BadManTech

The oldest file in the archive is a feather bed. My grandparents had one—huge, deep, the kind of bed that doesn’t really exist anymore—in a farmhouse in rural Indiana with pastures on both sides and woods out back. And the earliest thing I can remember, the very bottom of the whole stack, is this: crawling under those covers and disappearing.

That bed could swallow a kid whole, and it did. I’d burrow in and hold still. Then Grandpa would come in and ask, in a voice pitched to carry, “What is that lump?” And Grandma would consider the question seriously. “I don’t know. It could be anything.” And the lump would hold perfectly still, vibrating with the effort of not laughing. The most successfully hidden boy in Indiana.

That’s the first memory—not a toy, not a fall, not a fire. Those come later, and there are files on all of them. The first memory is of being small, and warm, and hidden, in the safest place I knew, while two people who loved me pretended not to find me for exactly as long as I wanted to stay lost.

Every operation that follows in this archive—every expedition, every cache, every unauthorized experiment—was run by a kid whose first memory is as a hidden lump in a feather bed.

More field reports declassified soon. —JW

Every operation has an origin. Mine involves a Hot Wheels trike, a red wagon, and a street built on a downgrade.

The trike could slide. Anyone who had one knew that if you pedaled hard and then cranked the handlebars, the back end would swing around like you’re Bo Duke escaping Rosco. After hundreds of slides, I had the maneuver down to a science.

The wagon, I reasoned, was just a bigger trike. The front wheels were somewhat steerable and roughly the same height as the trike’s. In the absence of pedals, the hill would provide the necessary speed.

With supreme confidence, I positioned the wagon at the top of the hill and then climbed aboard. I grinned as the optimal speed was reached for the maneuver. Then I cranked the handle. Quite unexpectedly, the wagon, now bound by a different law of physics, embraced the pavement, and I experienced temporary weightlessness before the forces of gravity took over again.

What I discovered that day was the coefficient of sliding friction—specifically, that rubber wagon wheels do not have a coefficient low enough to steer/drift in any direction, whereas the trike’s plastic wheels drifted because of their low coefficient.

More field reports declassified soon. —Jimmy

By kindergarten, I had begun noticing that adult-supplied data did not always survive verification. Uncle Charlie had already told me that donut centers are poison—hence why they are removed. He seemed like a reliable source at the time, and so I had been leaving a little ring around every donut hole for years. However, the skeptic in me was awakening.

That Christmas, I did not ask for a toy. I asked for a ladder. The logic was sound: if Santa’s sleigh were real, there would be tracks on the roof. Physical evidence. All I needed was access to the inspection site.

I did not get the ladder. Make of that what you will.

The donut hole audit continued.

More field reports declassified soon. —Jimmy

In rural Indiana, a healthy snowfall often resulted in the most glorious of school holidays—a snow day! On one such occasion, I devised a new experiment.

First, understand that I had done my calculations. That winter, the hill had been a working laboratory, and I had studied it: the older kids snow skitching behind anything that moved, somebody riding on a detached car hood while being towed, and kids on their plastic sleds pointing themselves downhill and then bailing off into the snow before the turn at the bottom. That last part struck me as a design flaw, not a maneuver. A plastic sled has no rudder—bailing is its steering.

At this point, I should add that there was a valid reason for bailing before the turn. If you continued straight, you would end up in a frozen creek with rather steep banks. There was, however, a footbridge off to the right that traversed this complication.

I believed that I had one advantage over the plastic sledders. I had a rail sled with runners and a steering bar. It was a proper vehicle with actual controls. I reasoned, with the airtight confidence of a boy who had never yet been wrong, that bailing was for people without better options. I would not bail. I would ride it down, make the 45-degree turn at the bottom, and cross the footbridge like a gentleman. I had run the calculation in my head. The calculation was optimistic.

Once again, I positioned myself at the top of the hill, climbed aboard my chosen vehicle, and launched myself down the hill. The plan had exactly one weakness—the plan itself. Halfway through the turn, the data came in: I am not going to make it. So I made the only command decision available. I cut back hard and initiated an unscheduled flight worthiness test.

I picked my creek entry point, left the bank clean, and stuck the landing in the sense that the landing occurred. Both handles snapped off the sled, but the pilot walked away. The findings were conclusive: the sled was not flight worthy.

Then came the most important phase of the operation: I got the sled home and stashed it before anyone could conduct an inspection.

More field reports declassified soon. —Jimmy

Some of my best days were junkyard days. Dad’s car always needed something, and the junkyard was where you got it. He’d find the donor vehicle and get to work, and here is the part that mattered: he’d let me take parts off myself. Real tools. Real bolts. I was a kid loose in a field of dead machines with wrenches.

I had my assignments, but I also had my own procurement program running on the side. Every glove box held a small light bulb. Every fuse panel was full of fuses. No one else wanted them, and I pulled them like found treasure and stashed them in a bin under my bed—because you never know what you might need for a project.

I didn’t have a project. The parts came first. The project would reveal itself.

That was the whole education, really. Dad could fix anything—everyone said so—and what he taught me was that broken machines are just parts that haven’t been reassigned yet. The difference between junk and inventory is whether somebody bothered to pull it and keep it.

I still stock the bin before I know the build. The bin has never once let me down.

More field reports declassified soon. —Jimmy