Fires, Explosions, other Misadventures

All teenagers secretly do things that they don’t want their parents to know about—things that would get them in trouble if their parents found out. I may have been a one-in-a-thousand exceptionally good teen, but I still had a few such secrets. True to the idealism of my INFP personality type I did my best to do good, be pure, and live right, even when no one else knew what I was doing. But, like all teens, I fell short in living up to the standards my parents set for me.

I wasn’t a total failure though. At a very young age I resolved to be honest. By the time I turned 13, trustworthiness had become such a part of my character that lying, cheating, and stealing weren’t even temptations for me. My parents could rely on me to do my chores well and keep up with my school work. I treated people with kindness and courtesy which reflected positively on my parents. But I carried a little guilt with me over private secrets and mischief that my brother and I shared with a couple boys who lived about a quarter mile down the road .

This code of secrecy isn’t just for teens. Throughout cultures all over the world people frown on busy-bodies who report misdeeds of their friends and peers, and that’s a good thing. We should be able to trust our friends. The world would be very unpleasant if it was full of tattle-tales. But this code of secrecy also enables destructive behavior. As with most things in life, balance is key. Reporting every little misdeed you see will undermine trust and you’ll have no friends. But when someone’s behavior is risky or destructive there comes a point where it should be reported. Most of us learn the code of silence too well and live in fear of reporting harmful actions that can get people into trouble. A lot of pain and suffering could be reduced if we had discernment to know when to turn people in. Personally, I think the world needs a few more brave whistle-blowers to cut back on corruption and oppression.

Discernment is one thing lacking from teenagers. Occasionally you’ll find a tattle-tale teen who doesn’t know when to respect others privacy, but most teens are too secretive. That doesn’t mean they don’t gossip. Teens love to tell other teens about the unsavory actions of their peers. They just don’t report wrong-doing to authorities who may do something about it.

Now I had entered this world of gossipy, secretive teens, but I was oblivious to it. Fortunately my mischief was all country boy stuff that never left my small circle of friends living on Fewins Road. No one else knew about our adventures such as when one of the boys found some pornographic magazines and hid them in an old abandoned shack in the woods.

Pornography confronts nearly all teenage boys and none of us want to tell our parents about that. Even to ask innocent questions. It’s embarrassing. I believe my experiences reflect what many boys go through. I remember the first time my friend showed the magazines he’d found to the rest of us. I was shocked. “Do women really look like that?!” I thought to myself. I was repulsed and captivated at the same time. I wanted to look away but felt compelled to look closer. It was the same when a cousin wanted to play a card game with pornographic playing cards. The images were offensive but my curiosity compelled me to examine each one carefully.

One image in particular grabbed my attention. I still remember the dark hared lady standing in a flower garden, exposed from the waist up, smiling broadly with bright red lips. I found nothing repulsive in this picture. She was beautiful and I just wanted to stare at her. But I felt really awkward so after one hand of whatever game we were playing I told my cousin I wanted to go outside and do something different. He seemed to feel a little awkward too so he readily agreed.

Now I had another secret and this one nagged me with guilt. I had gazed at the pictures quietly without offering a rebuke to my friends or cousin. I even snuck back once to the old shack in the woods for a private peek at the magazines. I refused to go back again even when the boy who found the magazines suggested it because I’d decided it was wrong and I was determined not to give in to that temptation again. But pornography is addictive and in those few brief exposures I was hooked. I thought about the magazines in the shack often, struggling against the urge to have another look. I avoided the cabin for a couple years then finally went back expecting to find a pile of rotten magazines chewed up by mice, but they were gone without a trace. Someone had removed them, but I never asked any of my friends about them. I didn’t really want to know where they’d gone and I didn’t want my friends or my brother, Bruce, to know I was even interested.

