FIRECRACKERS AND DYNAMITE

I thought I'd take a little break away from my young love life, and talk about my fascination for explosives as a boy. I hesitated writing this story for fear it would give kids bad ideas. It was a time in the Sixties when way too many boys were playing with anything that exploded. Television had lots of Public Service Announcements condemning such practices, giving warnings of boys losing hands and arms and even worse.
David and I started with those little, Zebra and Black Cat firecrackers. Then we discovered the Big BOOM a homemade Carbide Cannon made. We took an empty paint can, hammered a nail hole into the bottom of it, dropped a couple chunks of minors carbide into it, poured a small amount of water in the can onto the carbide, and then hammered the lid on tight and got back. The water on the minors carbide started forming a gas, and we could see the side of the paint can expanding. Then, very cautiously, we lit a match and touched it to the nail hole in the bottom of the can. The explosion could be heard over a mile away as the paint cans lid blew off.
I've already told you about horse shit hand grenades, so I'll move on to cherry bombs and M80s. I choose not to tell what we did with them. Ok, maybe one story. We were driving around in a friend of mines car. It was a 1953 Chevy he bought for $35.00. There were three of us boys in the car. I was in the middle. We drove around throwing M80s and Cherry bombs in friends yards one night. As we came upon a friends yard, I lit the M80 and from my middle of the seat position, I tossed it out the window. The only problem was, My friend had rolled the window up. The M80 bounced off the glass and back into the front seat between us somewhere. I don't believe an old car had ever slid to such a sudden stop with three boys piling out as fast as they could move. It exploded and left a big hole in the front seat!! I don't know this for sure, but I've often heard an M80 was the equivelant of a fifth of a stick of dynamite.
You'd have thought by now we'd have learned our lessons, but we still liked explosives. I can't bring myself to tell you all our Big Bang Adventures, but I will mention that dynamite in a fish pond really does kill fish.