By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Mike McKenna, the car dealer in Kailua, has 11 more months to figure out what to do about the 600-pound torpedo he found hanging from his office ceiling when he came to work a month ago.

A year is how long a person gets to launch into the next victim in the longest-running practical joke in Our Honolulu.

So far the torpedo has turned up at a funeral, under a Christmas tree, in a bridal bed and on an expensive office desk.

"I'll have to decide who gets it next," said McKenna as he sat under the torpedo. "A few candidates occur to me. These things take time. They just come to you."

He said two local boys found the practice torpedo in Pearl Harbor while scuba-diving. Ted Sturdivant got hold of it in 1975 and put it under the Christmas tree at Trade Publishing as a gift to friends Don Over and Carl Lindquist.

Then Sturdivant went on vacation. When he came back, the torpedo was stuck nose-first in his office desk.

Next, disc jockey Sam Sanford got married and went to Kona on his honeymoon. The torpedo turned up in the bed of his bridal suite wearing a baby bonnet.

The torpedo has also occupied a coffin at a funeral.

I'm not clear on the sequence of the practical jokes spawned by the torpedo. There was the time that Lindquist built a house in Lanikai, and his friends had a truckload of manure dumped into his yard.

Obviously, practical jokes require a lot of effort. Like the Model A Ford episode, when a local businessman went on vacation. His friends took apart the old car in the parking garage, carried it up the elevator in pieces and reassembled the parts in his office.

The only way he could get rid of it was take it apart again.

"Hawai'i has always been a great place for practical jokes," said McKenna, who was born and raised here.

He said he pulled his first one as a 16-year-old usher at a downtown theater. The movie "The Birds" was showing. He and the other teenage ushers sneaked in a pigeon coop and placed it below the screen. They released the pigeons during the scene when the huge flock of birds filled the screen as if attacking the audience. The pigeons flying around the theater caused a stampede toward the exits.

McKenna's talent for practical jokes came in handy during the Korean War, which he fought in as a U.S Marine.

His unit lost half of its motor transport in the fierce fighting. This required filling out countless duplicate forms to explain the loss of government property.

To save time, McKenna and his resourceful buddies stole seven replacement trucks from an Army base and painted them Marine green. As an added bonus, one of the trucks carried a load of 2 1/2 tons of sauerkraut.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.