It was a crisp Saturday morning in Whispering Pines Retirement Village, and the ham radio boys were up to something big—literally.
“Today’s the day, boys!” hollered Earl “CQ Master” Jenkins, slapping a folded blueprint onto the picnic table with a dramatic flourish. The blueprint promptly caught a gust of wind and smacked Horace in the face.
“Is this a ham radio antenna or a Soviet missile silo?” Horace muttered, untangling the paper and adjusting his bifocals.
“Bigger the better!” Earl beamed. “This baby’s 85 feet tall, aluminum, multi-band, and guaranteed to reach Tokyo from my backyard!”
The crew—Earl, Horace, Walt, and Big Don—hadn’t raised anything taller than a recliner in over a decade, but that didn’t stop them. Fueled by coffee, ibuprofen, and sheer delusion, they wheeled out the monstrous antenna base on a dolly that looked like it had last served in the Normandy landings.
“Okay,” Earl instructed. “We follow the plan. Step one: Assemble sections A through H while ensuring the angle brackets are bolted using the left-threaded coupling nuts.”
Everyone stared at him like he’d just spoken Latin.
“Can we just duct tape it and see what happens?” asked Walt, who’d already jammed a bolt into his pants pocket and forgotten about it.
Half an hour later, the antenna lay across Earl’s lawn like a fallen alien obelisk, sections mismatched and secured with whatever fasteners hadn’t rolled into the grass. Big Don, despite being three knees past retirement, hoisted one end with a mighty grunt and immediately threw out his back.
“I saw God,” he whispered, collapsing into a lawn chair with an ice pack and a Yoo-hoo.
Undeterred, the remaining trio switched to Plan B: the “Gentleman’s Lift,” involving ropes, a rusty ladder, and a pulley system borrowed from Walt’s garage (which may have originally been part of a bird feeder).
“Steady… steady…” Earl muttered, inching the base upward. For a glorious 4.5 seconds, the antenna stood at a majestic 12 degrees. Then Horace sneezed, Walt tripped over a garden gnome, and the entire thing came crashing down, flattening a flamingo lawn ornament and launching Earl’s toupee into a neighbor’s birdbath.
“Mayday! Mayday! We’ve lost the tower!” shouted Earl, diving for cover behind a shrub.
Mrs. Gwendolyn Applebaum from across the street appeared at the fence holding binoculars and a skeptical schnauzer. “Are you trying to summon a UFO, or is this performance art?”
“Ma’am,” Horace wheezed, holding his ribcage. “This is amateur radio. We talk to the world.”
“You fall on the world,” she said, shaking her head and disappearing back indoors.
Three hours later, they were no closer to success. The antenna was bent, Earl’s manual was stained with mustard, and Walt had somehow zip-tied his belt loop to the lawn chair.
It was Big Don who had a stroke of genius (or heat stroke—it was hard to tell). “Why not raise it with the car?”
Moments later, Earl’s 1987 Buick LeSabre was tethered to the antenna via an elaborate network of bungee cords, jumper cables, and hope. Earl hit the gas.
With a screech of tires and a mighty twang, the antenna swung skyward like a javelin, overshot its mark, and speared straight through the neighbor’s prize-winning azalea bush.
Silence.
Then, a slow clap from Mrs. Applebaum.
“Impressive,” she said dryly. “You’ve achieved orbit.”
The men beamed, bruised but victorious.
“Works for me,” Earl said, fiddling with his radio dial. “CQ CQ, this is Whiskey-Four-Foxtrot… anyone copy?”
Static.
Then, crackling through the speaker: “This is Tokyo. What the hell did you just launch?”
And thus, Operation Sky Stick was deemed a success… at least until the HOA meeting.
