🚀 go-pugleaf

As a kid I too ran through the gambit of burning out resistors,
exploding capacitors, etc. One time I encased a transistor in Lucite
or some other type of clear plastic, leaving the leads sticking out,
then applied voltage--mini bomb.

I am horrified at some at the things I used to do, now that I look
back on them. I never had an accident, but it sure wasn't from trying,
or giving bad luck the opportunity to visit. One "experiment" that I
performed in particular reminds me (1) how kids like to "hack"; (2)
how dangerous some of things are that kids can get into, and (3),
especially, how stupid I was as a twelve-year-old. Let me briefly
relate this story, although it doesn't have much to do with
electronics.

I was raised in a very rural town in which the prevalent attitude
toward safety was cavalier at best. My father had built our house
maybe fifteen years before I was born. In order to do so, he had to
cut down trees and blast away a lot of glacial erratics (boulders)
which were prevalent in the countryside in which we lived. In order to
the latter, he used some type of dynamite.

As far back as I can remember, I recall asking my mother what was in
that "shiny box" above our head in the rafters of our garage. She
would say: "don't you dare go near there; those are dynamite caps
which your father used to clear the area" etc. etc. Of course, that
only stoked my interest.  Nowadays it seems it was rather
irresponsible of my parents to leave that lying around, of course. But
again, it was nothing that all my neighbours didn't also do, and
really didn't strike me as being at all unusual at the time.

Well, both my parents worked and so in the summers I was alone a lot.
I had one friend in the area who would walk over to play. One day we
were bored.  And so, yep, we climbed up to the rafters and took down
that box. I was about twelve years old at the time.

Once we got it open (it was all encrusted and rusted; by now it was
twenty or twenty-five years old); we looked inside and gasped.
Contrary to what my mother told me, it wasn't dynamite caps at all. It
was bona-fide sticks of dynamite. Four pieces. Like roman candles. So
old that I remember that there was some kind of oil oozing out of
them.

Now, I didn't really know anything about dynamite and still don't, but
if I found a box like that today you can bet that I would be very,
very far away from it in a second's time. Who knows how unstable it
would be after all those years? I haven't a clue; but it would seem
like a good plan just to leave it alone, wouldn't you agree? Well, can
you guess what we did, geniuses that we were (Darwinism in action,
here, folks)? Yep, that's right: we tore the paper off each stick to
get at the explosive inside. It was white and sorta like clay and so
we shaped it into little figurines. I made a dinosaur and Paul Hamby
(my friend), I remember, spent a lot of time making an enviable
likeness of the Starship Enterprise, mumbling away and talking to
himself as he worked. Then we took them into the woods and--get
this--struck matches and *lit them on fire.* I remember watching
gleefully as they flared up with an intense white light.

Whenever I am feeling depressed and thinking that life has done me a
bad turn, I remember this incident and how lucky I was.  And I
immediately am happy again, knowing that I am living when I don't
deserve to be. Anyone out there know how likely it was for this stuff
to explode?

We did a lot of stupid things--made gunpowder and pipe bombs, etc., but this
one lives in my memory as being the worst.

--ken z.