# Man in prison gets cops to plow backyard for father with false confession? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 28, 2015, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786 "2015-09-28T01:50:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2015, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/1 "2015-09-28T01:50:51Z")
Has this joke/urban legend ever happened? Set up is the adult son is recently put in prison, his elderly father cannot plant a garden without the help of his son. So son makes a phone call or writes a letter saying whatever you do dad don’t dig up a large area starting twenty feet from the back of the house, then 30 feet from that and 30 feet in both directions or something so. So the FBI/cops know this must be where the drugs/money/guns/bodies are! They bring out a team with a warrant an dig it all up but find nothing. Father thanks son for plowing the soil for the garden, son says no problem dad.🙂 ? ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2015, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/2 "2015-09-28T02:11:57Z")
Generally considered at [Snopes](http://www.snopes.com/crime/clever/nowplant.asp)to be an urban legend, with variations going back to biblical times. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/3 "2015-09-29T01:41:58Z")
I personally would doubt that the letter would get to the father in the first place. I also doubt they’d leave things in a way suitable for farming. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/4 "2015-09-29T02:23:19Z")
“Digging up” is not the same as plowing. The father would have to expend more effort to put the plot back into shape for his garden than he would have before the cops dug it up. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/5 "2015-09-29T03:02:04Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > Generally considered at [Snopes](http://www.snopes.com/crime/clever/nowplant.asp)to be an urban legend, with variations going back to biblical times. Thanks I have heard and seen so many variations of this joke I wondered if anyone tried it for kicks. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/6 "2015-09-29T03:07:36Z")
Digging up is, however, the same as tilling. And it wouldn’t matter if the father got the letter. He wasn’t the intended audience. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/7 "2015-09-29T03:23:29Z")
What is the biblical edition of this story? ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/8 "2015-09-29T03:36:10Z")
There isn’t actually a version from the Bible itself, but the Snopes link gives a bunch of variations and related stories, including a story with similar elements from Aesop’s Fables which probably dates back to the Sixth or Seventh Century BCE–i.e., “biblical times”. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/9 "2015-09-29T04:11:45Z")
Mark Twain used it when Tom Sawyer dupes some kids into painting a fence. [http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/tomsawyer/section1.rhtml](http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/tomsawyer/section1.rhtml) > [@](#): > > On Saturday morning, Aunt Polly sends Tom out to whitewash the fence. Jim passes by, and Tom tries to get him to do some of the whitewashing in return for a “white alley,” a kind of marble. Jim almost agrees, but Aunt Polly appears and chases him off, leaving Tom alone with his labor. > > A little while later, Ben Rogers, another boy Tom’s age, walks by. Tom convinces Ben that whitewashing a fence is great pleasure, and after some bargaining, Ben agrees to give Tom his apple in exchange for the privilege of working on the fence. Over the course of the day, every boy who passes ends up staying to whitewash, and each one gives Tom something in exchange. By the time the fence has three coats, Tom has collected a hoard of miscellaneous treasures. Tom muses that all it takes to make someone want something is to make that thing hard to get. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/10 "2015-09-29T04:15:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Digging up is, however, the same as tilling. Not really. If they’re going to search a piece of property looking for some buried evidence, they’re not going to leave the field in tillable condition. They would search the field by excavating the soil, shifting through it for the evidence, and then dumping it somewhere outside of the area being searched. You’re not going to dump the soil back on the area where you’re searching because you’ll end up searching the same soil time after time. Or worse yet, you might be putting soil on top of the evidence you’re looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/11 "2015-09-29T12:13:39Z")
Depending on how deeply they dig, the cops would probably unearth a lot of subsoil and big clods of earth. Someone would have to replace the subsoil and break up the clods and pieces of sod with attached soil, which by far is the major work involved in getting a section of previously undisturbed soil into shape for gardening (not to mention adding amendments if the soil is heavy clay, poor in organic content etc. I just can’t see the P.D. bringing on bags of peat moss, compost, sand etc. to work into the soil and leaving everything in great shape to sow seed and transplant veggies. ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-in-prison-gets-cops-to-plow-backyard-for-father-with-false-confession/732786/12 "2015-09-29T13:36:57Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > They would search the field by excavating the soil, shifting through it for the evidence, and then dumping it somewhere outside of the area being searched. So if you need a hole dug for your new hot tub… 🙂 (see the first “sighting” in the Snopes link **Ethilrist** provided.)