Like drug addicts who never lose the desire for a high no mater how long they stay drug free, the draw of pornography has never left me. I’ve never purchased anything pornographic, but whenever it’s available free for the taking I have a difficult time ignoring it. From my college roommate’s magazines to the easily accessible images on the internet and even relatively mild lingerie adds I constantly battle the desire to waste time gazing at sensual images of women.

Fortunately the other secret adventures of my teen years did not turn into life-long battles against sinful desires. During my middle school years the other boys on Fewins Rd all experimented with tobacco. I was the only one who said no to everything, refusing even a single puff on a cigarette or a single pinch of chewing tobacco. I felt a little pride in my wise choices even under repeated pressure from my peers, but I never shared my pride with anyone else out of respect for their privacy. The code of silence motivated me to keep another secret from my parents even though they’d have been pleased with my actions.

My parents wouldn’t have been pleased with all my actions during this time, though. My friends and I spent a lot of times in the woods and occasionally got into mischief that would have given my parents cause to worry.

I suffered a similar accident after racing my friends up a hill. We were coming home from swimming at the river and had only recently gained the strength to ride our bikes straight up the big hill where Fewins Road dropped down to 669, also know as the Maple City Highway. When we first started riding bikes to the Platte River to swim by my Great Uncle Faye’s house we had to push our bikes up the big hill to get home. The next summer I discovered that I could ride up if I zig-zagged back and forth across the road. This was kind of dangerous because we couldn’t see cars coming until they were close, but there usually wasn’t much traffic on Fewins Road. (By the way, Fewins Road was named after my great-grandparents’ family.)

Eventually our bodies grew strong enough that we could ride straight up and we liked to race to the top. I was the oldest and almost always out front. At the top I’d slow with exhaustion and let everyone else catch up, but eventually I grew stronger and started showing off by continuing past the top of the hill and putting some distance behind me while everyone else continued struggling up the hill. Then a lowly mosquito humbled me.

It all started with Roy’s brilliant plan to make some money by trapping. I felt some reluctance in agreeing to Roy’s plan because trapping seemed a little brutal to me. The culture I grew up in accepted the death of animals for food as part of life. We butchered our own chickens, raise 4-H steers for slaughter, fished, hunted, etc. Anything that we killed we processed ourselves and ate without waste. I accepted trapping as a legitimate occupation, but I knew it was brutally painful for the animals so I never had any interest in trapping myself. But Roy had this idea that he could make some money by trapping rabbits behind his house and selling the pelts. There we so many rabbits in the woods behind his house that it seemed easy. None of us were as enthused with the idea as Roy, but Jeff (his younger brother), Bruce, and I all agreed to help.

So we found some rabbit trails in the woods and set up a few leg-hold traps along the trails and disguised them with leaves. We staked down the traps with sticks and checked them every day. I was surprised and relieved the first few days to find the traps undisturbed. The rabbits seemed smart enough to avoid them. Roy would try to disguise them better but nothing worked.

Then one day a trap was missing. The stake had been pulled out of the ground and the trap was gone. Through careful study of the ground we found a trail of disturbed leaves where some animal—we were sure it was something bigger than a rabbit—had dragged the trap away. We followed the trail to an old junked car on the edge of a field in back of the woods. At first we couldn’t see anything under the car so we started looking for a trail of disturbed leaves going away from the car, but Roy continued to search under the car, probing the dark shadows with a stick. Then he found it. Cowering in a clump of leaves was a small rabbit, its foot caught in the trap.

We felt stupid at this point for doing such a poor job staking down the trap that such a small rabbit could pull it away. I think we all felt a bad for causing the rabbit to suffer too, but now we’d found it, and we were eager to end its suffering. To do that we had to get it out from under the car, but after a long time poking and sweeping with sticks the rabbit wouldn’t budge.

