School lunch and dynamite fuze

Entiat school nineteen sixty-one sixty-two me in eighth grade, Justin in tenth.  Small school, maybe a hundred-twenty-five in the upper grades, attached elementary K - 8 with about that many again.  Eighth grade still one classroom under the guidance of Mr. Borrer, but we were located in the new high school building, lunches and breaks on their bell schedule.  Fun year.

I'll write about my claim to fame some other time, but with the fourth of July rattling the windows today I can't help remember Justin and his two buddies Mel and Richard rattling the windows at the school with ariel bombs.

Mel was the geek.  Ham radio enthusiast on the good side of the science teacher pretty much did whatever they wanted in the back room of the science lab.  Ongoing experiment drawing tobacco smoke through filters to examine the tars.  How many kids these days can pull a scam like that, sit around smoking every lunch and get an A for the effort?

Kurt Perry science teacher.

In those days every community had one or two.  Guys who survived the Batan Death march were cut wide margins for eccentric behavior.  Kids call him by first name when other teachers adhered strictly to Mr., Mrs., or Miss.  NO exceptions.....well he survived the death march you know.  In class he held the chalk like a cigarette, even putting it to his lips to chew off the end sometimes.  Teachers in those days wore chalk dust like grease on a mechanics overhauls. Badge of the trade.

That spring the yearbook came out dedicated to Mr. Perry and he was scheduled to give the commencement address at graduation.  As I recall he lived across the alley from the bus barn, not a hundred feet from the stage in the gym.  He did not show.

One can never know how the poor guy felt with the whole town sitting quietly waiting for him to make the stage.  He survived the death march you know.  No one loved him less, and my old man came ready for the change in schedule, pulled a speech out of his pocket and everyone went home happy.

But that hasn't got anything to do with the three science nerds who's story I'm telling today.  Mr. Perry let Mel do all the ordering for the science lab, so one day the boys came home with gallon-sized bottles, dark amber glass.  Sulfur, potassium nitrate and charcoal.  Ingredients for black powder.  Also could make a killer rocket fuel by cooking potassium nitrate and sugar.  Get it hot enough for the sugar to melt, but not so hot that it ignites.  One kid we knew a year or two later had his batch catch fire on the stove, filled the house with smoke.  Cleaned up before his parents got home and they were none the wiser.

One lunchtime Mel took a notion to mix nitro-glycerin on the counter in the science room.  Combining ingredients a flame shot up to the ceiling, leaving a large burn mark on the cabinets.  Lucky they weren't killed.  Mr. Perry never asked what happened.

In addition to that academic work, the boys decided to pull a prank or two.  Richard came up with a few feet of dynamite fuze, which they attached to two shot aerial bombs.  With a two minute delay, they could casually plant the fire-cracker and walk away.  Nowhere near the scene when the explosion rocks the trash can.

If it had happened more than the twice I remember witnessing they would certainly have been busted, but for whatever reason, they didn't push their luck.  Probably because there were only a couple of those things left over from the fourth.  

Fireworks were more restricted in those days.  My memory may be faulty, but it seems like the fireworks stands only sold stuff that didn't explode or leave the ground on fire.  We ordered from Amazon -- no wait it was from an ad in the back of comic books.  Always got the Racket Packet.  Guy at the railway station gave us a big lecture about using illegal fireworks and if there was a fire our ass would be grass.  Did they used to say that or am I tripping again?

No Cherry Bombs, but the two-inch Salute came with the green coated waterproof fuze and gave a decent explosion, and of course lots of packs of one-inch Zebras.  We never lit off a whole pack at once.  Carefully unthreaded each fire-cracker for individual explosions.  Put a couple inside the model Sherman tank or model ship and light the plastic on fire.  Hot plastic flies everywhere when the flames got to the fuzes.  Fun.

One of best fireworks in the Racket Packet was the two-shot aerial bomb.  A tube on a wood platform, green fuze light and get away.   A small charge sent a larger bomb straight up where it exploded with considerably more force than anything else we had in our kit.  Save a couple for later, which came in handy at school.  

Everyone hanging out on the field behind the school in nice weather when the fifty-five-gallon drum trash can is rocked by the two charges in the aerial bomb going off nearly simultaneously.  Geek boys strolled past unnoticed a minute or two before, ambled back into the building for a quick smoke before Mr. Rossing's fifth period English II class.

Romeo and Juliett go down ever so much better after a couple draws on the experimental smoking apparatus that puttered away in the science lab back room.