How many did something like this?

[groundpounder]

> *How many of us did some crazy things like this, when we were kids!?**
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Around age ten, my dad got me one of those little badass long bow beginner
> kits. Of course, the first month I went around our land sticking arrows in
> anything that could get stuck by an arrow. Did you know that a 1955 40-horse
> Farmall tractor will take six rounds before it goes down? Tough SOB.
>
> That got boring, so being the ten-year-old Dukes of Hazard fan that I was, I
> quickly advanced to taking strips of cut up T-shirt doused in chainsaw gas
> tied around the end and was sending flaming arrows all over the place. Keep
> in mind this was 99.999% humidity swampland so there really wasn't any fire
> danger. I'll put it this way: a set of post hole diggers and a three-foot
> hole and you had yourself a well.
>
> One summer afternoon, I was shooting flaming arrows into a large rotten oak
> stump in our backyard. I looked over under the carport and see a shiny brand
> new can of starting fluid (ether).. The light bulb went off. I grabbed the
> can and set it on the stump. I thought that it would probably just spray out
> in a disappointing manner. Let's face it: to a ten-year-old old
> mouth-breather like myself, ether really doesn't "sound" flammable. So, I
> went back into the house and got a one-pound can of dad's muzzleloader
> Pyrodex.
>
> At this point, I set the can of ether on the stump and opened up the can of
> black powder. My intentions were to sprinkle a little bit around the ether
> can but it all sorta dumped out on me. No biggie... one pound of Pyrodex and
> sixteen ounces of ether should make a loud pop, kinda like a firecracker you
> know? You know what? Heck with that. I'm going back in the house for the
> other can. Yes, I got a second can of Pyrodex and dumped it too.
>
> Now we're cookin'. I stepped back about fifteen feet and lit the two-stroke
> arrow. I drew the nock to my cheek and let fly. As I released, I heard a
> swish as the arrow launched from my bow. In a slow motion time frame, I
> turned to see my dad getting out of the truck. OH CRAP! He just got home
> from work. So help me it took ten minutes for that arrow to go from my
> bow to the can. My dad was walking towards me in slow motion with a WTH look
> in his eyes.
>
> I turned back towards my target just in time to see the arrow pierce the
> starting fluid can right at the bottom. Right through the main pile of
> pyrodex and into the can. Oh. Hell.
>
> When the shock wave hit it knocked me off my feet. I don't know if it was
> the actual compression wave that threw me back or just reflex jerk back from
> 235 decibels of sound. I caught a half a millisecond glimpse of the
> violence during the initial explosion and I will tell you there was dust,
> grass, and bugs all hovering one foot above the ground as far as I
> could see.
>
> It was like a little low to the ground layer of dust fog full of
> grasshoppers, spiders, and a crawfish or two. The daylight turned purple.
> Let me repeat this... THE **** DAYLIGHT TURNED PURPLE!
>
> There was a big sweetgum tree out by the gate going into the pasture. Notice
> I said "was". That mother got up and ran off. So here I am, on the ground,
> blown completely out of my shoes, with my thundercats T-shirt shredded, my
> dad is on the other side of the carport having what I can only assume is a
> Vietnam flashback: "ECHO BRAVO CHARLIE YOUR BRINGIN' EM IN TOO CLOSE!! CEASE
> FIRE *** *****- CEASE FIRE!!!!!"
>
> His hat has blown off and is thirty feet behind him in the driveway. All
> windows on the north side of the house are blown out and there is a slow
> rolling mushroom cloud about two thousand feet over our backyard. There is a
> Honda 185s three-wheeler parked on the other side of the yard and the
> fenders are drooped down and are now touching the tires.
>
> I wish I knew what I said to my dad at this moment. I don't know.. I know I
> said something. I couldn't hear. I couldn't hear inside my own head. I
> don't think he heard me either... not that it would really matter. I don't
> remember much from this point on. I said something, felt a sharp pain, and
> then woke up later. I felt a sharp pain, blacked out, woke later.... Repeat
> this process for an hour or so and you get the idea. I remember at one point
> my mom had to give me CPR so dad could beat me some more.
>
> Bring him back to life so dad can kill him again. Thanks mom.
>
> One thing is for sure... I never had to mow around that stump again. Mom had
> been *******g about that thing for years, and dad never did anything about
> it. I stepped up to the plate and handled business. Dad sold his
> muzzleloaders a week or so later. And I still have some sort of bone growth
> abnormality either from the blast or the beating. Or both.
>
> I guess what I'm trying to say is, get your kids into archery. Its good
> discipline and will teach them skills they can use later on in life.*