Roy’s next brilliant idea was to scare it out with fire. We all believed that animals run from fire in a panic thinking of nothing else but escaping the fire. So we got some paper and matches, poked a stick through the wrinkled paper, lit it, and suck it under the car. The rabbit just sat there. Roy pushed the burning paper closer. No reaction. At this point we were all so frustrated that we were beginning to lose our sympathy for the rabbit, but Roy needed to recover his dad’s trap and he still wanted the pelt even though it was a small one. We all felt an obligation to end the poor creature’s life and eat what little meat it had. Those were fundamental values we’d been raised on. That’s why I was actually encouraged when the leaves caught on fire. I thought surely the rabbit will flee from the burning leaves.

It didn’t. We couldn’t see the rabbit any more because smoke and flames obscured our view, but we knew the flames were close to the rabbit and it’d have to make a speedy exit. We stood around the car, encircling it, ready to club the little rabbit when it ran out. Still nothing. Then we heard the most hideous sound I’ve ever heard to this day. That rabbit had been cowering in complete silence all this time. I didn’t think rabbits could even make noises. Every rabbit I’d ever seen sat or moved in total silence. But this one screamed. As we stood there with sticks in our hands waiting for a rabbit to run out from under the car dragging a trap we heard this high-pitched, bone-chilling scream. It made us all feel sick. But the rabbit still didn’t flee.

After that we all grew desperate to end this terrible adventure. It was apparent we couldn’t scare the rabbit into running out of its hiding place. We stomped out any flames that left the car and the leaves under the car quickly burnt down to a smolder. I don’t remember clearly what we did next, but I think we got bigger sticks and worked together more effectively to physically push the rabbit out. Then Roy clubbed it to death with his stick. That was as brutal and unpleasant as everything else we’d been doing. The lifeless little rabbit lay there in the leaves at our feet with scorched fur. The pelt was ruined. It was so small there’d hardly be any meat on it to eat. We decided to just bury the poor creature. The rabbit had suffered and died in vain. None of us spoke a word about it, but we all knew our adventure into trapping had ended in the most shameful failure imaginable.

I learned that day that some things in life that seem easy can be very difficult. When venturing into unfamiliar territory it’s best to learn from someone with experience. I would never again experiment in ignorance with an activity like trapping that can cause great pain and suffering. Wisdom seeks advice from experts when beginning a new activity that can have serous consequences. I had learned a lesson, but being a foolish youth I had to learn the same lesson multiple times. It’s scary how many similarities my next misadventure had with this one, and the consequences were nearly much worse.

Brian gazed down in shock at the jet of flames shooting up from his gas can and sprang into action. Assuming that the can was about to explode, Brian did what any intelligent teenager would do; he kicked the can…straight toward me!

As the can rose into the air it tipped forward so that the liquid gasoline inside plugged the spout. The air pocket inside the can continued to burn creating enormous pressure which forced burning gasoline through the spout like a flame thrower. I was immediately engulfed. Instantly my brain questioned the previous admiration I’d held for Brian, but only for an instant. I had more pressing concerns.

In horror I watched the can tumble toward me, spewing flames everywhere. I was on fire from the waist down and flames rose high on the ground all around me. The phrase stop-drop-and-role resonated in my mind, but I wasn’t about to drop and role in the middle of all the burning gasoline, so I ran. I have a dream-like memory of Bruce’s voice saying “Don’t run,” and the feeling that everything was happening in slow motion. The blow-torch flame-thrower just missed Bruce, fortunately, so he ran around the fire following me. As soon as I reached ground that wasn’t in flames I started rolling. Bruce and Brian were both on me in an instant patting out the flames. Somehow we managed to put out the flames even though I still had some wet gasoline on my bare legs.

Amazingly, I only suffered a small burn area on the side of my right knee, about the size of a quarter, black, cracked, with a trickle of blood flowing down my leg, surrounded by a few blisters. My shorts, socks, and shoes weren’t even singed. All the fire had come from the burning gasoline, not my flesh or cloths. I reasoned that gasoline has a low ignition temperature and we got the fire out quickly enough that my skin and cloths hadn’t reached their ignition temperatures. Later I learned that liquid gasoline doesn’t really burn. The flames come from vapor in the air, so the liquid touching my skin wasn’t burning. The burning vapor eventually would have heated my skin enough to burn it, but not as quickly as I’d imagined it would.

