The one present Roy Collette wasn’t looking forward to getting for Christmas in 1988 was a pair of moleskin pants. Yet he knew he was in trouble as soon as a flatbed truck bearing a concrete-filled tank used to deliver ready-mix rolled up. He knew those pants were going to be in there and he was going to have to fish them out or declare his brother-in-law the winner of a rivalry that had spanned 20 years at that time. Being a real sport, brother-in-law Larry Kunkel (pictured above) thoughtfully supplied the services of a crane to hoist the concrete-filled tank off the flatbed. So why were two grown men going to such efforts year after year to retrieve the pants, only to send them off again?
It all began in 1964, when Larry’s mom gave him a pair of moleskin pants. After wearing them a few times, he found that they froze stiff in the Minnesota winters. That next Christmas, he wrapped the pants in pretty paper and presented them as a gift to his brother-in-law Roy. Roy didn’t want them either, but he bided his time until the Christmas after, then packaged them up and gave them back to Larry. This yearly exchange proceeded amicably until one year when Roy twisted the pants and stuffed them into a 3-foot-long, 1-inch wide pipe………and so the game began. Year after year, as the pants were shuffled back and forth, the brothers did their best to make unwrapping them more and more difficult, in hopes of ending the tradition. In retaliation for the pipe, Larry compressed the pants into a 7-inch square, wrapped them with wire, and gave the “bale” to Roy. Not to be outdone, Roy put the pants into a 2-foot-square crate filled with stones, nailed it shut, banded it with steel, and gave the trusty trousers back to Larry. The brothers agreed to end the caper if the trousers were damaged, but they were as careful as they were clever.
The back and forth continued through the years, until Roy was inspired to encase the pantaloons in 10,000 pounds of jagged glass that he would then deposit in Larry’s front yard. The pants were shipped to a friend in Tennessee who managed a glass manufacturing company. While molten glass was being poured over the insulated container that held them, an oversized chunk fractured, transforming the pants into a pile of ashes. The ashes were deposited into a brass urn and delivered to Larry along with this epitaph: “Sorry, old man, here lies the pants…….an attempt to case the pants in glass brought about the demise of the pants at last.” The urn now graces the fireplace in Larry’s home.
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| A 1974 AMC Gremlin crushed. The pants were contained in a steel cylinder in the glove compartment. |
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| Industrial truck tire filled with 3 tons of concrete with the pants inside. |
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| A 17½-foot-tall rocket ship filled with 6 tons of concrete with the pants inside. |
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| Roy extracting the pants from a block of concrete poured into a junked car |
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| A 4-ton Rubik’s Cube with a reinforced concrete core contained the pants. |
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| The brass urn containing the ashes of the pants. |
