When I was a kid some of the other fellas “weren’t right.” They did stupid shit for no reason and their parents ripped their hair out trying to figure them out. It raised questions with us other kids too. All my friends were firebugs and pyros when I was a kid. Johnny and George actually got busted by cops for starting a dumpster fire behind the school. Their parents were horrified when the cops brought their little juvies home. Why would ya do it, and how could you be so dumb as to get caught? We all nearly got blowed up real good when Brent made a rather unexpectedly competent pipe bomb. We buried our recreational IED in the long jump sand pits down at the school yard and lit the fuse... and sent about 3 cubic yards of dirt into the air. That scared us all straight for the rest of our lives and we never dabbled in hobby explosives or pyrotechnics ever again. It seems to be a pattern with some boys, maybe? They do incredibly stupid, nasty, dangerous and antisocial stuff... and then correct and behave themselves as if it had never happened.
But now...I’m in my mid 50’s... and sometimes I still hear my inner juvie calling me. I would love to go down to the junkyard with one of these. I’d laugh like a demented cretin as I blew up piles of garbage and junked cars....
Don’t judge me! 🤬
In the 70s in Caracas carbide was readily available as many rural folk used it for lamps and cooking. A kilo of the stuff was about 25 cents. Bamboo was prolific as well. The big six inch diameter stuff. Combine the two and you could make some serious artillery. We'd build batteries of a dozen of these rigs, you could make some serious noise.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/g1_yShGJW74
Judge you? Hell, gimme a minute, I’ll pack us a lunch and join you!
ReplyDeleteOf course we must judge you, how else do we know where you stand in the rankings?
ReplyDeleteEver last one of us has a juvie in the depths of our soul. Some of us do or did a better job of not getting caught. Some of us know nothing about letting the air out of the tires on the local cop car while he was in it, either.
ReplyDeleteJudge you? You're in the top ten for certain sure.
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time... in Northern Ohio there was a budding genius who lived a short distance from me. His father was in the construction industry, and always had interesting junk in the bed of his pickup. There was a piece of pipe with a cap on one end of it; about the same diameter as a golf ball.
So... dropping a lit firecracker (a ladyfinger) down the pipe and instantly following it with a golf ball produced a makeshift cannon. What no one understood were things like pressure and, you know, other technical stuff. We only knew that we could shoot a golf ball the length of a 2000 foot road. And, with the right elevation, we could actually hit the house at the end of the road.
But then we got distracted by the thought of ice cream and left. We passed the police about a quarter mile down the road and waved to them. They waved back.
The father of the home made artillery man was not as friendly nor as easily convinced that we, mere striplings, had anything to do with the dents in poor old Mister Coots garage door, or his new phobia about coming outside. Oh well.
Great story. Thanks
ReplyDeleteWell that just tears it!!! It's time for an Uncle Bob's Retard School field trip - to the dump!!!
ReplyDeleteM will handle the entertainment! I want something so big and destructive, that it will scare the seagulls off the outhouses up here in Alberta!
Bobo - peanut butter sammiches!!! A couple of us are allergic and will provide even more entertainment!
Stefan, Judy and Scott! You will handle the matches and gasoline until we get to the dump! Whatever ya do - don't let the rest of us get to them until it is safe to do so!
:)