Saw this meme on FB and it brought back a 60 year old
memory.
My classmate and fellow troublemaker acquired some 2,000
cherry bombs and M-80s. We spent the winter of 1960-61 setting them off.
He had a Jeep and I would ride shotgun lighting and tossing
them. This was in a Colorado mountain town of some 2,000 people. Our Senior
class had 42 kids. When things got
“interesting” we would shift over to my 1951 Ford four door with him riding
shotgun.
The High School three story wing had a central air
distribution room. Fairly large, it was used for storing old desks, etc., and
was locked (Ha!). Another conspirator made a delayed fuse in chemistry class.
He tested a few and declared they took thirty minutes to burn. We fabricated ten cherry bombs into a single
delayed fuse, placed it in the air distribution room, and lit it just before
the start of afternoon classes. The “thirty” minute fuse was more like ten
minutes and we three were as startled as everyone. A magnificent “boom”, and
about a twenty years accumulation of dust started pouring from the heat vents.
With three other towns within a 40 minute drive, we would
torment those residents when things got tense in our town.
We had one big thing going for us; keeping our mouths shut!
No boasting, no snickering in the school hallways, and not bringing in any
others (except the fuse maker, who could keeps his trap shut). Girl friends
were not in on it. The powers that were had their suspicions but never hard
proof. My fellow troublemaker never brought more than a few with him at any
time and we survived several cop searches.
It was good training for future employment. He, operating an
import business in Florida (no, I never knew what he imported) and me as one of
two designated demo men in a combat engineer company.
18 comments:
We never did any "big" stuff like that. Cherry Bombs and M-80's were just too hard to get in Illinois.
We were out driving around one night, and a buddy in the back seat lit a Black Cat, and tossed it out the window. Only the window wasn't down, so it bounced back into the car and went off.
In his lap....
No damage, and we proceeded with other mischief.
We stopped the night one of our buddies brought over a CO2 cartridge with the end sawed off, and stuffed full of match heads. When we finally got it lit, it didn't go streaking across the parking lot like we thought.
It went BOOM!, scattering bits of shrapnel everywhere, one of which hit a buddy in the shin. His jeans slowed it down enough that it didn't go too deep, so we pulled it out, slapped some iodine and band-aid on it, and went about our business.
These days you'd have DHS crawling all over the place.....
We had most of the police, city council, and school big shots trying to track us down. At 25 mph (town speed limit) you would be 2 blocks away when it went off. When we saw kids along the street ----------Guess who the cops jumped on?
When I was a young lad growing up on our ranch, we had a surplus WWII jeep and trailer. I learned to drive the jeep at age 8. When I was stationed in (the former) West Germany (74-77) I was one of maybe three people in our unit who could back a jeep-trailer combo in a straight line.
There was a time when our 19 year old kids won wars.
The cowman and his older brother were notorious for this kind of mayhem in their youth. They had ancient blasting caps and dynamite. There was a huge ol safe far out in one of the pastures, no one knew where it came from, or who had hauled it out there. They decided to blow it to see what was inside. When they got done with it there were tiny tiny pieces of it and what ever was in it scattered far and wide.
Brig
Sounds about right. There was a mill fire and the office safe ended up in the parking lot. Numerous people tried to open it. Since the mill owner knew of it, he would have opened it if anything of value was inside.
RHT447
I never mastered backing any kind of trailer. Once backing a cable trailer with a 5 ton Bridge Truck, my guide shouted. OK, turn the truck off and dismount. He was still hollering. Had one of the trailer tires on his foot. Worse, we weren't lined up properly. SFC Booker was pissed.
ROTFLMAO! We used to fish with them... Until the game warden caught us...
Yes, they're like kryptonite for teenage boys. I had a few (nowhere near 2000) and got into trouble with them as well. Then I graduated to artillery simulators.
As Old NFO suggests, if we weren't catching anything in the local river, we'd toss them into the hole and harvest the trout. I wasn't caught, but it comes down to using discretion. And teenage boys are almost always short on that.
RH: I too was stationed in West Germany from 1976 through 1978. I did not learn to drive any military vehicle during that period, since I was a 'day beggar,' and wore khakis every day, with shiny Kor-Fam low quarters. Never got muddy.
Then I went back for another German tour in 1981-1984, this time a tactical unit. Learned to drive the 2.5 ton AWD truck (duce and a half mfg'd by Studebaker), in addition to backing a 30KW generator trailer. Tricky, just needs stick time. Since then, backing any unit with a trailer has never been a problem, just like riding a bike. You always get the feel for it right away.
OldNFO
We never tried that.
LL
May have blogged about this before. In Germany my demo partner and I did harassment assignments when units were on the annual three day combat tests. We would lob artillery simulators at them.
Fredd
Some of us never learn. I get it done; just takes several tries.
I would have to replace the toilets broken up in high school. Porcelain doesn't hold up under explosive pressure (by fireworks, not poop).
We weren't that brave.
Or that stupid.
CP
Fear. The school janitor had two kids in high school. His son was one tough dude and his daughter "assertive". We got a pass on the dust blizzard because no one was certain of the culprits. Tough dude or not, few people wanted to fight us.
And years later, when I followed WSF into high school, a couple of the teachers treated me like they were getting back at him and his buddies. We had a sit down one day after school, when I asked then to let me get into my own trouble and leave my brother out of it. We got along better after that.
Ten years later and they were still pissed!
Imagine the reaction today. Local LE, a 3 letter agency or two, school on lockdown, mass media "right wing, white extremist" coverage and the terrorists looking at a minimum of 10 years each in supermax solitary.
When a Chicago High School dindu guns someone down? Different story, obviously.
Different days. Most of the unlocked pickups and cars parked around the school had rifles (loaded) in them. Several pickups had gun racks in the back windows. My Jr NRA .22 target rifle lived in my wall locker along with 200+ rounds of ammo. The wall locker stayed locked.
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