My parents, aunts, and uncles were all enjoying a relaxing evening about 50 yards away until they noticed a fireball rising over the 8-10 foot tall Scotch Pines surrounding the tool shed. In no time at all we had plenty of help putting out the fire. Needless to say, Brian had some major confessing to do and everyone wanted to check me for burns. I don’t remember what Brian’s punishment was, but he never lived that stunt down. People still bring it up at family gatherings.

Finding myself on fire from the waist down in the middle of a flaming circle of gasoline was terrifying. The memory motivates me to take fire safely seriously. But that experience did nothing to dampen my fascination with fire. I’ve always loved campfires, bonfires, fireplace fires, wood burning stoves, even candles. I can sit and stare at flames as if hypnotized. Something about fire captivates me; the flickering light, the warmth, the glow, the animated colors; I find it all fascinating. I always have.

I don’t know if Bruce and the boys in my neighborhood were as fascinated with fire as me, but we all shared the fire bug at some level and that shared interest led to some of our most dangerous adventures.

It started with innocent wandering in the woods. We used to explore for hours, just roaming through the woods playing games, pushing over dead trees, admiring fungus growing from dead trees, checking out signs of wildlife, whatever. We didn’t stay out as long or go as far in the winter, but we still spent a lot of time in the woods even when it was cold and covered in snow.

I’ll never forget the time Roy fell through the ice on one of the old trout ponds by the abandoned railroad bed along the Platte River. The ponds were just a few feet deep and froze over every winter, but never completely because fresh water seeped from the earth feeding each pond. The biggest one was about 200 feet long and 50 feet wide in the center. The water flowed in the east end and out the west end. The ice was always thin at those ends, but in the middle it got thick enough to support us and sometimes would ice over without snow-cover so we could run across the ice and slide. We’d see who could slide the farthest on our feet. We also explored the pond seeing what we could see through the cloudy ice cover. There were sticks and weeds and leaves frozen in the ice and in some places we could see through the ice to the slowly flowing water below.

One time Roy went down to the east end where the water flowing in from the muddy spring kept a patch of open water all through the winter and near that the ice was thin. We yelled at Roy, telling him to stay away from that thin ice, but our yelling only made him feel defiant. He carefully crept closer and closer watching for the ice to start to crack when it suddenly gave way. The pond was only about 18 inches deep where he fell through, but he sunk another 18 inches in the muddy bottom. I remember the look of panic in his eyes as he turned and lunged toward me, sinking slowly in mud. His feet wouldn’t move as the sticky muck pulled back causing him to fall forward onto the ice where he’d just been walking.

He landed hard on the ice, face down, arms outstretched. This same ice had supported him standing on it a minute ago, but cracks emanating from the broken hole he fell through weakened it and it collapsed as he fell onto it. Now instead of standing waist deep in water and muck, Roy was laying face down, almost submerged in the ice water. I inched closer, wondering how close I could get to help him before the ice cracked and I joined him in the water. I watched, horrified as Roy repeatedly lunged forward on his hands and knees in the water, muck, and ice. Every time he lunged, stretching out his hands over the solid ice, it would just crack more causing him to fall face-first into the water again.

This is my most vivid memory from that day. In my mind I can see Roy lunging in slow-motion, endlessly reaching for safety just to have the ice collapse and send him face first into the ice-water. The images of Roy’s struggle repeat over and over and over again. In reality he probably only lunged 4 or 5 times in a matter of 10 seconds, more or less, but in my fear enhanced memory it seemed to go on much longer.

Eventually Roy lunged onto ice thick enough to support him and he crawled out, dripping water and mud. Bruce, Jeff, and I breathed a collective sigh of relief and smiled with joy to see Roy standing on the solid ice. Roy smiled broadly too, but the frigid cold quickly turned his smile to a look of concern that we all shared. Roy was already shivering, completely soaked in ice-cold water, and we had to walk three quarters of a mile through deep snow to get home. I knew hypothermia was already starting and had doubts that he could make it home in time.

