Woman hunts for grandpa’s funny fart story | Andy Hobbs

One morning, Bill Hicks accidentally swallowed his hearing aid with his pills.

One morning, Bill Hicks accidentally swallowed his hearing aid with his pills.

In the shower, he farted out the hearing aid. He took the hearing aid to a local company, which fixed the device for free, in exchange for a little publicity.

A local newspaper printed this strange-but-true story, which described how “he experienced a bit of gas and found his hearing aid in the shower,” said granddaughter Erin Hicks, quoting from memory.

Erin, who lives in Gig Harbor, hopes to find that lost article and reunite with “one of the more ridiculous stories” from her grandfather’s life. The short article was posted on the Federal Way couple’s refrigerator and generated laughter for years. Bill Hicks, a retired engineer and U.S. Air Force officer, passed away in 2002, and his wife, Bernice, passed in 2011.

The family is stumped on the date of publication, and for that matter, which newspaper printed the piece.

The article, a few paragraphs in length, ran in the mid-1990s in either the Auburn or Federal Way paper, Erin said. The Federal Way Mirror launched in 1998, a few short years after Hicks and his flatulence made news.

“I never thought to ask what happened to that article,” she said. “It was just on his fridge. We’d say, ‘that’s in the paper, are you serious?'”

Now the feat has made headlines again. Anyone with information on the lost article would brighten a granddaughter’s day. Please send tips to editor@federalwaymirror.com.