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THE IMMORTAL CAKE

Reprinted from OHIO, April 1985
By Lonnie Wheeler

© 1985 Ohio Magazine, Inc.

Twelve years ago, Craig Boldman gave Paul Thoms a cake that he didn't want. So Thoms gave it back. So Boldman gave it back. So Thoms gave it back. And so on and so on and so on.

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At Fairfield High School, Craig Boldman had a music teacher named Paul Thoms. Thoms was slender and immaculately bearded, with a novella for a resume. But what characterized Thoms most, apart from his music and other accomplishments, was his dignity. He wasn't exactly stuffy -- not so much that the students didn't like him -- but he wasn't exactly a hair-down type of fellow, either.

In Boldman's eyes, this made Thoms ripe for a little practical joke. Thoms seemed to be asking for a small prank, Boldman thought. Boldman's family knew Thoms' family, so it would be taken in the spirit. Anyway, says Boldman, twelve years later, "I figured I could beat him up if I had to."

EVERYONE LOVES A PARADE.
Boldman, center; Thoms, far right
Journal-News photo by Mike Smith

So when Boldman found out that Thoms was born on April 16, he got together a do-it-yourself birthday kit -- candles, balloons and a bakery cake -- and left it on the teacher's doorstep at the appropriate midnight, phoning anonymously to inform Thoms. NEXT: THOMS RETALIATES

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Thoms stashed the birthday cake, one layer of devil's food, in his freezer. Later, he found out that Boldman was responsible for it, and on Boldman's birthday, August 30, Thoms mailed the cake back with a phoney return address. Boldman eventually figured out what had happened, and naturally he couldn't let it end there, with devil's food on his face.

It did not end there, nor has it ended yet. The once and future cake, which aspired only to an unremarkable end at the pit of someone's stomach, began a march on to a gamy immortality. It has been frozen and unfrozen countless times. It has been coast to coast, and it has been overseas. It has been mailed, boxed, framed, mounted, wrapped in a blanket and chained to a rail. It has been everything but eaten. It does not look good. It does not smell good. But Thoms would sooner throw away his dignity; Boldman, his pride.

For the first few years, the cake exchanges were comparatively pedestrian. Boldman and Thoms dismiss them now as unprofessional pranks. Boldman had a showgirl present Thoms with the cake at Bob Braun's Celebrity Inn, and then she flashed him. Thoms sent it to Boldman's art school as his first piece of mail from home. Boldman stuck it in a box marked "explosives" and chained it to Thoms' back porch, forwarding the key a week later. NEXT: IT ESCALATES

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Then, the stunts entered a period of relative sophistication. Thoms, with the advantages of experience and sophistication, gained the upper hand during those formative years. He had Boldman arrested and handcuffed at his girlfriend's house, with the cake presented in the squad car. He had the president of Boldman's college deliver the cake, along with Boldman's diploma, at graduation exercises. He organized a parade through Fairfield, with the route ending at Boldman's house and the mayor getting out of a limousine to hand over the cake.

But Boldman hung in. He hired a couple to approach Thoms and his wife in a restaurant, the man, a big, glaring fellow, and the woman carrying a blanketed bundle. "You're the one, Paul Thoms!" she screamed, blaming the bundle on him. It was, of course, the cake.

THE WEDDING PARTY, CRASHED.
FROM LEFT: Rev. Beck, Jeffi Ingram, Pete Matthews, Craig Boldman, Karl Kesel

Then Boldman pulled off the coup de theatre, a bit of chicanery that is considered the classic of the cake capers. He introduced Thoms to a girl named Jennifer. Then he told Thoms that things were getting serious between him and Jennifer. He showed Thoms Jennifer's engagement ring. He sent Thoms an engraved wedding invitation. He asked Thoms to sing at the wedding. He hired a preacher, rented a church and filled it with 200 observers. And then, just after Thoms had sung "If I Could Tell You" and "It's Only Just Begun," a baker barged into the church and rushed down the aisle, demanding that the wedding be stopped until somebody paid for a certain chocolate cake. NEXT: WHAT PRICE VICTORY?

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As sweeping a triumph as that was for Boldman, it is one that he has paid for deeply in retribution real and imagined. "I'm scared to get married," he confides.

The fact is, he can scarcely meet a girl without some cake-fed humiliation being conferred upon him. Last year, Boldman was on a Caribbean cruise with friends Thoms didn't even know, when he met some single girls with whom he became friendly. One of them eventually asked Boldman to come to her cabin and -- ahem -- look at her conch shells. There was the cake, carried on board by the friends Thoms didn't know but contacted nonetheless.

The year before that, Boldman was visiting a friend in California and went to Disneyland. As soon as he passed through the gate, he was greeted by a barbershop quartet and Mickey Mouse, who handed Boldman the cake.

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL.
Boldman (R) and friend.

Boldman matched that by catching up with Thoms when the teacher -- now a ranking administrator in the school district -- was on a business trip in Luxenbourg. "I was desperate for an idea that year, and I'd never been to Luxembourg," says Boldman, a freelance illustrator.

For the most recent passing of the cake, Boldman asked a musician friend to write and record a song to fit the coming occasion. They worked out a ditty with harmonica harmony, and Boldman took the song to the School for Creative and Performing Arts, whose students and teachers worked out a dance number. Lunch was arranged at Edwards Restaurant in downtown Cincinnati, with the dancers seated at the surrounding tables. When Thoms' birthday song came through the speakers, the other diners leaped up and converged on Thoms' table like a musical score from the Fifties, one of them naturally awarding him the cake. PM Magazine was there with cameras. "My aim," says Boldman, "is maximum humiliation."

So that's how it stands now, with the cake decaying further in Thoms' crowded freezer. Thoms says smugly that he has ideas good for at least three more years, which terrifies Boldman, who doesn't. But Boldman has learned to live with fear. Men of battle make fear their friend.

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PHOTO CREDITS: MIKE SMITH for Journal News, LANE BOLDMAN, PETE MATTHEWS