All 4 of us agreed that we had no time to waste so we set off immediately trudging for Roy’s home. We followed the path in the snow that we’d made coming back with Roy in the back so the 3 of us could pack the trail down more for him. Our quick pace probably helped generate heat to keep Roy going, but the cold and extra weight of his soaking cloths made it difficult for him to keep up. We urged him to press on without stopping or even slowing down until we made it to his house where he could peal off those cold cloths and huddle by a heater. Bruce and I must have left him there and gone home because I have no memory of waiting while Roy warmed up. All I remember is the huge sense of relief I had that we’d gotten him home safely with no frostbite.

We still explored those frozen ponds occasionally after that, but we used more caution than we had before. Exploring the ponds, the banks of the Platte River, and the banks of Stanley Creek were recurring adventures for us. About this time we started a new recurring adventure, but it didn’t involve exploring. It was motivated by our fascination with fire.

In the winter, when the snow was deep, we didn’t wonder as far in the forest because it was so difficult to walk, but we still liked being outside. We used to go sledding a lot. We’d entertain ourselves for hours seeing who could go the fastest and farthest, making banked curves and jumping ramps. But as we grew older sledding didn’t entertain us as long. The way I remember it one winter day we’d been walking through a pine forest near our home and we were all tired so we just stopped in a little sheltered area where the wind didn’t penetrate much. It was pretty cold and someone commented that this would be a great place for a campfire. We all thought that was such a great idea that we agreed to come back to that spot and make a fire.

One day shortly after that, we went back to the spot with paper and matches, collected dry dead branches from the trees, and started a fire. We all knew how to build a fire in the summer, but none of us had ever made one in snow before. The fire started nicely, but it quickly settled down into the deep snow, melting it as it went down. The flames withered to almost nothing, but we kept it going by carefully placing more dry sticks on top of the flame. Most of our sticks were too big for the amount of heat coming from the tiny fire so the flames never grew big enough to create much warmth or even give much satisfaction to watch, but we weren’t deterred.

Throughout that winter we experimented with making fires in the snow. We’d try digging down in the snow to the dirt, laying a bed of large sticks across the snow and building our fire on top of that, along with whatever other technique we could dream up. We got pretty good at building fires in the snow so that any time we wanted we could have a nice warming campfire in 10 or 15 minutes.

I actually felt pretty good about this activity. I loved campfires and felt like I was developing a useful skill in becoming a good fire starter and builder. In spite of those good feelings I also sensed that my parents would frown on what we were doing. Bruce and I never told our parents or our sister about the campfires, but we really didn’t feel like rebellious sons. We had a secret from our parents that might qualify as “mischief” that still seemed benign and innocent. If my parents discovered what we were doing I’m not sure they would have bothered telling us to stop. But the next summer our adventures with fire went to another level that I know would have caused my parents concern.

It started in Roy’s back yard. I remember Roy saying, “Come back here I want to show you something.” He had a can of gasoline and he poured some out in a sandy patch behind his house, struck a match, and dropped in on the gas-soaked sand. It didn’t surprise me to see flames spring up from the sand, but I was surprised at how long the flames persisted. Watching flames springing up from what appeared to be a simple patch of sand fascinated us. We stood there staring as the flaming patch slowly grew smaller. Then Roy’s dad came out calling for him.

Quickly Roy stomped on the flame to put it out, but it continued burning. He put his foot back on it and held for a few seconds but when he pulled his foot back the flame sprang up again! Roy was beginning to panic with concern that his dad was coming and he couldn’t stop the flame in the sand. His dad’s voice grew closer and began to show annoyance so Roy answered him as he stomped his foot down on the flame again. This time he stepped toward his dad, responding to questions while placing himself between his dad and the sandy patch. The flame sprang up again behind him, but it had dwindled to the size of a candle and his dad never noticed.

