THAT'S THROW BUSINESS 3/27/94

Published: March 27, 1994 By DAVE BARRY Miami Herald

TODAY WE HAVE A heartwarming human-interest story about some guys in Texas
who are fulfilling a dream--a dream that all of us have dreamt, but, for
one reason or another, have had to abandon. That's right: These guys are
building a device that will be capable of hurling a Buick 200 yards.

Needless to say, the origin of this idea involved beer. A lot of great
ideas originated this way. Take the electric light. One night in 1879 at a
bar in a little town called Menlo Park, N.J., some men were drinking beer,
when suddenly one of them announced that he was going to invent an electric
light. The others laughed, but that man got up, put on his coat and hat,
and accidentally walked into the fireplace, thereby setting his coat on
fire. This gave Thomas Edison, who was at another table drinking coffee,
the idea of using carbonized cotton as the filament in his light bulb.

So we see that beer, if used correctly, can be a tremendous force for good,
which brings us back to the Buick-hurling device, which I found out about
thanks to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article written by Paul Bourgeois and
sent in by alert reader Robert Grimm. The beer consumers in this case were
Richard Clifford, an engineer and artist; and John Quincy, a dentist. One
day they were snorking brewskis, and, as guys often do when they're getting
in touch with their feelings, they got to talking about medieval war
weapons.

As you recall from dozing off face-down on your history textbook, medieval
cities were surrounded by high stone walls with massive iron gates that
would not open unless you punched in the secret digital Roman-numeral
passcode. Thus the only way that an invading army could get inside was to
knock holes in the wall by hurling large objects at it. Originally
catapults were used for this, but they were eventually replaced by a
more-powerful device--the atomic bomb of the medieval era--called a
''trebuchet.'' It's basically a long arm with a big weight attached to one
end; the weight is raised, then dropped, which whips up the other end of
the arm, causing it to fling the projectile.

According to an article in the Januaryissue of Mechanical Engineering
magazine (alertly sent in by reader Bob Goetze), some trebuchets could
throw 300-pound boulders as far as 300 yards. They also were used to throw
dead horses. I am not making this up. The idea was to spread disease. This
would be a real morale-breaker:

HUSBAND: Hi honey! I'm home from my medieval job in the field of crossbow
sales! What's for dinner?

WIFE: Your favorite! A nice big mutton. . . .

(A dead horse comes crashing through the ceiling, spewing maggots
everywhere.) HUSBAND: Actually, I'm not hungry.

WIFE: I cannot wait for the Renaissance.

Yes, the trebuchet was an awesome weapon, and the more Richard Clifford and
John Quincy thought about it, while drinking beer, the more they realized
that they had to build one. And so they did. They used it to try to hurl a
brick. It was not a major success.

''We never knew which way the brick was gonna go,'' Quincy told me, in a
phone interview.

At this point, most guys would have quit. But Clifford and Quincy are not
''most guys''; they are an artist-engineer and a dentist. And so they did
some serious trebuchet research. They read books on military history. Then
they went to England to consult with the world's leading trebuchet expert,
a historian named Hew Kennedy. Kennedy is generally considered to be
''eccentric'' in the same sense that the sun is generally considered to be
''warm.'' He has built a large working trebuchet at his home in Shropshire,
and he regularly invites his neighbors over to watch him hurl stuff across
the fields. According to Mechanical Engineering, he has hurled small cars,
dead pigs and grand pianos.

He hurled a piano for Clifford and Quincy.

''It went almost 200 yards,'' Quincy told me, with awe in his voice.

Clifford and Quincy returned home inspired. They printed up some official
stationery. (It says PROJECTILE THROWING ENGINES, Texas Division: ''Hurling
Into the 21st Century.'') They hooked up with a welder, Don Capers, and
together they developed and built an improved trebuchet, for test purposes.
They've been using it to hurl bowling balls.

''We're throwing bowling balls now somewhere between 400 and 500 feet,'' he
said.

But that is small potatoes. What they plan to do is build--get ready--the
biggest trebuchet in the history of the world. The one that will hurl the
Buick.

Here is how serious they are: When I spoke with Quincy, he had just
purchased 80 acres of land adjacent to his property just so the Buick will
have some place to land.

''Wherever it lands,'' said Quincy, ''it's going to stay there.''

Quincy said they'll use the Big One to raise money for charity by holding
several major hurlings per year. And we're not talking just Buicks. Quincy
sent me a ballistics chart listing detailed technical data on the hurling
characteristics of--among other items--a toilet, a case of Spam, a
recliner, an Airstream trailer, a cow, and a mime (''silent, night
hurling,'' notes the chart).

I don't know about you, but, as a journalist and as an American, I am
really excited about this. I'm going to keep you readers informed. I'm
going to stick to this story the way Connie Chung stuck to Tonya Harding.
And, yes, I intend to be there when the Buick goes up. When it does, I know
that I'm going to have a very special feeling inside me. It will go away
when I burp.