The American Rope Trick
KEN KOLB was born in Portland, Oregon, served in the Navy during the war, and since graduation from the University of California in 1950 has been living in San Francisco.
by KEN KOLB
THE last time I was passing through India, I looked up an old fakir friend of mine to exchange a few burnooses (the burnoose is the official Indian monetary unit), and of course I ran into the same old trouble: he wanted me to perform the American Rope Trick for him.
The American Rope Trick, for the benefit of those few who have never been to India, is done as follows.
The American produces a standard roll of ticker tape which he places upon the ground. By chanting stock quotations he makes the ticker tape rise vertically into the air to the height of two Cadillacs stood on end. He then seizes an American car-hop waitress whom he has brought along for the purpose and shinnies up the ticker tape, dragging the girl up by her voluminous blonde hair. The two disappear into nothingness at the top of the tape. Very soon the sounds of a titanic struggle are heard, and pieces of debris fall out of the sky in a manner reminiscent of New Year’s Eve in New York City.
The American then slides back down the ticker tape, produces a bankbook, mutters the magic words Dow-Jones Industrial Averages and presto! in place of the waitress there appears a Hollywood starlet with a Max Factor face, a Dior dress, three pictures to her credit, and her hands full of preferred shares of Kennecott Copper, up three points.
Americans may scoff if they will, but I have met hundreds of Indians who have actually seen this trick performed.
Well, maybe not actually seen it performed, but who know somebody who has seen it performed. Or have an uncle who knows somebody who has seen it performed. Once in Bombay I encountered a rajah who had an elephant-scrubber who had a cousin who had actually taken pictures of the American Rope Trick.
Unfortunately, there was no shutter in the camera, and when the elephant-scrubber’s cousin later got into financial straits he was forced to sell the pictures to some English tourists as interior shots of the Black Hole of Calcutta. He bought a used car with the proceeds and disappeared in the direction of New Delhi.
Thus was all evidence of the American Rope Trick lost, but knowledge of it persists to this day to trouble the American traveler.