The Electric Gate: An Olympia Father Declares War on Front-Gate Courting

And now comes an Olympian who claims that he has made the best application of electricity.

One evening this week he very kindly invited a representative of The Tribune over to his residence on the Eastside to witness some experiments with his new apparatus.

Being of a convivial turn, his house is the resort of a good many young people, to whom he always extends an unbounded hospitality. But he complains that ever since his young daughter adopted dresses of the regulation length, his front gate has been afflicted with spasmodic attacks of spinal weakness.

His daughter, a recent graduate by the way, explains the difficulty by citing the lunar theory. She avers that the sagging of the gate is due to the phases of the moon, in a manner quite similar to the action of the tides. Her wary father laughs at this flimsy attempt to solve the mystery, and declares from personal experience that the strongest front gate ever made will, sooner or later, become demoralized if a dude and dudine persist in hanging on either side of it for seven nights in a week.

Stated in brief, his invention aims to forever break up this silly practice of young people lally-gagging over front gates after nightfall.

Having arrived at his residence a little after sunset, on an evening when his family were taking in a church festival, he showed the reporter two insulated wires running from the incandescent burner in the hall to the top rail of the gate, which had been deftly covered with a brass plate, ostensibly to hide a crack in the timber. The brass plate was about a foot long and wholly covered the space where lovers' hands and chins naturally rest while engaged in the interesting game of lally-gagging. Then there is a piece of sheet iron nailed to the walk on the outer and inner side of the gate. By touching a button behind the hall door the two metallic plates can be highly charged with electricity and the circuit completed. Further than this no technical explanation is needed.

While the two gentlemen were talking a good-natured dog came leisurely trotting down the sidewalk. The opportunity for a brilliant experiment in the interest of science was too good to be lost. Hastily whistling the unsuspecting canine to the gate, the inventor instructed The Tribune man how to make the animal stand with his hind feet on the iron plate, with his paws resting on the top of the gate. This being arranged, he stepped behind the hall door and, at the auspicious moment, "pressed the button." The result was truly wonderful. The poor dog fetched a long drawn-out howl of mingled fright, horror and doggoned disgust, turned a back somersault and then tore down the street yelling as if a hundred tin cans were tied to his tail, while the two men rolled upon the grass in a paroxysm of wicked glee.

Scarcely had the experimenters recovered from their laughing fit when a demure cow came along with a big ding-dong bell hanging from her neck. Bidding the reporter detain Mrs. Cow, the wily inventor hastened to the kitchen and returned with a big white cabbage which he dropped on the doorstep within tempting proximity of the fatal gate. All things being ready, the cow was led across the curbstone and as she stepped upon the sidewalk she made a dash at the big cabbage. Just as her dewlap touched the rail of the gate, the inventor pressed the demoniac button.

Thunder and lightning! Did she bawl? Ask the echoes that shook the hills for miles around. Her first movement was to rear upon her hind feet till her horns were about twenty feet in the air, but she never stopped bawling. Next she settled upon her knees with heels and tail in the air, still bawling, and her tongue protruding a foot from her mouth. At this juncture the current was turned off and the liberated animal went cavorting and bellowing up Ayers' hill and out of sight.

So much for the invention. Now, the happy inventor proposes to watch his opportunity and treat front gate lobbyists to a few volts of pure electricity, while the happy pair are holding an erotic session. Of course, there are millions in the thing and a caveat has been secured, until further improvements can be made.

The Tribune man was about to open the gate to leave when he received a shock that wakened him immediately. An after-stroll out East Fourth street convinced him of the necessity of such an invention, for some gates were hanging on one hinge and others gone entirely, showing the weight of love the Fourth street gates have had to bear.