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.
