Hugh Troy

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Hugh Troy Junior (1906 - 1964) was a US painter who is more famous for his pranks.

Hugh Troy was a son of a Cornell University professor, and himself attended the university from 1922 to 1927. Some of the practical jokes he pulled are still talked about. One of them included using a wastebasket made of a rhinoceros foot to make what appeared to be rhinoceros tracks across campus and to the lake that was the source of drinking water for the area. This was done during a winter snowstorm and Hugh had even taken the trouble to cut a large hole in the ice on the edge of the lake. The police ended up having to drag the lake in the middle of a snow storm. It was noted that earlier an article in the newspaper had mentioned an animal escaping from the zoo of a small New York town nearby. When this lead was checked out it turned out there was no zoo in the town! Hugh had planted the fake story in advance to the trackmaking episode. Reportedly, many people stopped drinking the water until Troy revealed the prank with an anonymous letter.

Once Troy took the galoshes of one lecturer and painted human feet on them. Then he covered his handiwork with a paint that would wash off. When the lecturer used the galoshes in the rain, he looked like he was walking with bare feet.

While working as the student sports reporter at Cornell, Troy invented a character named "Johnny Tsal". Tsal was a poor wretch of a character who would inevitably finish last in whatever race that Troy was assigned to cover. "Tsal", of course, was 'last' spelt backwards. Troy said he invented this perpetual loser so that he wouldn't have to feel bad about reporting someone's defeat.

In New York, Troy would visit Central Park carrying a park bench he had bought. Police, suspecting he was trying to steal it, arrested him a number of times. He always presented the bill of sale and was released. Hugh got his revenge by coordinating with a number of friends to take the park benches all at the same time. Because the police thought it was "that guy with the bill of sale" again none of the bench thieves were stopped as they walked out of the park. Eventually police declared Central Park off limits to him.

According to one story, in Ithaca, New York, Troy and his friends saw a large sign that read "JESUS SAVES". They decided to remove it from its original place beside a bridge and put it where it where it would do some good: on the front of a local bank. Legend has it that the bank did a record amount of business the next day.

Another story centers around a snobbish socialite who commissioned a painting from Troy. Ever the pricker of the pretentious, Troy did the painting, but he also painted signs inviting local families to a free picnic on her lawn.

On 1935 there was an exhibition of the works of Vincent Van Gogh in New York's Museum of Modern Art. Troy took a piece of corned beef, carved it into a shape of an ear and put it on display with a plaque that declared it was the ear Van Gogh had cut off in 1888. People flocked to see it until museum authorities removed it.

During World War II, Troy got fed up with military bureaucracy. He invented a new form for reports on the use of flypaper and sent it off. The story goes that Pentagon demanded that other units send theirs as well. Just when Hugh was sure that everyone was wasting time with these flypaper reports he sent another letter to the Pentagon. He mentioned that the counts might be inaccurate due to the counting of old flies from the previous counts. To counter this he suggested that each fly be daubed with a little ketchup using a toothpick. By doing so previous counted flies would now have a marking for the next count. This task was then added to roster.

Hugh Troy made his living as an illustrator for books and magazines. He died in 1964.