[wheelie]

When I was young we would make frog guns. We even had a frog gun club in a friends shed. A hockey stick and nail a clothspin on it and a nail in the end. Then get elastic bands and tie a few together and put the steel piece from the cloths pin and pull it back and close it in the clothspin. We would shoot frogs and small birds and squirels and stuff, My mother always wondered where her clothspins were disapearing to. Like any 10 year old boy would say" I don't know" Dad bought me a pelet gun at age 12 and got my hunting licence at age 15. My father was a cop.

40 years ago now but remember them days like yesterday!!!! My body tells me different!!!!!!!!!

[sumner4991]

Yes, did some things . . .but, I'm not allowed to say them aloud. Certainly am not going to put them in writing . . .

That's a good one Todd. Sounds like something Hoss would do . . .

[huntone]

Yes, I have blown up a few things, but not in that fashion.

[MADMAX2]

All I can remember is a mt aerosal paint can filled with salt peter,charcoal and I think sulfer?we lit her up and ran don't remember too much after the explosion

[Grizzly Adam]

I still like to blow things up.

Why do you think I live in NC's least populated county, in the middle-of-nowhere, with no neighbors?

[Shotnbeer]

when the statue of limitations run out I'll tell you some stories.

[ohioexocetfan]

Groundpounder... you and I must be about the same age. Dukes of Hazard and Honda 3 wheelers... GOTTA LOVE THOSE TIMES!

[maple]

As a kid; slingshots, blowguns, laying lines of gunpowder down the sidewalk, gas cans on the beach at night, finding out how primers work, firecrackers and pop bottles, potato guns, flaming cat-tail arrows shot straight up, Coleman stove flame throwers, was all fun. I'm not tellin' about the dangerous stuff though. Lucky we survived.


Maple

[Grizzly Adam]

When I was in the sixth grade (circa 1976), I actually got eight whacks and a week in from recess for blowing up a beaker and creating a cloud of noxious white smoke when I and another guy snuck into the old high-school science lab and mixed a bunch of chemicals together to see what would happen!

We also had to clean everything up, write a 500 word report on why we shouldn't do such things, do 1000 sentences and work in the cafeteria for a week.

They didn't call our folks (that was the biggest threat and worst punishment)! Those were the days!

Can you imagine what they would have done to us nowadays with their stupid politically-correct reactionary "zero-tolerance" school policies?

Everything would have been put on "lockdown", fifty police cruisers would have surrounded the place, a negotiator would have been dispatched, and media would have had a field day. We'd have been labeled as "terrorists", expelled for life, sent to juvenile alternative school, and made into criminals.

Sometimes I'm glad I was born when I was.

No ... make that a lot of the time!

[EQUINOXHNTERVA]

We have all been educated from our adventures. I know from growing up on a farm that there is a "Higher Power" looking out for children.

[Farmer]

That story had me ROFLMAO I myself never did anything like that

[Stash]

I recall a day in my youth when I bought a store's entire supply of book matches...You'd think a clerk would wonder what a 12 year old would need 25 boxes of 50 books of matches for, but no.

30,000 match heads packed together are a lot nastier than you'd think.

This was not something I did for a second time.

[agingcrossbower]

I'm going to ask my friend next door if I can tell a couple to his mishaps. He is funny. As for me, well, . I can not believe the crap a band of four kids in the country could dream up. Groundpounder, you had me rolling.

[roly]

I had so many of those stories I can't remember them all.

Once way back in the 60's ,I was getting ready for firer cracker day, I had roughly 2000 ,2 inchers in a shoe box ,thank god cannon crackers were band already

Any way I managed to set the whole box off at once in the house.

I can remember how black every thing was and how burnt my hands were from holding the lid on the shoe box

But most of all I remember how sore my behind was when my mum got home.