This is a really long item, but well worth the read!
The one present Roy Collette wasn't looking forward to getting for Christmas 1988 was those pants. Yet he knew he was in trouble as soon as the flatbed truck bearing a concrete-filled tank off a truck used to deliver ready-mix rolled up. Sure as God made little green apples, those pants had to be in there. And he was going to have to fish them out, else declare his brother-in-law the winner of a rivalry that had spanned 20 years.
Being the sport he is, brother-in-law Larry Kunkel thoughtfully supplied the services of a crane to hoist the concrete-filled tank off the flatbed.
What's this game, you ask? What was the significance of these pants, and why were two grown men going to such efforts year after year to retrieve them, only to send them off again?
It all began in 1964 when Larry Kunkel's mom gave him a pair of moleskin pants. After wearing them a few times, he found they froze stiff in Minnesota winters and thus wouldn't do. That next Christmas, he wrapped the garment in pretty paper and presented it to his brother-in-law.