other byes and invited them over to help him get rid of a few cases of beer and launch his balloon.

After 14 cases of beer and 3 jugs of screech, it was a merry crowd, indeed, that dragged what appeared to be a huge pile of cast-off clothing into the driveway. Shamus had made the heater for the balloon out of his bar-b-cue grill and since he didn't have anything to use as a basket he had attached the balloon to his lawn chair. As the heat from the bar-b-cue grill entered the pile of cloth, it shuddered and rippled and slowly began to get larger and larger. By the time it stood 50 meters over the roof of Shamus's house, about 30 of his neighbors were standing at the head of his driveway, craning their heads up and in awe of the majesty of such a magnificent creation. At least they did until Mr. Gilroy yelled out, "Hey! Those are my trousers sewed on the side of that thing". Then Mrs. Gilroy chimed in with "And ders me under drawers over der".

The balloon slowly turned, and about the time a triangular sail came into view with the Pride of the Maritimes painted on it, the police pulled up to the front of the house. Seeing that he might have more explaining to do than he wanted, Shamus jumped into the lawn chair and cut the rope attaching the balloon to the bumper of his Ford Pinto and majestically rose into the afternoon sky. Shamus forgot to take one small fact into consideration. His house is dead in line with the runway of the St. John's International Airport and about the time he got up to 500 meters, an Air Canada jumbo jet was just taking off. When last seen, Shamus was about at about 35,000 feet and heading toward Toronto at 500 KPH.