I’ve had no luck tracking down John Skook, the main character in this small drama published in the Minneapolis Star. He’d be about 71 years old now, presuming he did not make a career of jumping into accelerating jalopies to confront thieves in the middle of the night. Anyone out there know a Skook?

IN BAREFOOT CHASE

Owner, 16, Nabs Thief in Jalopy

FOR JOHN SKOOK, 16, there is nothing in this world these days that is quite like his old but nifty jalopy.

Little wonder then that Skook, 1628 SE. Eighth street, bounced out of his house, almost sans clothing, to chase and catch a thief who tried to steal his pride and joy at 12:50 a.m. today.

John was undressing, having removed his shoes and shirt, and his pants were half off when he heard the familiar purr of his jalopy’s motor.

He pulled up pants and dashed out. The car was moving along slowly in low.

A 19-year-old was at the wheel, shifting into high, when John caught up after a 200-foot chase.

John opened the right front door, hopped in and turned the ignition key off. The thief clouted him in the face.

“You better get out of here … I’ve called the cops,” John bluffed.

But it didn’t seem like a bluff when a police car hove into sight and its occupants were attracted by the jalopy moving slowly and uncertainly.

The officers took charge of John’s captive. In a drunkometer test at headquarters, the suspect registered over the drunk mark.

April 1957: Future jalopies filled a used car lot on Hennepin Avenue, east of Parade Stadium. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

When you were a teen, stuck at home with the flu or the measles, how did you pass the time? I read a lot of books and watched a lot of TV and drank a lot of flat 7-Up. The 15-year-old lad topping this Minneapolis Star account of boys gone wild dialed a lot of telephone numbers — AND EARNED A TRIP TO THE PSYCHIATRIST.

‘LOVE THY NEIGHBOR …’

Boys Will Do Some Funny Things

	March 1943: This industrious young man at Dunwoody Institute demonstrated the proper use of a phone when you’re bored: Take it apart. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

Boredom and the pangs of thwarted puppy love today had put two Minneapolis residents on record as the most annoyed individuals on earth, a la telephone.

One of these is Mrs. H.N. Buesen, 3856 Thirty-seventh avenue S.

At 11 a.m. yesterday, her doorbell and telephone started to ring. The telephone callers wanted to verify orders for various commodities phoned in for her to commercial houses.

The door callers came with deliveries of diverse articles ALL UNORDERED BY HER.

During the day, she told police, she clocked 75 liquor deliveries, six chow mein deliveries, 35 deliveries of coal or fuel oil, 10 grocery orders, three radio trucks, two refrigerator trucks and a tow car.

By the end of the day she was verging on nervous prostration, but no amount of mental effort could conjure up the name of anyone who would want to pull a trick like that on an unsuspecting neighbor.

Finally she had a thought. The 15-year-old son of a neighboring family had been home from school that day with illness. Police called on him.

HE DENIED EVERYTHING.

In the home telephone directory, however, they found a page had been creased – in the classified section listing liquor stores.

HE ADMITTED MAKING THE CALLS.

He had the friendliest of feelings toward his victim, he said, and didn’t want to cause any trouble.

But he simply had telephonitis and was bored stiff after being in the house three or four days.

He appeared before Lieut. Magni Palm, juvenile officer, today and was turned over to the child guidance clinic for an examination by a psychiatrist.

The other victim was the father of a girl who had been wooed by a pair of ardent young swains. He told her to tell them not to hang around any more. They didn’t, but they wanted to get even.

THEY ORDERED A TON OF COAL SENT TO HIS HOUSE. THE FATHER SENT IT BACK. A PLUMBER ANSWERED A RUSH CALL TO THE HOME AND WAS SENT BACK. NEXT TO APPEAR WAS A PIANO TUNER.

By this time the father was wise.

The two young men were picked up and reprimanded. Their joke, they were told, didn’t affect the father so much as it did the merchants and artisans, innocent victims.

November 1940: Loading up a Great Lakes Coal & Dock Co. truck. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

The unsolved hijacking of Northwest Flight 305 on Thanksgiving eve 1971 spawned scores of books, TV shows, movies and songs. Here’s the Minneapolis Tribune’s Page 1A account of the press conference held at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport two days after the well-mannered hijacker jumped off the jet’s rear stairway, presumably wearing a parachute and carrying a bag holding $200,000 in cash. The story doesn’t mention “Dan Cooper,” the name the hijacker used that night.

Hijacker’s note
at first mistaken
as date invitation

By Dean Rebuffoni
Staff Writer

A Northwest Airlines stewardess said Friday she first thought a note handed her by a hijacker on a flight Wednesday between Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash., was “a pass” or an attempt to “hustle” her.

