Olympic Gamins

Released
May 29, 1927

Starring

 * Farina
 * Harry
 * Jackie
 * Jay R.
 * Joe
 * Mango
 * Wheezer

Story
The gang gets interested in the Olympics. They find out in school that the contestants in the original Greek Olympic Games competed naked, but they all agree that they should stick with their grass skirts.

They decide to try out for their favorite Olympic events in Dooley Flats. This is the field with a three-foot-deep puddle, and since this is a water hazard, the nearby shack is always stocked with emergency grass skirts. This is a good thing because Mango, in normal clothes, tags along with Farina, but jumps into the big puddle when she sees it. Farina pulls her out, and her rubber panties spring a leak and get ruined. Her dress and shoes are also falling apart. Fortunately, Mango can change into a grass skirt, and goes home. Her parents inform her that if that’s the way she treats her clothes, she isn’t going to wear anything else for the next three months.

Farina and Joe bet each other that they can lift an eighty-pound barbell over their heads. Farina goes first. He digs his feet into the sandy area where the barbell is laying, grips it, but can’t get it off the ground. Then with a mighty effort, he doesn’t lift the bar, but rather drives his legs into sand pit up to his waist.

“You lose!” taunts Joe.

“I ain’t lost yet.”

Farina pictures himself hoisting the bar while waist-deep in the sand, but his next effort only drives his body down in the sand pit up to his chest. It gets predictable, with Joe telling Farina to give up and Farina refusing. Another burst of strength pushes Farina down in the sand up to his armpits, another up to his neck, and another up to his chin. One last effort and Farina succeeds in locking the bar with his arms straight over his head. Unfortunately his head is a few inches below the surface of the sand. He shakes his head to get breathing space, and declares, “Ha, I did it!”

“You have to get out of there for that to count.”

Farina tries to pull himself out, but hits his head on the bar. He lets go to push sand away from his head, and Joe rolls the bar away. Farina clears some space in front of him, but with nothing solid to hold onto, he can’t pull himself out. When he grabs the sand over his head and pulls, all he does is drag sand into his hole. He clears more space, but the sand below chest level is too compact to dig with his bare hands, so he is left standing in a funnel-shaped hole, the narrow part of the funnel beginning at his chest.

He can place his hands against the sides of the funnel and push himself waist high, but not high enough to free his legs. He digs his hands into the sides of the funnel as high as he can reach, but with no footholds he slides back down into the hole, bringing more sand into it, covering him up to his armpits, and packing himself in tighter. He clears the sand away from his chest again, and wiggles and twists, but the sand is too dense and compact to let him bend his knees or acquire any sort of foothold to help. He pushes himself up and leans forwards again and tries to claw his way out, but the sand just breaks loose in his grasp and he pathetically slides down again. After trying this a hundred times with no success, Farina tires and concludes he’s stuck chest-deep in his hole at the bottom of the funnel-shaped depression.

Joe then stands over the barbell and tries to pick it up. His first effort is fruitless, but on his second he yanks the bar off the ground and stumbles backwards. The bar lands on his stomach, and its momentum causes the bar to roll up his stomach and chest and over his neck. Joe is pinned to the ground, with half an inch of space between his neck and the barbell. He heaves and grunts, but can’t get the bar off him. He flops like a landed fish in an effort to get his stomach muscles into the effort, but it doesn’t work. After trying a hundred times to lift the bar Joe gets tired and has to admit he’s trapped.

Jackie and Jay bet who can jump higher in the pole vault. Jay goes first and fails miserably, his pole sinking two feet into the sand pit under the high bar and him going completely under the bar. Jackie goes next, and gets one leg over, but not the other. This results in a painful landing on the high bar, which snaps under his weight. Jackie makes the natural reflex with his hands as he drops straight down into the sand pit, and with his legs straight he plunges in up to his neck.

Jackie’s arms are trapped in front of him. Then the high bar pieces hit him in the head, knocking him further down, to his chin. Then the upright poles fall inward on his head, and drive him in up to his nose. Then his pole comes down and hits him in the head, driving him into his eyeballs. He twists his head to get breathing room, but is otherwise paralyzed from pain and shock and the fact that he is wedged in a hole tightly conforming to his body.

Jay then decides to practice running instead. He slips and falls on a muddy patch. He tries to get up, but his feet keep slipping and slipping. His efforts cause him to dig an ever-deepening hole with slick muddy sides. The more he struggles, the deeper it gets, until he finds himself in a six-foot bowl-shaped hole. He pauses, and realizes this is stupid. He decides to climb out, but the same thing happens, and a few minutes later he is in a seven-foot deep hole. Frustrated, he sits down at the bottom to catch his breath.

Harry tries the hammer throw, but the chain is way too long. He holds the chain a lot closer to the iron ball at the end while still holding the handle, and spins around. While turning very rapidly, he loses his grip on the chain, but not the handle. He stops spinning, and the chain wraps around his body several times, knocks him down, and the iron ball ends up on his stomach. With his arms pinned to his sides and the heavy weight on him, he can’t get up. Wheezer, dressed in normal clothes, comes by with his dog Pal. He gives a razzberry to Jay. He sees Farina and Jackie trapped deep in sand and gives them razzberries as well. Then he sees Joe and Harry trapped on their backs and gives out two more razzberries. Wheezer gets too close to Harry, who can bend his legs just enough to kick Wheezer backwards. Wheezer stumbles and falls into the water hole. He isn’t strong or coordinated enough to climb out on his own, and can only hang onto the edge.

He tells his dog Pal to get help. Pal runs off, but gets distracted by a lady dog. Eight hours later Pal comes back with the fire department, who rescues the kids. Wheezer’s parents feel the same way as Mango’s, and he has to wear just one of the grass skirts in that nearby shed for the next three months. When it got the news, the International Olympic Committee felt so sorry for these Olympic aspirants near the big city that it awarded the 1932 Summer Games to Los Angeles.