When Roy’s dad finally left we all looked at the small flame in the sand and at each other, then burst out in relieved laughter that we’d come so close to getting in trouble, escaping by pure luck that Roy and Jeff’s dad didn’t notice the little flame in the sand. This little burning of gasoline in the sand began a new chapter in our adventures that took us to a new level of danger.

I was mostly a spectator, fascinated with Roy’s experiments, having just enough wisdom to know they were foolish so I didn’t want to do what he was doing. But just by being a spectator and keeping our actions secret I had joined in the mischief.

We tested just about anything with a flammable warning label on it. Making a torch out of spray paint was great fun. Then we discovered black powder.

Roy’s dad loaded his own shotgun shells. Like any good dad, Roy’s father liked to teach Roy, showing him how to do all the manly things he did, especially exciting things like making your own shotgun shells. Roy wasn’t allowed to load shells unsupervised. He probably wasn’t even supposed to touch those dangerous materials when his dad wasn’t around. But Roy, like any red blooded American teen, wanted to show off his coveted knowledge to his friends, so one day Roy showed us his dad’s shot gun shell press and without actually making a shell he showed us the process, explaining how it works. At this point Roy probably wouldn’t have gotten into much trouble if his parents found out what he’d shown us. Like making small campfires in the woods we were treading into mischief that we had to keep secret from our parents, but it was relatively innocent mischief that wouldn’t get us into big trouble if we were found out. That was about to change.

I don’t remember who first suggested it, but someone mentioned that we could make a big boom with the black powder in the cabinet. So we snuck into the woods and put a little pile on a scrap of lumber. None of us wanted to light a match and touch it to the gun powder so we debated for a long time the best way to ignite it. We finally settled on tossing a lit match at the little pile. After several failed attempts one of us, I think it was Roy, held the match directly over the powder and dropped it. It still missed. We tried setting the match in the board, burning at one end with the opposite end in the gun powder. It went out before the flame reached the powder. We went back to the drop technique releasing from a point closer to the gun powder until we finally hit it. WHOOSH!

It went up in a dramatic poof of flames and an impressive whooshing sound, but we were actually disappointed. We were expecting a bang and dramatic explosion.

The previous summer we had lit firecrackers that Roy acquired from a relative who’d traveled out of state. At the time firecrackers were illegal in Michigan. At first we lit the firecrackers on the ground and stood back watching them pop. We quickly (and foolishly) grew brave enough to light them in our hands and throw them in the air while the fuse burnt. When that got boring we made it exciting by waiting until the fuse burnt down short before throwing them. Eventually we had a few explode in our fingers which stung pretty bad. Then we decided to slice them open and see what was inside. We even lit a few that we’d sliced open and found the little poof of burning powder anti-climatic.

Now the pile of gunpowder we’d just lit contained at least 30 firecrackers worth of powder so we expected a good bang, not just a whoosh. So we experimented with larger piles of powder. We started making trails of gunpowder leading to the big pile like a fuse. The flame flashes and whooshing sounds grew more impressive, but we realized the booming explosion we’d anticipated wouldn’t happen with a simple pile of gunpowder. So we tried putting a tin can on top of the pile.

That was cool! It made a little bit of a boom that resonated in the can, but the coolest part was how it launched the can into the air. We experimented with different sized cans and quantities of gunpowder, but by this time Roy had grown very worried. He felt certain that his dad would notice the large amount of gunpowder missing from the can. So we quit our experiments and carefully returned everything where we’d found it. We rubbed out scorch marks from the burnt powder and looked around for any other evidence of our mischief.