FBI sketch of D.B. Cooper …

Stewardess Florence Schaffner, 23, who said she regularly encounters amorous passengers in her work, put the note in her purse without reading it.

The hijacker, who was sitting beside her for the takeoff, motioned to her to read the note, however. It was then that Miss Schaffner, 1600 E. 77th St., Richfield, discovered that the man claimed he had a bomb, was demanding $200,000 ransom, four parachutes and the flight crew’s cooperation in his escape.

The hijacker – described by crew members as “not nervous,” “rather nice,” and “never cruel or nasty” – got everything he wanted, and apparently used two of the parachutes to leave the Boeing 727 jet airplane sometime during its flight later Wednesday from Seattle to Reno, Nev.

At a press conference yesterday morning at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the plane’s six crew members gave this account of the hijacking:

… and a second sketch.

The middle-aged hijacker, who wore dark glasses, a dark overcoat and a business suit, apparently boarded the plane, Northwest’s flight 305, in Portland. He sat alone in the last row of seats in the coach compartment.

Shortly after takeoff from Portland, the man asked Miss Schaffner to sit beside him and then handed her the note.

After she read the note, Miss Schaffner looked inside a small black suitcase the man was holding.

“I was scared to death and pretty nervous,” she said “but I do remember seeing a red cylinder in the suitcase.”

She said the hijacker had no other suitcases with him, and added that the cylinder filled the black suitcase.

While Miss Schaffner carried the note forward to the plane’s cockpit, a second stewardess, Tina Mucklow, 22, sat next to the hijacker to, as Miss Mucklow said, “ensure our passengers’ safety.”

The plane’s commander, Capt. William Scott, 262 Peninsula Rd., Medicine Lake, read the note and contacted Northwest officials via radio. He was told the money and parachutes would be delivered to the airplane while it refueled in Seattle.

Scott went into a holding pattern northwest of Seattle while the $200,000 was collected from several Seattle banks and the four parachutes from nearby McChord Air Force Base.

The airplane landed after about one hour of 40 minutes of circling. The plane’s 36 other passengers – who were not aware of the hijacking – left the aircraft in Seattle with Miss Schaffner and a third stewardess, Mrs. Alice Hancock, 24, Inver Grove Heights.

Capt. William Scott

Scott, First Officer William Rataczak, 3407 Selkirk Dr., Burnsville, and Second Officer Harold E. Anderson, Excelsior, remained in the cockpit throughout the hijacking. They never saw the hijacker.

Miss Mucklow, 7320 Cedar Av., Richfield, remained seated beside the hijacker in the coach compartment and relayed his demands to the cockpit via the plain’s intercom system.

“He was always polite to me,” Miss Mucklow said of the hijacker. “He did seem impatient at times, though.”

While the plane was being refueled, a courier delivered the $200,000 – in $20 bills – and the four parachutes. Miss Mucklow met the courier at the foot of the aircraft’s stairs. The money, she said, was in a “soft, white, cloth laundry bag.” She said the bag was open and hand no drawstrings.

Scott said the hijacker demanded the airplane fly to Mexico City, but the captain emphasized that the man did not demand the plain fly a certain route.

“All he knew was he was being taken to Reno (for refueling) on the first leg of a flight to Mexico,” Scott said.

The hijacker also demanded the crew open the plane’s rear door and lower the stairwell after takeoff from Seattle. Scott said he flew below 10,000 feet altitude and at about 200 miles per hour during the Seattle-Reno flight.

Scott said he and his crew made no attempt to stop the hijacking, but followed the orders of Northwest officials with whom they were in radio contact.

“Everything seemed to go nicely as long as we went along with (the hijacker’s) demands,” Scott said. He added that there was no sky marshal on board the plane at any time.

Miss Mucklow remained with the hijacker as the plane left Seattle. Shortly after takeoff and about 8 p.m. Wednesday, Scott lowered the plane’s rear stairs. The hijacker then told Miss Mucklow to, she said, “go to the front, pull the curtain (between the coach and first-class compartments), and don’t come back.”

Tina Mucklow

Miss Mucklow did just that. There was no further communication with the hijacker during the Seattle-Reno flight.

Scott said he assumed the hijacker was still aboard when the plane landed in reno. He denied reports that he had radioed officials as the plan approached Reno that the hijacker “took leave of us.”

After landing in Reno, Scott tried to call the hijacker on the plane’s public address system. He addressed the man as “Sir,” and asked if the hijacker had further instructions.

There was no replay. Scott said he found the passenger cabins empty when he walked back from the cockpit after landing.

Two of the four parachutes were still in the plane, Scott said. There was no trace of the hijacker, the money, the laundry bag or the black suitcase the hijacker claimed held a bomb.