agent-maroon said:
Sharpshooter said:
In High School one July 4th we took a 12" metal pipe, capped one end and drilled a small hole in the pipe side at the other end. Then, painstakingly emptied hundreds upon hundreds of fire crackers of their powder until we were able to fill the pipe with packed powder then capped the other end. Put a two ft piece of dynamite fuse in the drilled hole (I think the fuse burned at a foot per minute, or 30 sec, or something like that). And, yes, you could order fuse in the mail. Took the contraption to a rural road, lit it, and ran like hell. Heck of a loud bang. Went back next day and found a two ft hole blown through asphalt. Surprised I am still alive after the things we did. Again, being a kid was so fun.
My friend did something similar with straight up gunpowder and some underwater fuse that his older brother acquired somehow. Drilled a hole just big enough to accommodate the fuse, capped one end of a pipe nipple, filled with gunpowder, capped the other end. Basic pipe bomb 101. I wasn't present, but they buried it to be "safe" and it apparently blew a crater about 4' across and a foot deep. Crazy part of all this was that the gunpowder was bought at a Furr's grocery store which was the same store that I bought my first pistol.
The s*** we used to be able to buy back then, except on Sunday, due to Blue Laws that never made sense. Can buy the nails but not the hammer? Still life was good and fun and we somehow managed to survive.
I honestly have to wonder if us kids, made to drink our milk and eat our vegetables, had harder heads (when we fell off of monkey bars over asphalt or were repeatedly hit in the head by a water wiggle when we grabbed the hose in the wrong spot.) and robust immune systems when we all drank out of the single garden hose.
Sure, we caused some fires, had a few minor burns, sometimes scared ourselves s***less in the process, had parents that would scold (sometime spank us for being stupid) but I know with my parents they valued one thing above all else for
their kids. Freedom to be kids.
Both of my parents worked on the family farms when they were young. Not talking about chores such as clean up your rooms, take out the garbage type of chores, but milk the cows, gather the eggs, slop the hogs, then have breakfast. Go to school, come home, repeat. They gave us freedom to be kids.
Explore, experience childhood. And when we returned home in one piece, no matter the scrapes and scratches, we were still learning. Limitations, physics, "You were playing King of the mountain with bikes riding up the big construction pile of dirt and threw that kid back with his bike all of the way down that hill and his spiked pedal hit him in the head and cut it? Haven't you learned about gravity yet?"
Mom was mad, Dad was covering his mouth because he was laughng. His "baby daughter" had just beaten up several guys and won King of the Mountain.