Satisfied that we’d done a thorough job, Bruce and I returned home urgently hoping that Roy’s dad wouldn’t notice the missing gunpowder. We feared for what would happen to Roy if he got caught, but we also feared that his parents would tell our parents and we’d be in trouble too. I knew we’d been very foolish and felt guilt over having secret adventures that would upset my parents so I resolved to never do that again. I assumed that Bruce, Roy, and Jeff all felt the same way. My memory isn’t clear on it, but I think we even discussed it and agreed that we’d been stupid and needed to stay away from the gunpowder.

Flammable liquids were still fair game, though. After a few weeks the fear wore off. Roy’s dad hadn’t noticed the missing gunpowder and we were bored. We’d figured out that to get an explosion we needed to confine our highly combustible substances in a container that would burst under pressure. So we tried a pop can.

First we just put a little gasoline in it. It just burnt. Adding more gas made it burn longer, not stronger. Other flammable liquids did the same thing. We were all thinking gunpowder might do the trick, but we were afraid to go there again. Well, as you can imagine, our curiosity eventually overcame our fear. We resolved to just use a little, fearful Roy and Jeff’s dad might notice if we used too much.

So we hiked back through the woods about a quarter mile behind Roy and Jeff’s house. We had a pop can with a teaspoon or two or gunpowder in it and a pack of matches. How would we light the gunpowder in the bottom of the can? We all wanted to stand 20 or 30 feet back because we didn’t know what was going to happen. I felt skeptical that it would explode, but if it did I didn’t want shrapnel flying through my body.

Roy was usually the one who lit our experiments and if I remember correctly he tried releasing the matches above the opening in the pop can and stepping quickly backwards as the match fell. The matches kept missing the opening so nothing happened, but I was concerned that Roy was very close to the can when the matches were hitting. If he ever got a match into the can he’d only be a few feet away when it exploded, if the gunpowder had the power to explode the can. Roy was nervous too. It showed in the tension on his face and body and his shaking hand.

So I offered a different approach. I don’t remember if I suggested it and Roy tried it, or if Roy gave me the matches to give it a try myself, but it worked. We lit the match then set it across the opening to the pop can. Then we all had time to back away and watch the match burn until the tip had burnt away past the opening to the can and the burning match fell inside. BOOM! We finally achieved the effect we were looking for!

It wasn’t a big explosion, but it boomed much louder than a fire cracker and it split the can open. We reveled in our excitement recounting in detail how the can blew up in a flash of light and puff of smoke and we all reacted with a startled jump. We wanted to do it again with a little more gunpowder, but we also wanted to be careful to avoid getting caught. So we planned for another day of gunpowder pop cans in the near future.

The day soon came when Roy and Jeff’s dad was away at work and their mom had to take their 5 year old brother someplace. I think we blew up half a dozen pop cans, each with bigger booms and more destruction to the can. I remember the last one blasted the top half of the can completely off leaving a charred base with jagged, twisted shreds of metal reaching up on the sides. At that point we started feeling nervous again because we’d burnt most of a can of gunpowder.

I don’t think Roy and Jeff ever got caught, but their dad might have been suspicious. It seems like we waited a long time before playing with explosive and highly flammable materials again. But when we did, it was the most memorable and foolish experiment of them all!

It was just Roy, Jeff, Bruce and me again. The rest of Roy and Jeff’s family had gone somewhere. This time Roy had a glass pop bottle. As I remember it, Roy poured just a quarter inch of gunpowder in the bottom, but then he added a little gasoline—enough to soak the gunpowder. He sprayed paint down the neck of the bottle and a couple other highly flammable liquids whose identity I can’t recall. Roy’s fascination with fire and explosives had driving him to think of everything in the house that he might mix together, just to see what would happen. We’d grown so overconfident that we all focused on how cool this explosion would be, giving no thought at all to how dangerous it could be, until it was time to light the match.

Since nobody else was home we didn’t bother hiking back in the woods this time. We took the bottle out the side yard not more than 150 feet from the garage. We were near a row of mature Red Pine trees along the road where people driving by could see us, but the trees would obscure their view a bit. Roy put the bottle on the ground, held out the pack of matches, and asked who wanted to light this one.

