Civ Pro a Laughing Matter?

While in Starbucks between classes today, I was reading for my Civ Pro class. The section in the text dealt with the actual service of process (notifying someone that they are being sued) and what forms of service were acceptable and what were not. Evidently, courts go back and forth on what is appropriate "service" and in many instances must take it on a case by case basis. One of the confounding problems is that a lot of times people who do not want to be served can make it very difficult on the plaintiff/government to actually serve them. The book gave some examples of how people tried to avoid being served, how they were eventually served, and whether the court decided that was an appropriate form of service. This case caught my eye in particular. 

Defendant hid himself under his wife's petticoats and refused to receive the papers. The process-server saw him crouching there, so he put the papers on what seemed to be the defendant's shoulder, and went away. The Supreme Court rendered a decision which held that “where a person, to avoid service of summons, shelters himself in his wife’s petticoats, the laying of the papers on his shoulder will be sufficient service.”   

Maybe it's just me, but when I read this passage in Starbucks, I could not help but chuckle. The people around me probably thought I was crazy. I can't imagine it's every day that a law student reads something laugh-out-loud funny in their civil procedure textbook, so I thought I would document the occurrence.