We had all taken a turn or two at lighting gun-powder cans, but Roy was the primary ignition provider in our group of four mischievous teens. Suddenly we all felt a little nervous, offering with feigned generosity to let Roy have the honors. Roy clearly felt nervous too, but he quietly accepted the responsibility.

Bruce, Jeff and I all backed away to about 20 feet from the bottle as Roy anxiously struck the match. It didn’t light so he swiped it again—still nothing. Roy could usually light a match on the first swipe, but his emotional state was edgy enough to give him some trouble. After a couple more swipes he gave up on that match and tried another. Finally, on what I think was the third match, he got his flame.

Now Roy’s plan was to balance the match across the top of the battle so it would fall in after burning half way, giving him time to back away. This technique had worked pretty nicely for our gunpowder in pop-can explosions, but this experiment turned out quite differently. Gunpowder doesn’t produce fumes the way gasoline, spray-paint, and other highly flammable liquids do. I still have the image of Roy bending over, holding the match out at arm’s length, carefully reaching for the top of the bottle, and then my visual memory goes blank. The last visual image in my memory has Roy holding the match just above the neck of the bottle.

What I recall next is the loudest KABOOM! I’d ever heard. I also remember feeling a blast of radiant heat and being physically pushed backwards by the shock wave. I had to step back to keep my balance. Those sensations astonished me, but I spent no time or mental energy dwelling on them as my brain turned immediately to Roy. I could still see him in my mind bent over next to that bottle, arm stretched out. Is he dead? “Roy!” I don’t remember if I actually shouted “Roy!” or if the exclamation of his name was just a though in my mind as I rushed forward to check on him.

Enormously relieved to find him on his feet I asked him how he felt and began looking for wounds. I glanced down where the bottle had been and saw nothing but the round bottom with short, jagged edges pointing skyward. I was certain Roy must be littered with glass shards cutting through his body like shrapnel, but we found nothing, not a scratch or even a tear in his cloths. We each checked ourselves over and thanked God that we’d all survived without a scratch.

The panic slowly melted from our faces as we all began to grin sheepishly. Soon the grins transformed into relieved laughter as we recounted what each of us experienced and what we’d each thought in the previous couple minutes.

One of us picked up the bottom of the bottle and we all stared in amazement at how thoroughly the rest of the bottle had just blown away. We searched the area for pieces of the bottle but never found any. The explosion must have shattered it into very small pieces and scattered them far enough to make them difficult to find. I think Roy saved that bottle bottom as a souvenir. I wonder if he still has it? Naw, I’m sure he eventually threw it out.

Even though our fears of injury ended in relief and we recounted the explosion with gleeful excitement, we never blew up anything else after that. We all knew we were very lucky to escape that one without injury, especially Roy. We knew we’d gone beyond foolish and crossed into true stupidity, and if we continued, someone would get hurt. In fact, if we’d continued on to more grandiose experiments we’d likely have become candidates for one of those “Darwin Awards” that are so popular now.

Although my teenage and pre-teen mischief gave me many fond memories with no permanent injuries I’m not a fan of just letting teens go free to have their own childhood adventures. My friends and I were restrained compared to most teen-aged boys and we did some really stupid things in spite of our efforts to be smart. It’s better to keep our youth busy with chores, school, sports, scouts, 4-H, church, etc., than to give them a lot of unsupervised freedom. Teens love to experiment with risky behavior. The thrill of trying things that parents wouldn’t approve of is intoxicating. Nothing’s more dangerous than a group of bored teenagers!

Still, all teens need some unsupervised social time to grow independent. They need to be trusted with a few secret adventures that they don’t share with their parents. The teen years are risky. We can minimize risk, but trying to eliminate all opportunities for stupidity is nearly impossible and probably harmful. A certain amount of teenage risk taking might be an important part of growing up and developing wisdom. As parents we can only pray for safety once we’ve done our best.